The Mexican Revolution certainly had it's notable figures and Emiliano Zapata was one of them. As commander of the Southern branch of the Liberation Army, he is still very well-regarded even today. During his 40 years of life, he was a major player in events that shaped Mexico and a powerful political force. Born to a peasant family in the late 19th century, in Anenecuilco, he witnessed first hand the abysmal treatment of the farming class by the rich hacienda owners. Control of farm and ranch lands had been handed to the wealthy through the biased laws of President Porfirio Diaz.
Zapata married into a moderately wealthy family and was elected the leader of his small town by the age of 30. He became a leading figure in the area who fought for land reform, demanding that the stolen land from the haciendas be redistributed to the farmers who toiled so hard on it. This issue would become the central goal of much of his future work. By 1910, Diaz's presidency was being challenged by Francisco Madero, and Emiliano quietly supported the movement, believing that it was the best chance to implement country-wide change.
The new president Madero reneged on his vague promises of land reform, once Zapata had helped him oust Diaz from power in 1911. Relations between the two men soured even further when Francisco appointed a pro-plantation governor who refused to consider Emiliano's agrarian goals. Faced with arrest and persecution, the general was forced to flee into rural Puebla.
While in hiding, Zapata formed a rebel army, whose followers called themselves 'Zapatistas'. With them, he conquered city after city in the name of land reform; however, before he could oust President Madero, a general named Victoriano Huerta staged a coup and took the presidency by force, establishing a military dictatorship in 1913. He'd been responsible for many war atrocities in the South of Mexico during the initial rebellion. Revolutionaries Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon were also a part of Pancho Villa's northern fighters, and Emiliano's hatred led to his allegiance with the group.
A coalition of the four men was formed, which successfully forced Huerta from office in 1914, but afterward their truce dissolved; Carranza and Villa loathed each other and when the former declared himself to be the new President, Zapata tried to stay out of the way, defending his Southern territories but rarely engaging in the violent disagreement. Presidential attention turned southward, after Pancho was defeated in 1915, as he was well aware that Emiliano had an allegiance to the Northern rebel.
Zapata resisted attempts on his life, under order of President Carranza (and at the hands of an unforgiving general), but was assassinated finally, in April 1919. The southern Liberation Army fell apart, their dreams of fair land reform dashed. Emiliano was lionized as a martyr, and his ideas had a long-lasting impact when his campaigns for land distribution influenced the constitution of 1917. He was a maverick, in that he allowed women to fight in his army, and he was also progressive in wanting to end the brutal poverty endured by the peasant farmers.. Today he's still remembered as a hero for the people's cause.
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