ZAPATA, EMILIANO. (1879-1919). Mexican revolutionary. TLS. (“Emiliano Zapata”). ½p. Tall 4to. Cuernavaca, April 28, 1916. To Citizen Attorney Gregorio Zúñiga. In Spanish with translation.

“I recommend that you give the bearers of this [letter] thirty loads of grain that you buy, which is intended to support the forces that are on the lines of fire in the sectors corresponding to this area.

I communicate this to you for your understanding and influence.

Reform, Liberty, Justice and Law.

Headquarters in Cuernavaca, Mor[elos] April 28, 1916. General in Chief...”

An orphaned peasant, Zapata’s career as a revolutionary began locally, where he joined his community to protest the theft of their land. Arrested and sent to the army for his role in these protests, Zapata returned in 1909 and was elected president of the board to defend the villagers. In 1911, his activities extended beyond regional struggles when he supported Francisco Madero’s candidacy as president of Mexico over the dictatorship and elitist policies of Porfirio Diaz. Although Diaz had once welcomed democracy, he ordered Madero’s arrest and declared himself the election’s winner, inciting a revolution led by Pancho Villa in the north and Zapata heading the Liberation Army of the south.

Diaz was compelled to resign and Madero became president in November 1911, but was quickly overthrown by Victoriano Huerta (backed by the German Empire and the United States) in 1913. The revolutionary forces led by Villa and Zapata continued their fight for control and forced Huerta’s resignation in July 1914. A month later, on August 13, 1914, interim president Francisco S. Carvajal negotiated the Treaties of Teoloyucan, by which the federal army was dissolved, Mexico City surrendered, and provisions for amnesty were excluded. Negotiations for a transition of power broke down with Villa renouncing the presumed leader Venustiano Carranza on September 23, 1914. The October Convention of Aguascalientes sought to unify the divergent visions of the revolutionary parties, but no agreement was reached, and Mexico descended into Civil War in which Zapata aligned himself with Villa.

On April 9, 1916, less than three weeks before our letter was written, the New York Times published an eyewitness account of Zapata penned by Mexican reporter Guillermo Ojara, in which Zapata laid out his goals: “‘I am fighting for three things,’ replied Zapata, when coffee was brought; ‘first, to free all Mexico of foreigners, especially the Spaniards and the Americans; second, to give back to the Indians their lands, taken from them by the Diaz Government, the Madero Government, and now by the Carranza Government; third, to give Mexico an honest President, a ruler who will give justice to the 14,000,000 poor people as to the 2,000,000 so-called “upper classes” and the few hundred thousands of foreigners who have been allowed to drain the country of the great riches of the soil. I have fought for these things for nearly six years, and in the territory under my control every foreigner has been driven out or killed; every wealthy Mexican has been compelled to return his wealth to the Indians to whom it rightfully belongs, and the land has been distributed to every peon who wanted a share of it. I am the man who should be President…’” (“Zapata Would Drive Americans from Mexico: Famous Mexican Chieftain Declares Himself Ready to Fight Any Invasion of His Country by the United States Troops,” The New York Times, Ojara).

Our letter is addressed to its recipient in Tlaltizapan, a city in Morelos where Zapata established his headquarters in April 1914 (and which he had controlled since the 1914 Convention of Aguascalientes), and from where he implemented land and other reforms. During the Mexican civil war, in 1916, Tlaltizapan suffered massive civilian casualties when Carrancista soldiers killed nearly 300 civilians on June 2, 1916, less than two months after our letter, and hundreds more in subsequent attacks. Those who were not slaughtered fled the city, which lost nearly 60% of its population between 1910 and 1921. Today the town is known as Tlaltizapan de Zapata, the historic headquarters of one of Mexico’s greatest patriots, remembered for his commitment to the rights of indigenous peoples and peasant land reform.

Several letters from Zapata to Zúñiga are published but none with this date. Docketed in pencil in the upper right corner. Folded with normal wear and in very good condition.