Born August 8, 1879
Anenecuilco, Morelos, Mexico
Died April 10, 1919
Hacienda Chinameca, Morelos, Mexico
Rebel leader and land reform advocate
The actions of Emiliano Zapata were driven by one powerful desire: to see lands, stolen from peasant farmers by wealthy agriculturalists, returned to their rightful owners. To that end, Zapata first sought relief through legal channels. When that failed he resorted to taking up arms.
With a guerrilla army that varied in size from fifteen hundred to twenty thousand men, Zapata waged a nine-year-long war against a series of corrupt Mexican government leaders. Zapata seized plantation lands and turned them over to peasants. At the height of his power, Zapata controlled about one-third of Mexico. Zapata remains a folk hero among Mexico’s agricultural laborers.
Although there is some uncertainty as to Emiliano Zapata’s exact birth date (estimates range between 1873 and 1883), the most commonly accepted is August 8, 1879. Zapata was born in a farming village of four hundred people called Anenecuilco, in the Mexican state of Morelos (south of Mexico City). He grew up in relative comfort; his family owned land and livestock, which spared them the poverty, misery, and hard manual labor that characterized the lives of most of the other villagers. Nonetheless, from an early age Zapata sympathized with the plight of his neighbors.
During the few years that Zapata attended elementary school, he witnessed the illegal seizure of his neighbors’ farms by sugar plantation owners—with the backing of corrupt politicians. Many of those left without land were forced to work as day laborers, sometimes on the land they used to own. In 1887 Zapata’s family lost their orchards to greedy plantation owners. Legend has it that the young Emiliano responded to the theft of his family’s lands by stating, “When I am big I will make them return them.”
Zapata’s parents died when he was sixteen years old, leaving him to care for his two sisters (he had an older brother who had moved out of the area). Zapata made his living by growing watermelons and raising mules.
At the age of seventeen Zapata began participating in delegations of Anenecuilco men who protested the theft of their land. Zapata gained a reputation for boldly standing up to those in power. His involvement in the struggle intensified and he eventually became leader of the village’s legal campaign for redress.
In 1909, when Zapata was thirty years old, he was elected president of the village council. Part of Zapata’s job was to safeguard the land titles that served as a record of the villagers’ land ownership. It was expected that one day the lands would be reclaimed, and the papers would ensure the lands were returned to their rightful owners. With no legal relief in sight, in 1910 Zapata initiated a campaign to forcibly retake the stolen lands. He and his men encountered little opposition from the surprised plantation owners.
While Zapata was busy recovering lands in Anenecuilco, a serious challenge was being mounted to the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz. Díaz (1830–1915) had been in power since 1876, except for the years 1880–1884. Under his rule a tiny proportion of Mexicans controlled a tremendous amount of wealth while the majority of the population lived in poverty. Díaz’s challenger was a reformer named Francisco Madero. Díaz had Madero arrested and exiled to Texas. From across the border Madero called upon Mexicans to rise up against the government on November 20, 1910. November 20, however, passed uneventfully.
It was not until Madero returned to Mexico in February 1911 that the Mexican Revolution got underway. Zapata proclaimed his support for Madero, based on Madero’s promise of instituting land reform. Zapata organized a band of guerrilla fighters (small groups who wage surprise attacks) from his home region and wrested control of towns and plantations throughout eastern Morelos.
Zapata was rapidly recognized as a skillful military leader and was made commander of several columns of rebels. He led 1,500 men north through Morelos, launching surprise attacks against military installations. His forces won a series of military victories, contributing to Díaz’s decision of to flee the country on May 31, 1911.
Zapata’s support for Madero did not last long, however, for once in power Madero revealed that he would not support the return of plantation lands to the peasants. Zapata then kept on fighting, with the goal of overthrowing Madero. Revolutionary forces led by Pancho Villa (1877–1923) took up arms in the north of Mexico, forcing Madero to divide his soldiers between the two fronts.
Madero called Zapata a “bandit” and instituted martial law throughout the land. Madero’s insult prompted Zapata to draft a political platform, which Zapata called the Plan de Alaya (pronounced plahn day ahl-EYE-ah; see box).
Zapata’s forces continued advancing through Morelos. As they went, they occupied plantations, evicted the owners, and distributed the lands to local peasants. Zapata’s army even established a Rural Loan Bank to provide credit to peasants who received land so they could purchase seeds and equipment for planting.
In February 1913 President Madero was killed in a mutiny by the armed forces, and General Victoriano Huerta proclaimed himself the next president. For Zapata the change in leadership meant little; Huerta was no more a supporter of land reform than Madero had been.
Zapata’s forces continued advancing northward toward Mexico City. They were joined in their fight by rebel groups led by Madero supporters Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregón, as well as Pancho Villa’s army. By August 1914 Huerta had been driven out of Mexico and Carranza had taken over as president.
Carranza aimed to unify the rebel forces behind his rule and to bring an end to the fighting. Zapata made his allegiance to Carranza conditional on Carranza’s support of the Plan de Alaya; Carranza refused to endorse the plan. Other revolutionary leaders rejected Carranza’s power grab and demanded that elections be held.
In the meantime, Zapata’s forces approached Mexico City from the south and Villa’s forces from the north. In November 1914 Zapata’s forces overtook the capital, and Carranza’s forces retreated to Veracruz province. The next month Villa joined Zapata in Mexico City and the two leaders formed an alliance. Zapata, who was anxious to return to his campaign of land reclamation in Morelos, left the occupation of the capital to Villa’s forces.
Villa’s army was defeated in the first half of 1915. From that point on, Carranza devoted all his military strength to the battle against Zapata. Zapata’s forces were put on the defensive; by the end of 1916 Zapata’s manpower had been reduced from twenty thousand to five thousand. Carranza consolidated his hold on the capital and at times even took control of Morelos. Zapata’s soldiers grew weary of fighting and mutinies broke out. Carranza’s forces attacked Morelos in 1918, and a military stalemate ensued.
The end for Zapata came on April 10, 1919, when he was lured into a trap by a former Carranza general who claimed he wished to defect to Zapata’s side. As Zapata walked past a line of the general’s guards at the Hacienda Chinameca (a hacienda is a plantation), the guards raised their hands in salute. One of the guards then shot Zapata twice at point-blank range. Zapata died on the spot. Even though Zapata’s body was placed on public display, many of his supporters refused to believe he was dead.
In 1994 a guerrilla peasant army calling themselves the Zapatistas staged an uprising in the state of Chiapas, again raising the issue of land reform.
The Plan de Alaya
On November 25, 1911, Zapata issued his revolutionary manifesto called the Plan de Alaya. It advocated the overthrow of Madero’s government, the forcible repossession of lands stolen from farmers, and the redistribution of one-third of all plantation lands to peasants. The plan was coauthored by Zapata and Otilio Montaño, a schoolteacher in Villa de Ayala, and was published in a Mexico City newspaper. Zapata’s plan earned him many new supporters.
“The immense majority of the common people and citizens of Mexico,” read the Plan, “own no more than the land upon which they walk, suffering the horrors of miserable poverty without being able to better their social condition in any way nor to dedicate themselves to industry of agriculture because the lands, timber, and water are monopolized in a few hands.”
Books
Button, John. The Radicalism Handbook: A Complete Guide to the Radical Movement in the Twentieth Century. London, England: Cassell, 1995.
“Emiliano Zapata.” In Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1996.
Ragan, John David. Emiliano Zapata. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Southerland, James E. “Emiliano Zapata.” In Dictionary of World Biography; The 20th Century. Vol. 9. Edited by Frank N. Magill. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999, pp. 4104–4117.
Womack, John, Jr. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
Web Sites
“Emiliano Zapata.” DISCovering Biography. The Gale Group. [Online] Available http://galenet.gale.com (accessed April 20, 2000).
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