Emiliano Zapata (For Latin American Humanities class) - Research Paper Example

Soon after being elected the mayor of Anenecuilco town in 1909, he started to defend the peasants’ debt peons’ lands, from the greedy sugarcane plantations owners. He managed to assemble thousands of peasants’ men and he remunerated them by collecting taxes from provincial cities as well as extorting from the affluent (Chasteen 219). Zapata arms mostly came from the captured from federal troops and they were wanted change from the higher level. That is why he decided to ambush the well-off, national institutions, as well as the federal army anywhere and when possible.

Even though his peasants’ army acquired land and began to work on it, Zapata faced problems especially when changing from guerrilla aggravation to open combat, something which did not produce his desired victory (McLynn 221). His armed revolutionaries were referred to as Zapatistas who were mostly rural peasants. The alliance between him and Francesco Madero saw the overthrow of President Porfirio Diaz in 1910 (Chasteen 219). However, this alliance did not last for a long period, since him and Madero had dissimilar ideologies.

Zapata was more concerned about land reforms something which Madero did not believe in. When Madero was overthrown by his key General, known as Victoriano Huerta, Zapata joined forces with Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregón to defeat Huerta in 1914, before they turned against each other (McLynn 213). Zapata was later killed in 1919 after being tricked to appear in a meeting with Jesús Guajardo who was sent by Pablo González a close general of president Venustiano Carranza (MicrosoftCorporation para 3).

Some of Zapata notable achievements include the formation of the agrarian commissions, which were responsible for distributing land with no favoritism, in addition to being free of the practice whereby landowners could corrupt the