"People of the Sun" is the second single by American rock band Rage Against the Machine for their 1996 album Evil Empire. Written in 1992, the song is about the Zapatista revolution. Lead vocalist Zack de la Rocha wrote the song after a visit to Chiapas in southern Mexico. "People of the Sun" also has a music video. It was nominated for a Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy in 1998, but it lost to The Smashing Pumpkins' "The End Is the Beginning Is the End". The song has a wide variety of references, most notably the destruction of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish (see the article Five suns) and the Zoot Suit Riots of Los Angeles in 1943. De La Rocha also refers to the last Aztecan Emperor Cuauhtémoc, who was tortured and eventually executed by the Spaniards. The single artwork of the corn, sickle and ammunition belt is a 1927 photograph taken by Italian photographer Tina Modotti in Mexico. The final version of the song made its live debut on May 9, 1996, in Paris, France. Origin The band were known to perform this song live as early as 1992, the only difference being Zack's lyrics. A studio version was also recorded and has circulated on the internet. The original lyrics contained verses from their song "Fistful of Steel". This version was first played on September 28, 1992, at the Club With No Name in West Hollywood, California. Music video The video, directed by Peter Christopherson and produced by Fiz Oliver at Squeak Pictures, opens with shots of a dead indigenous Mexican girl (IMDB Melissa Herrera); her arm starts bleeding and the blood shows the words "Trickle down". Statistics illustrating the plight of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation are shown from a film projector being run in a morgue. Military footage of United States arms arriving in Mexico and the Zapatistas themselves are interspersed with this and shots of the band playing in front of a brick wall in about a 10 by 10 space. The version seen on MTV is the edited version; scenes of an indigenous worker being buried alive and trampled, and dead teenagers in the morgue, have been removed and replaced with military footage. The black and white documentary-style scenes of the laborer and the vaqueros are from the movie ¡Qué viva México! by Sergei Eisenstein, from the 1930s. Track listing single "People