The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is an indigenist and libertarian-socialist political and militant group in Mexico which launched a rebellion against the Mexican government's neoliberal reforms in 1994 in Chiapas. The EZLN was founded in 1983 by non-indigenous, northern Mexican members of the National Liberation Forces (FLN) revolutionary group and by Native American inhabitants of eastern Chiapas, and the EZLN grew in strength through establishing relations with the indigenous community in Chiapas. On 1 January 1994, the EZLN went public, declaring war on the Mexican government on the same day as the implementation of NAFTA. The EZLN, effectively led by its spokesman Subcomandante Marcos, waged a campaign of civil resistance against the Mexican government and seized control of Chiapas, with indigenous Mayans spearheading the rebellion. In the towns and villages the EZLN controlled, EZLN fighters created murals of their revolutionary idols Emiliano Zapata, Che Guevara, and Subcomandante Marcos, and they rejected and defied political classification in favor of implementing indigenous control over local resources and land. A Mexican Army counteroffensive in 1994 led to the EZLN abstaining from military offensives and instead focusing on winning grassroots support both in Mexico and abroad.