Emiliano Zapata biography

Synopsis

Early career

Zapata was the son of a mestizo peasant who trained and sold horses. He was orphaned at the age of 17 and had to look after his brothers and sisters. In 1897 he was arrested because he took part in a protest by the peasants of his village against the hacienda that had appropriated their lands. After obtaining a pardon, he continued agitation among the peasants, and so he was drafted into the army. He served for six months, at which point he was discharged to a landowner to train his horses. In 1909 his neighbours elected him president of the board of defense for their village. After useless negotiations with the landowners, Zapata and a group of peasants occupied by force the land that had been appropriated by the haciendas and distributed it among themselves.

Francisco Madero, a landowner of the north, had lost the elections in 1910 to the dictator Porfirio Díaz and had fled to the United States, where he proclaimed himself president and then reentered Mexico, aided by many peasant guerrillas. Zapata and his friends decided to support Madero. In March 1911 Zapata's tiny force took the city of Cuautla and closed the road to the capital, Mexico City. A week later Díaz resigned and left for Europe, appointing a provisional president. Zapata, with 5,000 men, entered Cuernavaca, capital of the state of Morelos.

Madero entered Mexico City in triumph. Zapata met Madero there and asked him to exert pressure on the provisional president to return the land to the ejidos (the former Indian communal system of landownership). Madero insisted on the disarmament of the guerrillas and offered Zapata a recompense so that he could buy land, an offer that Zapata rejected. Zapata began to disarm his forces but stopped when the provisional president sent the army against the guerrillas.

The Plan of Ayala

Madero was elected president in November 1911, and Zapata met with him again but without success. With the help of a teacher, Otilio Montao, Zapata prepared the Plan of Ayala, which declared Madero incapable of fulfilling the goals of the revolution. The signers renewed the revolution and promised to appoint a provisional president until there could be elections. They also vowed to return the stolen land to the ejidos by expropriating, with payment, a third of the area of the haciendas; those haciendas that refused to accept this plan would have their lands expropriated without compensation. Zapata adopted the slogan “Tierra y Libertad” (“Land and Liberty”).

In the course of his campaigns, Zapata distributed lands taken from the haciendas, which he frequently burned without compensation. He often ordered executions and expropriations, and his forces did not always abide by the laws of war. But underneath his picturesque appearance—drooping moustache, cold eyes, big sombrero—was a passionate man with simple ideals that he tried to put into practice. The Zapatistas avoided battle