Yesterday the troops followed the Zapata trail in the state of Morelos. I mean the students as we found out more about the man and not the icon. Zs job was to make sure that the peasants, the Indios, did their job which was to work the fields and produce for the owners. The owners would stay in their great haciendas and kick back under the shade, eat and drink, and count their profits. The Indios, peasants, and even slaves brought over from the coast would work hard in the hot sun because they had no other option. They were indentured servants, winding up owing more at the end than taking anything home.
At some point Emiliano Zapata had had enough, became enlightened, and would no longer function as a slave master. He decided he would join the workers. One of his sayings was, la tierra pretence a quien la trabaja, the land belongs to those work on it. He quickly became the leader through his resolve, charisma, and ability to move the population to join forces for the revolution.
He developed the Plan de Ayala, named after his natal homeland, where he laid out the plant to redistribute the land to those who worked on it. In his cuartel in Tlaltizepan there were tools of war, swords, rifles, guns; and pictures of Zapata and his friends who joined his war, were generales, and were killed on the battlefield. One set of friends were three brothers, los Ayalas, who died, and a picture of their sister, who joined after they died, and lived until 1994, an Irony. Emiliano was also married and there was a picture of him and his wife and his brother and his wife. There was also his special friend who cooked for him through the whole campaign. Zapata was also a womanizer and left children left and right. He is not considered such a hero by the Mexican feminists nor an icon. His cuartel was nice built like a typical hacienda with rooms around the perimeter and a court yard in the middle.
Later on in the day we went to Chinameca where he was terminated. He wasn’t a trusting man but this time a ruse was set up. He was going to meet with a federal agent who said he was going to join forces with Zapata to end the war. The agent even proved it to Zapata that he was sincere by having a federal killed that Zapata took as proof. Zapata went to meet with him and just as he entered the giant sized portal he was assassinated with hundreds of rounds of fire. 800 machine guns were waiting
for him when he arrived. His body was riddled and so was the portal wall behind him. We saw those holes in the wall, all over. He was really killed. People say though that he had sent a double and that it really wasn’t him. People say that they still see him riding his white horse in the hills around the hills of Morelos. He even comes into town to buy stuff.
There is a lot of detail about his life, but we don’t hear very much about it. We usually just see the popular icons of Zapata with his bandeleras on and the big hats, a rifle in profiled position in photographs. He represented the poor, the subjugated, and marginalized people all over the world. He had his flaws when we take a close up view. He had multiple relationships, his close friends died while fighting under him; he fought his way from the south and made it all the way to Mexico City, he met there with the troops from the north and Pancho Villa. When offered the Presidential chair he refused it and Villa sat in it, but he got up too and left it empty. The battle was won for the two caudillos but there was no one there to carry on the work of government. Madera sat in the chair and later arranged for the assassination of Zapata. And that was that. I don’t know that much more about it as I have not read John Womack’s book for a couple of decades, but being there gave us a better view of the man, not the deity, just the sobering facts. Where he was assassinated there was a big stature of Zapata at the door of the portal where he walked into the trap. There were a couple of old guys selling pictures of him and one of them sang song about the caudillo Zapata.
We never hear about Zapata nor Villa in American history although it is a part of it especially since a majority of the kids in California in public schools are Mexico origin children. They wear the t-shirts, but no one ever tells them what Zapata stands for, for the poor, for the hard working farm workers, for the poor on the streets who have been and continue to be disenfranchised of their ethnicity. George Washington wasn’t their father.
This is in contrast to the current Americanization, to try to portray the founders of the country and the constitution as saints and deities in the eyes of some AM radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh who cries on the radio when he talks about the founders of American society. He’s not the only one – US history teachers are also trying to make saints and sacred the founders and framers when in fact they were mortal men with flaws that we know about. US History teachers are promoting monoculturalism and conformity and are not taught to be critical except in cases where youngsters pursue specification such as in History Day. Children in these projects learn to do history, interview living persons about historical personages. But the rest do not get in depth and are certainly being proselytized to believe things such as George Washington and the cherry tree about lying and telling the truth. Pluralism means only one thing, become a white American, never mind e plural unum. It doesn’t exist.
The plural is the artificial, the unum is the maximum, that’s why everyone is disconnected, detached, and alienated. History is a trance, not an awakening. Kids are not taught to analyze, think critically, and are not allowed to pursue current events showing the other side. I don’t know how many lies my own children have been told by teachers at Buchannan High School that “Bush” is right and that Iraq attacked the twin towers. Not only are my children chastised for being Mexican, but also for being democrats. My older daughter taking a history class at the Willow-International Clovis College listened to a so called history instructor that all ethnic movements in America during the civil rights movement were violent and that’s why they failed. Who gave him permission to say that?
Diversity is seen as unpatriotic or treason by the mainstream monocultural conformists and this is hurting Chicano kids, Hmong kids, Black kids and also white kids because they stay uninformed. US history is taught as if it was the greatest country ever and that what it does politically to the rest of the world is morally right when the rest of the world sees Bush and his cronies as morally wrong. In the mean time the Children of the Sun are ignored, and not reflects in the panorama of history. They lose interest in George Washington who is considered the father of this country but not the father of Chicanos.
We have little opportunities to reflect on the men and women who matter, like Zapata. Who was the real man? We know nothing about Zapata in US history. It was American meddling in Mexican economics that caused the 1910 Revolution. Zapata has become an icon of revolution throughout the world. The 1910 Revolution was the first revolution in the 20th century. He is considered an icon of change along with Che, Mao, Fidel, and Lubumba. None of this is taught in High School world history. Why? Because the history teachers don’t even know, only promote one dimensional history, conformist history, ideological myth making parading as fact. The kids have to wear their t-shirts to tell the teaches what they want and need to know: the Virgin de Guadalupe, Villa, Cesar Chavez, Emiliano Zapata. Education needs a revolution and these are the icons that will incite that needed change.
- Dr. G – July 17, 2008
