Revolutions - 9.25- Loyalty and Betrayal

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

In 1918 and 1919, it was hard to tell whether the Mexican Revolution was heating up or cooling down.  Sponsor: harrys.com/revolutions

And welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.25, Loyalty and Betrayal. Before we get started this week, I want to open up with some stuff about where we are headed. As I said last time, this year Mexican Revolution series will wrap up with episode 9.27. That means that we have three more full episodes, including the one you're listening to right now. This episode, and next week's episode, will be dedicated to wrapping up the narrative of events. Not unlike the French Revolution, it is very difficult to mark a hard endpoint for the Mexican Revolution, because it just sort of transitions seamlessly,

more should I say transitions roughly and violently, away from the chaos of revolution to the order of reconstruction. And it is only in hindsight that one can even pick a date in, say, late 1920, and say, okay, yes, that is the end of the quote-unquote revolution. Certainly, at the time, everyone was just moving from one day to the the next, not knowing if the revolution had ended or whether it was still going on. Mexico would be plagued by revolts, assassinations, and repression well into the 1930s, to say nothing of the fact that many of the issues raised by the revolution were yet unresolved. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and so these next two episodes will take us to

the arbitrarily selected endpoint of December 1920. Then the final episode, episode 9.27, will be about wrapping things up. looking back on what had happened and pushing the story forward, albeit in more summary fashion, through the presidency of Lassaroc Cardinus, who was president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940, and who, more than anyone else, actually tried to fulfill what by then had become the very ambiguous legacy of the Mexican Revolution. After episode 9.27, I am going to go on hiatus to continue my preparations for the Russian Revolution, and also spend a bunch of time writing Citizen Lafayette. Now, I'll have more to say about how all that will unfold in next week's episode,

but I will tell you right now that when the Mexican Revolution's wraps up, I have scheduled for myself my longest hiatus yet. It pushes the limit from being a long break to being a short sabbatical. My last episode of the Mexican Revolution will post on March the 10th. The first episode of the Russian Revolution will not post until May the 19th. So, enjoy these next few episodes, because there is a two-month break coming up. Okay, so that's all I have to say about that.

Oh, wait, one more thing. Since the Mexican Revolution got going, you may have noticed that each episode has covered roughly six months' worth of events. While these last two episodes are going to involve longer strides, because though up to this point, the action has been coming fast and furious, between about the spring of 1917 and the spring of 1919, Mexico sunk into a kind of equilibrium, or perhaps more accurately, a stalemate. Caronza solidly controlled the center of the country, and he had garrisons spread out across the rest of the country,

fighting with peripheral regional rebellions. Poncho Villa had been reduced to being a little more than a bandit up in the north, running around with never more than 500 men. The Zapatistas and Morelos continued to come under heavy pressure from the federal armies, led by General Pablo Gonzalez, but they too continued their obstinate resistance. Felix Diaz led a rebellion in the southeast that both never really heated up nor ever died down. But because they were all geographically and sometimes ideologically separated from each other, all these rebellious forces could not combine to defeat Karanza, nor could Karanza muster the strength to defeat them.

So the main question of today's episode is can these disparate revolutionary forces still out in the field combine against Karanza to defeat and overthrow him? or would he just stay president forever, and slowly but surely entrench a new authoritarian regime? Playing very much against type, the man who was now working hardest to forge a national revolutionary alliance was Emiliano Zapata. Given Sapata's own preoccupations and worldview, it's kind of crazy that he should be the one now to attempt to spearhead this project. From the very beginning, all the way back to his first rebellious attacks against the Porfarian oligarchy in 1910, Sapata had been laser-focused on the rights and well-being of the villagers of Morales. Thanks to this focus, he never lost the support of those villagers during all these long years of endless, destructive fighting.

Zapata's authority over Morelos had waxed and waned over the years. Sometimes he was little more than a fugitive in the hills. Other times, he sat in Kornavaka and was the center of government for the whole state. But he always kept his focus on the state, never trying to jump out onto the national stage. And he was conscientious of his responsibilities. It was well known that whenever and wherever he exerted some administrative control, that Sepanta took pains to be just, reasonable, and fair. And though he was, of course, running an army,

he expected the civilian village councils to have final authority, and he routinely disciplined his chiefs and soldiers to stop them from abusing the people. If theft or rape or murder were reported, the perpetrators were tracked down and punished. And then, of course, unlike every other revolutionary Caudillo, who made grand proclamations about redistributing land, Sopata actually did it. So it's fair to say that by 1918, the ongoing war was unpopular. Everybody was sick of fighting. But Sopata himself remained very popular. He was beloved. He was a near mythic figure. But importantly, he never lorded it over anybody. He was never the father of the people of Marelos. He was always the son of the people of Marelos.

and there was a distinction there, and it mattered. Sapata's obsession with local affairs, though, sometimes hurt the greater cause, and certainly his unwillingness to move decisively against Obrugone's supply lines in 1915 was a major factor in the downfall of Pontchia's Division del Norte, and by extension, the whole conventionist alliance. Maybe Sapata had learned from this great mistake, because here in 1918 and 191919, it would be Sapata, under the increasing influence of Ildardo Magagna, who would be producing a steady stream of letters and proclamations trying to rally Mexico behind the necessity of joining together

to overthrow Caranza, who was clearly a dictator in the making. Now, naturally, he addressed these letters to the other rebellious caudillos and exiles out there, but by the summer of 1918, he was for the first time able to make his pitch to unhappy members of Caranza's own political apparatus. Many of those who had followed Carranza into power actually were committed reformers and revolutionaries. It wasn't just a front for them. They expected big changes, and they expected those changes to be for the benefit of the people, not the powerful. These were the type of sincere liberal reformers who wound up producing the Constitution of 1917 with its radical articles about land and labor. These honest reformers were at the moment coalescing into a block that would

become known as the liberal constitutionalists. After the first election following the promulgation of the new constitution, the liberal constitutional held a majority in Congress. But when they got down to the business of actually governing Mexico, they wound up very unhappy with Caranza's high-handed conservatism. Caranza, as we know, is a big believer in a strong central government with a strong executive at the center of that central government. And Caranza alienated those who expected more power sharing with the legislative branch. In August of 1918, so just a little over a year after the National Congress first convened, a new round of elections led to more conservative delegates being elected, and the liberal constitutionalists losing their majority. They were replaced

by allies of Karanza, who were all too happy to just rubber stamp his decrees. So in the summer of 1918, Sapata started writing to these disaffected members individually and published open letters to all of them collectively, that said basically, Caranza is a dictator in the making. Surely you can see that. If you love Mexico, you will consider renouncing him and helping the people of Mexico overthrow this new would-be overlord. The most important member of this disaffected liberal wing of the constitutionalist was a man currently pretending that he had no opinion about any of this whatsoever, that he wasn't interested in politics, and that he was loyal, forever and always loyal to Carranza, and that is Alvaro Obrgon. After defeating Poncho Villa in 1915, Obrigon was promoted to

Minister of War in Carranza's pre-constitutional government. Obrugone spent most of his time in office either dealing with the United States or trying to systematize and organize the army, as it made its transition from constitutionalist army to the federal army. But for a variety of reasons, Obrugone decided that after the Constitution of 1917 was promulmonary, He was promulgated, elections were held, and a new national government was sworn in, that he would resign. And so, on May the 1st, 1917, the day Carranza was sworn into the presidency, Overgone resigned. And he did not resign just as Minister of War. He also resigned from the Army.

He wanted to go home to Sonora as nothing more than a civilian private citizen. Now, once back in Sonora, he really leaned into the Cincinnati George Washington routine. He devoted himself almost exclusively to his family and his estates. And as I said last week, thanks to being the victorious general of the revolution, Obergoen's estates had grown from about 200 hectares to more than 3,500 hectares. All of it, some of the most fertile land in the state. He also involved himself in cattle ranching, mining, and import-export schemes, which involved a lot of dealings with business and government types in the United States.

and he positioned himself as a business leader and pillar of the local community. And if anybody asked, that's all he planned to be for the rest of his life. But look, this is very clearly a performative retirement. It was a chance to recuperate, reconnect to his home state, and attend to his own personal finances, yes. But this is always with one eye on a future presidency. And partly, it's about putting political distance between himself and Cronza. In fact, Cranza was very very good. unnerved when Obergoen resigned his minister of war, not because Obergoen was some loyal and

indispensable advisor, but because the minute Obrugone returned to Sonora, he became a natural rallying point for those who were opposed to Caranza. And the Sonoran wing of the constitutionalists had always been more liberal and reformist than Caronzo was. And they tended now to align with the liberal constitutionalists, and there was a lot of grumbling over drinks and cigars that they had put Carranza in power so that he could do what? Bring the old Porfuriato back. Obergon wasn't any happier about it than they were. He was also hearing from his American contacts that they were not happy with Carranza's brand of nationalism, especially Article 27 of the Constitution that stripped foreigners of their private property rights. In talking to the Americans,

Obrugn casually but persistently let it be known that he had always been a friend of the United States, and he was somebody who they could depend on. When word of Obrugone's unhappiness with Carranza started filtering out, Zapata took the initiative to write Obrugan personally and publish an open letter to the revolution's most successful general, urging him to declare his opposition to Caranza. Part of the pitch was now patriotic. The Americans hate him, and we need to topple him, or they will invade and impose their own stooge.

But if Obrugone ever replied to Zapata or even considered making a deal with the Zapatist, he never put it down on paper, possibly because he had no intention of leaving a paper trail. Obrugone made no move at all from his retirement in 1918, though. So we'll leave him in Sonora until next week. But he was not the only potential leader of a national revolutionary movement that Zapata and Magana were trying to coax back into service. Another big one was General Felipe Anhalis. Now, we last left Anhalis in late 1915, forced out of the crumbling Division del Norte after Via stopped taking his advice, and it was strongly hinted that he might soon lose his life.

Since then, Anhalis and his family, wife and four kids, had taken up residence on a small ranch in Texas. During his service, both in the old Porfurian army and with Pancho Villa, Anhalis had been a pretty honest guy, and he had not done much to personally enrich himself. and when he crossed the border, he had practically nothing in his pocket. When the ranch failed to be very profitable, Anhalis went north to New York, where, at least for a while in 1916, he took a job doing manual labor just to make ends meet. Now, this is quite a tumble socially and economically,

but Anhalis claimed that he didn't mind, that it kept him in touch with the common people. I do, however, get the feeling that he was hoping that this period of slumming it would be temporary, and it would make, for a very. a good story once he returned to the prominent place a man of his education, experience, and stature deserved, once the despised Caranza had been gotten rid of. And boy, did Anhalas ever despise Caranza. Anhalis did a lot of writing and corresponding during his years in exile, and he held

Caranza personally responsible for just about everything that had gone wrong since the assassination of poor Signor Madero. Anhalis had come to loathe Caronza so much that he blamed him for. how the punitive expedition had unfolded, even though Via was the one who had provoked it originally. Anhalis focused not on the invasion itself, which was a humiliating stain on national honor, but in how Carranza handled it, blaming Karanza's rudeness and megalomania for the poor relations with the United States. Shortly after his arrival in the United States, Anhalis joined the Liberal Alliance, an organization of Mexican exiles, who wanted to join the old Mataristas,

with the newer and more radical Vistas, to plot Karanza's down. downfall. Being both a Matarista and a vista, Anhalis, of course, joined this liberal alliance, but he wanted to take it even further. He wanted to bring in old reactionary conservatives if using their resources would bring an end to Carranza that much quicker. By 1918, Annalis's great fear was that when World War I ended in Allied victory, that the United States would bring home its large, well-trained, and experienced army and invade Mexico. The offending Article 27 had sent shockwaves through the American business community and talk of regime change in Mexico was in the air. Onhalus wanted to harness that too. And thanks to his plentiful

contacts, both among the Americans and exiled Mexicans, Anhalis positioned himself as a viable pro-American alternative to Caronza. But the idea was to so position himself to prevent the United States from invading for the third time in five years. But that would mean that Anhalis himself would have to return to Mexico to self-organize a viable native alternative. And Anahlus did represent an alternative to the regime Carranza was building. And to explain himself, Anhalis wrote up a manifesto that would wind up being published in January 1919. First, he wanted to get rid of the Constitution of 1917 and bring back the Constitution of 1857, not just because he thought Article 27 was excessively nationalistic, though he did,

but because the process by which it had been created was illegitimate. Anhalis wanted constitutional change to come only after legitimate, real, nationwide elections were held. And for him, that meant first elections at the local level, and then at the state level, and then at the national level, including those for Congress and president. This would prevent whoever became president from imposing their will on the people. Ever since he had gotten to know Madero back in 1912, Onalus wanted to fully realize, Madero's dream of a free and democratic Mexico. But like Madero himself, Anhalis's vision of democracy was often undermined by his actual feelings about the people.

Anhalis was a progressive reformer, and he even claimed at times to be a socialist. But really, he was a classical patrician liberal. He never shook the idea that the wealthier and better educated and more responsible citizens must be the stewards of the nation, that they must run things for the protection and benefit of all those ignorant, scruffy, poor people. So even as he wrote of the necessity of democratic reform and universal suffrage and local elections first, you get the feeling like he just sort of assumed that the people would then naturally vote for exactly the kind of candidates and policies Anhalas himself supported.

And one wonders how he would have responded if the people had democratically voted for something or someone else. More than anything else, though, the theme Anhalas hammered on was that Mexico. Mexico needed peace and reconciliation. And he thought that that was impossible with Carranza in power. But he also thought that it was impossible if any of the old revolutionary Chaudillos wound up in office. So he proposed that when post-Coronza elections came, that no officer from any revolutionary army, and that included himself, would be allowed to stand for political office. Now, this was both to undercut the militaristic power of the Caudio warlords, but also to hopefully elevate a new generational

cohort that might be free of the bitter personal baggage and rivalries and rage that kept Mexican revolutionary leaders bound in these endless rounds of fighting. So by 1918, Annalis is no longer aiming to be president of Mexico. He was aiming for something a little more glorious. He wanted to go down in history as the great peacemaker. But before he could bring peace to Mexico, Anhalis first needed to make peace with his old friend and comrade, Pancho Villa. In the summer of 1918, Anhalis wrote via a letter. The gist of it was, I'm thinking about coming back to Mexico. What would you say if I wanted to rejoin you?

Via jumped at the chance to patch things up. He wrote a letter back to Anhalis full of adoration and praise. Of course you can come back. Of course we've always been friends. In a further exchange of letters, the two men established that they were both still loyal to each other and respected each other, and Via even accepted some responsibility for pushing Anhalis away. With assurances in hand from Via that he would be welcomed with open arms and his counsel listened to again, Anhalis made preparations to cross the border.

His final decision to return home was spurred in part by the official end of World War I, which came in November of 1918. The end of World War I meant peace in Europe, but possibly the start of a ticking clock that was counting down to an American invasion of Mexico. On December the 11th, 1918, Anhalis was met by one of Via's secretaries at a ranch in Texas. Together, they crossed the border back into Mexico. Anhalis followed this secretary for the next few days,

and they were forced to camp at night in cold, fireless secret to avoid being picked up by a patrol. When Anhalis arrived in Via's camp, he and Via embraced each other and called each other, my general, oh, my general. And then they sat down to read them. plot their return to glory. Initially, Anhalis insisted that he was there to make peace, not war, and he wanted to go around

with an olive branch, not a machine gun. But Via scoffed and said, look, what you're proposing is impossible without some kind of military force behind us, and that is what I want you to help me rebuild. Via had not been able to do anything ambitious since he had lost all his ammunition back in the spring of 1917, but he had not been inactive. Though he was now little more than a bandit, Via had always been a pretty good bandit. He organized a protection racket targeting foreign-run mines, who considered payments to local bandits and rebels, simply the cost of doing business in northern Mexico. With a steady stream of cash, Via was then able to slowly overcome his ammunition problems in delicious fashion.

Given his own supply problems, thanks to recurrent American embargoes, Carranza had expanded domestic manufacturing operations. to produce bullets and gunpowder for the federal army. But since the federal army was full of corrupt officers and suppliers, especially up in Chihuahua, much of this wound up on the black market and purchased by Via. So by the end of 1918, Carranza was at least indirectly, Via's largest supplier of ammunition, and he had once again amassed a nice cache of weaponry and bullets. The thing Via needed help with, though, was the political stuff.

As we talked about last time, Villa had combined. completely lost the plot and was no longer even bothering to articulate any kind of political message. Anhalis was eager to help refocus via politically, which had always been part of his job description in the division del Norte anyway. First, Anhalis said, you gotta pivot off this whole Death to the Gringos thing and get back to who we were back in 1913 and 1914. Reliable friends of the Americans, that way they'll support us. It's hard to remember after the Columbus raid and the punitive expedition blot everything else out, But for a long time, Poncho Villa was the favored caudio of the Americans. And since Anhalas was in Mexico, in part to give the U.S. government a viable alternative to Caranza,

Anhalis insisted that they had to go back to courting the gringoes, not killing them. Via grudgingly accepted. Two years of death to the gringos hadn't really gotten him much anyway. Anhalis also started delivering speeches and towns they passed through to give their activities a political purpose, that this was about the revival of freedom and democracy, reclaiming the original dream of Senior Madero from the hated clutches of the authoritarian Caranza. Most especially, though,

Anhalis insisted that Via Curb his more recklessly murderous impulses, no more casual brutalization, no more summary execution of prisoners. Now, Via had been fighting a literal, take-no-prisoners' war with the federal army for years now, and they were only too happy to summarily execute his men. But Anhalis insisted, and Via relented. From now on, when prisoners were taken, they would be let go if they promised to stop fighting,

unless Via had some particular personal beef with one of them. Taken together, Onhulis was intent on recreating what had made Via so popular in the first place, that we are fighting the corrupt and the powerful on behalf of the honest and the powerless. We're the good guys. You don't need to fear us. They need to fear us. When Anhalis got to camp, Via had about 500 men with him. After a few months, that number would rise to 2,000, and then 3,000.

Would 191919 be 1913 all over again? Via and Anjolis returning to form in the north was great news for Miliana Zapata down in the south. So far, his efforts to forge a grand revolutionary alliance had come to naught, and when the rainy season ended in Morelos in December 1918, General Pablo Gonzalez went back out on the offensive. Gonzalez had now been leading federal operations in Morelis for nearly two years, and all he had to show for it was that maybe he had learned some lessons. This time leading just 11,000 men, Gonzalez focused on securing the cities and towns of the state

and forcing Zapata and his men to take to the mountains. But as he did so, Gonzalez ordered not destruction, but construction. Instead of crashing around burning things down, soldiers and engineers were tasked with rebuilding everything, the infrastructure, the roads, the railroads, the mills, the stables. They worked on getting the assyendas planted and running again. And Gonzalez also initiated a repopulation campaign that offered incentives, wages, and jobs to anyone who wanted to move to Morelos. This would further revive the state economically, and side bonus, bring in people who were not quite so loyal to Emiliano Zapata. During these months, Sepata and what was left of his forces were now more fugitives than they were a proper army, but they still managed to stay one step ahead of Gonzales, much to Gonzalez's great frustration. During this period, though, Maganya opened up negotiations with a couple other high-ranking generals in the federal army, who leaned, like Obrugan, in a more liberal constitutionalist direction. If they could be convinced to defect, then that would reverse the whole situation almost overnight. One in particular was quite close to Carranza. His name was General Castro, and he was running the garrison in neighboring Puebla. Magagna pitched him not just on the justice of their cause, but also on the growing belief that Carranza's hostile relations with the United States was going to lead to yet another invasion.

But after a few months of clandestine talks and earning the trust to Maganya and this apatistas, Castro came back and said, I have been authorized to make an offer of amnesty. I agree that the threat from the United States is real, and that's why you need to lay down your arms. If you do, you'll be pardoned and allowed to go home and live in peace. He also said that he could probably get some of the Zapatistas into positions of local leadership inside the new constitutional order, so their interests would be looked after. When news of this offer spread, some took the deal, some always took this deal, but Sopata and Magana and the other core group that had been in revolt since 1910 refused to even consider. consider it. When Zapata realized that the talks with Castro were not about Castro defecting,

but trying to get Sapata to quit, all contact was broken off. Instead, on New Year's Day 1919, Zapata issued yet another proclamation to the people calling for them to overthrow Carranza. The response from the Federal Army was a redoubling of their efforts to track him down. Sapata was driven from the last little bits of territory he controlled, and he now was very much on the run. It did not help his cause that the winter of 1918, 191919, was incredibly brutal, and the global flu pandemic that would go sweeping around after World War I reached Mexico and tore through a population already malnourished, sick, and impoverished. The people of Morelos were dying, and the hardcore remaining rebels

died with them. What forces Sepanta had dropped by half in just a few months. But though Sapata was on the run, little more than a hunted fugitive, he remained free and defiant. Despite every effort, every bribe, every reward offered, every threat issued, General Gonzalez could not get anyone in Morelos to turn on Sepanta. Even in these bleak times, Marillos would never turn on her favorite son. The final betrayal could only come from outside the family. In mid-Marche, a colonel in the federal army named Jesus Guajardo got in trouble with General Gonzalez. Colonel Guajardo had been ordered to go out on patrol in the mountains, and instead, officers found him drinking in a local bar, and he was arrested.

When Sipata found out about this, he sent a letter to Guajardo, saying, hey, why don't you tell your boss to shove it and defect over to my side? But this letter was intercepted by General Gonzalez's spies, and Gonzalez hatched himself a little plot. He showed the letter to Guajardo and said, you, sir, are a drunk and a traitor, and if you don't do what I tell you to do, I'm going to have you shot for treason. Guajardo said, I'll do anything, and Gonzalez instructed the colonel to write a letter back to Sopata, saying, you know what, you're right, I'm ready to defect. This kicked off a little flurry of letters between Sopata and Guajardo in the first week of April, and plans were laid to affect Guardo's defection to the Zapatistas. On April the 8th, Sapata ordered a series of attacks that diverted federal attention, and Guajardo led his company out of Kuwaitla. The next day, Guarado attacked a small federal garrison and drove. them into retreat, and this attack made his alleged affection very believable. But the battle had been staged, the officers had been warned, and the only soldiers actually put in harm's way were men who had once defected from the Zapatistas. These men were left behind for Guajardo to capture and execute in yet another show of good faith to Sapata.

Convinced by this bloody proof of Guarro's honest intentions, Sapata rode down and met him, and they spent the rest of the day making plans. At the end of this conference, Guajardo said he wanted to go back to a nearby Asienda, which was about 10 miles away. He said it was where he had stashed all his munitions, and he wanted to make sure that it was safe and protected. Sepata agreed, and they made a plan for Sapata to come right out and meet him the next morning. Accompanied by about 150 men, Sepata himself spent the night camped in the hills.

The next morning, April the 10th, 1919, Zapata and his men rode to the Asienda, where they were greeted by no outward signs of trouble. But almost as soon as they arrived, a scout came in warning that federal forces were nearby. So Sapata ordered Guajardo to guard the munitions, while Sapata himself went out to investigate. By mid-afternoon, though, Sapata had stumbled across no federal soldiers, and so he made his way back to the Asienda. This time he took only ten men with him. The plan was to just go inside and have some lunch. When Zapata rode in, he found Guarro's men waiting at parade attention. As Sapata approached, a bugler blew three notes for them to present arms. Now this wasn't especially suspicious. It appeared to be a mere formality, maybe a sign of respect for their new chief. But as Sapata dismounted his horse, the lined-up soldier suddenly raised their rifles. They pointed them at Sapata and his escort. They opened fire at point-blank range. Sapata was blown backward by the force of God knows how many bullets, and his body crashed on the ground.

He was dead before he landed. Emiliano Zapata, the favorite son of Morelos, intractable, legendary revolutionary. The face, the heart, the soul of the Mexican Revolution was dead. He had been ambushed and murdered. He was 39 years old. The hours that followed were a scramble of confusion as the Zapatistas who had not been killed in the ambush fled south down a river. but they were not relentlessly pursued. The consuming action for the federal officers was to confirm, document, and publicize that

Zapata was dead. His body was thrown over a mule and carried back to Kuala, where General Gonzalez was there to personally view his dead enemy. The body was then propped up, labeled, and photographed. Soon enough, everyone in Mexico would know that Emiliano Zapata was dead. By this point in the Revolution's podcast, you've probably picked up on the fact that I prefer flexibility to inflexibility, compromising to uncompromising, adaptable to stubborn, that getting most of what you want is better than holding out for all of what you want and winding up with nothing.

Nobody embodies the inflexible, uncompromising, and stubborn revolutionary, quite like Emiliano Zapata. And I will admit that the first time I really studied the Mexican Revolution, I was very frustrated with Zapata. He had a bunch of different opportunities with a bunch of different governments, going all the way back to Madero, to make a deal, to secure peace, to get a lot of the village land claims recognized, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. And every time he had a chance to end the fighting, not just for him, but for everybody, he refused. That is and will always be a knock on Sepata, that he preferred to be a martyr rather than give even one single inch. But having gone back through all this now a second time and in greater detail, I find myself more

sympathetic, because I now happen to agree with one of the fundamental reasons he kept refusing to make these deals, that none of the other men he was dealing with could be trusted. Sapata always believed that the minute he disarmed that the old Oscendados would come flooding back in. And when you read what those other national leaders thought of the Zapatista, as it's clear that there was no place for the Zapatistas in the future of Mexico, whether that would be a conservative future or a liberal future. Madero had been sympathetic, but also too weak to stand up to the Ascendanos. General Huerta would have just exterminated them all. Carranza thought the Zapatista's little better than savages who needed to be disarmed or enslaved.

I mean, show of hands for anybody who thinks that Carranza's declarations that the villages would be able to keep their communal lands was sincere. Even Felipe Anhalis, who thought Sapata was an honorable man fighting an honorable war, happened to be fighting for a terrible idea that Anhalis would have never allowed if he had been president. Sapata understood that he and his people were fighting for something that nobody else wanted them to have. That maybe not today or maybe not tomorrow, but someday any promise made to them about their lands would be broken. And so he did not trust these dishonest men, and he never stopped fighting. And the people of Marlilos never stopped following him because Sapata was an honest man. People always trusted Zapata, and he never broke his promises to the people, and they loved him for it.

As I mentioned when I first introduced him, Sopanto was never Don Emiliano. He was never the father figure. He was always the beloved son. He was forthright and honorable. He was brave and resilient. He believed the sacrifices that they were all making were necessary. And in the end, he sacrificed his own life for what he believed in. Like so much about the Mexican Revolution, Sopata has a complicated legacy.

And because of that, he embodies the Mexican Revolution like almost no one else besides Pancho Via, and he remains today a potent symbol of resistance, rebellion, and revolution. And he always will. And oh, also, the mustache. That is one hell of a legendary mustache. Next week, we will bring the Mexican Revolution to a close, almost exactly 10 years after it began. We will see the last hurrah of Pancho Villa and Felipe Anhalis. We will see the resilient survival of the Zapatistas now led by Ildardo Magana.

But most importantly, we will see the last. last campaign of Alvaro Obrugan.