by Frank McLynn
This illustrates the wider point that it is impossible to portray people like Villa and Zapata as `anti-capitalist', just as Mexican landowners cannot be pinned down as being either `feudal' or `capitalist'; some were one, some the other, some were neither. A similar inadequacy attends the usual typology of the `big four' of the Mexican Revolution: Carranza bourgeois, Obregon petit-bourgeois, Zapata peasant revolutionary, Villa social bandit. As Alan Knight has pointed out, it is fruitless to analyse the Mexican Revolution in Marxist terms, for much of it was the work of `secondary' classes (peasantry, petite-bourgeoisie) who were in no sense the surrogates of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The great social change that occurred in the years 1876-1920 is not necessarily a pat and formulaic transition from an alleged `feudalism' to an alleged `capitalism'. This is why many scholars play safe and simply refer to Mexico as in `permanent transition' throughout the twentieth century.
The great class struggle in the Mexican Revolution was that of peasant against landlord. It was Zapata's political genius to understand that the differences between these classes were irreconcilable in a way that the famous Marxist conflict of workers and capitalists was not. Zapata also realised that the Obregons and Carranzas represented a new type of commercial capitalism which was yet another threat to the ancient modalities of peasant communities, and the Revolution had entered a new phase, to determine which of these values should prevail. This explains much of Zapata's so-called obstinacy and what has been described as his `dour, suspicious, protective' attitude. For all that, Zapata was not blind to the virtue of producing economic goods to make a surplus. He condemned the attitude of the zapatistas in neighbouring states who destroyed their sugar industry to produce subsistence crops. Although living standards in those states (Puebla, Guerrero) improved in the short term, there was no surplus from which the poor and needy could be sustained, or armies of self-defence armed and equipped. For this reason he built four new sugar mills in Morelos and tried to nudge his followers towards a market-oriented economy, instead of subsistence crops of corn and beans.
It is important to be clear that Zapata had no reverence for entrepreneurship as such; its importance in his mind always depended on how far it could bolster and sustain his peasant utopia. In any conflict between ancient rights and customs and new technologies, no matter how efficient, Zapata always came down on the side of tradition. He once hauled over the coals a young university-trained agronomist who had been recruited to Morelos to work on land-partitioning. Zapata rebuked him thus: `The villagers say that this stone wall is the boundary. You're going to draw the line along it for me. You engineers often care a lot about straight lines but the boundary is going to be this stone wall, even if you have to work for six months measuring all the ins and outs.'
Yet the most immediately pressing of Zapata's problems concerned the proposed alliance with Villa. Zapata was well aware that in many ways the two great revolutionary leaders were poles and worlds apart. He never wavered in his commitment to agrarian reform and local self-government, and the only political compromise he would ever make was to ally himself with anyone hostile to a common enemy. This incorruptibility was what enabled him to survive nine years of constant fighting and ever-present danger. Villa was always more of a political pragmatist, both by temperament and because the social structure of the north demanded it. The Zapata movement was coherent, focused on a strong core, dedicated to a relatively straightforward form of class warfare; the Villa movement was a trans-class coalition, embracing military colonists, agricultural workers, miners, railwaymen, industrial workers, the middle class and even some reformed hacendados. Villismo was heterogeneous, eclectic and fissiparous: it did not have one single goal, but several, often mutually contradictory.
The chief reason for the uncertain political profile of Villismo was the dominance in the movement of the rancheros. The ranchers were politically ambiguous and ambivalent, sometimes functioning as a brake on the Revolution, sometimes as an accelerator. In states where the hacendados dominated, the rancheros were their natural enemy; in states where the hacienda was insignificant as an institution, the ranchers tended to fill the hegemonic gap and to be as reactionary as the hacendados elsewhere. There was always a tendency with the northern caudillos to turn on the revolutionaries who had fought for them, to tax them or press-gang them. Like Villa himself in his early life, the rancheros played the role of the gabelloti in the Sicilian Mafia, quite prepared to ally themselves with oppressor or oppressed as occasion demanded. Usually their profile was as counter-revolutionary figures. Good examples were in Guanajuato, Michoacan and Jalisco, where they were conservative, Catholic figures, uninterested in revolution.
This should have meant that the Villa movement could accommodate easily to any regime in Mexico City, but the concern for local autonomy - which too often simply meant warlordism - had the result that villistas were just as incompatible with Mexico City technocrats as the zapatistas. The Figueroa brothers, who challenged Zapata in Morelos and Puebla in 1912, were classic examples of villistas avant la lettre, unable to coexist either with Zapata, Madero or Felix Diaz. This made villistas naturally suspect to Zapata. He realised that Villa's land reforms were the product of expediency not conviction or, as Alan Knight puts it: `In Morelos agrarismo dictated the character of the civil war, in the north the civil war dictated the character of agrarismo.' In the north the existing economic system had to be kept in being to finance the war; in Morelos Zapata first undertook the distribution of lands and then looked around for finance for the peasant armies to defend it.
Above all, Villismo and Zapatismo represented a conflict of different values. Entrepreneurship was a desirable goal in itself in the north: that is why land reform there delivered most of the land into the hands of smallholders and rancheros, rather than to the communal villages or ejidos of Morelos. In the north there was always more concern with power and resources for the leaders, rather than with peasant or communal interests. Always there was the clash of the southern programme of communal ownership and the northern policy of confiscating great estates to give them to independent smallholders; but at least Villa did not want to return the land to the original owners, as Carranza did. Villa headed a movement that was primarily concerned with political revolt and the transfer of national power; Zapata headed a movement that was primarily social, concerned purely with land ownership in Morelos. Zapata and his followers revelled in parochialism. They even developed their own canting slang to hold outsiders at a distance: a `buddy' was a vale (literally `a voucher'); `fun' (el gusto) meant trick riding and roping steers; quebrar ('to bust') meant `to shoot'; pobre (poor) was pronounced probe, somos (we are) as semos, fue (it was) as hue, and so on.
The differences extended to points of lifestyle. Zapata was a genuine man of the people, but the northern caudillos lived in some splendour, aping the lives of the hacendados they had overthrown. To confiscate an estate and then live on it like a lord, surrounded by flunkeys and retainers, was the abiding ambition of the northern caudillos. Orozco diversified into mining, transport and retailing, while Urbina retired to a luxurious palace in Durango. Whereas in Chihuahua villista roughnecks occupied the confiscated haciendas and later, in Mexico City, camped in the mansions of the rich, in Morelos it was the young technocrats and agronomists who occupied the deserted `big houses' of the vanished planters.
All this helps to explain the deep suspicion entertained by Zapata for Villa and the villistas, the enforced allies with whom he was now to share the occupation of Mexico City. Arriving in the capital on 26 November, Zapata refused to attend ceremonies in his honour at the National Palace or to give interviews to reporters. Hearing that Villa had occupied the northern suburbs without consulting him, Zapata decamped a few days later, doing another of his famous vanishing acts and reappearing in Morelos. So alarmed was Villa that he sent a special delegation (consisting of Carothers, Serratos and Juan Bandera) to Cuernavaca to assure Zapata of his good wishes. The envoys delivered a per
sonal letter, in which Villa guaranteed his ally his personal safety, stressed that Carranza would rejoice if there was no Villa-Zapata accord, and offered to meet Zapata on 4 December at the floating gardens of Xochimilco just outside Mexico City. Zapata accepted.
To guide him through the tricky negotiations with Zapata, Villa predictably turned to Felipe Angeles, whose advice was blunt: in no circumstances allow Zapata to operate independently against Carranza. `Zapata is a revolutionary, but knows nothing of war,' Angeles said. `His "army" doesn't deserve the name. He doesn't have a single general of any talent. If he asks to take control of operations in the south, don't let him. This is the time to chase Carranza to Veracruz . . . If you give Carranza time to regroup, who knows what will happen.'
As his principal adviser for the meeting Zapata chose Paulino Martinez, not a particularly happy choice, as Villa hated him. Zapata had hoped to build bridges to the peasant leaders in the Villa movement, such as Calixto Contreras, but by late 1914 most of the important ones were dead: Toribio Ortega died of typhus and Porfirio Talamantes was killed at the battle of Tierra Blanca. Apart from Contreras, the main peasant leader remaining with Villa was the intellectual Gonzalez Garza. As mediators Villa and Zapata agreed on two men. The first was General Benigno Serrato who, much later in Mexican history, would be governor of Michoacan and struggle for political supremacy there with future president Lazaro Cardenas. The second was Juan Banderas, the Sinaloan who had been with Villa in jail in 1912 and then joined Zapata; he had already been acting as broker between villistas and zapatistas at the Aguascalientes conference.
On 4 December at Xochimilco the two great figures of the Mexican Revolution finally met for the first and almost only time. If we conflate the meeting on 4 December with another two days later - the only occasions on which the two men encountered each other - we are justified in regarding this as one of those great meetings of history where complementary protagonists met just once, putting the Xochimilco affair in the same category as the encounter of Nelson and Wellington in 1805 or that between Hitler and Franco at Hendaye in 1940. However, perhaps the most salient comparison is between the Villa-Zapata conclave and that of Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin at Guayaquil in 1824. In both cases it was the liberator of the south who was discomfited and the liberator of the north who held centre stage thereafter.
Decked with flowers and bunting as if for a fiesta, the high school at Xochimilco was the unlikely venue for the meeting. There was a mariachi band and a choir of children singing corridos. Zapata arrived first with his aides, his sister Maria de Jesus and her infant son, his cousin Amador Salazar and a formidable bodyguard. Asleep in a pair of white cotton trousers was Zapata's son. Also present was an American observer, Leon Canova, representing the US State Department. Promptly at noon Villa arrived with his escort. It fell to Otilio Montano to introduce the two men, who then pushed their way into a packed schoolhouse and went upstairs to an improvised conference room. The principals sat down at a large oval table, where they were jostled by about sixty enthusiasts who crowded around them, and where Canova observed them minutely and attempted a verbatim transcript of their conversation.
Canova first of all noted the obvious physical differences between the two men. Villa weighed 18o pounds, had a florid complexion `like a German', and was much taller than Zapata who, at 130 pounds was short, dark and thin-faced. In their contrasting garb, the two looked like men from very different spheres. Villa wore a pith helmet, a heavy brown sweater, khaki trousers, leggings and heavy riding boots. Zapata, ever the dandy, had donned a lavender shirt, a short black coat and two neckerchiefs, a large blue silk one with a green border and another in a multi-coloured floral pattern. He also wore black, tight-fitting charro trousers with silver buttons down the outside seam of each leg and two old-fashioned flat gold rings on his left hand. Topping off the outfit was a huge sombrero, useful for shading the sun outside but absurdly dysfunctional here. The snobbish Canova remarked that Zapata's sister's entire outfit, clothes, jewellery and all, could have been purchased in the USA for five dollars.
Observers made much of the signs, symbols and subtexts of the unwritten sumptuary code at Xochimilco. Villa's men looked like soldiers, with khaki uniforms supplied from the USA, standard issue firearms and rank tabs clearly displayed. Zapata's men looked exactly like the southern Mexican peasants they were, dressed in white cotton shirts, rustic sandals and a heterogeneous assortment of weaponry. Villa was making the point with his ubiquitous khaki that he commanded a professional army that was the arbiter of Mexico's destiny. Zapata, dressed as though he were about to cut a dash at a country fair, was underlining the notion that the civilian ethos should always take precedence over the military. The sartorial differences formed a kind of objective correlative of the ideological differences discussed above.
Canova, who wrote up his account of the meeting for the State Department, reported that the atmosphere was initially frosty and that it took half an hour for the ice to thaw: `It was interesting and amusing to watch Villa and Zapata trying to get acquainted with each other. For half an hour they sat in an embarrassed silence, occasionally broken by some insignificant remark, like two country sweethearts.' Zapata seemed to study Villa for a long time without saying anything. Then Villa achieved a breakthrough by making a disparaging remark about Carranza. `I always said so,' Zapata agreed. `I always told them Carranza was a sonofabitch.' For an hour the two of them tried to outdo each other with anti-Carranza stories. Finally Zapata called for cognac and insisted that the teetotal Villa join him in a toast to their partnership. According to Canova, Villa took a gulp and `nearly strangled. His face contorted and tears sprang to his eyes while he huskily called for water.' Having purged the taste with water, he offered the rest of his glass to his revolutionary colleague. Zapata, who was enjoying himself and may have pre-planned Villa's alcoholic discomfiture, insisted that the big man drain the glass.
Feeling more at ease with each other, the two men gradually found common ground. Both stated vehemently that they had no personal political ambitions and just wanted a free hand in their own spheres of influence. Zapata's stance was a moral one: he was contemptuous of all full-time politicans. As he told Villa, `These cabrones [referring to politicians] ... as soon as they see an opportunity, they want to turn it to their advantage and they move in to brown-nose the most powerful man around. That's why I've busted all those cabrones. I can't stand them ... they're all a pack of bastards.' Villa's position was that he lacked the education and background to be president. His explanation to Zapata was a virtual carbon copy of the words he had used to John Reed: `I am a fighter, not a statesman. I am not educated enough to be president. I only learned to read and write properly two years ago. How could I, who never went to school, hope to be able to talk to foreign ambassadors and the cultivated gentlemen of Congress. It would be bad for Mexico if an uneducated man were to be president.' The two agreed, however, that the next president would have to be under their control. `We'll just appoint the ones who aren't going to make trouble,' Villa said. Zapata replied: `I'll advise all our friends to be very careful. If not, they will feel the blows of the machete.'
At mention of the machete there was general laughter. `Well,' Zapata continued, `I think we won't be taken in. We've only loosened the rope on them, looking out for them, over here, over there, to keep after them while they're grazing.' Zapata continued with a tirade against big cities that had Villa nodding in agreement: `The men who have worked and walked the hardest are the last to get any good from these sidewalks. Just nothing but sidewalks. And I'm speaking for myself. When I walk on a sidewalk I feel like I'm going to fall.'
Later the talk turned to agrarian reform. Villa accepted the Plan of Ayala in principle, but was vague about the how, when and where of land distribution. Much of his talk was generalised emotive stuff: `All large estates are in the hands of the rich, and the poor have to work from morn till night. I am convinced that in the future life will be different, and i
f things do not change, we shall not give up the Mausers that we hold in our hands.' And again: `Well, we should give the people the bits of land they want. Once they've been distributed, there will be some who'll try to take them back again.'
These anodyne expressions contrasted with Zapata's impassioned statements. Speaking of the Morelos peasants, he said: `They feel so much love for the land. They still don't believe it when they're told: "This land is yours." They think it's a dream. But after they've seen other people drawing crops from these lands they too will say: "I'm going to ask for my land and I'm going to sow there." More than anything, this is the love the people feel for the land. Generally everybody gets their living from it.' At this point General Benigno Serrato interjected: `It seems impossible to them that it has really happened. They do not believe it. They say: "Maybe tomorrow they will take it away." ' Villa tried to reassure the men of the south: `You'll see. The people will be in command and they'll soon see who their real friends are.' Zapata agreed that the peasants had a very shrewd idea of their friends and enemies: `The people know these others want to take their lands away. They know that they and only they can defend it. But they would die before they'd give up the land.'
After these public discussions Villa and Zapata withdrew to a private room for a secret conference, accompanied by just a handful of trusted advisers. For this session Palafox was at Zapata's side. They agreed that any future government must give them a free hand in their respective bailiwicks, and they in turn would leave the government a free hand in foreign policy and in the states where they had no vital interests. For the immediate future the two agreed not to impede each other's pursuit of personal enemies and to agree a list of proscribed persons. Villa expressed his concern that Zapata seemed willing to recruit anyone, ex porfiristas, ex-huertistas and, most woundingly, ex-orozquistas, to his ranks. Zapata replied that not all villistas seemed committed enthusiasts for the Revolution.
