http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~greyblur/zapatainfo.html
(see below)
It is part of the "Zapata Casa" home page at Stanford, California:
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~greyblur/zapata.html
Glenn Welker
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<IMG SRC="Zapata.GIF">
<H1>Emiliano Zapata</H1>
<P>
Zapata, Emiliano
Zapata, Emiliano (b. Aug. 8, 1879, Anenecuilco, Mex.--d. April 10, 1919,
Morelos), Mexican revolutionary, champion of agrarianism, who fought in
guerrilla actions during and after the Mexican Revolution (1911-17).
<P>
Early career.
Early career. Zapata was the son of a mestizo peasant who trained and sold
horses. He was orphaned at the age of 17 and had to look after his brothers and
sisters. In 1897 he was arrested because he took part in a protest by the
peasants of his village against the hacienda that had appropriated their lands.
After obtaining a pardon, he continued agitation among the peasants, and so he
was drafted into the army. He served for six months, at which point he was
discharged to a landowner to train his horses. In 1909 his neighbours elected
him president of the board of defense for their village. After useless
negotiations with the landowners, Zapata and a group of peasants occupied by
force the land that had been appropriated by the haciendas and distributed it
among themselves.
<P>
Francisco Madero, a landowner of the north, had lost the elections in 1910 to
the dictator Porfirio Diaz and had fled to the United States, where he
proclaimed himself president and then reentered Mexico, aided by many peasant
guerrillas. Zapata and his friends decided to support Madero. In March 1911
Zapata's tiny force took the city of Cuautla and closed the road to the capital,
Mexico City. A week later, Diaz resigned and left for Europe, appointing a
provisional president. Zapata, with 5,000 men, entered Cuernavaca, capital of
the state of Morelos.
<P>
Madero entered Mexico City in triumph. Zapata met Madero there and asked him to
exert pressure on the provisional president to return the land to the ejidos
(the former Indian communal system of landownership). Madero insisted on the
disarmament of the guerrillas and offered Zapata a recompense so that he could
buy land, an offer that Zapata rejected. Zapata began to disarm his forces but
stopped when the provisional president sent the army against the guerrillas.
<P>
The Plan of Ayala.
The Plan of Ayala. Madero was elected president in November 1911, and Zapata
met with him again but without success. With the help of a teacher, Otilio
Monta-o, Zapata prepared the Plan of Ayala, which declared Madero incapable of
fulfilling the goals of the revolution. The signers renewed the revolution and
promised to appoint a provisional president until there could be elections. They
also vowed to return the stolen land to the ejidos by expropriating, with
payment, a third of the area of the haciendas; those haciendas that refused to
accept this plan would have their lands expropriated without compensation.
Zapata adopted the slogan "Tierra y Libertad" ("Land and Liberty").
<P>
In the course of his campaigns, Zapata distributed lands taken from the
haciendas, which he frequently burned without compensation. He often ordered
executions and expropriations, and his forces did not always abide by the laws
of war. But underneath his picturesque appearance--drooping moustache, cold
eyes, big sombrero--was a passionate man with simple ideals that he tried to put
into practice. The Zapatistas avoided battle by adopting guerrilla tactics. They
farmed their land with rifles on their shoulders, went when called to fight, and
returned to their plows at the end of a battle or skirmish. Sometimes Zapata
assembled thousands of men; he paid them by imposing taxes on the provincial
cities and extorting from the rich. Their arms were captured from federal
troops.
<P>
When General Victoriano Huerta deposed and assassinated Madero in February 1913,
Zapata and his men arrived at the outskirts of Mexico City and rejected Huerta's
offer to unite with him. This prevented Huerta from sending all his troops
against the guerrillas of the north, who, under the direction of a moderate
politician, Venustiano Carranza, had organized the Constitutionalist Army to
defeat the new dictator. Huerta was forced to abandon the country in July 1914.
<P>
Zapata knew that Carranza's Constitutionalists feared him. He attracted some
intellectuals from Mexico City, among them Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, who became
his theorist and later established an agrarian party. When Huerta fell, Zapata
invited the Constitutionalists to accept his Plan of Ayala and warned them that
he would continue fighting independently until the plan was put to practical
use.
<P>
In October 1914 Carranza called an assembly of all the revolutionary forces.
Pancho Villa, who commanded the most important part of the army of the north,
refused to attend the meeting because he considered Mexico City as enemy ground.
The assembly was moved to Aguascalientes, where both the Villistas and the
Zapatistas attended. These two groups constituted a majority, and the convention
agreed to appoint General Eulalio Guti?rrez as provisional president. Carranza
rejected this decision and marched with his government to Veracruz.
<P>
War broke out between the moderates (Carrancistas) and the revolutionaries
(Conventionists). On November 24, Zapata ordered his army (now called the
Liberation Army of the South and numbering 25,000 men) to occupy Mexico City.
The people of the capital watched in astonishment as the peasants went from door
to door humbly asking for food and drink, instead of assaulting palaces and
violating women.
<P>
Two weeks later, Zapata and Villa met on the outskirts of the capital and then
visited the National Palace. The two leaders promised to fight together until
they put a civilian president in the palace, and Villa accepted the Plan of
Ayala.
<P>
Agrarian reforms.
Agrarian reforms. Zapata created agrarian commissions to distribute the land;
he spent much time supervising their work to be sure they showed no favouritism
and that the landowners did not corrupt its members. He established a Rural Loan
Bank, the country's first agricultural credit organization; he also tried to
reorganize the sugar industry of Morelos into cooperatives. In April 1915 U.S.
President Woodrow Wilson's personal representative in Mexico met with Zapata;
Zapata asked that Wilson receive his delegation, but Wilson had recognized the
Carranza government (the convention's government under Guti?rrez had dispersed).
<P>
Meanwhile, the war continued. Zapata occupied the city of Puebla and won various
battles, advised by some professional soldiers who had joined his side. In 1917
Carranza's generals defeated Villa and isolated Zapata. Carranza then called
together a constitutional convention but did not invite Zapata; the convention
approved and passed a constitution and elected Carranza as president of the
republic.
<P>
A new U.S. envoy, William Gates, visited Zapata and then published a series of
articles in the United States; he contrasted the order of the Zapata-controlled
zone with the chaos of the constitutional zone and said that "the true social
revolution can be found among the Zapatistas." When these articles were read to
Zapata, he said, "Now I can die in peace. Finally they have done us justice."
<P>
Soon afterward General Pablo Gonz?lez, who directed the government operations
against Zapata, had Colonel Jesos Guajardo pretend to want to join the agrarians
and contrive a secret meeting with Zapata at the hacienda of Chinameca in
Morelos. There, Zapata was ambushed and shot to death by Carrancista soldiers.
His body was carried to Cuautla and buried there.(V.Al.)
<P>
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (1969); and Roger
Parkinson, Zapata (1975).
<P>
Copyright 1994, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
<LI> <A HREF="http://www.eb.com/">Encyclopaedia Britannica</A>
Still in progress.
<LI> <A HREF="zapata.html">Return to Zapata home page</A> - To return to the
Zapata home page, click here.