Our heroes Their Enemies

Emiliano Zapata - Born August 8, 1879, in Anenecuilco, Morelos, was a sharecroper and horse trainer.. In 1909 his neighbours elected him president of the board of defense for their village. After useless negotiations with the landowners, Zapata and a group of peasants occupied by force the land that had been appropriated by the haciendas and distributed it among themselves.Francisco Madero, a landowner of the north, had lost the elections in 1910 to the dictator Porfirio Diaz and had fled to the United States, where he proclaimed himself president and then reentered Mexico, aided by many peasant guerrillas. Zapata and his friends decided to support Madero. In March 1911 Zapata's tiny force took the city of Cuautla and closed the road to the capital, Mexico City. A week later, Diaz resigned and left for Europe, appointing a provisional president. Zapata, with 5,000 men, entered Cuernavaca, capital of the state of Morelos. Madero entered Mexico City in triumph. Zapata met Madero there and asked him to exert pressure on the provisional president to return the land to the ejidos (the former Indian communal system of landownership). Madero insisted on the disarmament of the guerrillas and offered Zapata a recompense so that he could buy land, an offer that Zapata rejected. Zapata began to disarm his forces but stopped when the provisional president sent the army against the guerrillas.In the course of his campaigns, Zapata distributed lands taken from the haciendas, which he frequently burned without compensation. He often ordered executions and expropriations, and his forces did not always abide by the laws of war. . The Zapatistas avoided battle by adopting guerrilla tactics. They farmed their land with rifles on their shoulders, went when called to fight, and returned to their plows at the end of a battle or skirmish. Sometimes Zapata assembled thousands of men; he paid them by imposing taxes on the provincial cities and extorting from the rich. Their arms were captured from federal troops.Zapata created agrarian commissions to distribute the land; he spent much time supervising their work to be sure they showed no favouritism and that the landowners did not corrupt its members. He established a Rural Loan Bank, the country's first agricultural credit organization; he also tried to reorganize the sugar industry of Morelos into cooperatives. In April 1915 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's personal representative in Mexico met with Zapata; Zapata asked that Wilson receive his delegation, but Wilson had recognized the Carranza government .Soon afterward General Pablo Gonzalez, who directed the government operations against Zapata, had Colonel Jes£s Guajardo pretend to want to join the agrarians and contrive a secret meeting with Zapata at the hacienda of Chinameca in Morelos. There, Zapata was ambushed and shot to death by Carrancista soldiers. His body was carried to Cuautla and buried there. The spirit of  Zapata still lives on today, with the Zapatista Uprising in southern Mexico, and in our people, as they face an everyday struggle living in this country and standing up for what what they believe in.                       "Tierra y Libertad" land and liberty - Emiliano Zapata.  .