U.S. environmental activist, Susana Olsen, arrives in southern Mexico to try to overcome indigenous resistance to a "clean energy" project. In the mountains of southern Mexico a culture of ancestral communal life over seven thousand years old still thrives. Like the communities of the state of Chiapas that erupted into resistance in the Zapatista war of 1994, these communities are threatened by a global economy that cares nothing for communal living and holds nothing as sacred. Armando Pedro Cruz and his village in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca struggle to regain their ancestral memory and to resist the encroachment of mines and megaprojects that threaten the territories of their pueblo. Meanwhile, ArmandosĖ sister, Elena, organizes her adopted pueblo on the Oaxacan Isthmus against international development projects that divide the community. The violent reality of current day Mexico forcefully imposes itself on all three as they try to make sense out of what would really constitute "a civilization for the future" of an embattled planet.
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