Zapata of Mexico

Emiliano Zapata, hero of the Mexican Revolution that overthrew the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship in 1910, died a victim of that revolution. With his call for `land and liberty’, Zapata helped make and shape the revolution. The governments that followed the toppling of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship (1877-1910), while professing a commitment to the country’s campesinos (peasantry or farmworkers), fell short of meeting the demands of the zapatistas for land and political freedom. In the end, the campesino general became an outlaw in the post- revolutionary state. Ten years after he took up arms to defend the campesinos of his home state of Morelos, Zapata was assassinated by government emissaries in 1919. But his murder did not silence Zapata’s Liberation Army of the South. Instead, cries of Viva Zapata emboldened the Zapatistas in their struggle to win back control of ancestral community lands. Even after the original zapatistas put away their guns, Zapata’s name continued to inspire campesino militancy. Whenever campesinos have gathered to seek land or confront the State, the image and the name of Emiliano Zapata has been present. Campesino militants inevitably invoke his legacy to build support for their own causes. In the history of the campesino struggles, the memory of Zapata has never died. How this came about, and why it continues to be is the subject of this book. Zapata describes what Emiliano Zapata worked towards and what he and his companeros actually achieved in Morelos and southern Mexico between 1910 and 1920. It also includes a short account of the evolution of the ejidos and common lands of Mexico.