This article traces the discourses of "nation" and "tradition" that emerged in the home studio practices of pro-Zapatista activist musicians in the peripheries of the Mexico City metropolitan area. It examines the ways that these practices related to notions of "autogestión" and "autonomy" linked to the contemporary Zapatista movement which, in turn, were connected to musicians' freedoms to "preserve" what they perceived as their cultural "roots". Although these activities ostensibly harked

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... to ahistorical "tradition", this article situates them within Mexico's turn towards neoliberal economic policy since the 1980s, and the attempted reconfiguration of nationalism towards the private sphere that accompanied it.