Emiliano was seen as one who did not particularly care for the politics of the world. At eighteen, however, after a drunken brawl he got a taste of how the government treated those who went against their wishes when President Porfirio Diaz’s infamous Rurales threw him around and his brother Eufemio had to fight against them to gain Zapata’s freedom. This situation was similar to the stories he had heard growing up in the fields with all of those older men. Yet again we can see a reoccurring pattern of the people having to fight against not only hacienda’s poor working conditions but also against the government who did not treat its citizens with any say in how they could live.

            Zapata has another run in with the government when he and many others in his community were seeking rights to land in all the legal ways possible and to no avail being completely ignored or denied at every turn. In every point of his life fighting for a better life had been used numerous times, so after Zapata realized that the issues of land, economy, education, and political input of the citizens of Mexico were not being heard him and many others in his community grew an increasing dislike for President Diaz. Attending election meetings in the early 1900s Zapata grew to realize the only way for change was to fight for it. Protests during these meeting and rallies was the beginning for Zapata to start a revolution. “To a young, idealistic Emiliano Zapata, however, who had played by the rules and knew who would have won in a fair contest, the rigged election and government intimidation was a bitter pill to swallow. He grew increasingly alienated from a corrupt judicial system that did not protect the legal rights of pueblos or workers, and a rigged political system that would not allow legitimate efforts at democratic change.” This is when Zapata and the Zapatista movement began.

 

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