Some pictures from a trip to a Zapatista community center in Chiapas. In the 1990’s the Zapatistas began helping groups set up community centers in central locations to nearby villages. The centers offered education. programming and other services for Mayan villages in Chiapas where no government services existed. No electricity, running water, and hardly any roads which were mostly serviced by trucks that would drive around helping people get from place to place. Most of the houses in this area at the time consisted of grass huts and people grew there own food and kept livestock. Money was only scarcely used when traveling to the nearest cities where one could buy clothes and other supplies. The presence of a nearby military base would often be felt with helicopters passing by and trucks of soldiers roaming the area.
