Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata Salazar (1879-1959) was a Mexican revolutionary, political organizer, and the first Premier of Mexico. He was a prominent figure in both the First and Second Mexican Revolutions as the firebrand leader of the agrarian socialist Zapatistas, most emphasized in the First Morelos Commune and the Liberation Army of the South, and eventually of the Mexican Alliance of National Liberation by the latter. The Alliance, formed between his movement and Pancho Villa's North Division was considered instrumental to the spread of proletarian revolution in Latin America. In their victory against the Calles regime, the Alliance united with the left-wing remnants of the National Revolutionaries and the Communist Party to form the Workers' Party of National Liberation, and subsequently the Socialist Republic.

In his years as Premier, he enacted his foremost priority: the redistribution of farmland to the impoverished peasant class (campesinos) in a model not unlike the one implemented in his time in Morelos. Aside from that, he was largely a unifying figure in a political configuration divided between the nationalistic Cardenistas, the Campesinistas and the more radical Communists. Today, he is a largely mythologized figure in Mexican history as a valiant hero who fought and won for the rights of the downtrodden. His strategies during the revolutions and his policies during his premiership formed the theoretical basis of Marxism-Zapatism, which has influenced revolutions in Panamerica, the Philippines and other anti-colonial movements throughout the world.