Once the ringing ends, the thud of hammers again echoes across the sprawling farmlands around this autonomous city, home to 100,000 Tzotzil-speaking Mayas.

San Juan Chamula, a mostly ceremonial center that long resisted outsiders, is undergoing a construction boom, thanks mostly to young people who recently departed in droves to work in the United States and are sending millions of dollars home.

Along with the building explosion, Chamula and other remote indigenous communities where Mayan is spoken are experiencing a technological awakening.

Cybercafes sprout in villages with primitive plumbing and unpaved roads. Mayas in traditional attire chat on cellphones and send text messages to kinfolk in the United States. Here, many now photograph and videotape their festivals and religious ceremonies, a syncretism of ancient beliefs with Catholicism. Until recently, recording such images could land one in jail.

Fourteen years after the non-Indian Subcomandante Marcos and his National Zapatista Liberation Army took up arms to demand better living conditions, autonomy, schools, clinics and access to modern media technology for the Maya, a high-tech revolution is taking hold.

''After all, Chiapas was the site of the first Internet war,'' William ''Chip'' Morris Jr., author of Living Maya, said about the Zapatista uprising. It was timed to protest that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the United States, Canada and Mexico, didn't provide favorable agricultural conditions to Mexican farmers.

It was Marcos who used the Internet from the Lacandon jungle to enlist tens of thousands of sympathizers from around the world to the cause. He ultimately forced then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to call a cease-fire and begin talks.

Chiapas, population four million, is still Mexico's poorest state despite some of the country's richest natural resources. Its dams provide Mexico with almost half its hydroelectric energy.

Living conditions are dire for many, and political tensions still percolate between Zapatista communities and the government of President Felipe Calderón.

But what the government has failed to provide, tens of thousands are finding on their own. Chamula, never a Zapatista stronghold, has found a solution across the U.S. border.

''These are George Bush's dollars,'' Juan Gallo, a former Chamula County judge and a renowned artist, chuckled as he walked around his neighborhood.

NEW WEALTH
Rising in their wake of abandoned mud thatch huts are modern-day pyramids testifying to new wealth -- concrete homes with columns, bay windows and white-picket fences, many painted in the sunny pastels favored by Floridians.

Gallo said his son Julio César, 24, went to Tampa four years ago and makes a good living in construction, living in a community with hundreds of other Chamulans.

With his son's funds, Gallo built a successful mini-tortilla factory that churns out the corn staple with the latest modern machinery. Workers use four newly purchased motorcycles to make home deliveries.

''The kids here go the states for three or four years,'' said Gallo, 51. ``It's like going to college.''
Mexican migration statistics show that up to half a million Chiapanecans, mostly indigenous peasants, are working in the United States. They labor in construction or gardening in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and California and range in age from 15 to 18. While most are men, young women are also joining them.

''I worked in Tampa for two years,'' said Manuel Hernández, 24, who crossed the Arizona desert two years ago, made his way to Tampa and is now back home. ``I went to make money and learn other ways of construction. I may go back to Tampa, but now I'm too busy building homes in Chamula.''

With only an elementary school education, Hernández and an apprentice were rapidly building a two-story home with skylights, probably better suited for the tropics than the cloudy cool climate of Chamula. He had designed it for a city elder, based on building styles that resembled those of Florida or California.

''The exodus of the Chiapas population is a recent phenomenon without precedent in the modern history of our region,'' said Jorge Alberto López Arévalo, an economist with the Chiapas Autonomous University.

Arévalo has been documenting the migration of workers to the United States since the late 1990s, when it erupted, as well as the social changes it has brought. He points to NAFTA, the government war of attrition against the Zapatistas and recent natural disasters such as hurricanes Stan and Wilma, which wiped out tens of thousands of homes and farmland, to explain the exodus of Maya farmers.

''We're becoming importers of food and exporters of workers,'' he said.
In 2005, workers sent $655.3 million to Chiapas, jumping to $824.5 million in 2006. In 2007, they sent $796 million, ebbing with the U.S. mortgage crisis and increased clampdown on illegal immigration in the United States.

The Bank of Mexico estimates U.S. workers from Chiapas now send more money home than those from traditional migrant states such as Zacatecas, Colima, Durango, San Luis Potosí and Nayarit.

Annual total remittances to Mexico from abroad are estimated at about $25 billion a year, second only to the country's oil earnings. Most of it goes toward family consumption and only about 1.5 percent toward productive investment, the Bank of Mexico estimates.

LURE OF CYBERSPACE
In Chamula, a line now forms early each day at the new Western Union office that recently opened up across the market plaza, where peasants sell beans, corn, fruit and arts and crafts. Next to it, the first cybercafe, with 10 computers, opened in April.

Until recently, Chamulans traveled south seven miles to San Cristobal de las Casas, a colonial tourism haven of 250,000, for daily errands. Now, Chamula is becoming self-sufficient and more tech-savvy.

''Indigenous communities want more cellphone coverage,'' said Rafael Najera, supervisor for cellphone company Telcel in San Cristobal. ``They buy a lot of prepaid cellphone cards to call the United States. We're now studying logistics to install more cellphone towers.''

CULTURAL CONCERNS
Many anthropologists worry that the digital age may further endanger Maya culture, but others here say it will better enable them to record and preserve their culture.

At the Universidad Intercultural of Chiapas, in San Cristobal, 900 students pay about $60 a semester to study everything from Mexican history, anthropology, political science and communications for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

Gallo, the Chamulan artist, recently inaugurated a mural for the university auditorium. It shows the evolution of the Maya with familiar depictions of farmers, festivals, the Virgin of Guadalupe. And it continues to modern times, with scenes of tourists taking photos, a Maya woman writing on a computer, modern dancing and even the now-accepted spectacle of public kissing.

Its final scene is of Mayas climbing stairs made of books.
''Their traditions come from the 16th century,'' said Luis Morales, an anthropologist at the university.
''With globalization, the changes are accelerated, but Maya culture doesn't allow outside imposition,'' Morales said. ``Instead, they adopt aspects of Western life, what they like. But they maintain their tight community organizations without changing their profound cultural, religious base.''