Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a Mexican guerrilla and revolutionary leader, best known for spearheading the peasant uprising in Morelos during the Mexican Revolution and for founding the agrarian reform movement known as Zapatismo. He was born in the small village of Anenecuilco, Morelos, at a time when wealthy landowners, backed by dictator Porfirio Díaz, were squeezing peasant communities out of their land and water to grow sugarcane. Zapata got involved in politics early, pushing back against the Díaz regime and the hacienda owners. When the revolution started in 1910, he took charge of the peasant revolt in Morelos. Working with other rural leaders, he built the Liberation Army of the South and quickly became its top commander.

Zapata’s fighters helped topple Díaz by beating the Federal Army at the Battle of Cuautla in May 1911. But when Francisco I. Madero became president, he rejected the Zapatistas, calling them bandits. In November 1911, Zapata issued the Plan of Ayala, demanding major land reforms and the redistribution of land to peasants. Madero sent the Federal Army to crush the Zapatistas in Morelos. His generals burned villages, forced people out, and sent many men into the army or to forced-labor camps in southern Mexico. These brutal tactics only made Zapata more popular with the peasants, and his forces drove Madero’s army, led by Victoriano Huerta, out of Morelos. In February 1913, Huerta overthrew Madero and took power, but a northern coalition of Constitutionalists—Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón, and Pancho Villa—with help from Zapata’s troops, pushed Huerta out in July 1914. Zapata refused to accept Carranza as the revolution’s leader, sticking instead to the Plan of Ayala.

After defeating Huerta, the revolutionaries tried to sort out who would lead at the Convention of Aguascalientes in late 1914. Zapata and Villa broke with Carranza, and Mexico slid into a civil war among the victors. Unhappy with the alliance with Villa, Zapata turned his attention to rebuilding Morelos, which he controlled, putting the Plan of Ayala’s land reforms into practice. As Carranza gained strength and beat Villa in 1915, Zapata waged guerrilla war against the Carrancistas. Carranza’s troops invaded Morelos and again used scorched-earth tactics to try to oust the rebels. Zapata retook most of the state by 1917 and held it until he was killed in an ambush in April 1919. After his death, Zapatista generals sided with Obregón against Carranza and helped drive Carranza from power. In 1920, Zapatistas won important posts in the Morelos government and began carrying out many of the land reforms Zapata had fought for.

Zapata remains a powerful symbol in Mexico, used both as a nationalist icon and as a figurehead for the neo-Zapatista movement. Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution was written in response to his demands for agrarian justice.

Emiliano Zapata was born on 8 August 1879 in Anenecuilco, Morelos, to Gabriel Zapata and Cleofas Jertrudiz Salazar, the ninth of ten children. Contrary to myth, the Zapatas were a well-known local family and fairly well-off. His maternal grandfather, José Salazar, had fought under José María Morelos y Pavón at the siege of Cuautla, and his paternal uncles Cristino and José Zapata had served in the Reform War and the French Intervention. Emiliano’s godfather managed a large local hacienda, and his godmother was the manager’s wife. The family traced their roots to the Zapata of Mapaztlán and were likely mestizos—of both Spanish and Nahua descent. Whether Zapata himself spoke Nahuatl is not certain, but historian Miguel León-Portilla has pointed to later Zapatista proclamations and eyewitness accounts as evidence that he was fluent.

Gabriel Zapata was a farmer and horse trainer, and Emiliano’s childhood on the farm gave him a deep understanding of rural hardship and his village’s long fight to reclaim land taken by expanding haciendas. He had a limited education from his teacher, Emilio Vara, which included basic bookkeeping. When Emiliano was about 16 or 17, his father died, leaving him to support the family. He was enterprising: he bought a team of mules to haul maize and bricks, and grew watermelons as a cash crop. A skilled horseman, he competed in rodeos, races, and bullfighting from horseback. Those skills got him work training horses for Porfirio Díaz’s son-in-law, Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, who owned a large sugar hacienda nearby. Zapata was striking, with a large mustache he was proud of, and dressed in a charro outfit—tight black cashmere pants with silver buttons, a broad charro hat, a fine linen shirt or jacket, a scarf, one-piece boots, Amozoqueña-style spurs, and a pistol. In one undated studio photo, he wears a standard business suit and tie, projecting an image of a man of means. Around the turn of the century, Anenecuilco was a mix of different social groups.