Emiliano Zapata Posters

The horseman and muledriver Emiliano Zapata, hero of the 1910 social revolution, led a "peasant army" based in the Cuautla valley 70 miles south of Mexico City. In addition to many military victories, Zapata organized peasant committees out of which came position papers on land reform. An important part of his Cuautlan peasant committee land reform was incorporated into the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, to the benefit of the campesinos throughout the nation. As for Zapata's origins: Birth records for Zapata were burned in a town fire, and race was not noted in Mexican government records of his time.

Spanish census data did show race, and from it some extrapolations can be made. Zapata was said to be from a family that went back generations in the valley, and it was said that by Emiliano's time, all of the old families were interbred in one manner or another. The valley was just under 50% Afro-Mexican in late colonial times. Zapata was of peasant roots, and among those with this ancestry, Afro-Mexicans well outnumbered Indigenous and the few mestizo and white peasants. A narrowed geographic sampling finds Zapata's home village of Anenecuilco and surrounding villages had a population of 101 families of Afro-Mexicans, 32 Indigenous families, 5 of mixed Afro-Mexican and Indian, 4 mestizo, and 3 white families.

The Spanish data for Cuautla shows 4 households of Zapatas. Three of the four are Afro-Mexican, "pardo." One of the Afro-Mexican Zapata homes was next door to two Afro-Mexican families with the name of one of Emiliano's other grandparent lines, the Cerezos. All told, two thirds of the families of Emiliano grandparent lines were Afro-Mexican. More details on the probable roots of Emiliano are in the explanation to the photograph of his sister Maria de la Luz.