Mexican annals: No weapon too dirty or criminal against the Zapata revolution

Jan Martinez Ahrens
EL PAIS  (SPAIN)
FIRST RUN ON 2 DEC 2016
EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE

A new study brings to light the war of extermination that the Mexican government, supported by the United States, waged a century ago against the revolutionary with chemical weapons, deportations and mass torture.

General Zapata with rifle and saber. Incorruptible and unconquerable, except by treachery and out-and-out barbarism.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]egend has it that Emiliano Zapata never died. History proves it every day. Almost a hundred years after his assassination, the figure of the revolutionary, general-in-chief of the Liberation Army of the South, continues to inflame the imagination of Mexicans. Proletarian, rebel and often visionary, Zapata (1879-1919) embodies the ideals of a troubled age like no other. His years of struggle and glory are those of a country at war with itself. A ruthless time on which Mexico built its current structure and from which not even Zapata could escape. Far from the sweetened visions that the official iconography has provided, a detailed investigation by the historian Francisco Pineda shows how Zapata, already a living myth, was viciously persecuted by the Venustiano Carranza regime (1859-1920) and also how to defeat him. Constitutionalist government did not hesitate to unleash a war of extermination. Chemical weapons, indiscriminate torture and even the enslavement of prisoners were used to subdue a man who never knelt. “The Mexican Revolution was paradoxical and complex. And there is an attempt by certain sectors to claim the work of Carranza and turn the Constitution, which is one hundred years old on February 5, into a symbol of continuity and stability, when it is not so: Mexico is a nation in permanent conflict traumatic and fascinating. That is Zapata's lesson ”, explains the professor-researcher of the Colegio de México, Carlos Marichal.

The war of extermination, of which few details were known, illustrates one of the darkest moments of the Mexican Revolution. On September 26, 1915, with General Victoriano Huerta already overthrown but with the country on fire, Carranza ordered one of his confidants, General Pablo González, to crush the Southern Revolution, the peasant liberation movement led by Zapata. A former farmer and military knight, the revolutionary had entered the arena of history after leading the agrarian protests in Morelos and joining in 1910 the uprising of Francisco I. Madero that started the Revolution. But with victory achieved and the dictator Porfirio Díaz exiled, Zapata charted his own course and refused to demobilize his troops. For him, war had another purpose. Achieve the collectivization of the large estates and free thousands of peasants from centuries of landowner oppression. And not only that. 

SIDEBAR

Carranza (tallest man with white beard in the foreground) during an inspection tour in 1916.

Emiliano Zapata or northern revolutionary general Pancho Villa. Once firmly in power in Mexico, Carranza sought to eliminate his political rivals.

With a much more advanced vision than Pancho Villa and other warlords, the southerner advocated for the right to strike, the recognition of indigenous peoples and the emancipation of women. But its strength was not only based on a political program capable of blowing up bourgeois conventions. That peasant turned revolutionary had on one side an army ready to die at his command and on the other, thousands of peasants to whom he had given back bread and pride. It was not long until he was seen as the great enemy to beat by Carrancista power. The offensive was relentless. “For this the Government had the help of the United States. Carranza in December 1914 barely had 1,700 rifles; in less than a year, Washington provided him with more than 53,000, ”says Pineda.

Carranza at his desk. Though leading a revolutionary army of land-hungry peasants, he never intended to fulfill that part of the bargain.

With this support, Carranza and his generals went to work and as early as February 1916 they began to manufacture, with machinery imported from the United States, the grenades for the suffocating gas with which they intended to annihilate the Zapatistas. "Possibly they were prepared with phosgene, a colorless poison with a green corn smell, whose symptoms are not immediate," Pineda explains. Together with the chemical arsenal, the Carrancistas devised a war plan following in the footsteps of the bloody Cuban campaigns of the Spanish general Valeriano Weyler. Likewise, they secured the Federal District with a line of trenches of more than 100 kilometers and collected intelligence information, through the widespread use of torture, to learn the location and movements of the enemy to the millimeter. On March 12, 1916 the invasion began. The terror machine unfolded. Villages were burned and crops destroyed. Hundreds of peasants were summarily executed, and thousands were concentrated and deported. "The objective was to force the Zapatistas to do more to survive than to fight. This facilitated the extermination tasks, "says Pineda. The first hit was successful. The scorched earth strategy pushed back the Zapatistas and devastated the civilian population. Immense columns of women, children and the elderly roamed the moors in search of food. When hunger didn't kill them, bullets did. Terror haunted them.

The Carrancista high command sharpened their scythe. He ordered massive deportations to the Yucatan and enslaved entire populations in labor camps. Anyone who tried to flee was executed without further ado. Also those who approach closer than 60 meters a railroad or who walked on roads and sidewalks without safeguards or who were simply suspected of serving Zapatismo. There was no forgiveness for the enemy. After an initial withdrawal, the Zapatistas managed to regroup forces and in July launched their counter-offensive. The spirit of a revolution and Zapata's military genius made way for them. The rebels multiplied before puzzled and overconfident troops. The pulse was freed on all fronts. Tepoztlán and Santa Catarina fell. General Pablo González answered, intensifying the repression. The punishment of the civilian population skyrocketed. Constitutional guarantees were suspended throughout the revolutionary territory. Morelos, Puebla, Guerrero, the State of Mexico, Tlaxcala and part of Hidalgo felt the yoke of Carranza. But none of it was enough. In early 1917, Zapata had managed to expel the invader from his territory. A short and intense period of the Zapatista insurrection began then. In March, the leader proclaimed "government of the people by the people." Rabidly anti-oligarchic, he reopened schools, gave birth to new administrative forms and reorganized the Liberation Army of the South. Although reduced to its southern limits, its ideology was pure nitroglycerin: "When the peasant can shout 'I am a free man, I have no masters, I depend only on my work', then the revolutionaries will say that our mission has concluded, then they will You can affirm that all Mexicans have a homeland, "he wrote. Like so many things in those confusing days, his proclamation was a milestone and a mirage. The Carrancistas, determined to crush the peasant revolt, soon returned the charge. In late 1918 they launched the second invasion. And this time they set their sights on Zapata himself.

The Carrancista Colonel Jesús Guajardo was sent to kill him. He first let the Zapatistas know that he was ready to defect, and then, as a test of confidence before meeting the revolutionary leader, he shot 50 federal soldiers. Both agreed to meet on April 10, 1919 at the Hacienda de Chinameca, in Morelos. When Zapata crossed the threshold, betrayal fell on him. Although he managed to draw his pistol, he was unable to pull the trigger. Seven bullets killed him earlier. His body was brought that same day before General Pablo González and exhibited in public. The traitor Guajardo was promoted. Eventually he fell into oblivion. Zapata, buried and mourned over like few in Mexico, has been alive ever since.

Emiliano Zapata's corpse, riddled with bullets, is surrounded, in disbelief by the people. His spirit  has never died. The peasant general was assassinated in the state of Morelos, on 10 April 1919.

About the author(s)

Jan Martinez Ahrens is a distinguished Spanish journalist, international correspondent and senior editor with center-left daily El País, Spain's second largest newspaper. 

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