Zapata, Emiliano (1879–1919)

In the two decades before the Mexican Revolution of 1910 exploded against the cruel dictator Porfirio Díaz, the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, was covered by 40 giant sugar estates exporting to the world market. By 1910, the millionaire landowners had illegally stripped the peasants of their corn patches in order to grow more sugarcane. During the Revolution, Emiliano Zapata was the peasant who led his people in a struggle for land and freedom. His guerrillas gained more strength, and in 1914, a “people's war” drove the landowners from the state. The land was divided up among the peasants. A people in arms governed itself during 1915—the year of freedom for Morelos. But in the Mexican north, revolutionary factions were fighting each other and the radical Pancho Villa lost. The “revolutionary” winner who took over the presidency represented landed interests. From 1916 to 1919, Venustiano Carranza sent scorched-earth campaigns against the peasants of Morelos. In 1919, Zapata—el general—was betrayed and assassinated. The peasants were granted half the land and laid down their arms. In the following decades, Zapata's radical agrarianism lived on in the struggles of his followers for land and freedom: In the 1930s, the Mexican Revolution finally culminated in a national land reform. During the 1940s and 1950s, the old Zapatista commander Ruben Jaramillo organized peasants and led guerrilla wars against the corrupted Party of the Revolution (PRI). The ideals of the incorruptible Zapata inspired revolutionaries throughout the 20th century. In the 1980s, indigenous Mayas joined the secret Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional; EZLN) and in 1994 hit the conservative government with an insurrection. At time of writing (2006), they have yet to lay down their arms. Their white intellectual leader, Subcomandante Marcos, has become a world symbol by using the Internet to criticize the ruling classes.

Emiliano Zapata was born in 1879 in the peasant village of Anenecuilco. His old guerrilla grandfather told him stories of Benito Juárez's struggle to throw French invaders out of Mexico. With only 2 years of schooling, Zapata learned to read. (During the Revolution he read history every day in order to improve his leadership abilities.) In the 1890s, the young Zapata became the best bronco buster in the state of Morelos—in a horse-and-buggy society, he often left his corn patch to break untamable horses for the great landowners.

In Latin America, peasant struggles for land tend to pass through three stages. In 1909, Zapata entered the first phase by hiring a lawyer to sue the sugar landowner who had stolen the lands of his village. Peasants are naïve legalists who often begin in the courts, trying to enforce constitutions that guarantee private property. But the ruling classes violate these constitutions with impunity. Zapata's legal struggle [Page 1512]came to nothing. He was conscripted into the dictator's army and taken from the state under military discipline. With Zapata gone, the landowners found untamable broncos on their hands. So the landowner Ignacio de la Torre got him out of the army and kept him as a groom for his stables in Mexico City. There, Zapata read the newspapers and talked politics with friends.

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