San Cristobal de las Casas, has not seen anything like it since the Zapatista uprising on New Year's Day, 1994. The day when the patchwork Zapatista army, the EZLN, an army who - in the typical poetic paradox, that zapatismo is so good at - speaks of "weapons that aspire to be useless" and "a rebellion that embraces", descended from the hills and took over this colonial town.

No one knows how many EZLN soldiers took the city that day, we know that at least 300 EZLN members had infiltrated the federal army years previously and broke their cover, opening up the military base and taking loads of communications equipment with them. While in the city, the police force had been just as successfully undermined. Fifty EZLN sympathizers had kindly offered to take on the New Year's Eve shift so that their colleagues could spend time with their families.

This time it may not be new year's day, but the sliver of a new moon portends another moment of historical transformation. Todays communique from the EZLN demands "another world. A new one. A good one." Once again, as 20,000 Zapatistas and their supporters filled the streets of this small town perched high up in the mountains of the South East of Mexico, we glimpsed this new world.

This time around, there was no sound of gunfire, only a suprising silence at first, a silence that seemed to represented the unbreakable power of dignity, a silence which was kept with impeccable discipline by the columns of masked Zapatistas lining the streets, a silence which was only broken with the arrival of the comandantes, at which point the columns flowed into the main square, jostelling the crowds to get a good view of the stage and chanting "Zapata vive! La lucha sigue!" ( Long live Zapata, the struggle continues).

Seven years on from the uprising, the world is already a very different place. This time there was no need for Zapatista infiltrators, because the irresistable spirit of Zaptismo like the mist from these mountains, has seeped between the cracks and infiltrated and infused so many corners of global civil society. From the Mexican trade unionists, to the Italian white overalls movement, from the Spanish squattters to the militant striking Unam Student, from Latin American campansino groups to global independent media activist, from sons of the dissappered in Argentinia to militant mexican indebted farmers associations, from Berkley, New York and London Reclaim the Streets networks, to Zapatista solidarity groups from all over the world. All of us who flooded the narrow streets of San Cristobal, on the eve of the caravans departure, have been inspired by Zapatismos beautiful words and exemplorary actions, by their inclusive call for "one world with many worlds within it".

As members of "Civil Society", the term used by Zapatistas to describe the broad base of support and mutual aid that accompanies and partakes in struggles, we are all here to surround and protect the 24 commandantes, as they make their journey to the doors of the Mexican government. As the caravan passes through twelve different states, stopping of in towns and communities on the way, it will build grassroots pressure on the government, to agree to the three EZLN demands: release all Zapatista prisoners, evacuate 7 military bases in chiapas and make the Cocopa agreement which will give Mexico's 10 million indegenous people rights of self determination, and thus open up the space for dialogue about peace. No one as yet knows how everything will pan out, the whole caravan project is an enormous gamble for all those involved. Everyday the newspapers are filled with stories about it and the game of brinksman ship that is developing between Mexicos prseident Fox and Subcommandante Marcos.