The law, made by the rich, favors the rich.
Letter by Emiliano Zapata to the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Headquarters in Yautepec, August 23, 1914. Translated by taller ahuehuete.
LETTER
To the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson
Headquarters in Yautepec, August 23, 1914.
Mr. Woodrow Wilson
President of the United States of America
Washington
Dear gentleman of my consideration,
I have seen in the press the statements you have made concerning the agrarian revolution which for the past four years has been developing in this republic.Â
With pleasant surprise, I have learned that you, notwithstanding the distance, have accurately understood the causes and ends of this revolution, which has taken, above all, increment in the southern region of Mexico, that which has had to suffer most from the expropriation and extortions of the large landowners.
That conviction that you sympathize with the agrarian emancipation movement induces me to explain to you facts and background information that the press of Mexico City, devoted to serving the interests of the rich and powerful, has always endeavored to disfigure with infamous slander so that the rest of America and the whole world could never realize the profound significance of that great proletarian movement.
I will begin by pointing out to you the causes of the revolution I led:
Mexico is still amid the feudal epoch, or at least it was at the outbreak of the 1910 revolution.
A few hundred large landowners have monopolized all the arable land in the republic; from year to year, they have increased their domains, for which they have had to expropriate the people of their ejidos or communal fields and the small petit bourgeois landowners of their modest estates.
There are cities in the state of Morelos, such as Cuautla, lacking even the land necessary to dump garbage; and with much reason, the land is indispensable for the production of the population.
And the fact is that the landowners, orchestrating from one dispossession to another, today with one pretext and tomorrow with another, have been absorbing all the properties that legitimately and from time immemorial have belonged to the indigenous peoples, and from the cultivation of which the latter obtained sustenance for themselves and their families.
To extort land thus, the landowners have made use of the legislation, which under the management of the hacienda owners, has allowed them to seize enormous extensions of land under the pretext that they are uncultivated; that is to say, not covered legally by ‘valid’ and ‘lawful’ titles.
In this way, aided by the complicity of the courts, and appealing many times to even worse methods, such as imprisoning or consigning to the army the small landowners whom they wanted to dispossess, the estate proprietors have made themselves the sole owners of the entire extension of the country. And since the indigenous people no longer have land, they have been forced to work on the haciendas for insignificant wages and have had to endure the mistreatment of the hacienda owners and their stewards and foremen, many of whom, because they are Spaniards or the children of Spaniards, consider themselves entitled to behave as in the time of Hernán Cortés; That is to say, as if they were still the conquerors and masters, while the peons merely slaves subject to the brutal law of the conquest.
The position of the hacendado concerning the peons is no different from that of the feudal lord, the baron, or the count of the Middle Ages for his serfs and vassals.
The landowner, in Mexico, disposes at his will of the person of his peon; he reduces him to prison if he likes; he forbids him to leave the hacienda, under the pretext that he has debts that he will never be able to pay.
And, employing the juridical system and the judges, whom the landowner corrupts with his money, and of the prefects or politicians, who are always his allies, the great landowner is, in reality, without any consideration, the lord of lives and haciendas in his vast domains.
This unbearable situation gave rise to the revolution of 1910, which was mainly and directly aimed at destroying the monopoly of land in the hands of a few. But, unfortunately, Francisco I. Madero belonged to a rich and powerful family that owned large tracts of land in the north of the Republic, and as was natural, Madero did not take long to get along with the other landowners and to invoke the legislation (that legislation made by the rich and to favor the rich) as a pretext for not fulfilling the promises he had made to destroy the crushing monopoly exercised by the landowners, through the expropriation of their farms for reasons of public utility and with the corresponding compensation, if the possession was ‘legitimate’.
Madero failed to keep his promises and the revolution continued, mainly in the regions where the abuses and dispossessions of the landowners were most accentuated, that is, in the States of Morelos, Guerrero, Michoacán, Puebla, Durango, Chihuahua, Zacatecas, etc.
Then came the "cuartelazo" of the Citadel, that is, the effort made by the former Porfiristas and conservative elements of all shades to take power again, because they feared that Madero would one day be forced to fulfill his promises, and then the peasant population was alarmed and the revolutionary effervescence spread more vigorously than ever, since the "cuartelazo", followed by the assassination of Madero, was a challenge, a real challenge to the 1910 revolution.
Then the revolution embraced the entire extension of the republic and having learned from the previous experience, it no longer waited for the triumph to begin the distribution of land and the expropriation of the large estates.
This has happened in Morelos, Guerrero, Michoacán, Puebla, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, Zacatecas, in San Luis PotosÃ; in such a way that it can be said that the people have done justice for themselves, given that the legislation does not favor them and that the current constitution is more of a hindrance than a defense or a guarantee for the working people and, above all, for the peasant people.
The latter have understood that the old molds of legislation must be broken, and seeing in the Plan of Ayala the condensation of their desires and the expression of the principles which should serve as the basis for the new legislation, they have begun to put this Plan into practice as the supreme demand of justice, and this is how the revolutionaries throughout the republic have returned their lands to the dispossessed peoples, have distributed the monstrous large estates and have punished the feudal lords, the caciques, the accomplices of the dictatorship of Porfirio and the authors and accomplices of the "cuartelazo" of the Citadel with the confiscation of their estates.
It can be assured, therefore, that there will be no peace in Mexico until the Plan of Ayala is elevated to the rank of organic law or constitutional precept and is fulfilled in all its parts.
This is not only concerning the social question, that is, the need for agrarian distribution, but also concerning the political question, that is, the manner of designating the interim president who is to call elections and begin to put social reform into practice.
The country is tired of impositions; it no longer tolerates the domination or bosses being forced upon it; it wishes to take part in the designation of its government agents, and since it is a question of the interim government that is to emanate from the revolution and give guarantees to it, it is logical and just that the genuine agents of the revolution, that is, the revolutionary leaders of the armed movement, be the ones to appoint the interim president.
This is provided for in article twelve of the Plan de Ayala, contrary to the wishes of Don Venustiano Carranza and his circle of ambitious politicians, who intend that Carranza should ascend the presidency by surprise, or rather, by a coup of audacity and imposition.
You will see that the southern revolution is a revolution of principles and not of revenge or reprisals. Said revolution has contracted before the country and before the civilized world the formal commitment to give full guarantees before and after the triumph, to the lives and legitimate interests of nationals and foreigners, and thus I am pleased to present this plan to you.
This long exposition will inform your enlightened opinion regarding the Surian movement and will convince you that my personality and that of my people have been villainously slandered by the venal and corrupt press of Mexico City.
Better than these notes will illustrate to you the information which Dr. Charles Jenkinson and Thomas W. Reylly, kind visitors to this place, to whom we have had the satisfaction of offering our modest but cordial hospitality, and by whose kindly conduit I am sending you these lines.
For my part, I can say to you that I understand and appreciate the principled agreement which, within the limits of respect for the sovereignty of each entity, you have taken charge in this beautiful and not always happy American continent.
You can believe that as long as that policy respects the autonomy of the Mexican people to carry out their ideals as they understand and feel them, I will be one of the many sympathizers that you have in this sister republic, and certainly not the least loyal of your fellow collaborators, who reiterates his particular appreciation.
Emiliano Zapata
Translated by taller ahuehuete | ahuehuete.org
