Origins of the Zapata Revolt in Morelos

Author(s): John H. McNeely

Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 46, No. 2 (May, 1966), pp. 153-169
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2518386
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Origins of the Zapata Revolt in Morelos

JOHN H. McNEELY*

DURING the violent upheaval of the Revolution in

Mexico from 1910 to 1920 two of the Mexican states,
Chihuahua and Morelos, were chronic centers of resistance. Uprisings took place in those states against the governments of Porfirio Diaz, Francisco I. Madero, Victoriano Huerta,
and Venustiano Carranza. Indeed, Chihuahua and Morelos can be
considered the cradles and proving grounds of the Mexican Revolution. Special conditions of acute unrest existed in both states before
the Revolution broke out in 1910. They continued as focal points of
opposition, because the national leadership from Diaz through Carranza was constantly thwarting popular aspirations.
Francisco Villa in Chihuahua and Emiliano Zapata in Morelos
were familiar with and part of the prerevolutionary dissatisfaction in
their states. As the Revolution progressed, Villa and Zapata came to
incarnate the hopes of the masses. It is fairly well known that under
the dictatorship of President Diaz, there was prolonged exploitation
in Chihuahua by the political machine of the great landowner General
Luis Terrazas. The Terrazas-Creel clan also was responsible for the
serious scandal of the Banco Minero robbery in 1908, which kept Chihuahua in an uproar until the outbreak of hostilities against Diaz.'
A much more obscure part of the revolutionary background concerns
the development of a similar tense situation in the small state of
Morelos to the south of Mexico City.
Since its creation in 1869 the Mexican state of Morelos, with
Cuernavaca as the capital, has been one of the smallest and most
densely inhabited in the republic. The aboriginal tongue, especially
north of Cuernavaca, has always been Nahuatl; yet those in the state
* The author is Associate Professor of History at Texas Western College of
the University of Texas.
'Francisco R. Almada, Gobernadores del Estado de Chihuahua (Mexico, 1950),
269-271, 444-445; Fernando Jordain, Cr6nica de un pais bdrbaro (Mexico, 1956),
261-274; Ram6n Puente, Vida de Francisco Villa, contado por 61 mismo (Los
Angeles, 1919), 27-28; Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York,
1928), 60, 141-144; Frank Tannenbaum, Mexico, the Struggle for Peace and
Bread (New York, 1950), 52-62.

154

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speaking the Aztec idiom have long been declining as the ethnological
stock has shifted to the mestizo. Morelos is a mountainous region,
with agricultural and social life concentrated in the Plain of Amilpas
and the valley of Cuernavaca where the fields of sugar cane are found.
By a royal cedula of June 6, 1529, Emperor Charles V granted
Hernan Cortes an immense territory called the Marquisate of the
Valley of Oaxaca, which included present Morelos. Under the Spanish Crown, municipalities were also created, and Indian villages received grants of communal lands. The holdings of the Marquisate
belonging to Cortes and his descendants were gradually subdivided
into latifundios and disposed of by sale or emphyteutic grant.2
Near the end of Diaz' supremacy in 1908-1909, the seventeen principal hacendados of Morelos were producing annually on their properties 52,000,000 kilograms of sugar. In seeking expansion for such
a money crop they had virtually engulfed the old native villages and
their occupants. The town of Cuautla, for example, was so imprisoned
by adjacent large holdings that the houses on one of its suburban
streets belonged to an hacienda. The heirs of Cortes still retained
possession of the Hacienda of Atlacomulco, although it was under
lease to the estate of Delfin Sanchez. While sugar technology. improved steadily during the Porfiriate, the situation was not favorable
to the lower classes.3
The experience of the village of Tepalcingo in the District of
Jonacatepec illustrates conditions that aroused bitterness against the
hacendados. When the citizens were despoiled of property by the
Hacienda of Santa Clara, one of the respected elders of Tepalcingo,
He was murdered for
Antonio Prancisco, tried to press litigation.
to Manuel Alarcon,
attributed
the
crime
in
being
efforts
1886,
his
the state. Other
of
and
later
governor
in
of
Morelos
rurales
chief
and had
haciendas
into
villages also had been completely absorbed
The
San
Pedro.
and
Sayula,
Cuachichinola,
Acatlipa,
disappeared:
owner of the Hacienda of San Jose Vista Hermosa, drove out the
last inhabitants of Tequesquitengo by flooding the settlement with a
lake.4
2 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Mexico (San Francisco, 1883), II, 308311, 483; Oth6n Flores Vilehis, El problema agrario en el Estado de Morelos
(Mexico, 1950), 20-23, 66; Marte R. G6mez, La cuesti6n agraria en los primeros
congress del Mexico independiente (Mexico, 1955), 8-14, map opposite page 28;
Jesus Sotelo Inelan, Raiz y raz6n de Zapata (Mexico, 1943), 31-34.
8 Gildardo Magafia, Emiliano Zapata y el agrarismo en Mdxico (Mexico, 19341937), I, 7, 14, 16-23; Flores Vilehis, El problema agrario, 63, 78.
4 Flores Vilehis, El problema agrario, 78-80; Maganla, Emiliano Zapata, I, 2223, 80-88; Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, "Hechos que provocaron la revoluci6n del

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

155

Typical of the abuses were those of the Hacienda of Atlihuayan,

inherited by the sons of Antonio Escando'n. Although the owners
originally held legitimate title to only two caballernas of land, its
domain had been forcibly extended by 1902 to include an area which
from time immemorial had belonged to the town of Yautepec. Not
content with invading the municipal holdings, the hacendado also
fenced in a watering place which the vecinos of Yautepec had always
used freely. Faced with the loss of seven caballerias of their communal property as well as ancient watering rights, the people of
Yautepec determined to send a committee to Mexico City with irrefutable documentary proof of their ownership.
No less than sixty citizens, headed by Jovito Serrano and including
Emiliano Zapata, went to the capital and secured the services of a
noted attorney, Licenciado Francisco A. Serralde, who carried the
case before the Supreme Court. Serralde arranged through Felix
Romero, one of the most worthy of the magistrates, for the vecinos
to have an interview with President Diaz. Don Porfirio appeared
favorably impressed and told them that justice would be done. The
litigation extended over three years, during which the issuance of
amparos proved unavailing.
Not only did the villagers of Yautepec ultimately lose their case,
but Jovito Serrano and his companion, Ambrosio Castillo, while on a
trip in connection with the trial, were arrested in Mexico City, on
May 11, 1905. The police, who presumably had been paid by the
hacendado Pablo Escand6n, changed the names of the prisoners for
the records and then deported them to forced labor in Quintana Roo
along with thirty-five other unlucky natives from different parts of
Morelos. When the prisoners passed through Veracruz, Serrano was
able secretly to mail a letter to his wife explaining what had occurred.
At Santa Cruz de Bravo in Quintana Roo Jovito Serrano died on
November 29, 1905, without his family's ever being able to find out
the cause of his death.5
Meanwhile, Pablo Escand6n became governor of Morelos during
the last period of the Porfirian regime. Accounts of his administration are mixed. In a contemporary view, Marie Robinson Wright
refers in flattering terms to Governor Escando'n as having fostered
sur," El Fronterizo (Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua), January 29, 1954; one of a
series of articles which also appeared in El Universal of Mexico City and was
published in book form as La revoluci6n agraria del sur y Emiliano Zapata, su
caudillo (M6xico, 1960), 68-70.
5Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, "La revoluci6n y sus causas," El Fronterizo,
January 20, 1954; Magafia, Emiliano Zapata, I, 88-90.

156

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H. MONEELY

vocational education among the field workers. Another writer,

Hector Ribot, maintains, however, that Escand6n accepted the governorship through vanity and that he ruled through lieutenants
because his life as a clubman in Mexico City gave him no time for
administrative duties.6
The background of unrest behind the Zapata revolt is seen in
the tumultuous gubernatorial campaign and election of Escandon on
February 7, 1909. Colonel Escand6n, a staff officer of President Dfaz,
was the government 's candidate. Since Don Porfirio had already
invited opposition and had announced that Mexico was ready for
liberty in his famous Creelman interview, there was an independent
contestant in the person of Ingeniero Patricio Leyva, son of General
Francisco Leyva, who had been governor of Morelos under President
Sebastia'n Lerdo de Tejada before 1876. Patricio Leyva had the
backing of the local Club Democratico Liberal and was a member of
the national Democratic Party, recently organized in Mexico City.
Colonel Escand6n invited two men associated with the Democratic
Party, Licenciados Heriberto Barron and Diodoro Batalla, to visit
Morelos and make campaign speeches in his behalf. Barron and
Batalla sought to overcome the unpopularity of their candidate by
making promises of greater freedom to the people, only to find themselves jeered at and threatened with stoning and lynching until they
withdrew to Mexico City. The orators of Patricio Leyva, on the other
hand, were said to have inflamed the poorer classes by telling them
that the great terratenientes ought to be killed like snakes and their
wives and daughters seized in revenge for the violations of humble
that the haciendas belonged to the
maidens by the powerful-adding
Indians, who had been despoiled of the land, and to the field hands,
whose wages were stolen by the hacendados.7
Two young professional men in Mexico City, the brothers Alfredo
and Gabriel Robles Dominguez, accepted an invitation from the leaders
of the "disinherited and illiterate masses" to speak in favor of
Leyva. They felt that their reputations as democrats and as members
of the Democratic Party would suffer in the public eye when it was
seen that some of their colleagues were willing to support Escandon,
the candidate of the great and wealthy.
8
Marie Robinson Wright, Mexico, a History of Its Progress and Development
in One Hundred Years (Philadelphia, 1911), 456-460. H6ctor Ribot, El Atila del
sur, novela hist6rico-tragica (Mexico, 1913), 13, 16.
7 Manuel Bonilla, Diez afios de guerra (Mazatlan, Sinaloa, 1922), 84-85;
Ruben Garcia, El antiporfirismo (M6xico, 1935), 77; Alfonso Taracena, Mi vida
en el v6rtigo de la revolcui6n, anales sinteticos, 1900-1930 (Mexico, 1936), 72.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

157

The brothers arrived at Cuernavaca toward the end of the campaig-L on February 5, 1909, and found that the city was full of troops
under General Juvencio Robles. The atmosphere was thick with
tension. Licenciado Gabriel Robles Dominguez made a moderate speech
that evening but was threatened with hanging by the jefe politico. He
told his audience that they were within their rights in preventing
Colonel Escandon from carrying out his promise to plant sugar
cane in the very atrium of the parish church at Yautepec, the town
which the Escand6ns had already stripped of most of its lands.
Ingeniero Alfredo Robles Dominguez spoke briefly, urging all good
citizens to vote. The crowd responded by crying out against their
relatives' being forced into military service and against the spoliation
of their little farms or water rights until they had not even enough
to eat or drink. On election day the polling places were manned
largely by government employees protected by the armed forces. It
was soon announced that Colonel Escandon had been victorious, and
he took office on March 15, 1909. One of those who organized a group
to uphold Patricio Leyva was Emiliano Zapata.8
Anenecuilco, the native village of Emiliano Zapata, had a long
record extending back to colonial times of contentions and representations over its land rights, the most recently being with the Hacienda
of the Hospital. After careful study of the documents Licenciado
Francisco Serralde had given the people of Anenecuilco his legal
opinion on February 8, 1906, that their claims were absolutely valid.
The junta de defense elected by the vecinos, had taken their troubles
directly to Don Porfirio. They supposed that favorable action was
about to be taken when the death of Governor Manuel Alarcon of
Morelos intervened on December 15, 1908, followed by the death of
the hacendado Vicente Alonso. The new governor, Pablo Escandon,
or rather his substitutes, paid little attention to the petitions of the
villagers.9
Emiliano Zapata had already been forced to serve in the military
levy at Cuernavaca for a little over six months in 1908. In a meeting
at Anenecuilco on September 12, 1909, he was chosen to be president
8 Diego Arenas Guzman, La consumaci6n del crime (Mexico, 1935), 19-25, 2932, 56-59, 68-70; Agustin Victor and Gustavo Casasola, Historia grdfica de la
revoluco6n, 1900-1940 (Mexico, n.d.), I, 117-118; Magania, Emiliano Zapata, I,
106-107; Ram6n Prida, ;;De la dictadura . . . a la anarquia!! (El Paso, 1914),
I, 348-352; Sotelo Inelan, Baiz y razon de Zapata, 178, 233; Alfonso Taracena,
La tragedia zapatista (MWxico,1931), 8.
9 Sotelo Inelan, Rafz y raz6n de Zapata, 160-189, 195-196; Diaz Soto y Gama,
"El sur encuentra a su caudillo," El Fronterizo, February 3, 1954.

158

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H. MCNEELY

of the junta de defensa with Francisco Franco as secretary. The next

year he was able to take possession of some lands belonging to the
village to which the Hacienda of the Hospital was trying to get title
through the municipality of Cuautla.
Under the more aggressive leadership of Zapata the citizens were
enjoying some success with their demands, when the revolt of Francisco I. Madero broke out against President Diaz. Zapata was particularly impressed with the land restitution clause in Madero's revolutionary Plan of San Luis Potosi of 1910, which promised to return
to villages the lands of which they had been despoiled. It was
arranged to send Pablo Torres Burgos, a school teacher from the
neighboring Villa de Ayala, to San Antonio, Texas to confer with
Madero. Whether Torres Burgos actually saw Madero is a matter
of dispute, but upon his return to Morelos he was considered to be
the chief Maderista in that state.10
In support of Madero three bands of insurrectionarieswere formed
in the state, commanded by Emiliano Zapata, Rafael Merino, and
Gabriel Tepepa. The fourth leader, Professor Torres Burgos, accompanied the column of Tepepa, which raided the towns of Tlaquiltenango and Jojutla on March 23 or 24, 1911. It is said that the
professor was shocked by the violence of Tepepa's men. Having withdrawn in disgust along the road to Moyotepec, Torres Burgos was
overtaken and shot together with his son and an assistant by federal
forces under Enrique Dabadie, jefe politico of Cuernavaca.
The guerrillas of Emiliano Zapata occupied Izuicarde Matamoros
on April 17, 1911, but on the following day the troops of Colonel
Aureliano Blanquet drove them out. The rebel leader Rafael Merino
was among those killed in that fighting. A conference of the rebel
chiefs in Jojutla on April 22 finally recognized Zapata as head of the
Madero Revolution in Morelos.1"
During this period the young Rodolfo Magaila, who later became
the historian of the Zapata movement, arrived at the camp of Zapata.
Magaiia brought with him a copy of the "Political-Social Plan, proclaimed by the States of Guerrero, Michoacan, Tlaxcala, Campeche,
10Diaz
Soto y Gama, La revoluci6n agraria, 69-70, 82-85; Flores Vilchis, El
problema agrario, 72-73; Magafia, Emiliano Zapata, I, 104-105, 108-109; Porfirio
Palacios, El Plan de Ayala, sus origenes y su promulgaci6on (Mexico, 1950), 11.
" Casasola, Historia grafica, I, 234-237; Baltasar Dromundo, Emiliano Zapata,
biografia (Mexico, 1934), 45-49; Pedro Gonzdlez-Blanco, De Porflrio Diaz a
Carranza (Madrid, 1916), 231-234; Magafia, Emiliano Zapata, I, 108-113; Jes-fs
Romero Flores, Anales hist6ricos de la revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico, 1939), I,
180-184; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 9-11.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

159

Puebla, and the Federal District.;" This document had been composed in Mexico City by Profesora Dolores Jimenez y Muro in protest against the suspension of individual guarantees by the Diaz government on March 13, 1911. It was dated in the Sierra de Guerrero,
March 18, 1911, and signed by various Madero sympathizers, among
them Gabriel Hernaindez of Tlaxcala, and Carlos B. Muigica of
Michoaatan, a brother of the later famous Constitutionalist General
Francisco J. Mfigica. Zapata approved the plan and asked Magana
to write his friends to come to Morelos, but by then they were mostly
scattered or imprisoned in the penitentiary of the Federal District.
The Plan politico-social, while acknowledging Madero as provisional president and supreme chief of the Revolution, also contained
some agrarian articles. The natives were to be protected, and usurped
properties would be "returned to the old and legitimate owners."
Special commissions would be named to fix the wages of rural and
industrial labor according to the capital income produced. The work
day was to be limited to eight or nine hours, and Mexican nationals
were to hold at least half of the job opportunities in foreign-owned
companies. All proprietors who had more land than they were able
or wanted to cultivate would be obliged to give their idle holdings
to anyone who asked for them; yet the owners were to receive six percent interest on the tax value of the land. Several of the signers of
this plan, including Profesora Jimenez y Muro and Gildardo Magafia,
later were active adherents to the Zapata movement.12
On the military side, the forces of Zapata occupied Jonacatepec on
May 5, and Cuautla on May 18, 1911, pillaging and burning as they
went along. The difficulties in Morelos were accentuated by the extreme antagonism which sprang up between Zapata and Ambrosio Figueroa, leader of the Maderistas in the neighboring state of Guerrero.
Named supreme chief of the Revolution in the south against the better
judgment of Zapata, Figueroa soon undertook an armistice with
Lieutenant Colonel Fausto Beltran that would be binding on Zapata's
men as well as his own. When Cuernavaca was finally evacuated by
the federals, troops of Manuel Asutnsolo, an officer of Figueroa,
took possession on May 21, 1911.
Zapata did not enter Cuernavaca until May 28, in agreement with
Asu'nsolo. Meanwhile, his animosity toward Figueroa had increased
12 Secretaria de Educacion Pfiblica, Documentos de la revo0uci6n mexicana
(Mexico, 1945), 47-51; Magalia, Emiliano Zapata, I, 117-126; Francisco Naranjo,
Diecionario biogrdfico revolucuonario (Mexico, 1935), 268-270; Romero Flores,
Anales hist6ricos, I, 174, 186-187, IV, 221-223.

160

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because of the shooting three days before at Jojutla of Gabriel Tepepa

by order of Federico Morales, another lieutenant of Figueroa. The
death of "El Viejo" Tepepa left Zapata as the sole survivor of the
four original leaders in Morelos after only two months of fighting.
At the moment of victory Figueroa began referring to Zapata in the
press as a bandit, basing his denunciations on the sacking of Jonacatepec and Cuautla as well as the periodic inaction of Zapata that
prevented him from imposing his will on his followers. The situation
made it appear that Figueroa was the most important and desirable
of the southern leaders while concealing the great strength and influence of Zapata among the mass of campesinos.13
On May 25, 1911, Diaz resigned the presidency and went into
forced exile. His secretary of foreign relations, Francisco Leon de la
Barra, conservative leader of the Catholic Party, followed as interim
president for more than five months. In the forthcoming elections, it
was assumed that Francisco I. Madero, leader of the successful revolution that overthrew Diaz, would be chosen as constitutional president.
Madero made his triumphal entry from the north into Mexico City
on June 7, 1911. General Emiliano Zapata was one of the first to
greet him at the railroad station. On the next day, Madero and
Zapata had an interview in which Zapata was urged to mend his
At that conference and on other
quarrel with General Figueroa.
subsequent occasions, Zapata repeatedly told Madero that his people
in Morelos were interested only in the return of their lands stolen by
the hacendados. Madero asked Zapata to have faith in him and
said that the problem would be solved by legal means. From June 12
to 16, 1911, Madero made a trip to Morelos and Guerrero, arranging
for the discharge of the rebel troops at Cuernavaca under the supervision of Gabriel Robles Dominguez.14
The mere spectacle of Madero's treating with the Zapatistas inflamed the reactionary press in the capital to initiate a counterA
revolution. El Imparcial called Zapata the "modern Attila."
picture was painted of orgies of anarchy and brigandage in Morelos,
with families fleeing in terror. Zapata was accused of having already
broken up a number of haciendas. It was believed, however, that
1 Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, "Revoluci6n relmpago,"
El Fronterizo, February 11, 1954; Dromundo, Emiliano Zapata, biografia, 50-51; Magafia, Emiliano
Zapata, I, 127-133, 165-166; Romero Flores, Anales hist6ricos, I, 184-185; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 12-14; Casasola, Jistoria grdfica, I, 278-281.
14 Casasola, Bistoria grafica, I, 300-301, 312-317; Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama,
"Calumnias e intrigas contra Zapata," El Fronterizo, February 17, 1954.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

161

some of the wealthy men of Morelos had distributed money among

the newspaper reporters to induce them to revile Zapata and keep the
air alive with rumors of atrocities. Actually conditions were quiet
in the state by the middle of June. Foreigners living in Cuernavaca
considered that Zapata kept good order and that violence had ceased.
But the conservatives had discovered in Zapata an instrument to discredit Madero and turn the revolutionaries against one another.15
Madero suggested that fears might be quieted by bringing in revolutionary troops from some other state (though not from Guerrero)
to police Morelos. Provisional Governor Juan N. Carreo'n persistently
wired the minister of gobernacion, Licenciado Emilio Vazquez Gomez,
to send such elements, but received no answer, according to Madero,
because of the chaos in the department. Vazquez G6mez resigned as
minister of gobernacion on August 3, 1911, being replaced in that
position by an hacendado, Alberto Garcia Granados. The change of
administrators soon led to the dispatch of General Victoriano Huerta
and Colonel Blanquet with federal troops to take military action in
Morelos if the lagging disarmament of the rebel forces could not be
carried out immediately. In an effort for peace Madero went hastily
on August 17, 1911, to Cuautla, where Zapata agreed that Eduardo
Hay should become Governor of Morelos and Rau'l Madero commander
of the revolutionary troops, and that the federal army should be withdrawn from the state.16
Madero believed that he had settled matters satisfactorily, but,
instead of withdrawing, General Huerta advanced, apparently seeking
Nueva Era, the organ of the Maderistas
to provoke resistance.
founded in Mexico City and directed by Juan Sacnchez Ascona, defended Zapata, explaining that unusual circumstances prevailed in the
state of Morelos where the Mexican hacendados visited their properties
only to take accounts or for pleasure trips. The paper said that the
great fincas were generally administered by Spaniards who treated
their campesinos worse than slaves. In contrast, the press of the old
regime attacked Zapata and Madero unceasingly, while the sugar
planters tried to use the Catholic Church for their defense, "to the
grave detriment of honest and distinterested Catholics." Nueva Era
"6El Imparcial, June 18-20, 1911; The Mexican Herald, June 20, 1911; Rosa
E. King, Tempest Over Mexico (Boston, 1935), 62-76; Magafia, Emiliano Zapata,
I, 157-164, 179-206; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 15-16.
16 Dromundo, Emiliano Zapata, biografia, 53-57; Manuel Gonzalez Ramirez
(ed.), Manifiestos politicos, 1892-1912 (Mexico, 1957), 285-368; Magafia, Emiliano
Zapata, I, 229-326; Alfonso Taracena, Madero, vida del hombre y del politico
(Mexieo, 1938), 445-475; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 17-19.

162

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charged that either the government of interim President De la Barra

was deceiving Madero or Huerta was disobeying the government.'7
In any case, Madero considered that Huerta and Blanquet were
"the least appropriate for the mission of peace," because they were
"hated in the region." Nevertheless, President De la Barra ignored
the -mediations and recommendations of Madero, for he felt "that an
individual with antecedents" like Zapata's should not be allowed to
Garcia Granados wanted
maintain such an independent attitude.
the federal government to take steps "to guarantee lives and haciendas
-in that state which has suffered too much," and "not to negotiate with
bandits." Hostilities broke out again at the end of August, and during September the federals continued to push the campaign against
When Ambrosio Figueroa was appointed governor of
Zapata.
Morelos he was actively assisted in the field by Huerta and Federico
Morales, so that Maderistas were being used to help fight Maderistas
more than two months before Madero's inauguration as president.18
Though the federal troops operating in Morelos were able to
occupy various points, the harassments had the effect of invigorating
the Zapata movement, which soon was completely out of control. Juan
Andreu Almazan, a young Maderista general from Guerrero who had
fought beside Zapata in the south, explained in an interview pub-lished on October 15, 1911, that "Zapata is something more than a
man; he is a symbol for the people of Morelos; a symbol of the socialI think that the only
ism which has awakened in that region. .
"that the Nation
held
Almazan
solution is to amnesty Zapata...."
ought to make an expenditure, although it be large, to buy and divide
the lands of Morelos in small lots to cede to the campesinos for the
immediate purpose of -avoiding worse evils. "19
Many dead and wounded were brought to Mexico City on October 16, 1911, from a military train wrecked by the Zapatistas at
Ozumba. Eight days later the capital was thrown into terrible panic
when a large band of surianos fell upon Milpa Alta at the boundary
17
grdfica, I, 324, 326Nueva Era, August 17, 22, 1911; Casasola, 1istoria
327, 332-336; Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, "Madero y Zapata," El Fronterizo,
February 24, 1954.
Charles C. Cumberland, Mexican
Bistoria
18 Casasola,
grdfica, I, 371-372;
176-182; Gabriel Ferrer de
Genesis Under Madero (Austin, 1952),
Revolution,
1956), 116-117; Magafia,
I. Madero (M6xico,
Vida de Francisco
Mendiolea,
Emiliano Zapata, II, 24-27.
19El Diario, October 15, 1911; Enrique Lumen, Almazdn, vida de un caudillo
Rafz y
y metabolismo de una revoluci6n (Mexico, 1940), 48-82; Sotelo Inclfn,
El
del General Juan Andreu Almazan,"
raz6n de Zapata, 201-203; "Memorias
Universal, September 23 to October 15, 1957.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

163

between Morelos and the Federal District, ravaging and burning the
municipal palace and commercial houses. The Porfirian Chamber of
Deputies, still intact, declared itself in permanent session and called
Alberto Garcia Granados, secretary of gobernacion, and General Jose
Gonzalez Salas, subsecretary of war, to come before it to explain why
the rebellion could not be controlled. Garcia Granados hinted darkly
that "there exists a powerful influence which prevents the orders
of the government from being complied with." Gonzalez Salas, related to the Madero family by marriage, said that Zapata had many
sympathizers in Morelos and the adjoining states.20
Although De la Barra, Garcia Granados, and the officers in the
field had insisted UpOll and guided the government 's unsuccessful
military policy the Chamber was high in its praise for them. Deputy
Jose Maria Lozano acclaimed Garcia Granados for taking "the responsibility of opening that campaign of civilization against barbarism." But no more could be expected of "our heroic Federal
Army," he said, because Madero, in negotiating with Zapata at
Cuautla, had imagined that, like St. Francis of Assisi, he could perform the miracle of taming a wild beast.21
Deputy Francisco M. de Olaguibel exonerated De la Barra, "the
immaculate First Functionary of the Republic," and placed full
blame on Madero and Gonza'lez Salas. Olaguibel sought to force the
resignation of the subsecretary of war and pictured Madero as an
accomplice of Zapata. Nevertheless, a crowd in front of the Chamber
clamored for the dismissal of the minister of gobernacion. On October 26, 1911, Garcia Granados, Gonzalez Salas, and Dr. Francisco
Vazquez G6mez, all retired from the cabinet.22
The secretary of foreign relations, Licenciado Manuel Calero,
testified before the deputies on October 27 that the social and land
problems of Morelos could not be solved in a few months. In his
opinion, the natural and inevitable consequence of the Revolution had
been to arouse "an intensity of racial hatreds, suppressed passions,
20
Manuel Marquez Sterling, Los fzltimos dias del Presidente Madero (Habana,
1917), 255-260; Gregorio Ponce de Le6n, El interinato presidencial de 1911
(Mdxico, 1912), 216-218; Romero Flores, Anales hist6ricos, I, 218-225; Stanley
R. Ross, Francisco I. Madero, Apostle of Mexican Democracy (New York, 1955),
198-199, 223.
21 Salvador Sdnchez Septien
(ed.), Jos6 Maria Lozano en la tribuna parlame-ntaria, 1910-1913 (Mdxico, 1956), 29-35.
22 Magania, Emiliano Zapata, II,
28-43; Palacios, El Plan de Ayala, 38-43;
Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 20-21; Francisco Vazquez Gomez, Memorias
politicas, 1909-1913 (Mdxico, 1933), 459-460; Casasola, Historia grdfica, I, 373374.

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H. MCNEELY

and eagerness for agrarian restitutions. . . . The Indian who thinks

he has been despoiled of his lands and water, and the laborer mistreated by the overseer . . . strengthen and uphold the Zapatistas in
their excesses."
Caleroasked the Chamberto cooperate with the government, which
was struggling under severe disadvantages. The troops of the regular
army, he said, "could not operate effectively, because they could not
find organized forces to combat." The federals would continue to
hold the towns, he believed, but three new corps of rurales were being
added to the three already in Morelos "under the supreme command
of the Interim Governor of the State, Citizen Ambrosio Figueroa,
whose fidelity and competence are well proved." Yet Calero seemed
unaware of the irreconcilable differences, which were not the same as
the traditional bandit troubles in Morelos before the Porfirian era.
Upon assuming the governorship, Figueroa, a personal enemy of
Zapata, had declared concern only for political and property rights.
He intended to ignore the agrarian problem. Meeting in Jojutla on
October 31, 1911 with General Arnoldo Casso L6pez, chief of the
federal garrison in Cuautla, Figueroa expressed his determination to
pacify Morelos by exterminating Zapatism "through blood and fire."
Despite the deadly animosities and jealousies, Madero was optimistic
when he became president on November 6, 1911, believing that everything could be settled peacefully and that the Zapata movement would
cease of itself.23

General Zapata also expected a favorable change under the new

administration. He ordered the suspension of hostilities and the
concentration of his troops around Ayala. Negotiations began there
on November 9 with Gabriel Robles Dominguez, the special envoy of
President Madero. Two days later Zapata and Robles Dominguez
reached agreement on the following bases for the surrender of the
Zapatistas: (1) withdrawal of Figueroa as governor; (2) retirement
of the forces of Federico Morales from Morelos; (3) general amnesty
for all in arms; (4) issuance of an agrarian law to improve the
condition of the field workers; (5) withdrawal of federal troops at
the discretion of the president, but the withdrawal to be requested
within forty-five days; (6) maintenance of a rural force of five
hundred men from the troops of Zapata, respectfully asking that
28 Antonio
Diaz Soto y Gama, " Maniobras para distanciar a Madero de
Zapata, " El Fronterizo, March 3, 1954; Magafia, Emiliano Zapata, II, 23-24,
43-48; Lamberto Popoca y Palacios, Historia del bandalismo en el Estado de
Morelos (Puebla, 1912), 90-99; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 22; El Paso
Morning Times, November 7, 1911.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

165

the command be given to Raul Madero or Eufemio Zapata, brothers

of the president and the rebel chief respectively. Other terms included the selection of a governor by the principal revolutionary
chiefs in agreement with President Madero, while a garrison of fifty
men from the rural corps was to be established at Ayala, presumably
as a guarantee of personal safety to Zapata.24
Robles Dominguez made a quick trip to Mexico City on November
12, with the result that Madero sent orders to the secretary of
war to suspend all hostilities in Morelos until peace could be arranged.
At the same time, the president insisted that the rebels lay down their
arms immediately in line with his policy of peace first and reform
afterward. According to General Magafia this was like saying: "The
doctor can do nothing as long as the patient does not recover his
health. "
The negotiations might still have been successful, except that the
concentration of Zapatistas at Ayala, intended as an act of faith in
the government, was too great a temptation for General Casso Lopez,
who had replaced Huerta, and for Governor Figueroa, who would have
killed Zapata if he could. During the absence of Robles Dominguez,
the "Colorados" of Figueroa under Enrique Castrejon and Federico
Morales left Cuautla for Santa Ines, and a detachment of federal
cavalry set out for Tenextenango, encircling the flanks of Zapata. On
November 13, 1911, General Casso Lopez refused to allow Robles
Dommiguez to return to Ayala from Cuautla on grounds that the troops
were in motion to capture Zapata as quickly as possible under orders
from Mexico City.25
It is not clear whether Madero 's original order suspending hostilities was delayed, ignored, lost, or countermanded, but it seems unlikely
that the new chief executive could have upheld his assurances of
personal safety to the southern leaders. This final break with Madero
led Zapata to issue the Plan of Ayala, the most famous agrarian document of the Mexican Revolution. Written at a solitary place in the
Sierra de Ayoxustla, near the village of Miquetzingo, by Professor
and General Otilio E. Montafio in close collaboration with Zapata, the
Plan of Ayala was signed November 28, 1911 by seven generals, seventeen colonels, thirty-four captains, and one lieutenant.26
24 Casasola, Historia grdfica, I, 397; Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama, "I Por que
rompi6 Madero con Emiliano Zapata?," El Fronterizo, March 14, 1954.
" Dromundo, Emiliano Zapata, biografia, 58-59; Magafla, Emiliano Zapata,
IL, 42, 86-107; Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 23-24.
26 Magaiia, Emiliano Zapata, II, 111-114; Palacios, El Plan de Ayala, 53-56;
Taracena, La tragedia zapatista, 24-25; Gonz6ilez-Blanco, De Porfirio Diaz a Ca-

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H. MONEELY

The Zapatista document opened with a lengthy denunciation of

Madero. It named General Pascual Orozco, who had been the rebel
leader in Chihuahua against Porfirio Diaz, as " Chief of the Liberating
Revolution" and if he could not accept this arduous post, "the Citizen
General Emiliano Zapata shall be recognized as Chief of the Revolution." Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosi, as amended at Ayala, was
still upheld, while the Revolutionary Assembly of the State of
Morelos promised to defend those principles "until victory or death
. . . inasmuch as the nation is tired of deceitful and traitorous men
who make promises as liberators but who, upon reaching power, forget
their promises and become tyrants."
The plan proclaimed that lands, woods, and waters despoiled by
"the hacendados, Cientificos, and caciques," should be recovered immediately by the villages or individuals having the true titles. Such
claims then should be held by force of arms until after the triumph
of the Revolution, when special tribunals would be established to
adjudicate claims.27
The truly impressive features in the "social chapter" of the Plan
of Ayala are found in Articles 7 and 8, which emphasized that "the
great majority of the Mexican villages and citizens" owned absolutely
nothing, not even deeds to usurped lands. In other words, the possibilities of restitutions were extremely limited, whatever the hopes of
the persons involved. To give lands to the suffering masses of campesinos, Article 7 proposed to expropriate, as justified, one-third part
of all the great latifundios "after previous indemnification to their
powerful proprietors, so that the villages and citizens of Mexico
[not just Morelos, but Mexico] may obtain ejidos, colonies, fun4dos
legates, or fields for planting and tillage, and improve in every way
and for everyone the lack of prosperity and well being of Mexicans. "
Thus there are listed all the four remedies ever suggested for agrarian
grants (communal lands), agricultural colonies, town
reform-ejidal
sites, and small private holdings (la pequefia propiedad).
Article 8 of the Plan of Ayala guaranteed the elimination of the
hacienda system, since it provided for the confiscation of all the lands
of great proprietors who resisted the plan. One writer has maintained
that Zapata never wanted to destroy the haciendas but only to take
rranza, 237-244, gives a Spaniard's unfavorable interpretation of Zapata and the
Plan of Ayala.
27"E Diario del Hogar, December 15, 1911, was the first to publish the Plan
de Ayala; Plan de Ayala, documentos interestantes de la revoluci6n de ideales
(Puebla, 1913), 6-17; Dromundo, Emiliano Zapata, biograffa, 63-77; Mexico
revolucionario, a los pueblos de Europa y Am6rica, 1910-1918, 142.

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

167

one third of them.28 Yet how many hacendados would-have been

willing to see a third of their lands expropriated? Almost without
exception they would certainly have resisted Zapata's plan and, if
the Revolution triumphed, lost everything.
Additional proof that the Plan of Ayala was intended to apply
to the entire nation comes from Articles 12 and 13, which called for
the meeting of a convention of the victorious revolutionary chiefs
from all of the states of Mexico to name an interim president of the
republic who would arrange elections to organize the federal government. The revolutionary leaders as a council in each of the states
would likewise select state governors who would see to the formation
of local administrations.29
Some writers have assumed that the Plan of Ayala was only for
the state of Morelos, that is, local in its purpose and application. To
that end Zapata is frequently quoted as having called upon the world
to -know that "we will not lay down our arms until we are given
possession of our village lands." Owing to the influence of Professor
Montafio, however, the plan presents a broad platform not characteristic of Zapata's previous utterances. Andres Molina Enrlquez, the
father of Mexican agrarian reform, portrays Montafio as "the sociThe
ologist of Zapatism [and] true author of the Plan of Ayala."
supreme contribution of Montafio was to formulate a practical revolutionary program that could be applied anywhere in the republic to
break up the great latifundios.30
Thus is revealed the transformation of Zapata. First, we have
an uncultured peasant, elected to preside over the junta de defense
of his native village and willing to accept the Porfirian regime -if it
would only honor the modest land claims of the vecinos. When the
greed of the hacendados precluded any compromise, Zapata joined
the Madero movement; then by a process of elimination he was left
as the main popular leader in Morelos. The failure to work out a
"
28 Angel Lascurain y Osio, " Aclaraci6n a mi articulo, ' Fines del agrarismo,
Excelsior, December 22, 1955, said that Zapata sought only one third of the haciendas; GonzAlez Ramirez (ed.), Planes politicos, 73-77; Magania, Emiliano
Zapata, II, 114-139.
Morales Jim6nez, Historia de la revolucidn mexicana (Mexico,
29 Alberto
1951), 125-134; Palacios, El Plan de Ayala, '53-65; Prida, i;De la dictadura . . .
a la anarqula!!, II, 706-710; Romero Flores, Anales hist6ricos, I, 228-231, IV,
227-231; Jesis Silva Herzog, El agrarismo mexicano y la ref orma agraria, exposici6n y critica (M6xico, 1959), 177-180.
30 Andr6s
Molina Enriquez, La revoluci6n agraria de Me'xico (Mexieo,
1933-1937), V, 93-95; Ross, Francisco I. Madero, 251-252; El Paso Morning
Times, October 31, 1914.

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peaceful settlement during the interim presidency of De la Barra

and the presidency of Madero raised Zapata to the position of
a national agrarian liberator with an intrenched local stronghold.
"I am resolved to fight," he wrote in a letter of December 6, 1911 to
Gildardo Magafia, "against everything and everybody without any
other bulwark than the confidence, affection, and support of my
people. "31
Esquivel Obregon said in 1912: "Zapata has been rightly called
the Attila of the South; but, to prove the degenerate Romans knew
that the evils of the Asiatic hordes were a deserved punishment, remember that Attila was called the 'Lash of God.' "32 When Madero
was killed and General Huerta seized power in February 1913, the
Zapatistas continued to resist Huerta as they had opposed Madero.
At that time, Francisco Bulnes declared: "The Plan of Ayala is not
anarchic as is generally thought; on the contrary, it is just, and the
government ought to study it and give it the solution which it requires
and which will put an end to this series of revolutions that the country
has been suffering since 1910. "33
Far from taking such advice, Huerta waged a long and ineffective
military campaign against Zapata at the end of which his government
was actually proposing to exterminate the local population in Morelos
and introduce thirty thousand Japanese colonists as replacements for
the native labor.34 In the belief that Morelos and Chihuahua were
the principal centers of the rebellion which was causing the collapse
of his regime, Huerta finally issued a decree on June 17, 1914, reducing
the state of Morelos to a territory and dividing Chihuahua into two
territories and a smaller state.35
After the Constitutionalists had driven out Huerta, the Ayala
document reached the pinnacle of its national importance when it
was formally adopted on October 28, 1914 by the Sovereign Revolu81 Maganaa,Emiliano

Zapata, II, 140-142.

Toribio Esquivel Obregon, El problema agrario en Mdxico (M6xico,
1912), 25-26; Jesus Silva Herzog (ed.), La cuesti6n de la tierra (Mexico, 19601962), II, 139.
" Luis F. Bustamante, Savia roja, socialismo mexicano (San Luis Potosi,
1914), 57-58.
'" El Pais, May 14, 17, 1914. El Pals was suppressed by Huerta for its critical
attitude; Diario de los debates de la Cdmara de Diputados del Congreso de los
Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Year II, Period II, Second XXVI Legislature, Vol.
IV, No. 36, May 13, 1914, 2-5; No. 39, May 16, 1914, 9-10; No. 40, May 18, 1914.
No. 36,
8 Diario oficial de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Vol. CXXXII,
June 11, 1914, 385; No. 41, June 17, 1914, 450-451. Gildardo Magafia and Carlos
Perez Guerrero, Emilian-o Zapata y el agrarismo en Mexico (Mexico, 1952), III,
192-196.
S2

ORIGINS OF THE ZAPATA REVOLT IN MORELOS

169

tionary Conventionat Aguascalientes. Unfortunately, the First Chief

of the Constitutionalist Revolution, Venustiano Carranza,would never
accept the Plan of Ayala nor abide by the decisions of the Convention.
Seeking political advantages, the First Chief found it necessary to
issue decrees that gave lip service to the agrarian movement although
at heart he always remained the creole hacendado. During his presidency Carranza fought a real war of extermination against the
Zapatistas in Morelos. Yet he could never destroy Zapata's fame as
the supreme historic symbol of Mexican agrarian reform.36
"Dfaz Soto y Gama, La revoluci6n agraria, 170-178, 187-199, 224-238; Antonio D. Melgarejo, Crmcenes del zapatismo (M6xico, 1913), 135-140; A. N.
Molina Enriquez, El agrarisno de la revoluci6n, exegesis, critica y reencauzamiento
(M6xieo, 1953), 23-32; Molina Enriquez, La revolucidn agrarian,V, 142-143.