Zapata: Struggle, Legend, and Memory

A project of such dimensions had never been implemented in the country before, and Carranza and Obregón took note and took action. Defeating the Zapatistas would not only require a brutal military force, but also agrarian and other social reforms that would give legitimacy to their own limited liberal project.

The Zapatista campaign did finally end in defeat, but their struggle, vision, and ideals fundamentally determined the 1917 Constitution and the post-revolutionary national project. Zapata was assassinated in 1919, and his heirs would continue their struggle not only for material demands but also to recover the memory of the Caudillo del Sur (leader of the South) and insist on his principles of justice.

In the following decades, with Zapata’s continuing high stature in the eyes of the people, the Revolution that had become the government spread an image of Zapata stripped of all his radicalism and converted him into another 1910 revolutionary hero simply bent on overthrowing Díaz. The figure of Emiliano Zapata has been appropriated to an extreme that insults his historical memory. For example, in 1992 President Carlos Salinas announced his reform of Article 27 in front of a large image of Zapata, cynically asserting that El Caudillo del Sur would support the changes that privatized the (communal) ejido system and declared all pending land requests null and void.

But the people have long memories and long for justice. They have vindicated Zapata's legacy. From the struggle of Rubén Jaramillo who undertook the agrarian struggle, to the Zapatista veterans of the Revolution who day and night guarded the grave of General Zapata so that the government would not take his remains to Mexico City, to the EZLN that in 1994 launched its ¡Ya Basta! Campaign (Enough!) to the neoliberal reforms, to the people of eastern Morelos who today oppose the construction of a thermoelectric plant that would devastate their lands and waters, Zapata, as example, symbol and inspiration of the struggle, is still alive.

A century after his death, his fight continues.