The decade-long Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 was bloody, with death toll estimates ranging from between one to two million. Several revolutionary leaders were assassinated, including the two everyone has heard of, Zapata and Villa.
Pancho Villa’s fearsome military abilities had taken him from banditry and cattle rustling to major revolutionary figure in a few short years.
The other great revolutionary player in Mexico, the ex-sharecropper Emiliano Zapata, was as committed to the revolution, but was less concerned with killing people than with setting up redistribution commissions, and had drafted a scheme for constitution land reform, the ‘Plan de Ayala’.
Villa may well have been the most media-savvy revolutionary of all time, and is certainly the first to have signed exclusive contracts with a movie company, and to have delayed a battle until the newsreel cameras got into position. Villa and Zapata’s forces were separated: Villa was based in the north whereas Zapata’s Liberation Army was fighting in the south, and the lands between the revolutionary-controlled territories were held by the Federales, under the control of unpredictable and often highly brutal generals.
The two men finally met on 4 December, on the outskirts of Mexico City, and agreed to an alliance prior to occupying the city. Villa, always alert to a good photo opportunity, posed with Zapata in a frequently reproduced photograph taken in the National Palace. Easily found on the web, and replete with overt and symbolic meaning, the photograph shows Villa sitting on the presidential throne – which Zapata modestly declined to sit on – beaming off-camera to his right while angled slightly towards to his left, where Zapata bends in towards Villa. Zapata has a sombrero on his knee (one of several splendid hats in the picture) and they are surrounded by a mixed bag of followers whose features range from Indian to Spanish, and who look like the mixed bag of cut-throats, intellectuals and excitement seekers they are, the base material of revolution (Villa’s psychopathic general Rodolfo Fierro, a truly nasty individual, is there also).
What Happened Next
Villa and Zapata formed a loose alliance – all Mexican revolutionary alliances in this period were loose – against the constitutionalist politician Carranza, whom they accused of seeking to become dictator (Carranza was elected president in 1915 and was assassinated in 1920). Villa – whose troops were not as disciplined as Zapata’s – was obliged to leave Mexico City early in 1915, eventually retiring (more or less) in 1920. He was assassinated in 1923. Zapata was assassinated in 1919, but in the early 21st century the Zapatista Army of National Liberation had established control of part of the Mexico state of Chiapas, and Zapata himself has become identified among some of his Mayan people as a divinity.