The Zapatista Movement was a movement that started twenty years ago when a group of Indigent Zapatista rebels went up against the Mexican government in an effort to assert the rights of the impoverished group in the Mexican state on the date of the signing of the Free Trade Agreement. The group’s complaints against the government included gripes that they and the people they were in support of were forced into poverty, and ignorance. Furthermore, the group opposed economic globalization.

The Zapatista Movement has achieved some successes over the last twenty years in the country of Mexico. One of its biggest successes was having anti-discrimination laws passed, especially since the indigenous are a group that is often discriminated against. As a group that often separates itself from larger Mexican society, the members of the group run their own schools and facilities that are normally run by the government.

Many people believe that the challenges that these indigenous Mayan peasants face are in part of their own choosing because of the policies and beliefs promoted by the Zapatista Movement. This indigenous groups is often denied access to more traditional established in Mexico. Furthermore, they often separate and isolate themselves from larger society.

One can hardly argue that the Zapatista Movement was successful. This is not because they did not receive that much attention. In fact, the group received worldwide attention for their cause. However, the group has consistently refused to take any government assistance. Therefore, this group is still racked with poverty and economic inequality, the same problems that they were protesting when the movement started twenty years ago. Today, there are those who argue that the Zapatistas and their movement is no longer relevant because there are other group who have staged more successful calls for economic equality.

The fight against economic inequality was at the heart of the Occupy Wall Street Movement that occurred on September 17, 2011 when Adbuster initiated protests against big businesses’ influence on democracy and the government, political corruption, and economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street Movement is being compared to the Zapatista Movement in that they are both considered to be global revolts, the Zapatista Movement being the original global revolt and the Occupy Wall Street Movement being the most modern of the global revolts.

According to “Zapatismo and the Global Origins of Occupy” the recent Occupy Wall Street Movement did not copy the Zapatista Movement that took place in 1993, 1994, however, it did take some inspiration from that movement. “In contrast to a linear descent of active transmitters and passive adopters, global resistance has spread more through the indirect force of ‘inspiration.’ Global resistance did not copy the Zapatistas, but took inspiration from them and adopted Zapatista strategies to fit their own situation” (Nail, 2013, p. 20). Some of the similarities of the two movements, the article points out, are the use of masks in the movement, the push for consensus decision-making as one of the objectives that the movement is trying to achieve, and horizontalism, or the communication without hierarchy.

The Occupy wall Street Movement gained a great deal of attention at the time that it was initiated and in the year following when numbers reached as high as 100,000 protesters. However, there have been other movements in the past that were set to protest economic inequality and corporate influence on the government instead of popular choice by the masses. These protests groups and movements often fall back over time similar to the lessening in effect of the Zapatista Movement. Only time will tell is the Occupy Wall Street Movement will continue and impact change or it will simple fall back into a relic of time.