Strategy Informer  

Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the Mexican Revolution, is ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by government forces.

Born a peasant on August 8, 1879 in Anenecuilco, Morelos Zapata was a mediero (sharecropper) and horse trainer. He was conscipted into the Mexican army in 1908 following his attempt to recover village lands taken over by a rancher for seven years ataining the rank of sergeant.
After the revolution began in 1910, he raised an army of peasants in the southern state of Morelos under the slogan "Land and Liberty." As president of the village council, he campaigned for the restoration of village lands confiscated by hacendados. His slogan was "Tierra y Libertad." Demanding simple agrarian reforms, Zapata and his guerrilla farmers opposed the central Mexican government under Francisco Madero, later under Victoriano Huerta, and finally under Venustiano Carranza. Zapata and his followers never gained control of the central Mexican government, but they redistributed land and aided poor farmers within the territory under their control.

Zapata's influence has endured long after his death, and his agrarian reform movement, known as "Zapatismo", remains important to many Mexicans today. In 1994, a guerrilla group calling themselves the Zapata Army of National Liberation launched a peasant uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.