The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-10

| HE OhlNASON JGC En- ny IT. A1s
Dunn. Mcbride 81 Co. SO.
A story of Eniliano zapata should
reveal good deal about that tur-
bulent period 191o-1917) when Mex
leo entered the first stage of the
bourgeois democratic revolution. The
peasant and the Indian fighters head
ed by Zapata had central place in
the agrarian upheaval of this time
which actually struck blows at the
more reactionary feudal landlords
and the Catholic Church.
But, aside from the relation Of a
few fresh facts (of the significance
of which the author does not reveal
that he is ALVAREZ, THE Crimson
Jester" contributes little. Generally,
the book reaches level little higher
than that of the ordinary magazine
| adventure story on Mexico. Page
after page records the looting, burn
ing, and shooting of the horde" of
Zapata. But only in few isolated
paragraphs is there an indication of
the social content Of this movement
This content is partly suggested in
the words of an Indian follower Of
zapata, quoted by Dunn: This is
the country of our people. We come
from the soil. We must have that
soil again. It belongs to us Indians,
not to the white planters, nor to
the half-breed caciQues (usurers and
landlords, but to us who have lived
on it, since before the beginning of
the centuries" 1t is further summed
up in an isolated paragraph by the
author himself: items of thousands
of public papers-deeds, property
transfers, titles, mortgages, marriage
agreements, birth registrations, death
records, maps and other irreplaceable
documents-were destroyed at his or
der or by his own hand, in the belief
that the destruction of these records
would leave the land free to the In
dams. Titles to more than five hun
bred haciendas and to hundreds Of
smaller farms are lost forever. Their
terrain is occupied but not cultivated
by three or four million Indians"
Zapatisrno and it's fearless chief
tain have come to symbolic for the
Mexican masses the battle with
feudalism and reaction. This has
been the source of never-ending leg
end among the peasant and Indian
population. Around the supposed eX-
plois of zapata and the heroism Of
his followers, countless songs (cor-
ridos) and chants have arisen. 1t
is mainly from this point of view
that some revolutionary intellectuals
have begun to write of zapata.
But the record of the Zapatista
movement has several principal and
far reaching political lessons for the
revolutionary movement in the Am
ericas. In the first place, it serves
to shatter the demagogic claims OF
the present rgeoiS-landlord gov
eminent in Mexico, the government
of the Gales clique, about the "revo-
| lutionary" nature of this government,
and its Agrarian Reform of 1917. The
record of the Zapatista movement
shows plainly that it was solely
through the revolutionary pressure
of the peasant masses, whose move
ment reached its highest fighting
stages in the activities of the follow
ers of zapata, that the Agrarian Re-
form of 1917 came into existence. The
state of Morelos was the center of
the struggles of the zapatistas. In
this state, according to the figures Of
Tannenbaum, ("The Mexican Ag-
Tot.,f III
nenbaun), a bourgeois economist, 25
ger cent of the population has re-
.ceived 35 per cent Of the total land
of the state in government distribu-
ton UP to 1926 This figure is not
even approached in other sections
of the country.
The same Professor Tannenbaum
states, that for Mexico as whole
4.3 per cent Of the rural population
received no more than 2.64 of the
total landed area as a result of this
much heralded Agrarian Reform of
the Constitution Of 1917 This is to
say nothing OF the fact that the
land distributed was taken chiefly
from unclaimed government reserves
and was not land appropriated from
the landlords; that it was the land
of the poorest quality and incon-
veniently situated; that under the
guise of a Is per cent tax the land
was actually paid for by those who
received it; that the poor peasant
who did receive land had no imple-
ments or any other means necessary
for the working of this land. Such
has been the fraud of Agrarian Re-
form in Mexico which American lib
erals and socialists of the brand Of
Upton Sinclair hail as a revolutionary
solution to the agrarian question, and
which they have the gall to compare
with the Socialist solution which is
being rapidly won in the Soviet
| Union.
Actually, the demagogic agrarian
program OF the Mexican government
was nothing more than a means of
trying to pacify the embattled peas
antry, to head off their struggles.
Whatever actual concessions were
gotten by the peasantry were not due
to governmental and landlord gen.
crosby. They were due to the stub
born, in fact savage, fight of tens OF
thousands of armed peasants such as
the Zapatistas That the peasant re-
volt was beaten back and that it fell
short of changing in any fundamen-
tai respect the semi-feudal class re-
lations is borne out, however, by the
fact that today 10 per cent of the
land owners of the country own over