A Triumph

Lazaro Cardenas

Alvaro Obregon, a radical Constitutionalist, came out of retirement because of Carranza’s move to the right, and overthrew him in 1920.  With Obregon in power, much of what the Zapatistas had fought for became part of the revolutionary government.  Zapata’s desire to promote popular education resulted in the building of thousands of schools in the countryside.  The villagers of Morelos held onto their lands and the new government of 1920 instituted guarantees to them that they could keep it.  Twice during the Mexican Revolution the U.S. government directly intervened with troops—once at Vera Cruz in 1914 and again in the North in 1916-1917.  These and other U.S. interferences kept the revolution from achieving all that it had hoped for.  Some of the best achievements had to wait for the regime of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940).

See John Womack, Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, and Robert P. Millon, Zapata: Ideology of a Peasant Revolutionary

Morelos, 1920: Triumph

The year ends with agrarian reform as a national policy.  The Zapatistas are integrated into the national army.  The area of Morelos, on whose behalf Zapata had taken up the revolution, has survived systematic arson, concentration camps, and mass executions.  The people of Anenecuilco, hometown of Zapata, filter back and gain plantation lands as their own under the new law.  Most large sugar plantations are gone.  What was called prosperity for the state was misery for us.  We are [now] growing what we want to grow and for our own use.