Emiliano Zapata Salazar: Mexican Revolution

Emiliano Zapata Salazar was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, the main leader of the peasant revolution in the state of Morelos, and the inspiration of the agrarian movement called Zapatismo.
Zapata was born in the rural village of Anenecuilco in Morelos. In Morelos peasant communities were under increasing pressure from the small landowning class who monopolized land and water resources for sugar cane production with the support of dictator Porfirio Díaz. Zapata early on participated in political movements against Diaz and the landowning hacendados, and when the Revolution broke out in 1910 he was positioned as a central leader of the peasant revolt in Morelos. Cooperating with a number of other peasant leaders he formed the Liberation

Zapata's family were Mexicans of Nahua and Spanish ancestry, that is mestizos. Emiliano was the ninth of ten children; his older brother Euphemio Zapata is also figure in Morelos history. From a family of farmers, Emiliano Zapata had insight into the severe difficulties of the countryside and his village's long struggle to regain land taken by expanding haciendas.
He received a limited education from his teacher, Emilio Vara, but it included "the rudiments of bookkeeping." At the age of 16 or 17, Zapata had to care for his family following his father's death. Emiliano was entrepreneurial, buying a team of mules to haul maize from farms to town, as well as bricks to the Hacienda of Chinameca; he was also a successful farmer, growing watermelons as a cash crop. He was a skilled horseman and competed in rodeos and races, as well as bullfighting from horseback. In an undated studio photo, Zapata is dressed in a standard business suit and tie, projecting an image of a man of