Combating Coca-Cola and the global conquistadores: following a tradition of resistance that goes back to pre-Columbian days, indigenous youth organizers in southern Mexico take on transnationals and the free-trade invasion. (Action).

On Indigenous Peoples' Day, October 12, 2002, an other-earthly growl rose from the center of Juchitan, in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. More than 500 people--most in their teens and early 20s, nearly all indigenous--marched out of the zocalo, or city center. The demonstrators dragged thousands of plastic bottles, tied into long chains, across the mile of pavement to Juchitan's Coca-Cola bottling facility. Their hand-painted banners addressed Coca-Cola and the corporate world it represents: "Transnationals = hunger and destruction" and "If you globalize the world, we [will globalize] the resistance!"

Shrill chants replaced the bottles' loud rumble as the crowd ...