Emiliano Zapata by Rolls Albert

Author:Rolls, Albert [Rolls, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ABC-CLIO
ISBN: 9780313380808
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

T H E R I S E A N D FA L L O F H U E RTA

77

for the revolution to go on even though Madero was gone. Zapata also condemned Orozco for surrendering the principles for which the peasantry had fought and died. Orozco’s putting down arms was particularly troublesome, as it provided Huerta with an example to parade before

those with whom his government was negotiating. That example was

what convinced Jesús “One-Eyed ” Morales, among others, to retire from revolutionary activities. Through these months, the fi ghting continued, and the now typical stalemate in which the federales controlled the major towns and the Zapatistas controlled the countryside was reestablished. The Zapatistas went on attacking the railways, but the federales slackened the pressure it put on them. Huerta was focusing his army’s resources on the north and held off sending as many troops as he thought would be needed in Morelos until April, when General Robles returned.

Robles quickly reestablished a campaign along the lines of his pre-

vious one, but this time he took control not just of the military in the region but of the civil government as well. The new approach, as Huerta proclaimed in a speech to Morelos’ land owners at the end of

April, would follow “extreme measures, for the government is going, so to speak, to depopulate the state, and will send your haciendas other

workers,” 10 which was the only way, he explained, to clear the state of Zapatistas, whom he, as Robles had done before him, defi ned as the entire rural population. “ Zapatismo will be exterminated, cost what it may,” he assured Mexico City the following month, 11 and those who

would pay, it now became clear, were the people of Morelos. Depopulation programs would soon be carried out in regions throughout Mexico, the idea apparently being to pacify the people by relocating them, and the cruelty of Huerta’s Mexico came to be regarded as ordinary. “Dainty women talked unconcernedly about peons hung on telegraph poles and the ‘funny way’ in which soldiers spun round when they were shot.

Genial Britons and Americans spoke of the execution of prisoners as a regular practice and approved it, because ‘if the Mexicans would only exterminate one another, the country would have a chance,’ ” the re-

porter H. Hamilton Fyfe observed. 12

Zapata had stepped up his campaign before Huerta had laid out his

plans, attacking Jonacatapec, where his victorious forces seized valuable weapons as well as General Higinio Aguilar and 47 other offi cers, whom Zapata went on to pardon, after securing their promise to stop

78 E M I L I A N O

Z A PATA

fi ghting the rebellion. Aguilar not only kept that promise but joined the Zapatistas, providing them with military expertise and useful contacts that enabled them to buy weapons from federales more concerned with turning a profi t than with who won the war. Zapata went on to

lay siege to Cuautla before April ended, and his forces subjected the Cuernavaca area to continual attacks in the fi rst weeks of May.

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