Emiliano Zapata

This 1992 statue of Emiliano Zapata (1879 – 1919) by Gabriel Ponzanelli stands in front of the Consular Office of the Embassy of Mexico at 2827 16th Street, Northwest in Washington, DC. 

Gabriel Ponzanelli

James M. Goode in his 2009 book, Washington Sculpture, reminds us who Zapata was:

Zapata was the son of a small landowner whose property in the village of Anenecuilco, Morelos, was taken over by a rich and powerful rancher. Zapata organized the peasants of Mexico against the powerful hacendados who were who were seizing additional lands to increase their production of cane sugar, which had become very profitable at the turn of the century.

He fought from 1910 until his death in 1919 for the return of common land taken from villages and for the reduction in size of large ranches. Zapata supported the Plan of Ayala, in which the land of Mexico would be redistributed. One-third of the land of the haciendas, or large ranches, was to be seized and distributed among the peasants. “Land and Liberty” became his slogan. He was eventually assassinated by a fellow revolutionary. The role of Zapata in Mexican history was brought vividly to life by John Steinbeck in his screenplay in 1952 for the film Viva Zapata

Goode describes the statue this way:

Dressed in peasant clothes and boots, Zapata wears a wide mustache and holds a sword in his left hand by his side. There are a number of surviving photographs of this famous early twentieth-century Mexican revolutionary dressed this way wearing a large sombrero and wearing two bandoliers. Indeed, the statue shows two bandoliers stretched across Zapata’s chest. … Although the statue shows Zapata in a defiant mood, he stands without his usual wide sombrero.

He points out an irony in the location of the statue and gives us some history of the building that houses the Mexican Embassy.

The Zapata statue stands incongruously adjacent to one of the most imposing Beaux-Arts mansions on Sixteenth Street. It was designed in 1910 for a Chicago banker and successful wholesale grocery owner, T.  Franklin MacVeagh (1837-1934). MacVeagh served as secretary of the treasury under William Howard Taft (1909-1913). In 1921, when Sixteenth Street was still a fashionable residential area, the Mexican government purchased the house for use as its embassy and added the over-scaled Tuscan porte cochere at that time. MacVeagh represented the upper class that Zapata hoped to reduce or eliminate entirely.

Here's a typical portrayal of Zapata by José Guadalupe Posada  from a 1914 song sheet entitled El entierro de Zapata (The burial of Zapata) that came out well before Zapata's death. (LOC)  Zapata is shown with a full set of attributes: Mustache, Sombrero, Bandoliers, Sword and Rifle. (The mustache, sombrero and bandoliers have become the attributes of the American trope of the bandito (e.g. the Frito Bandito, or this party constume)).

The wood cut seems to be based on this 1914 photograph labeled “Emelio Zapata,” also in the Library of Congress.

Miguel Covarrubias adds a horse to the list of heroic attributes in his 1933 book Peace by Revolution written with Frank Tannenbaum. (Internet Archive)

Diego Rivera's lithograph from 1932 entitled “Emiliano Zapata, the Agrarian Leader” shows Zapata holding a sickle (representing the peasantry), leading a horse while treading on a sword. (LOC/Britannica)  

Print shows Emiliano Zapata as a hero of the Mexican Revolution, holding a machete, while standing over a fallen man who represents those who oppose the revolution. Zapata has taken the reins of the man's horse, and his armed peasant followers stand ready in the background. -- LOC

This  1972 Screen-print by Peter Gallegos belongs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

I want to die a slave

to principles

and not to men.