Emiliano Zapata

The iconic figure of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata, represents the most radical and, for many, the foundational purpose of the revolution: the peasants' demand for a return of lands seized over the centuries and a strengthening of the collective form of land ownership (ejidos). Produced in the midst of the sweeping land reforms of the 1920s, Siquerios's lithograph portrays Zapata (who had been assassomated in 1919) as triumphant and at peace. Pictured among an expanse of mountains, Zapata appears as if vitally connected to the land. The shape of his sombrero - an important symbol of the revolution - is echoed in the shape of the mountains, as if to embed the revolution itself into the land which produced it.