Emiliano Zapata
Emiliano Zapata Salazar
General Emiliano Zapata.
Date of birth:
August 8,
1879(1879-08-08)
Place of birth:
Anenecuilco, Morelos,
Mexico
Date of death:
April 10, 1919 (aged 39)
Place of death:
Chinameca, Morelos,
Mexico
Major
organizations:
Liberation Army of the
South
Emiliano Zapata Salazar (August 8, 1879 –
April 10, 1919) was a leading figure in the
Mexican Revolution, which broke out in
1910, and which was
initially directed
against
the president Porfirio Díaz. He
formed and commanded an important revolu-
tionary force, the Liberation Army of the
South, during the Mexican Revolution.
Biography
A symbol of the agrarian reform movement,
Zapata was born to Gabriel Zapata a peasant
who trained and sold horses, and Cleofas
Salazar in the small central state of Morelos,
in the village of Anenecuilco (modern-day Ay-
ala municipality). Zapata’s
family were
Mestizos, having mainly Nahua ancestry with
some Spanish mixture;[1] Emiliano was the
ninth out of ten children. A peasant since
childhood, he gained insight into the severe
difficulties of the countryside.[2] He received
a limited education from his teacher, Emilio
Vara. He had to care for his family because
his father died when Zapata was 17. Around
the turn of the 20th century Anenecuilco was
an indigenous Nahuatl speaking community,
and although Zapata is generally thought to
have been a mestizo there exist eyewitness
accounts stating that Emiliano Zapata spoke
Nahuatl fluently.[3]
At that time, Mexico was ruled by a dictat-
orship under Porfirio Díaz, who had seized
power in 1876. The social system of the time
was a sort of proto-capitalist feudal system,
with large landed estates (haciendas) con-
trolling more and more of the land and
squeezing out the independent communities
of the indigenous and mestizos, who were
then subsequently forced into debt slavery
(peonaje) on the haciendas. Díaz ran local
elections to pacify the people and run a gov-
ernment that they could argue was self-im-
posed. Under Díaz, close confidantes and as-
sociates we