On this day, 10 April 1919, Emiliano Zapata, peasant leader during the Mexican revolution of Nahua and Spanish mestizo descent, was assassinated in Chinameca, Ayala, by forces of the “revolutionary” Carranza government.
Early in life, he began to advocate for the rights of Indigenous people in Morelos when he saw wealthy landowners continually stealing their land, with no response from the government. So he began taking part in armed land occupations.
With the outbreak of revolution in 1910, Zapata became the leader of the Liberation Army of the South. The force was a revolutionary peasant militia fighting for “tierra y libertad” (land and freedom), a slogan they adopted from Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón.
After Francisco Madero took power in 1911, Zapata denounced him for betraying the revolution, and drafted the Ayala Plan: a radical programme of land reform. Madero himself was then overthrown by counter-revolutionary Victoriana Huerta.
Zapata’s southern army allied with the revolutionary armies in the north, led by Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. They soon overthrew Huerta, and called a convention to form the new government, which Zapata declined to participate in as none of the organisers had been elected.
With Carranza in power, he only implemented minor reforms, which fell well short of the Ayala plan, so the Zapatistas fought on.
Carranza put a bounty on Zapata’s head, hoping that one of his own fighters would betray him, but none of them did. In the end he was lured to a meeting with one of Carranza’s men who pretended to be interested in defecting.
When Zapata arrived for the meeting he was murdered, and his body photographed for propaganda purposes.
He is today a national hero, and Indigenous rebels in Chiapas who rose up in 1994 and created an autonomous territory named themselves after him.
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