A day like today: Emiliano Zapata
A boy saw his father crying that he was a hardworking, honest man with calloused hands and toasted skin; the peasant had lost the land of his whole life, the land of his sweat and his hope. It was Mexico at the end of the 9th century, the man was called Gabriel Zapata and his little son, Emiliano, that boy swore that he would never allow a peasant to cry for lack of land.
Years passed, land conflicts continued, and then a leader who spoke Nahuatl and Spanish emerged, and who mobilized the peasants overwhelmingly. It was the same child Emiliano Zapata, and a man, with thousands of peasants willing to recover the land that had always belonged to them.
The battle cries were: "Land and freedom" and "The land for which he works". Mexico lived a deep revolution.
Mexico was betrayed by elite sectors that posed as supporters of the popular sectors, and delayed the long-awaited agrarian reform. The traitorous president was Carranza, but Emiliano Zapata continued to take up arms and wrote to the president: "You, citizen Carranza, took advantage of our struggle and with your friends the spoils are distributed: business wealth, banquets, parties, bacchanalia, orgies ... "
And he added in that letter-complaint: "Forget that we made the revolution to benefit the great masses, the legions of the oppressed"
Emiliano Zapata, leader of that legendary revolution, was killed after falling into a trap of President Carranza, and we remember him because Emiliano Zapata was being born for history on a day like today, August 8, 1879.
And here, and in Chiapas, and wherever it is required to remedy an injustice, you are always reminded.
