Emiliano Zapata - Hero of the Mexican People

The Mexican Revolution

Born on August 8, 1879, in the village of Anenecuilco, Morelos (Mexico)

Zapata's Ideology

Zapata's revolution was first and foremost an agrarian one. It would in no way be fair to call Zapata a communist, even though his revolution fits into nearly the same time frame as that in Russia. Nevertheless, all throughout Zapata's speeches and writings, a few socialist themes keep recurring, such as agrarian reform in favor of giving some of the lands of the haciendas to the peasants. One of the more "socialist" ideas in Zapata's ideology is the re-establishment of ejidas or communally owned lands with shared use rights -- a system common among the Mexican indios. This was, however, not a contradiction to private property. One might choose to argue that even that attitude was not truly socialist, since Zapata was fighting for the restoration of titles that had been usurped by the planters and not necessarily a full, sweeping redistribution of all hacienda lands. One of the best documents describing Zapata's positions, which have been described as "bourgeois-democratic and anti-imperialist as well as ... anti-feudal"[6], is the 1917 Manifesto of the People. The revolutionary Zapata sounds very conciliatory in this statement of principles:

To unite Mexicans by means of a generous and broad political policy which will give guarantees to the peasant and to the worker as well as to the merchant, the industrialist and the businessman; to grant facilities to all who wish to improve their future and open wider horizons for those who today lack it; to promote the establishment of new industries, of great centers of production, of powerful manufacturies [sic] which will emancipate the country from the economic domination of the foreigner... [7]

Zapata's main goal was the political and economic emancipation of Mexico's peasantry. Land reform was not an end in itself but a means to achieve this popular independence. Doubtlessly, Zapata argued for the destruction of the reigning feudal system which kept the sharecroppers and small-time farmers in perpetual poverty. Nonetheless, Zapata was, as always, cautious and prudent in not arguing for the dismantling of all haciendas but rather for a kind of coexistence between an empowered peasant population and a number of larger plantation owners. Throughout Zapata's writings, terms such as "economic liberty" and even "growth and prosperity" point out that a Marxist interpretation of the original Zapatista movement would be out of place.


http://www.cs.utk.edu/~miturria/project/zapata.html

Here's someone all Mexicans can look up to, he could of fled into the U.S.,
yet he chose to remain and FIGHT to make his country better.