Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata Salazar (8 August 1879 – 10 April 1919) was a Mexican revolutionary. He was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, the main leader of the people's revolution in the Mexican state of Morelos, and the inspiration of the agrarian movement called Zapatismo.

Quotes

I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.

Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.

The land belongs to those who work it with their hands.

• ¡Tierra y Libertad!
  • Land and Liberty!
    • A slogan popularized by Zapata, quoted in Tierra y Libertad (1920) published by Imprenta Germinal; further attributed to Zapata in works in the 1930s and later, including, Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History (2010) by José Rabasa, p. 122, where the influence of the anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón on its development is also attested.

• I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.
  • As quoted in Heroes of Mexico (1969) by Morris Rosenblum, p. 112

• Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.
  • I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.
    • As quoted in Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe‎ (1979) by Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, p. 281; this is sometimes misattributed to the more modern revolutionary, Che Guevara, and to "La Pasionaria" Dolores Ibárruri, especially in Spain, where she popularized it in her famous speeches during the Spanish Civil War, to José Martí, and to Aeschylus who is credited with a similar declaration in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life." The phrase "better that we should die on our feet rather than live on our knees" was spoken by François-Noël Gracchus Babeuf in his defence of the Conspiracy of Equals in April 1797. In French it read, 'Ne vaut-il pas mieux emporter la gloire de n'avoir pas survecu a la servitude?' but translated this bears no resemblance whatever to the quote under discussion. see: The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendome (1967), edited and translated by John Anthony Scott, p. 88 and p. 90, n. 12.
  • Spanish variants:
  • ¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
    • I'd prefer to die standing, than to live always on my knees.
      • As quoted in Operación Cobra : historia de una gesta romántica (1988) by Alvaro Pablo Ortiz and Oscar Lara, p. 29
  • Variant translations:
    • Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
      • With an extension, as quoted in Timeless Mexico (1944) by Hudson Strode, p. 259
    • I would rather die standing than live on my knees!
    • It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
    • I prefer to die standing than to live forever kneeling.
    • Prefer death on your feet to living on your knees.

• La tierra es de quien la trabaja con sus manos.
  • The land belongs to those who work it with their hands.
    • Quoted as a slogan of the revolutionaries in Shirt-Sleeve Diplomat (1947) Vol. 5, p. 199, by Josephus Daniels, and specifically attributed to Zapata by Ángel Zúñiga in 1998, as quoted in Mexican Social Movements and the Transition to Democracy (2005), by John Stolle-McAllister

• Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.
  • Remarks in regard to Pancho Villa, as quoted in The Unknown Lore of Amexem's Indigenous People : An Aboriginal Treatise (2008) by Noble Timothy Myers-El, p. 158

Quotes about Zapata

• The historic January 1, 1994, indigenous uprising led by the Zapatistas in Chiapas further strengthened the new sense of self. By April 22, 1994, it seemed that the spirit of Mexico's revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata had marched straight from the mountains of Chiapas to Dolores Park, San Francisco.
  • Elizabeth Martinez, De Colores Means All of Us (1998)

• We can look to Mexico, where a vision for social change has been powerfully affirmed by the Maya people of Chiapas. They named their vision "Zapatismo," in memory of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and startled the world with an armed uprising on January 1, 1994. That day, and ever since, the Zapatistas have posed the basic problem: how to establish both identity and democracy? How to achieve a new life of dignity for indigenous people while also creating a Mexico of justice for everyone? Always the Zapatistas have said they do not want one without the other. At a 1996 meeting of Chicanas/os with some of the Zapatista leadership, Comandante Tacho began his presentation by saying: "We don't want power. What we want is decent homes, enough to eat, health care for our children, schools." At first I thought to myself: how can you gain those things without power? Then I realized that by power he meant domination. The Zapatista vision does not find the answer to injustice in the replacement of one domination by another, but in a vast change of the political culture from the bottom up that will create a revolutionary democracy.
  • Elizabeth Martinez, De Colores Means All of Us (1998)

External links

• Brief biography at the Free Information Society
• Emiliano Zapata Online
• Emiliano Zapata videos