Native Uprising.

WHETHER BY STORMING shareholder meetings or presidential palaces, indigenous groups have been shaking up Latin America's political mainstream as never before. Opening the way for public protest has been the region's turn toward democracy, prompting activists to seize on the powerful combination of instant worldwide communications, moral high ground and colorful native garb.

In recent months, U'wa council leaders faced down Occidental Petroleum's chairman amid warnings that the whole tribe would walk off a cliff if Oxy drilled on U'wa sacred lands in Colombia. Mapuches started retaking land from Chilean agroindustrial firms by squatting. A Wayuu tribe member in Venezuela rose to the post of environment minister. A leader of the Yanomamo jetted off to Scotland to meet with the Green Party to stop mining and logging in his Brazilian homeland. Amazonians, including this pipe smoker, held forth in Brasilia's government square to show displeasure over a new health plan.

The legacy of Chiapas, Mexico, drives these movements. The notion that a small, never-before-heard-of group of natives could bring a company or a country to its knees by taking up arms and the Internet is enough to bring the hardest of bard-nose negotiators to the bargaining table.