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Who
was Zapata?
Emiliano Zapata was a Mexican revolutionary and folk hero. He was a native
illiterate tenant farmer who, in 1910 created an army of indigenous people
to reclaim land the ranchers had taken away from them. He created an
agrarian proposal known as the Plan
of Ayala, demanding the return of Mexico's lands to her native peoples.
While his opposition may have seen him as a simple bandit, he became
a hero and revolutionary to the native people of Mexico.
The agrarian movement in support of the Plan of Ayala became known as zapatismo. Throughout the course of several decades, it has been interwoven with the indigenous cultural movements that have become the basis of Mexican nationalism. Though Emilio Zapata was killed in 1919, he remains a folk hero in Mexico today; and he is particularly revered in the south, where EZLN consider themselves to be modern day descendents of Zapata.
Emiliano Zapata