‘As of marriages, so of revolutions,’ writes a historian of Mexico. ‘The best take years to turn out well. (Francisco) Madero accomplished the overthrow of (Porfirio) Diaz in ten months of planning and action. A victory won too soon.’
On June 22, 1911, the Mexican newspaper El Pais carried a story that surprised many. General (Emiliano) Zapata had just arrived in Cuernavaca, the capital of his home state of Morelos, after speaking to the man who was about to become Mexico’s new president. The “jefe” of the South had been called by Francisco Madero to answer grave charges (i.e that Zapata was a bandit planning a new uprising) made by Mexico City newspapers “faithful to their program of deceiving an unfortunate public.” He left no doubt as to the falseness, and danger, of such accusations, especially at this moment of peace, which so many believed would continue. He sensed something unsettling about the inexperienced man who had just turned Mexico’s history upside down.
Yet Zapata wanted to trust Madero. But in this, their third meeting, he could not understand Madero’s patience with those who hated so much of the Revolution.
Actually, all Zapata wanted to do was to go home, retire and get married.
He and those associates who accompanied him to the capital traveled in “magnificent automobiles,” reported El Pais. They paused at the Cuernavaca railroad station. General Zapata spoke with those who had gathered to wish him well. He declared that if he were affiliated with a revolutionary party, he was not guided by the idea of gain, but of patriotism.
Elected president in October, Madero immediately created freedom of the press, gave workers the freedom to organize unions, but hesitated to take on the “land problem.” He was the product of a rich hacendado family. He had no practical concept of what the peones and campesinos who worked Mexico’s millions of hectares of fertile (and not so fertile) soil endured at the hands of large landowners.
Zapata sensed this and it tempered his trust. Madero, fatally, appointed Brigadier General Victoriano Huerta to put down some landowner-fomented uprisings in the north, even though Huerta was not his first choice. Unfortunately, Madero believed that all men harbor good in their hearts. Just as he did not understand Zapata’s simple, campo friends, he did not understand sadistic monsters such as Huerta.
As Madero dawdled in tackling Mexico’s land problem, Zapata’s faith continued to dwindle. He was still celebrating his August 9, 1911 marriage, with his wife, her family, neighbors and his lieutenants, when news came that 1,000 troops under Huerta had entered Morelos.This, sadly, was the result of one of Madero’s several fatal political/military mistakes. In this case it was allowing Francisco de la Barra, a friend of Huerta’s, to serve as interim president. The fragile relationship between Madero and Zapata could not at this moment survive the machinations of Huerta and the political weaknesses of de la Barra.
As federal troops arrested, hung, killed, and dispossessed citizens of Morelos state, Zapata gained in strength as surviving victims of this campaign joined his Liberation Army of the South. That army quickly learned the harsh lessons taught by pitched battles, and adeptly adopted the tactics and strategies of guerrilla warfare. Often attacks were aimed at solely acquiring horses, mules, burros, ammunition, armament and food supplies. This enraged their federal enemies, who punished innocent civilians. This, in turn, created more guerrilla recruits. Soon, Zapata had nearly 3,000 horsemen. By January 1912, his army had grown to 12,000 men and women. His army was known for recruiting women for combat.
By November 25, in reaction to attacks by critics and enemies, particularly in the Mexico City press and in a Niagra of speeches, Zapata and a local school teacher, Otilio Montaño Sanchez, drafted the Plan de Ayala. In direct, concise language, it made plain the ideology behind the Zapatista battle cry, “Reforma, Libertad, Justicia Y Ley”, later cut to “Tierra Y Libertad”. Primarily, it gave the power over state land to local townships and citizens, rather than favoring large hacendados.
General Huerta, apparently a born turncoat, kidnapped President Madero and killed his brother Gustavo February 18, 1913. February 22, at 11 p.m., Madero and Vice President Jose Maria Pino Suarez were killed by Major Francisco Cardenas while being transferred from one prison to another.
In mid-April, Huerta ordered the brutal general, Juvencio Robles, to take over the Morelos government, even though it had an elected governor and a full legislature. Robles was constitutionally ineligible to be governor for he was not a native of the state. Robles merely declared that he had “final orders” from Huerta to be proclaimed governor. The legislators resisted, and hurriedly planned to move the government into the mountains north of Cuernavaca. There they hoped Zapata’s general, Genovevo de la O, would provide them refuge. But in the middle of the night Robles had the entire legislature arrested and the next morning they were sent to the Mexico City penitentiary.
The large landowners served up a banquet for Huerta April 21, agreeing that Morelos needed “a strong government, capable of restoring order.” Huerta responded by asking his audience to support him, “without reserve,” even though he would have “recourse ... to extreme measures, for the government is going to ... depopulate the state, and will send your haciendas other workers.” This was necessary because the country people “were all Zapatistas.”
The day after Robles seized power, April 18, 1913, Zapata launched an all-out attack on Jonacatepe, garrisoned by approximately 500 troops. The federal commander of the town held out for 36 hours, before surrendering. It was a hard fight but the victory was a guerrilla’s delight. The federal supplies were immense: 330 Mausers, 310 horses with matching tack, two machine guns with a fine supply of ammunition. And, of course, the commanding general and 47 officers, plus the surviving troops, some of whom joined the Zapatistas. So did General Higinio Aguilar, an experienced thief. His several talents, besides professional military training, fit the needs of the guerrillas. He became an adept go-between for the Zapatistas and corrupt federal officers, providing the Liberation Army with a long-sought ready supply of arms and ammunition.
Then on May 1, the rebels blew up a military train in a station on the Mexico-Morelos border, resulting in the deaths of nearly 100 soldiers. That began a new wave of constant attacks around Cuernavaca.
To the north of Morelos, the decidedly independent Zapatista jefe Genovevo de la O, from a nearby pueblo, became an audacious dynamiter. High in the cerro forming the Cima Divide – the only western railroad pass between Mexico City and Cuernavaca – his self-created assignment for himself was “cutting the throat of the federales in Morelos.” He bragged that he and his men could blow up every troop train coming into the state.
There were to be setbacks and hard and bloody days – some of them catastrophic – ahead for the Liberation Army of the South. But that season, 99 years ago, Zapata’s command grew with thousands of fresh volunteers, as his guerrilla strategy wounded the government’s ability to fight both a southern and a northern war. For in the north, Pancho Villa, Alvaro Obregon and Venustiano Carranza were raising hell – and soon communicating with the “Caudillo of the South.”