Emiliano Zapata He was born on August 8, 1879 in the town of Anenecuilco and died on April 10, 1919 in Chinameca.
He was the ninth child of the marriage formed by Gabriel Zapata Y Cleofas Salazar. It was his grandfather who transmitted to Shoe The history of Mexico. Also, thanks to him, he learned to handle weapons.
He did his first studies with the professor Emilio vera, who had been an old Juarista soldier. Soon he worked as a farmer and muleteer. With tan skin and a great horseman, he led a land occupation movement, made up of farmers dressed in white shirts and pants who, shouting “land and freedom“, they entered the haciendas defended by the landowners. After obtaining their surrender, they were expropriated and distributed among the peasants who worked them. His rebellion condemned him to the lev: in 1908, Shoe it was incorporated into the 9th. Cavalry Regiment, in Cuernavaca.
He began his revolutionary activities in 1909, when he armed 80 men who took some land to distribute it among the peasants who cultivated it, justifying his actions with the saying “the land belongs to those who work it.”
His first political appearance, alien to his peasant world, was that same year, in the elections for governor of Morelos in 1909, when he supported the opposition candidate, Patrick Leyva, against that of the latifundistas, Pablo Escandón and Barrón.
In 1910 he joined the revolutionary ranks of Francisco I. Madero, whose objective was to end the regime of Porfirio Diaz.
The following year, after assuming Log The presidency, Shoe lost confidence in him and, after declaring against him, formulated his own agrarian reform program, present in the so-called Ayala Plan. This, proclaimed on November 28, 1911, did not recognize the government of Log and appointed head of the revolution to Pascual Orozco and, failing that, to own Shoe.
One year later, with Pancho Villa Y Orozco, sign the Aguascalientes Convention, rejected by Carranza, in the course of which they decide to occupy the Mexican capital with conventional forces.
However, the strong counterattack of the president Carranza and the defeat it inflicts Alvaro Obregon they forced him to withdraw to Morelos and to install his headquarters in Tlaltizapan, preserving the implantation of the revolutionary movement in southern Mexico.
In 1917 “Pancho Villa is defeated by troops of Carranza; then Emiliano Zapata dominates the Morelos area, managing itself and gaining administrative solidity.
Faithful to Liberation Plan of the children of the State of Morelos, or Plan Ayala, Shoe defended the right to the restitution of the lands to their true owners, the workers, and spoke out against Log, Victoriano Huerta Y Venustiano Carranza, who managed to defeat the Zapatista movement thanks to his military superiority and his strong constitutionalist ideals, of a liberal tendency.
Even so, the achievements carried out by the Zapatistas were several: the elimination of large estates, the first agrarian banks in Mexico, the relevance of the life of the municipality through participation and the opening of schools, among others, achieving in 1915 the promulgation of the Agrarian Law under the government of the Convention.
Since his retirement, he has always faced the measures of Carranza, defending the implementation of an authentic agrarian reform that would eliminate the unequal distribution of land and consider indigenous rights, a reform model implemented by Shoe in Tlaltizapan.
The accusation of Shoe against his old revolutionary companion, Carranza, reflected it in an open letter of 1919 addressed to “Citizen Carranza“, in which he accuses him of having”He took advantage of the fight for his own benefit and that of his friends who helped him. Then you shared the loot, wealth, business, banquets, lavish parties, bacchanalia, orgies“. And it continues:”It never occurred to you to think that the Revolution was made to benefit the great masses, the legions of the oppressed whom you encouraged with your harangues.“.
In response, Carranza hatched a plan to assassinate Shoe.
In 1919, and as a result of an ambush, the revolutionary leader was assassinated on the Chinameca farm, Morelos. The trap was organized by Jesus Guajardo, military man of the Mexican Revolution and man of Carranza, who promoted him to General as a reward for his work.
With the death of Shoe, at the age of 39, the fiercest defender of the rights of the Mexican Indians and of the Agrarian Reform is extinguished.
His example has been taken up, more recently today, by the Sub Commander Marcos at the head of Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which defends the rights of the indigenous people of Chiapa