Emiliano Zapata, assassinated on this day in 1919, was a leader of peasant uprisings in Mexico and the inspiration of the agrarian movement known as Zapatismo.

Mexican revolutionary. In the complex development of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the so-called agrarian leaders took up the just aspirations of the most humble rural classes, who had been driven to misery by an arbitrary agrarian policy that dispossessed them of their lands. Of all of them, Emiliano Zapata continues to be the most admired.

Member of a humble peasant family. Emiliano Zapata worked as a laborer and sharecropper since he was a child He was orphaned around the age of 13, and both he and his older brother Eufemio inherited a bit of land and a few head of cattle, with which they had to support themselves and his two sisters, María de Jesús and María de la luz.

Emiliano stayed in his hometown, Anenecuilco, where, in addition to working his land, he was sharecropper of a small part of the land of a neighboring farm. When he was around seventeen years old, he had his first confrontation with the authorities, which forced him to leave the state of Morelos and live for some months in hiding on the ranch of some friends of his family and eventually took a job in Mexico City.

One of the causes of the Mexican Revolution was the disastrous agrarian policy developed by the Pofirio Díaz regime. Under the iniquitous laws promulgated by the dictator, landowners and large companies seized communal lands and small properties, leaving humble peasants dispossessed. It is estimated that in 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Revolution, more than 90 percent of the peasants lacked land, and that around a thousand latifundistas (landlords) employed three million braceros.

Back in Morelos, Emiliano Zapata took up the defense of the communal lands. In Anenecuilco, a dispute had begun with the Hospital estate, and the peasants could not sow on the disputed lands until the courts resolved. Emiliano Zapata made his first drastic decision: at the head of a small armed group, he occupied the lands of the Hospital and distributed them among the peasants.

What trigger the Mexican Revolution was Porfirio Díaz's decision to stand in the 1910 elections. Such "elections" were actually a farce. pseudo-democratic to extend its mandate for another six years as he had been doing for almost 30 years.

Francisco I. Madero, founder of the Anti-reelectionist Party , had presented his candidacy for the 1910 elections, but he was persecuted and forced into exile. Understanding the futility of the democratic path, Francisco Madero launched the Plan of San Luis from exile, a political proclamation in which he called on the Mexican people to rise up in arms against the dictator on November 20, 1910, the start date of the Mexican Revolution.

In Morelos, many immediately joined the insurrection; This was not the case, however, for Zapata. He did not fully trust the promises of the San Luis Plan, and previously wanted to see the land distributions he had made at the head of the Villa de Ayala Board recognized and legitimized with appointments. After being appointed colonel by Pablo Torres, Zapata adhered to the Plan of San Luis and in March 1911, upon Torres's death, he was appointed "supreme head of the revolutionary movement of the South."

The Ayala Plan

After the fall of the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, and already during the interim presidency of León de la Barra, discrepancies quickly arose between Zapata, who demanded the immediate distribution of the lands of the haciendas among the peasants, and Francisco Madero, who for his part demanded the disarmament of the guerrillas. Finally, Zapata accepted the discharge and disarmament of his troops, in the hope that the election of Madero as president would open the doors to reform.

Faced with the failure of new talks and the attacks by the army against peasants in the south, Zapata drew up the Ayala Plan in November of the same year, in which he declared Madero incapable of fulfilling the objectives of the revolution (particularly agrarian reform) and announced the expropriation of a third of the lands. of the landlords in exchange for compensation, if accepted, and by force otherwise. Those who adhered to the plan, who elected Pascual Orozco as head of the revolution, raised the flag of agrarian reform as a priority and requested the resignation of the president.

Madero is Betrayed and executed by one of his Allies called Victoriano Huerta, who was conspiring with American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson to remove Madero, and he Declares himself President and attacks Zapata in the south.

Zapata would end up Forming an Alliance with both Pacho Villa, Alvaro Obregon and Venustiano Carranza to defeat Huerta, with Villa and Zapata taking over the capital, eventually the Alliance of the 4 would break down with the Constitutionalists (Carranza and Obregon) against the Zapatistas and the Villistas.

Faced with the impossibility of ending the movement and the threat that Zapata posed to the federal government (to the extent that radicals from other states could follow his example), Carranza and González hatched a plan to assassinate Zapata. By making him believe that he was going to go over to his side and that he would deliver ammunition and supplies, Colonel Jesús Guajardo, who was directing government operations against him, managed to lure Zapata to a secret meeting at the Chinameca farm in Morelos. When Zapata, accompanied by ten men, entered the hacienda, the soldiers who pretended to present them with weapons shot him at point-blank range.

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Alexander, M - ‘The New Jim Crow’ (2010)

Davis, A - ‘Are Prisons Obsolete’ (2003)

Jackson, G. - ‘Blood in My Eye’ (1972)

Vitale A.S - ‘The End of Policing’ (2017)

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