Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), an Indian tenant farmer, became a Mexican revolutionary during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, one who largely gained control of Southern Mexico in an effort to recover expropriated village lands for the peasant farmers or campesinos. His tools were courage, integrity, and an army of Indians with which he fought federal governments and occupied Mexico City on three separate occasions. By and large the Mexican Revolution was about warring ideologies but it was also about agrarian concerns that ran deep among the Mexican Indian peasantry, “It is principally as a consequence of the struggle of the men of the South that the Mexican Revolution achieved the profound agrarian content which has marked it to this day. Although the distribution of land was their primary objective, the zapatistas also developed an integrated program for national economic, social and political reforms. This program possessed a clearly defined ideological orientation” (Millon 5).

Emiliano Zapata was born in Anenecuilco, Mexico. He was of the peasantry and his main goal as one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 was to regain the lands unrightfully taken from his people. He fought to win the transfer of hacienda lands back to the peasants. Zapata’s cry mimicked the aims of the peasantry, Tierra y Libertad! (Land and Liberty!).

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mollify the villagers they had riled as to disrupt Constitutionalist control. In mid-August he publicly condemned ‘the cowards or egoists…who have retired to live in towns or camps, extorting from the pueblos or enjoying wealth they have taken over in the shadow of revolution,’ and giving ‘promotions or appointments to persons who do not deserve them,’ (Womack 261). Zapata was successful in more than one battle against federal troops in Central Mexico. President Madero was killed in 1913 and Victoriano Huerta was instituted as president but Zapata would not recognize his authority. President Huerta was opposed by forces led by Zapata, Pancho Villa, Venustiano Carranza, and Alvaro Obregon. By 1914, Zapata and Villa had won control of Mexico City and in July of that year Huerta was defeated and forced to resign from office. Many of the reforms sought by Zapata and the men who followed him were democratic in nature. The reforms for which they fought were to have laid the foundation for the democratization of Mexico’s political structure. They sought to redistribute the wealth held in the hands of the foreign capitalists at the same time they hoped to increase independence from foreign influence. The zapatistas were also in
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Approximate Word count = 2502
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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