The Tzotzil are an indigenous Maya people of the central highlands in what is now southern Mexico. In their native tongue they are the "people of the bat" and have lived in the modern day state of Chiapas for more than 2,000 years.

They traded in the iridescent Quetzal feathers that were used to construct the penacho worn by the Aztec leader at the time of Spanish invasion, Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Today that penacho is still stolen property and is in Vienna at their Museum of Ethnography, a grotesque example of unashamed colonialist abuse.

The indigenous TzoTzil, or Bat People, have been fighting for their sovereignty for more than 500 years, take a minute and count those generations.

As original inhabitants of the lands in what is now Southern Mexico, they faced the Spanish invasions of the 16th century. Native land was stolen piece by piece and the indigenous people, like the TzoTzil, were eventually forced into labor on 'encomiendas' or large land holdings that had been violently taken by the Spanish crown.

The first TzoTzil uprising against Spanish settler colonialism and forced labor on the stolen lands these settlers occupied, was in 1528, then again in 1712 and again in 1868.

More than 40 years after the Mexican War of Independence, which ejected the Spanish crown left the remaining settlers in political control, Mexico elected its first indigenous president - Benito Juarez. Immortalized as liberator in nearly every corner of the country today, laws that he enacted in 1863 stripped communally held lands from indigenous people like the southern TzoTzil leaving them even fewer options and forced most into servitude.

People of the Bat, the TzoTzil of what in now the Mexican state of Chiapas have been living in these central highlands for over 2,000 years. For the last 500 years they have fought to protect their ancestral lands and their traditions.

In the 1930's then president, Lázaro Cárdenas (del Río) enacted a series of land reforms intended to unite indigenous people across the country and redistributed nearly 70,000 square miles of large holdings, haciendas and ranches back into communal land controlled by peasants in several agricultural regions. La Laguna a prominent cotton-growing region in northern Mexico and in the Yucatán where the economy was dominated by henequen production. He also enacted land reforms in Baja California, Sonora, Michoacán and in Chiapas - home to the Tzotzil people.

The TzoTzil people of what is now the Central Highlands in the modern day state of Chiapas, Mexico are a part of a diverse Mayan ancestry. A tiny 10% fraction of Palenque, one of the most well known of their ancient ceremonial sites, has been uncovered. It is believed that more than 1,000 monumental stone structures remain hidden by the dense jungle which surrounds the cleared area.

"The Classic Maya in particular developed some of the most accurate pre-telescope astronomy in the world, aided by their fully developed writing system and their positional numeral system, both of which are fully indigenous to Mesoamerica."

Support for the Zapatista movement "Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN" is very strong in the indigenous communities of TzoTzil people living in what is now the Mexican state of Chiapas. At the heart of this movement is the TzoTzil town of San Juan Chamula at an altitude 7,200 ft and just outside of the well known colonial town, San Cristobal de las Casas.

No federal police or military are allowed in the village and it has been declared an autonomous zone. Visitors must request admittance to the town at the municipal building and are not permitted to take photographs once welcomed. The central Catholic church has long been reclaimed by indigenous ceremony, the pew-less floor covered with fragrant pine and the walls adorned with religious figures appropriated from their colonial past and now in service of indigenous spirituality.