| Emiliano Zapata - Icon of the Mexican Revolution |
by Gregg Thompson
December 2003
Emiliano Zapata loved horses as much as he hated politicians. Horses he understood — he trusted their instincts. But politicians were opportunists who couldn´t be trusted. And trust is what mattered most to Emiliano Zapata. He said he could pardon a man who stole to feed his family, but he could never forgive a traitor. Because Zapata never betrayed the trust of his people he remains today the most revered leader of the Mexican Revolution. In the end, trust betrayed is what killed him.
The revolution that tore Mexico apart broke out in the north of the country in 1910. It began as a middle-class democracy movement intent on ending the corrupt and repressive 30-year Diaz dictatorship. When it spun out of control revolutionary violence and devastation killed at least one million people – one in every 15 Mexicans. Amidst the chaos various factions clamored for change: in education, labor law, foreign ownership and limits on Church power.
None of this mattered to Emiliano Zapata. He led his people into war for one thing: land. The best farmland in Zapata´s home state of Morelos was occupied by a small number of wealthy families, whose enormous sugar-cane haciendas had expanded through the illegal take-over of communally-owned peasant lands. Tens of thousands of families had lost their deeded farms; corruption blocked legal recourse. The great bulk of the people – Zapata´s peasant constituency – barely survived planting maize on waterless, rocky hilltops.
Zapata´s major political manifesto, the Plan of Ayala, called for measured agrarian reform. One-third of haciendas would be re-distributed to the landless. While jacket-and-tie northern revolutionaries fought for free-and-fair elections and an eight-hour workday, Zapata´s sandal-clad southerners marched off to war crying out for “Land and Liberty.”
Zapata´s Liberation Army of the South had its base in Morelos, but its operations reached deep into several surrounding states. In 1914 the Zapatistas occupied the nation´s capital at Mexico City. At the height of the Revolution the Army numbered some 25,000 barely-trained peasant soldiers. Operating in small mounted units, seldom larger than 300 strong, its hit-and-run guerilla tactics targeted government outposts, troop trains, rail bridges and sugar plantations. Money to support the movement came from “protection” sold to hacienda owners. Arms and ammunition, always scarce, was either captured in battle or purchased from corrupt government officials. Soldiers´ wives prepared the meals, and also fought. There were few doctors and medicines for the wounded, and no rules of war. Atrocities were numerous and committed in earnest on all sides.
The cultural homogeneity of the Zapatista army made it a force of great strength, resilience and unity. Many soldiers were brothers or cousins, and their backgrounds were identical – they were of the land, had seen it stolen, and were fighting to get it back. Unlike conscripted opposition troops, the volunteer Zapatistas knew what they were fighting for. Fervently religious and guided in spirit by the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe, their faith in Zapata´s leadership was equally indissoluble. When Zapata told them “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees,” they kept on riding and dying for the land, for liberty and for “´Miliano.”
Emiliano Zapata was born on August 8th, 1879, in the town of Anenecuilco (ah-nene-QUIL-co), Morelos, the second of ten children. He grew up in a stone house, a cut above the mud-and-wattle shelyrts of his neighbors. Orphaned at age 16, the independent-minded Zapata went to work raising livestock and peddling watermelons. Later he ran his own mule-team business. He refused to work at day-labor on nearby haciendas, as did other young men of the village. He was a loner, shunned groups and had few close friends. Zapata was somber, even mystical in character, but not dour. He liked jokes; his favorites he liked to hear time and again. He sometimes drank brandy, but disapproved of those, like his older brother Eufemio, who drank to excess. Zapata´s real rancor he reserved for politicians, whom he hated for their toadying opportunism. “As soon as they (politicians) get a chance,” Zapata told Pancho Villa, “they go where the sun shines brightest. That´s why I bust those bastards – I can´t stand them.”
Zapata´s preferred company were horses, and his equestrian skills brought him early recognition and income as horse-trainer to the region´s rich and famous. Zapata was the “Charro of Charros,” — the finest of horsemen – and loved rodeo-riding and fighting bulls from the saddle.
Zapata was skilled out of the saddle, too. Dressed in a well-cut charro outfit of tight-fitting black trousers, white linen shirt and silver-buttoned short jacket, Zapata was “muy enamorado” – very much the lover. “Emiliano was so brave and handsome,” his sister recounted. “He was very seductive and charming with women.” Zapata had numerous love affairs that produced children before marrying Josefa Espejo, the daughter of a local cattle merchant, in 1911. They had two children, but neither survived infancy.
Zapata´s great strength as revolutionary leader was his unfailing integrity, fostered by a complete absence of personal ambition. “He wanted nothing for himself, not even power,” observes historian T.R. Fehrenbach. “I want to die enslaved by principles and not by men,” the illiterate Zapata dictated in a 1913 letter. Driven by a “conscience that would not let him quit,” and fearless in battle, what terrified Zapata most was breaking faith with his followers – holding their esteem represented for Zapata the highest moral value.
But integrity in strength breeds intransigence, and inflexibility was for Zapata a serious leadership weakness. He was a poor team player, and his failure to make even small concessions sometimes undermined his position in the Revolution. His non-conformist impulses, his loathing of politics, left him outside; other revolutionaries found him prickly to deal with. Zapata refused to reach out to anarchist-controlled labor unions; they were “city,” and the Zapatista vision was rural. (Zapata didn´t like cities – just walking on a sidewalk, he said, made him feel like he was going to fall.)
A new Mexican Constitution was drawn up and signed in 1917. Zapata, arguing that the new document left land issues unresolved, refused to lay down arms. His tragic end came into view. On April 10th, 1919, having negotiated the defection to his side of a Federal army unit, Zapata was shot to death only a few miles from his village. Trusting in others, he had been tricked and betrayed, and died in an ambush. He was four months short of his 40th birthday.
It took ten years to fight the Mexican Revolution and another 20 years to sort out the results. Land re-distribution finally reached the Mexican peasantry in the 1930´s, when the ejido system of land ownership granted small-holdings to the landless.
Zapata later became an official hero of the Revolution – his name appears in gilt letters carved into a marble wall in the nation´s capital. But in the collective memory of Mexico´s rural folk, then as now, Zapata is not remembered that way. Even in the dead of night, they say “´Miliano” can still be seen, riding a white horse through the green valleys and high hills of Morelos.
Gregg Thompson has lived in Mexico for eight years, and has a keen interest in Mexican history. He and his wife Angela operate “Angela’s Hotel & Hostel,” located at Pedro Ascencio #10, in downtown Zihuatanejo ( www.zihuatanejo.com.mx/angelas/ ). He can be reached at 554-5084 or at angelashostel@hotmail.com. |
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