It takes more than two hours to get everyone through the narrow doors of Tierradentro Cafe, and so we stand outside waiting, crushed together with other Spaniards, Italians, Mexicans, Norweigans, Canadians and Americans. Together, we are the multi-coloured, multi-shaded faces of international zapatismo.

On this particular sunny southern Mexican day we've assembled for the announcement of the beginning of the Other Campaign's second phase. Once we are all seated and arranged within the cafe, with our respective cameras and notepads prepped and patiently pointed
toward the empty "round table" (which happens to be quite square, rectangular even, as Marcos will quip
during one of his speeches), the comandancia (leadership) of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation files into the crowded room and take their places beneath the twin Mexican and Zapatista flagsthat are suspended from the wall.

Strike the Zapatista hymn. Strike it about 6 times on repeat, crackling fuzzily through the speaker system. Some of the crowd mouths the words or sings along as the zapatista leaders stand in salute with varying degrees of poise. (Somewhere toward the end of the
line of comandantes (commanders) the zeal to raise an arm in salute has tapered off and been replaced with a patient slumped shoulder standing.)

The meeting begins with a speaker recounting what was the first step of the Other Campaign. We are reminded of the national tour that the zapatistas undertook to meet with and to listen to all of those in Mexico who are "from below and to the left," and that in this tour the zapatistas found, with each new meeting, that they were not alone in the oppression they live and in the desire to seek deep, structural change. Equally, the presenter notes, each new encounter was a lesson in new and diverse organizing tactics, a point of
exchange between the zapatistas and the diverse people of Mexico who are in resistance; a site upon which to reflect about the profound crisis that neoliberal capitalism is enacting upon the world.

Once the collective memory of the Other Campaign has been established, comandante Tacho takes the microphone. He speaks of the corrupt power of the elites and of money. He also announces the beginning of this second phase of the Other Campaign: the Campaña Mundial por la Defense de las Tierras y los Territorios Indígenas y Campesinos, Autónomos, de Chiapas, México y el Mundo (World Campaign in Defense of Land and Autonomous Indigenous and Campesino Territories of Mexico and the World) which as of 6pm this evening, the 25th of March, has begun.

As the next 8 speakers will remind us in their varying forms and from varying anlaytical viewpoints - two of whom are only vicariously present across internet connections, calling in from land movements in Honduras and Brazil (MST) - the struggle for land is at the base of the oppression that people the world over are faced with. Land is not only land, not only trees and fields, as commandante Kelly orates, but is also the source of all culture, all history, all dreams, and all identity. When it is taken away, or denied to a people, these people are also denied food, water and shelter, as well as home, community, identity, self-determination and autonomy. Life, as it is.