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Emiliano Zapata Biography

In a small village in southern Mexico, farmers plow the fields with mules and clear the brush with machetes – at least those who are fortunate enough to have any land follow these practices.  Over the past 100 years, some progress has been made with land reform in rural Mexico.  The seeds of land reform came from the ideas advocated by Emiliano Zapata.

 

The Early Years

At the time of the birth of Emiliano Zapata, a dictator ruled Mexico in the late 1800s.  The dictator had policies, which favored large wealthy plantations. Emiliano would grow up and advocate policies that favored small-farming land owners.

Emiliano’s parents were mestizo, meaning their heritage was a mixture of native Indian and Spanish.  Approximately, a third of the population was mestizo while Emiliano was growing up.

His parents had 10 children, but only four lived to see adulthood – Emiliano, an older brother and two sisters.  They lived in a home built of stone and adobe brick.  The home had a dirt floor and a thatch roof.  The family raised cattle and bred horses, which would help Emiliano become an excellent horseman.  Both horses and guns were part of his family’s rural life.

His uncle taught him how to shoot a rifle and hunt for deer.  He enjoyed listening to family stories of the battles they had fought in – especially how his ancestors fought injustice at the hand of Spanish conquistadors.

 

The Village

The country of Mexico comprises 31 states.  Of those, one of the smaller ones is the state of Morelos.  Located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Mexico City, it is slightly smaller than the size of Delaware in the United States.  Even though small in land size, the soil was viewed as some of the richest in the country.  They lived in a village called Anenecuilco, which means the “place where the waters swirl.”  The history of the village goes back to the time of the Aztec Indians.  It was always the place that Emiliano most wanted to be, whenever his work and his causes took him away from home.

In 1894, Emiliano’s parents died within a year of each other while he was a teenager.  Emiliano used his part of the inheritance to purchase 10 mules.  The mules were used for transporting corn at first.  Then, he started hauling bricks and lime for construction projects.  He grew watermelons and was most excited one day to earn from 500 to 600 pesos when the crop was harvested.

Emiliano loved the land and the native traditions.  He viewed the village almost in a spiritual way like his Indian ancestors did.

In addition to his love of the land, Emiliano was known for his love of the ladies.  In his late 20s, he became involved in a scandal.  He allegedly abducted a woman and set up house with her in 1908.  Her mother reported Emiliano to the authorities who forced him to serve in the 7th Army Battalion.  The following year, he bribed his way out of the service and back home.  The woman, Inés Alfaro, stayed and had a son named Nicolás with Emiliano, plus two daughters.

Emiliano’s reputation as a horseman led to an invitation to manage the stables and be a horse trainer for a rich man in Mexico City.  The thoroughbred Arabian horses lived like royalty in a palace-like stable, featuring floors of marble and tiny cobblestones.  Meanwhile, Emiliano saw the employees living in squalor compared to the fancy stables.  After a month, Emiliano quit and decided to return home to the village.

 

The Village Chief

In 1909, the townspeople of Anenecuilco elected Emiliano as the village chief.  One of the first tasks that he and the village secretary did was to study all of the historical documents related to the land.  Most of the documents were written in the language of Nahuatl, a tribe related to the Aztecs but comprising only about 10 percent of the population at that time.

A priest was hired to translate all of the documents including title deeds, maps, legal opinions and land charters.  The translated documents were placed in a tin box and buried so that others would not destroy the village’s rights to the land.

 

The Haciendas

A hacienda refers to a large estate or ranch.  In Mexico, haciendas developed a negative reputation because of the way the large plantations treated neighbors with small tracts of land.

Hacienda owners started fencing in what had been village communal land as part of their personal property.  When Emiliano’s or another family’s livestock wandered past the moved border, the hacienda impounded the livestock.  An animal would be kept without being fed until the owner came to pay a fine.  Or, in the case of multiple livestock, one animal would be kept as the fine and the others returned.  Emiliano tried to go through the proper channels to have the haciendas stop these practices, but it was to no avail.  Finally, Emiliano advised the other farmers they could not depend on the government to return the stolen parcels of land.  They needed guns and horses to reclaim their land.

In their village, the neighboring hacienda had encroached on most of the villagers’ lands.  Emiliano organized an armed force of 80 villagers.  They began occupying the disputed territory.  This time, the courts started ruling in their favor. 

Now, farmers started working the fields with a rifle over their shoulder.  This was used to defend property and / or fight in local skirmishes as needed.  

The Indians used the land to grow corn for their own food supply.  But the hacienda owners wanted to grow sugar cane for export due to high prices at that time in the world marketplace.  To confiscate land and to prevent farmers from reclaiming their own land, the land barons often hired former criminals to patrol the haciendas.

 

Debt Slaves

Problems continued with the haciendas.  It was estimated by 1910, that 96 percent of the rural families did not own “any” land.  Once the land was lost, some people became day laborers at the hacienda or worse yet were debt peonage.  This is where someone is forced into servitude to pay off a debt.

In these cases, the workers lived on the hacienda and were forced to buy food and clothing from the hacienda store.  Schoolteachers on site were forbidden to teach math so that no one could double check the figures.  The debt slaves were legally bound to stay until everything was paid off.  When workers died, the children entered into servitude to pay off the parents’ debts.

By 1910, an estimated 60 percent of the country’s Mexican population was classified as debt slaves.

 

The Mexican Revolution

In 1910, the Mexican Revolution started with Emiliano guiding forces in southern Mexico, and Pancho Villa overseeing rebels in northern Mexico.  The rebels felt the only way to gain the attention of the Mexican government was through the use of force.  Rebels were instrumental in the removal of the dictator in May 1911.  He left the country to go into exile.

In June 1911, Emiliano married Josefa Espejo of Ayala in a civil ceremony.  She was the daughter of a prosperous livestock dealer.  Several years before, he had asked for her hand while her father was alive.  He had refused because Emiliano did not own enough land.

With her father deceased and Emiliano’s status as a general, the wedding could proceed.  Emiliano’s common-law marriage and other affairs were not considered an issue.  In August of that year, they had a religious ceremony.  And then, they delayed the honeymoon until the fall because the federal army attacked the state of Morelos.

 

Francisco Madero

In October 1911, Francisco Madero became the elected president of Mexico.  Emiliano had supported President Madero during the revolution because of his pledge for land reform.  However, the president started to compromise with the land owners and weakened his stance, saying he would urge the state governments to explore land reform.  He also asked Emiliano to disarm his revolutionary force because Mexico was at peace in his opinion.

For a while, Emiliano’s forces were voluntarily disarmed of weapons they brought in and received payment for.  The haciendas continued to fence off village land.  And Emiliano realized that nothing was going to change under this president.

 

Plan Of Ayala

In November 1911, Emiliano issued the Plan of Ayala, calling for land redistribution.  Emiliano worked with a teacher named Otilio Montaño to create the dramatic reform plan.

The plan was preceded by much fanfare.  In the small town named Ayala, farmers assembled who played drums and horns to perform Mexico’s national anthem.  Then Emiliano entered wearing the flag of Mexico like a cloak and read a document named the Plan of Ayala.

The plan advocated taking a third of the land back from the haciendas and giving them to local councils to redistribute to the population.  Pensions would be paid to those left as widows and orphans by the war.  In one part, the plan stated:

“The immense majority of Mexican pueblos and citizens are owners of no more than the land they walk on, suffering the horrors of poverty without being able to improve their social condition in any way or to dedicate themselves to industry or agriculture, because lands, timber, and water are monopolized in a few hands,” reported in "Zapata and the Mexican Revolution."

The plan called for the farmers whose lands had been seized illegally to reoccupy the land by force.  The plan also called for the overthrow of Madero’s government because he had not kept his promises.

The government thought the plan would not be taken seriously and even allowed a publication in Mexico City called Diario del Hogar to print it.  But the plan was taken seriously.  Within two months, land revolts spread through five states in Mexico.

 

The Zapatistas

The soldiers who followed Emiliano were known as the Zapatistas. Neither them nor Emiliano wore military uniforms.  Instead, they often wore sombreros, white shirts and pants.  Emiliano wore the charro clothes of a village leader – a short black jacket, boots, tight-fitting trousers with silver buttons down the side and an embroidered sombrero to top everything off.

Emiliano’s devotion and respect to the land was similar to that of his ancestors.  In meetings, he often listened while others debated, expressing his opinion quietly after others had finished.  He gave his troops strict orders on how to act when in other villages.  This included forbidding any drunken behavior, robbery or disorderly conduct.  They would knock on doors and respectfully ask for food, expressing gratitude when it was provided.  They would help villages reoccupy lands confiscated by the hacienda owners.

There were not enough weapons for everyone.  Men who were called “buzzards” would follow the Zapatistas.  They would wait until the end of a skirmish and then go out on the battlefield, taking the guns and ammunition of the dead soldiers.

When the Zapatistas captured federal soldiers, their fate depended on their rank.  If they were federal officers who burned villages or executed prisoners, they would be shot.  If they were regular soldiers, they gave them food and money for their weapons and return trip home.  Or they could join the Zapatistas if they desired.  Some did join because many of the federal soldiers were peasants who had been forced to join that army.

One of the federal prisoners who had been released was so astonished that he helped the rebels obtain guns and ammunition from federal supply depots.

When federal forces captured Zapatista rebels, they were taken to the nearest town to dig their own graves.  Then they would be shot.  Sometimes, when prisoners were taken from a battle, they would be hung from trees.  Corpses would be left as a dangling reminder.

It cost money to operate a revolution and by May 1912, the Zapatistas were running out of funds.  To help raise money, the Zapatistas started imposing a weekly tax on the haciendas and setting a minimum wage to be paid to the laborers.  For those haciendas who didn’t pay, the Zapatistas burned their sugar cane fields.  By the beginning of 1913, it is estimated more than half of the sugar cane fields in the state were burned.

 

The Federal General

A general in the president’s own federal army issued the order for President Madero’s arrest.  The fighting lasted for 10 days in Mexico City with numerous human rights abuses on the civilian population.  The senior officials who were democratically elected were held as prisoners.  On 22 February 1913, the president and vice president of Mexico were executed by being shot.

General Victoriano Huerta declared himself president after the coup.  Those in power now were the worst enemies of the Zapatistas and would not support any land reform.

Huerta crushed the freedom of the press, which had been operating in Mexico.  He closed some newspapers.  Others were severely censored.  His generals were appointed to take control of the state governments.  Mexico became extremely militarized as the government took over the use of the railroads and the schools.  Huerta increased taxes on businesses and forced companies to make loans to the government.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize this Mexican government who had overthrown the leaders chosen by the people.  In addition, the U.S. Government authorized the sale of arms to Pancho Villa’s rebel forces in the north, which was the closest to the U.S. border.

The U.S. Government received information that a German ocean vessel was bringing a shipment of firearms and ammunition to the Huerta regime.  The U.S. Navy blocked the port of Veracruz so that the delivery could not be made.  The United States attacked the following day on 21 April 1914 and took the city.  This resulted in the deaths of 200 Mexican soldiers, 21 U.S. service personnel and an unknown number of civilians.  President Wilson was surprised when the rebels condemned the U.S. action.  However, the rebels were not interested in joining forces with Huerta to fight the U.S.  As Huerta’s army re-grouped to prepare against any further U.S. force, the rebels entered the towns that had been evacuated.

The Huerta regime declined, and he resigned that same year on 15 July 1914.  He boarded an ocean vessel and went into exile in Cuba.

With Huerta’s departure, another rebel leader General Venustiano Carranza took control of the country’s capital, Mexico City.  Two months later, in October 1914, revolutionary leaders and their delegates held a convention.  They called for new presidential elections.  Plus, they agreed to support the Plan of Ayala and use it as a basis for a future constitution.

The United States had left Mexico but remained a supporter of this convention and of Pancho Villa.

Carranza and his forces vacated Mexico City for Veracruz.  Zapata and his forces then entered Mexico City on the evening of 24 November 1914.  Carranza’s men had vandalized and plundered the city, including the government’s archives.  Emiliano who couldn’t stand large cities was already looking forward to returning to the village.  He always enjoyed talking with the villagers in the plaza while having a brandy and cigar.

The Zapatistas stayed only a few days in Mexico City, returning home as Villa’s troops entered the city to take over.

 

Villa And Zapata Meet

On 4 December 1914, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata met for the first time.  Their staffs had met before, and they leaders certainly knew of each other.  The meeting took place at a school in a village about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Mexico City.  The school had flowers and decorations for the occasion, plus a choir of children and even a mariachi band.

Otilio Montaño who worked with Emiliano on the Plan of Ayala introduced the two leaders.  They had both come from rural backgrounds and both led rebel forces.

At first, it seemed awkward as to how to break the ice.  They found common ground in their disapproval of Carranza.  They each stated that they had no political ambitions.  Pancho felt he lacked the education.   His view was that the president should be an educated man, a statesman who would represent the country well to foreign dignitaries and members of congress.

Pancho expressed his support of land reform, but they did not discuss specifics.  They did discuss having a combined campaign against Carranza.   Pancho promised artillery and ammunition for Emiliano’s forces.

After the meeting, Emiliano had to send several requests before Pancho provided the artillery.  He finally came through with the artillery but not the transportation to deliver it.  The handling of this combined with intelligence reports that Emiliano received made him wary and unable to trust Pancho.

 

Agrarian (Land) Reform

Emiliano had already started implementing the Plan of Ayala in his home state.  Pensions were provided for widows and orphans of the Zapatistas.   Also, lands were distributed to the villages.  In January 1915, 41 surveyors came to Morelos from the National School of Agriculture.  They had been sent to accurately record the boundaries of every village in the state.  They would use maps and records dating back hundreds of years to establish the traditional claims.

Once a village knew the size of its land, it could keep it as communal property or divide it into individual titleholders.  Each village would decide on its own, based on local customs.  Part of the requirements was that no one could sell or rent the land to prevent corruption.

The Zapatistas also passed the most radical land reform bill on 26 October 1915.  The legislation set a maximum size on farms, depending on the quality of the land.  One farmer with good quality soil and irrigation could have up to 247 acres.  While one with poor quality acreage, could have ten times that amount with 2,471 acres.  If an individual farm family left their land uncultivated for more than two consecutive years, it reverted to the state.

The Zapatistas had their own minister of agriculture.  He had the authority to create agricultural banks, courts, experimental stations and irrigation services.  Agriculture had the highest precedence for water rights and regulating usage.

In the fall of 1915, the state of Morelos experienced one of the best harvests ever.  The farmers grew corn, chili peppers, beans and onions.   The abundant supply brought food prices in line.  In cities throughout Mexico, revolutions broke out with the battle cry, “Viva Zapata” (meaning “long live Zapata”).

 

Venustiano Carranza

Venustiano Carranza and another rebel leader worked together to push back Pancho’s forces to the U.S. border.  Emiliano’s forces withdrew from the federal district in his home state.  Due to his victories, Carranza declared himself as president of Mexico in March 1917.  Emiliano felt that this had betrayed the revolution.

Although Otilio Montaño and Emiliano had collaborated on the published reform plan, they later diverged in their viewpoints.  They had opposing views on which political leaders to support, and Otilio wanted them both to flee the revolutionary fight.  In 1917, Otilio attempted to switch sides to the enemy territory; he was tried and then executed by a Zapatista firing squad.

During a political amnesty, Emiliano lost some of his commanders who went over to the government’s side.  He became depressed, wondering if the deaths and destruction had been worth the gains.

 

Flu Pandemic

A worldwide Spanish flu pandemic spread killing 40 million people.  Of that amount, 300,000 were in Mexico. By December 1918, some cities were ghost towns.  Emiliano’s home state had lost a quarter of its population – some of it was attributed to death and the rest to fear as there was an exodus to a neighboring state.  This state was supposedly free of the deadly virus.

 

The Letter

Emiliano worried about the loss of manpower and how he would defend the villages.  Federal troops kept coming back to Morelos.  Emiliano needed hope.  He had heard of a disagreement where a federal general had ordered an officer to lead a patrol.  Instead, the officer had gone to a bar where he was caught.

Emiliano wrote the officer named Colonel Jesús Guajardo and invited him and his troops to join the Zapatista side.  Before the letter reached the colonel, it was intercepted by the general.  The general offered the colonel the choice of a court martial followed by a firing squad or he could lure Emiliano into a government trap.

The colonel agreed to the trap and responded to Emiliano that he wanted to defect and bring his entire unit and a large supply of ammunition with him.  Emiliano’s generals advised that the offer seemed too good to be true.  As a test of loyalty, Emiliano asked the colonel to arrest the Zapatistas who had gone to the other side.  He arrested them and then proceeded to have them shot as well.

The two leaders were to meet at a railway station with 30 soldiers each.  The colonel came with all 600 of his men.  He advised Emiliano that he was concerned they would not remain loyal if left behind.

As a gift, he presented Emiliano with a lovely horse called the Golden Ace.  They agreed to meet again the next day.  On 10 April 1919, Emiliano went to the Chinameca Hacienda in Morelos for the meeting.

Emiliano obtained 150 reinforcements.  The morning meeting was interrupted by reports of enemy troops nearby.  Emiliano and his men left to scout the area.  They returned that afternoon.  Emiliano rode through the gates on the Golden Ace horse.  Ten of his men escorted him.  He dismounted and walked toward the steps.

The colonel’s soldiers were lined up as an honor guard.  A bugler played the honor call.  At a designated time, the soldiers raised their guns in unison and shot Emiliano in the back.

 

Afterward

The following year, one of Carranza’s generals Ávaro Obregón broke off and announced his intention to run for president.  Obregón, the remaining Zapatistas and other revolutionaries overthrew Carranza, who was killed during this time.

The year 1920 is considered the end of this Mexican Revolution period which spanned 10 years and killed anywhere from 1 to 2 million people.

In 1920, Obregón did become president of Mexico.  He was flexible and sympathetic to the cause of the Zapatistas.  He began implementing many of Emiliano’s reforms.

Emiliano Zapata never wavered in his principles for "Land and Liberty."  Throughout the 20th century and beyond, his ideals still live in the minds of many Mexicans who want to be self-sufficient.

EMILIANO ZAPATA (Mexico)
Born: (estimated) 8 August 1879	Died: 10 April 1919	Age: 39
“They feel so much love for the land.  They still don’t believe it when they’re told:  ‘This land is yours.’  They think it’s a dream.  But after they’ve seen other people drawing crops from these lands they, too, will say: ‘I’m going to ask for my land and I’m going to sow there.’ ” ~ Emiliano Zapata (Reported in “Villa And Zapata”)