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Zapata dilahirkan di pekan luar bandar [[Anenecuilco]] di Morelos. Ketika itu, masyarakat petani di Morelos semakin ditekan oleh golongan kecil tuan tanah yang memonopoli sumber tanah dan air bagi penanaman tebu dengan sokongan Porfirio Díaz. Zapata turut serta awal dalam gerakan politik menentang Diaz dan ''hacendados'' pemilik tanah, dan ketika revolusi meletus pada 1910 beliau menjadi pemimpin utama pemberontakan petani di Morelos. Dengan kerjasama beberapa pemimpin petani lain, beliau membentuk [[Tentera Pembebasan Selatan]] dan kemudian menjadi ketua mutlak. Angkatan Zapata membantu menjatuhkan Díaz, tetapi apabila ketua revolusi [[Francisco I. Madero]] menjadi presiden beliau tidak mengakui peranan Zapatistas (kumpulan Zapata), mengecam mereka sebagai penjahat biasa. Zapata menyebarluaskan [[Rancangan Ayala]] yang menyeru reformasi tanah besar-besaran, mengagihkan semula tanah kepada petani. Madero menghantar pasukan untuk menghancurkan Zapatistas di Morelos. Para jeneral Madero menggunakan dasar bumi hangus, membakar kampung dan mengeluarkan penduduknya, dan mengerah yang lelaki memasuki tentera atau dihantar ke kem buruh paksa di selatan Mexico. Ini menguatkan kedudukan Zapata di kalangan petani dan Zapata berjaya menghalau angkatan Madero dan [[Victoriano Huerta]] keluar Morelos. Huerta membunuh Madero dan mengambil alih kuasa, tetapi satu gabungan pendukung perlembagaan pimpinan [[Venustiano Carranza]], [[Álvaro Obregón]] dan [[Francisco Villa]] menggulingkan beliau dengan sokongan askar Zapata. Carranza, juga tidak sukakan Zapata, melantik dirinya sebagai ketua Mexico, tetapi Villa bersekutu dengan Zapata menentang Carranza dan Obregón. Kecewa dengan persekutuan ini, Zapata menumpukan tenaganya kepada membina semula masyarakat di Morelos yang dikuasainya, memulakan reformasi tanah Rancangan Ayala. Apabila Carranza menyatukan kuasanya dan memujuk Villa, Zapata memulakan pertempuran gerila terhadap Carrancistas (kumpulan Carranza), yang lalu menyerang Morelos, sekali lagi menggunakan taktik bumi hangus bagi menyingkirkan pemberontak Zapatista. Zapata berjaya menguasai semula Morelos pada 1917 dan mengawal sebahagian besarnya sehingga terbunuh dalam satu serangan hendap pada 1919. Selepas kematiannya, para jeneral Zapatista bersepakat dengan Obregón menentang Carranza dan berjaya mendapat jawatan penting di Morelos selepas kejatuhan Carranza. Mereka melaksanakan banyak reformasi tanah yang dirancang oleh Zapata.
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This all took place before the urban intellectuals began flocking to the Zapatista movement. The Plan de Ayala was proclaimed at the end of 1911; the city radicals, migration began in May 1914. At the time, Mexico was under control of General Victoriano Huerta, the able but alcoholic and despotic professional soldier who overthrew Madero in 1913 and is widely believed to have masterminded his assassination.
Zapata kekal sebagai watak ikon di Mexico, digunakan sebagai simbol kebangsaan serta simbol [[Tentera Pembebasan Kebangsaan Zapatista|gerakan neo-Zapatista]].
In that late spring of 1914, Huerta's days were numbered. Revolutionary forces under Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa were steadily advancing on Mexico City from the north. In June Huerta's forces would suffer the shattering defeat at Zacatecas that triggered his July 20 flight into exile.
In a desperate attempt to break up any potential focus of resistance in the capital, Huerta closed down the House of the World Worker in May. The House was a hotbed of radical activity and many of its members belonged to that previously mentioned group of left-wing urban intellectuals.
With the House's closure, a split developed among its former members. Some went underground in the capital, later to join Carranza and help organize the workers into the so-called "Red Battalions." Others escaped south into Morelos and joined Zapata.
Of the group that joined Zapata, best-known was Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama. A fiery orator, he was strongly influenced by anarchist Peter Kropotkin's creed of the good peasant. At the 1914 constitutional convention Soto y Gama had refused to write his name on a Mexican flag designed for the event, branding the flag a "symbol of clerical reaction."
Others who rallied to Zapata were Rafael Perez Taylor, Miguel Mendoza Schwerdtfeger and Octavio Jahn. Perez Taylor and Mendoza Schwerdtfeger were vaguely Marxist while the French-born Jahn was a syndicalist who had reportedly fought in the Paris Commune.
Why did Zapata welcome followers who were seemingly so out of sync with the earthy values of a nativist Mexican revolutionary movement? Possibly because of disillusionment with Otilio Montafio, author of the Plan de Ayala and Zapata's original intellectual guru. When Huerta overthrew Madero and seized power, Montafio had considered recognizing him. A year earlier he had suggested that he and Zapata should disguise themselves and flee the revolutionary struggle. In May 1917 Montafio was shot by a Zapatista firing squad. He had been found guilty of attempting to flee to territory controlled by Carranza, by now Zapata's enemy.
The gap left by the departure of Montafio and other rural intellectuals was filled by the new wave of urban intellectuals. For all their high-flown rhetoric they served Zapata well. Soto y Gama elaborated and refined Zapatista agrarian policy while Mendoza Schwerdtfeger served ably as a headquarters secretary between 1914-16. After Zapata's fatal ambush in 1919, almost all of these men joined Obregón's revolt against Carranza (who had masterminded Zapata's fall) and later played important roles in his administration.
Zapata's lack of formal education was amply counterbalanced by native shrewdness and intense ideological commitment. So the myth of sophisticated city intellectuals exploiting a peasant revolutionary is as threadbare as it is facile. As much as the eggheads who introduced exotic historical names into his communiques used Zapata, he used them.
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== Lihat juga ==
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