hero and martyr of the Mexican Revolution

While the Villista army was almost professional and led long and extensive campaigns, the Zapatistas maintained close contact with the villages and limited their actions to Morelos and its surroundings, where they carried out a vast agrarian reform. This was both their strength and their weakness. In Morelos, they enjoyed deep popular support and were able to resist forcefully, but at the national level they were weaker. Distrustful of other revolutionaries, the Zapatistas refused to collaborate further and lacked a coherent national project. This is why, in 1914, they refused to negotiate with Carranza.

Although Zapatista representatives participated in national meetings, such as the Aguascalientes Convention in 1914, Zapata and his military leaders were absent. They left the negotiations in the hands of inexperienced urban intellectuals, who irritated the other participants by insisting that the Plan of Ayala be accepted as the sacred text of the national revolution. Zapata, for his part, was wary of political maneuvering and grand gestures. He preferred to remain in the state of Morelos and enjoy life in the countryside as a patriarchal caudillo. His life was one of parties and bullfights, aguardiente and artisanal cigars, and he was the father of 17 children.

When Villa’s forces entered Mexico City in late 1914, the Zapatistas also marched through the capital, carrying banners of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The two popular leaders met briefly and amicably. The Zapatistas had little interest in the big city and national politics, but they were open. This put an end to the sensationalist stereotypes in the press about Zapata, nicknamed Attila of the South, and his violent followers. Zapata stayed in a modest hotel near the train station and, a few days later, returned to Morelos, home to his family and his life in the countryside.

Hold on

Although Villa and Zapata were nominally allies, their alliance lacked organization and commitment. This would be essential when the revolution entered its final phase, a struggle between two rival revolutionary coalitions: the Carrancistas and the Villistas. The Villista army, superior in numbers and military reputation, faced Álvaro Obregón’s Carrancistas in three major battles fought in Celaya and León in 1915.

Zapata did not take part in these battles and remained in Morelos, away from the fighting. He did not attack Carranza’s long and vulnerable supply lines. Obregón triumphed, Villa suffered a decisive defeat, and the Zapatistas found themselves once again in the role of rebels against the central government. But the government was now the product of a popular movement. It had an army and an ambitious reformist project embodied in the 1917 constitution, the first in Mexican history to include social rights.

The Zapatistas resisted for four long years, while the state of Morelos was in the grip of war and repression. The revolutionary government crushed the rebels but failed to eliminate them. In 1919, Zapata was assassinated, betrayed, and shot in an ambush. But the rebellion continued. Eventually, the political wheel turned again and the surviving Zapatistas were able to reap the fruits of their long and bitter struggle.

In 1920, Obregón seized power and began building a new nationalist and reformist state. Obregón, who had been an effective general, was also a shrewd politician. He struck a deal with the new Zapatista leader Gildardo Magaña, a pragmatic politician, whereby the Zapatista rebels accepted the new Mexican state in exchange for positions in local government. He also proposed a sweeping official land reform that eliminated the sugar haciendas and benefited the villages.

Zapata’s dream had come true, at least in part. Morelos played a pioneering role in the great land distribution project that would transform the Mexican countryside in the 1920s and 1930s. Large haciendas were replaced by ejidos (communal estates created by agrarian reform). Zapatista veterans played key roles in local politics: some followed the movement’s old goals, while others, like Zapata’s eldest son Nicolás, became the caciques (leaders) of the new order.

From history to legend

Zapata, who died in 1919, saw none of this, despite the legend that he survived the ambush that led him to ride his white horse through the sierras of Morelos. Of the many heroes of the revolution, Zapata became the most admired, followed by his ally Villa, who also died young, betrayed in an ambush in 1923. An early and violent death contributed to his political canonization.

Over time, the revolution that Zapata had helped launch and define lost its radical and popular character. In the 1940s and 1950s, land reform slowed as industrialization and urbanization gained momentum and peasant protests resumed. A veteran Zapatista, Rubén Jaramillo, led a rebellion in the state of Morelos and was killed by the Mexican army in 1962.