Juan Araiza is a Yaqui Indian boy with no money, no shoes, no education, and no future. He leaves his village to search for his father a man he never knew in Mexico s second largest city. He doesn t find his father, but his native wit and grit take him all the way from the streets to a job in the federal government. He meets the charismatic Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos and soon finds himself feeling torn his head in the government job and his heart in the black-masked Zapatista fight for Indian rights.