Emiliano Zapata

A recurrent action during Porfirio Diaz's government was the expropriation of people´s land by local governments. Natives didn't have right of word in any matter and they were simply displaced. One fine day in Anenecuilco, Morelos, one of these Natives began to learn from ancient documents, from the Independence and Reform wars, the people have the right to own and benefit from the land where they were born.

Emiliano Zapata had a clear position that he described in a simple phrase: Land and Freedom! Along with it and a group of men he took by force his legitime land in 1910. Right after agreeing an alliance with Madero through a messenger, he raised up arms against Porfirio Diaz. He fought fiercely from the south and supported Madero's entrance to the government. Not long after, he was disappointed when his claims were ignored.

Even when Zapata demanded land to be returned, his petition also included the practice of ancient intents and purposes in which land is a common property, thus the disappearance of the private property. This idea became ineffective and incongruous with the capitalist models that governments after Diaz wanted to apply. Thus Zapata refused to leave arms.

In the Constitution of 1917, Carranza passed a law where the creation of Ejidos were to be inforced. Ejidos were a modern iterpretation of the principles Zapata was fighting for. However, this law is not effectively inforced until 1934, during Lazaro Cardenas government. Differences between Carranza and Zapata were not resolved. In 1919 Zapata attended an appointment with a General at the orders of Carranza that proposed an alliance, it was really an ambush and Zapata was killed. News about his death ran quickly but people started refusing it.

Still in our days, out in the country you can hear people saying: Zapata is not dead! Zapata lives!... so much that even Sub Commander Marcos in Chiapas, in 1994, held Zapata's statements, his figure and name to claim a worthy place for Native Americans in a globalized world.