Who was Emiliano Zapata?
Emiliano Zapata was born in 1879 in Anenecuilco, Morelos, into a family that had long led its community. In 1909 villagers chose him to press their claims to communal land that estate owners had taken. He joined Francisco Madero's 1910 revolt against Porfirio Díaz, then turned against Madero when the land was not returned. In November 1911 he issued the Plan of Ayala. For the next decade he fought Madero's successors, first Victoriano Huerta and then the Constitutionalists under Venustiano Carranza, mostly in Morelos, at the head of the Liberation Army of the South. On April 10, 1919, he was shot in an ambush at Chinameca.
Political views
- He campaigned for villagers' right to land that estate owners were taking, and he first used old title deeds to back the villages' claims.Source: libcom.org
- When the government stalled, he began taking disputed land by force.Source: libcom.org
- He broke with Madero after Madero insisted on institutional procedures, ordered Zapata's troops disarmed and failed to act on land to Zapata's satisfaction.Source: encyclopedia.com
- The Plan of Ayala, issued on November 25, 1911, denounced Madero and called for communal lands to be returned and hacienda land to be expropriated, with no payment to owners who refused.Source: encyclopedia.com
- He refused to attend Carranza's convention because none of its delegates had been elected.Source: libcom.org
- A schoolteacher, Otilio Montaño, introduced him to the writings of Ricardo Flores Magón and Peter Kropotkin, and he was partly influenced by Magón, though readers dispute whether the anarchist label fits him.Source: libcom.org
- Article 27 of the 1917 constitution drew on the Plan of Ayala, but large-scale land distribution waited until the government of Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s.Source: encyclopedia.com
Legacy
Zapata is one of Mexico's best-known revolutionary heroes, and his image stands for peasant land rights. Admirers credit him with keeping the land question at the center of the revolution, and the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas took up his name. Critics at the time, especially urban ones, called him the Attila of the South and treated him as a bandit. He fought an elected president in Madero, and his forces took land by force. After he was lured into an ambush and killed in 1919, the Liberation Army of the South gradually fell apart. Later leaders often pursued policies he would have opposed.