I leave you the best famous phrases of Emiliano Zapata, one of the most important military and peasant leaders of the Mexican Revolution. His best known slogans were "land and freedom", "if there is no justice for the people there is no peace for the government", "the land belongs to those who work it" and "I would rather die standing than live on my knees."
Zapata was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), during which he formed and commanded the South Liberation Army, an important revolutionary brigade. Zapata's followers were known as Zapatistas.
Zapata's influence lasted long after his death, and his land reform movement, known as Zapatismo, remains important to many Mexicans today.
In 1994, a guerrilla group calling itself the Zapata National Liberation Army launched a peasant uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.
You may also be interested in these phrases of the Mexican Revolution or these of Independence.
- "Liberty, justice and law."
- "Land and freedom!"
- "I forgive those who steal and those who kill, but those who betray, never."
- "I want to die as a slave of my principles, not of man."
- "The land belongs to those who work it with their hands."
- "Better to die standing than live a lifetime kneeling."
- "Ignorance and obscurantism never produced anything but herds of slaves for tyranny."
- "If there is no justice for the people, there is no peace for the government."
- "It is still time to avoid useless bloodshed and I hope from your patriotism that you will avoid it."
- "Whoever wants to be an eagle to fly, whoever wants to be a worm that crawls, but does not scream when they step on it."
- "If unfortunately blood is shed, the entire nation will judge us, just as history will dictate its ruling to judge the guilty."
- “The people want their rights to be respected; the people want to be attended to and heard and it is not possible that because they make a request, they try to silence them with bayonets. "
- “The people are increasingly indignant with his presence and threat; I beg you, for the good of the country, order the withdrawal of the federal forces and I will make peace in twenty-four hours. "
- "Tyrants, by means of the blows and tremors of the word, do not listen, but by means of the blows of the hands."
- "I am determined to fight against everything and everyone with no other bulwark than the trust, love and support of my people."
- "Peace can only be reestablished on the basis of justice, freedom and law as a lever and support, and reform and social welfare as the top of that building."
- “The Mexican Revolution has never had help from anyone at all; you have not received even a single cartridge from someone; it was born, it has grown and continues to grow until it reaches its full development. "
- “The entire nation contemplates us with its eyes: we will die, but the principles that you inscribed on your flags, in Chihuahua, will not die; our homeland, the entire nation, will make them come alive if unfortunately they succumb to us. "
- “I know that I have been a faithful supporter of you and the government. Why, then, because of a just request from me, the people and the army, are we inmates of a serious crime, when we have had no other than having been defenders of our freedoms? "
- "I beg you and all your henchmen to go to the head and not to the feet, for peace arrangements, and do not confuse me with Figueroa who is nothing more than a poor wretch who is only driven by interest and money."
- "I have risen not to enrich myself but to defend and fulfill that sacrosanct duty that the honored Mexican people have and I am willing to die at any time."
- “We cannot be satisfied with seeing the promises for which the people have had a blood ordeal mocked; we cannot settle for the sad resurgence of a government sheltered in the black folds of treason. "
- “If you move away from that old mold of dictatorships and are inspired by the purest patriotism, putting aside the traitors of the institutions, listening to the voice of the revolution, which is the voice of the people, then you will have conquered the appreciation and applause of his compatriots. "
- “If you take into account the aspirations and ideals of the revolution, you must join it to cement with living and conscious forces the true government that deserves the name of legally constituted; otherwise it will not do anything other than prolong an era of sacrifice and blood for Mexico. "
- “I have always admired in you the worker of our liberties, the redeemer of the peoples of Chihuahua and the border region and when I have seen him become a centurion of Huerta's praetorian power, withering his conquered lauros in the shadow of our libertarian banners, I could not help but be surprised before the revolution fallen from his hands, like Caesar at the blow of Brutus' dagger. "
- “Perhaps you, tired of a relentless struggle and a constant and virile effort in favor of our political and social redemption, abdicated a creed that the revolutionary world of the entire Republic received, in the midst of clouds, lightning and thunder from glories and freedoms; but instead of working for peace, you have worked for war, causing the revolution to commit suicide, in its men and in its principles. "
- “I belong, sir, to a traditional race that has never degenerated or been able to betray the convictions of a community, and those of its own conscience; I prefer the death of Spartacus riddled with wounds in the midst of freedom, rather than the life of Pausanias locked alive in a grave by his mother on behalf of the country. "
- “But if instead of putting yourself on the side of principles, you stand next to men, dizzy by the censer of tyranny, then pretend that you have grasped the rod of Moses, not to dry up the waters of the Red Sea of the revolution, but to stir them up and breed the storm that must drown us in a sea of blood and shame. "
- “In the midst of violated rights, outraged freedoms, violated principles and ridiculed justice, there cannot be peace, because from each mouth springs an anathema, from each conscience a remorse, from each soul a hurricane of indignation."
- "The principles were shipwrecked, and the disastrous triumph of men was reduced to substituting one despot for another who added to his scepter of tyranny the most scandalous despotism recorded by the stages of time."
- "I hope that in you I will continue to see the patriotic and honorable man, who will know how to adhere to our flag and defend it with disinterest as he has been fighting until today and you are sure that in this way we will make peace and prosperity of the Republic, because you believe that the formation of the provisional government is the fundamental basis of the great popular work that will improve the social condition of our people and save them from the terrible misery that has enveloped them for a long time.
- “It is not fair that those of us who for a long time have raised the banner of the Ayala Plan, which is specified in terms of land and freedom, should leave it in the hands of a few ambitious people who only seek wealth at the expense of the sweat of the working people; that after having shed so much blood the people be mocked and left in the same or worse condition; We must not allow this for any reason and we must ensure the interests of the Republic. "
- “A few hundred large landowners have monopolized all the arable land of the Republic; from year to year they have increased their dominions, for which they have had to deprive the towns of their ejidos or communal fields, and the small owners of their modest estates. "
- “If there is no honesty, nor sincerity, nor the firm intention of fulfilling the promises of the revolution, if even having some armed men who were harming no one, it was intended to assassinate me, trying to end by this means the group that has had the daring to ask for the return of the lands that have been usurped from them, if the prisons of the Republic are packed with dignified and virile revolutionaries because they have had the gesture of men to protest the surrender of Madero, how can I have faith in their promises? "
- “And the fact is that the landowners, from dispossession to dispossession, today with one pretext and tomorrow with another, have been absorbing all the properties that legitimately belong and from time immemorial have belonged to the indigenous peoples, and from whose cultivation the latter drew the sustenance for themselves and their families. "
- “The landowners have availed themselves of the legislation, which, drawn up under their management, has allowed them to seize huge tracts of land under the pretext that they are uncultivated; that is to say: not covered by legally correct titles. "
- “The landowners have become sole owners of the entire country, and the indigenous no longer having land, they have been forced to work on the farms for very low wages and having to endure the mistreatment of the landowners and their mayordomos and foremen, many of whom, because they are Spaniards or sons of Spaniards, consider themselves entitled to conduct themselves as in the time of Hernán Cortés; that is, as if they were still the conquerors and the masters, and the peons, simple slaves subject to the brutal law of conquest. "
- “The landowner, in Mexico, has the person of his laborer at will; reduce him to prison, if you like; prohibits him from leaving the estate, on the pretext that he has debts there that he will never be able to pay, and through the judges, who the landowner corrupts with his money, and the prefects or political leaders, who are always his allies, the great landowner is, in reality, without consideration, the lord of lives and estates in his vast domains. "