On New Year's Day, 1994, the uprising of Indian peasants in Chiapas, Mexico signalled a dramatic new chapter in a long history that began five hundred years ago. That history involves three major players: the rich and powerful elite, the church, and the poor majority.

In Mexico at the Crossroads veteran correspondent Michael Tangeman explores the history of interaction between these rival forces in America's closest neighbor, beginning with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors and missionaries in the sixteenth century, through the era of independence, revolution, and emergence of the modern nation.