structural:summarization, information:highlighting, structural:expansion
Emiliano Zapata and the Revolution in Morelos

From the late Porfiriato until his assassination by an agent of President Carranza in 1919, Emiliano Zapata played an important role in the Mexican Revolution, the only revolutionary of first rank from southern Mexico. His home territory in Morelos was of strategic importance just south of Mexico City. Of the revolutionary factions, it was the most homogeneous, with most fighters being free peasants and only few peons on haciendas. With no industry to speak of in Morelos, there were no industrial workers in the movement and no middle-class participants. A few intellectuals supported the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas' armed opposition movement just south of the capital needed to be heeded by those in power in Mexico City. Unlike northern Mexico, close to the U.S. border and access to arms sales from there, the Zapatista territory in Morelos was geographically isolated from access to arms. The Zapatistas did not appeal for support to international interests nor play a role in international politics the way Pancho Villa, the other major populist leader, did. The movement's goal was for land reform in Morelos and restoration of the rights of communities. The Zapatistas were divided into guerrilla fighting forces that joined together for major battles before returning to their home villages. Zapata was not a peasant himself but led peasants in his home state in regionally concentrated warfare to regain village lands and return to subsistence agriculture. Morelos was the only region where land reform was enacted during the years of fighting.

Zapata initially supported Madero, since his Plan de San Luis Potosí had promised land reform. But Madero negotiated a settlement with the Díaz regime that continued its power. Once elected in November 1911, Madero did not move on land reform, prompting Zapata to rebel against him and draft the Plan of Ayala (1911).

With the overthrow of Madero and murder, Zapata disavowed his previous admiration of Pascual Orozco and directed warfare against the Huerta government, as did northern states of Mexico in the Constitutionalist movement, but Zapata did not ally or coordinate with it. With the defeat of Huerta in July 1914, Zapata loosely allied with Pancho Villa, who had split from Venustiano Carranza and the Constitutionalist Army. The loose Zapata-Villa alliance lasted until Obregón decisively defeated Villa in a series of battles in 1915, including the Battle of Celaya. Zapata continued to oppose the Constitutionalists, but lost support in his own area and attempted to entice defectors back to his movement. That was a fatal error. He was ambushed and killed on 10 April 1919 by agents of now President Venustiano Carranza. Photos were taken of his corpse, demonstrating that he had indeed been killed.

Although Zapata was assassinated, the agrarian reforms that peasants themselves enacted in Morelos were impossible to reverse. The central government came to terms with that state of affairs. Zapata had fought for land and for those who tilled it in Morelos and succeeded. His credentials as a steadfast revolutionary made him an enduring hero of the Revolution. His name and image were invoked in the 1994 uprising in Chiapas, with the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.