Marco Jimenez
12-19-11
Per:3 Emiliano Zapata Emiliano Zapata was born on August 8, 1879 in the city of Anenecuilco, Morelos. Zapata’s parents were Gabriel Zapata and Cleofas Salazar; he also had ten brothers and sisters. His family was Mestizos which meant they were half Nahua and half Spanish. Zapatas father was a horse trainer and dealer and when it came to breeding and training horses he was considered an expert at it. Zapatas family came from middle-class meaning that he wasn’t too poor nor too rich. Emiliano and his family worked off the lands but when that would become insufficient they would begin to purchase and sell animals. When Emiliano was 16 years old his mother passed away and eleven months later his father passes away too so he was made man of the house, taking support for his siblings. Zapata began to purchase mules and used them to haul corn from his little neighborhood to the big town. When Emiliano was 31 years old he married Josefa Espejo who was the daughter of livestock dealer in the city of Villa de Ayala. HE was a sharecropper who organized and led peasants join forces with Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, he also let others fight the government of Porfirio Diaz. He supported the agrarian reform and land redistribution. In 1897, Zapata was arrested for being part of the protest along with the peasants of his village against the hacienda that had took over their lands. Zapata then obtained a pardon and he was drafted into the army for six months. In 1909, among his neighbors they elected him as president of the board of defense for their village. In 1910 Francisco Madero, a landowner, lost election to Porfirio Diaz. On March 1911 Zapata along with his small force surrounded the city of Cuautla and closed the road to the capital in Mexico City. After a week, Porfirio Diaz abdicated and departed to Europe, where he appointed a provisional president. Zapata met with Madero and asked him to make use of the pressure on the provisional president to return the land to the ejidos. Madero offered Zapata a payback such as making Zapata eligible to buy land, an offer that he rejected. Zapata then disarms his forces but stopped when the provisional president sent the army against the guerillas. Madero was then elected in 1911 where Zapata met him without success. Zapata and with the help of a teacher, came up with the Plan of Ayala, which meant that Madero was incapable of fulfilling the goals of the revolution. Signers renewed the revolution and promised to appoint a provisional president until there can be elections. They also promised to return the stolen land to the ejidos by confiscating a third of the area of the haciendas. They only confiscated the haciendas that refused to accept the plan that would have their lands confiscated without compensation. In his campaigns, Zapata distributed the lands that were taken away from the Haciendas, which he often burned without compensation. Zapata continuously ordered executions and expropriations, but his forces not always bear the laws of war. Zapata would pay his men by imposing taxes on the provincial cities and exhorting from the rich. They would get their arms and weapons from the federal troops. Madero was assassinated on February 1913 by General Victoriano Huerta. Zapata and his army arrived at Mexico City and they rejected to unite with Huerta and his army. Huerta then realized that he wasn’t going to be able to send his troops against the guerillas of the north. Huerta was then forced to abandon the country in July 1914. When Huerta died, Zapata invited the constitutionalists to accept his Plan of Ayala and warned them that he would continue fighting independently until his plan was to be operated. On October 1914 Carranza called in an assembly for all revolutionary forces. Pancho Villa