Although Diego Rivera portrayed him in paintings as a humble peasant dressed in white, he was relatively well off, nor did he come from an indigenous background. His clothing in this picture shows that the hero of the agrarian movement was of a higher class.

The Mexican dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who was president from 1877-1880 and again from 1884-1911 supported the landowning elite and foreigners, which was detrimental to the middle class and poor, and the Indians and landless peasants in particular suffered under his rule.

Emiliano Zapata, who would be nicknamed the "Tiger of Morelos," was a native of Anenecuilco, a village in the state of Morelos in Mexico. He was elected the village chief in 1909, at the age of 30. After his election, he started to defend neighbors who were the victims of greedy landowners under Díaz. With the help of armed peasants, he started to take the land back by force. His supporters would come to be known as Zapatistas. 

In 1910, when Francisco Madero began the struggle against the Mexican dictator, Diaz rigged the election and then forced Madero into exile. Madero called for a revolution from his exile in the United States. Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Pascual Orozco led the Northern Army, while Emiliano Zapata became the general of the Southern Army. Zapata captured Cuautla in May of 1911, and Díaz recognized that he had lost. He went into exile.

Although Zapata had been allied to Madero at first, Madero did not support land reform, Zapata’s only concern. Once it was clear that Madero was not going to go through with his promises, Zapata started to fight against him. He wrote the Plan of Ayala in 1911, in which he called Madero a traitor, and declared Pascual Orozco the head of the Revolution. He also outlined a plan for reform. His reform plan called for the immediate return of all lands stolen under Díaz. The plan also required one-third of all large plantations be nationalized and the land would then be given to poor farmers and the rural cooperatives should be established to stop seizure and theft of the land in the future. After outlining this plan, he then fought the federal forces near Mexico City, but he did not have the to overthrow Madero because General Victoriano Huerta arrested and executed Madero in February 1913.

However, Zapata disliked Huerta, who was responsible for atrocities in southern Mexico; Pancho Villa also wanted Huerta gone and Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregón raised armies in Coahuila and Sonora. When Woodrow Wilson sent troops to occupy Veracruz on April 21, 1914, Huerta had to withdraw from Morelos and Puebla, and Zapata took control of eastern Morelos. In the summer of 1915, Zapata occupied the southern edge of the Federal District and was about to move into the capital. After multiple military losses to the “Big Four,” Huerta resigned and fled in June 1914. 

The Big Four, although allied against Huerta, did not get along, and the infighting caused the Revolution to continue. Villa and Carranza hated each other and began fighting pretty much immediately. Obregón thought Villa was a bit dangerous and uncontrollable, so he supported Carranza. Carranza also had the backing of the U.S. because he had higher status than Villa and Zapata, who were also more progressive than Carranza. Zapata didn’t like Carranza, so he sided with Villa, but stayed out of the fray for the most part. Obregón defeated Villa in 1915, and Carranza then focused on Zapata. Carranza kept the Zapatistas out of the peace treaties as he saw them as uncultured savages, and in 1916, he sent Pablo González to kill Zapata. González destroyed villages and killed suspected allies of Zapata during his quest to kill Zapata. Zapata managed to drive out the federales for a time in 1917-1918, but Carranza ordered González to dispose of Zapata by any means necessary. On April 10, 1919, Colonel Jesús Guajardo, one of González’ officers ambushed and killed Zapata, after claiming he wanted to switch sides.

Unfortunately, Zapata’s death, ended the push for land reform and the fair treatment of farmers; but that was only for the time being, as Zapata became a martyr when he died. In 1994, a group called the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatist Liberation Army) attacked towns in southern Mexico, choosing the name because Zapata’s vision had not yet been fulfilled. After the initial armed attacks, they switched to world media and the internet, the contemporary battlefields. Some Mexican feminists also point to Zapata for creating a milestone for women’s rights; he had soldaderas in his ranks, and the women engaged in combat. Some were even officers.

The photo at the top of this story was colorized by Olga Shirnina, aka Klimbim; you can see more of her work at her Flickr page.