Meaning of Land and freedom

What is land and freedom:

"Land and freedom" is a FIt was used as the slogan of peasant struggles for the vindication of land rights. In Mexico, it was the motto of the Mexican Liberal Party and is associated with the Mexican revolution and the figure of the caudillo Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Liberation Army of the South.

Today, however, we know that it was Ricardo Flores Magon, politician and writer, founder of the Mexican Liberal Party and considered one of the intellectual precursors of the revolution, who used it most frequently in his political writings.

"Land and freedom" referred to the right of Mexican peasants to own and work their own lands, and to the need to confront the political struggle and armed to liberate the Mexican people from the oligarchic regimes that only privileged the landowners and the gentry, as was the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

The motto "land and freedom", then, united in the imaginary of the revolution the agrarian struggle of Emiliano Zapata in the south with him ideology of anarcho-communist tendency proposed by Flores Magón from the north.

Both, Flores Magón and Zapata, agitated their followers in the days of the revolution to raise their voices against the injustices of those who held power. political and economic: the first based on the ideal of freedom defended by international acracia, the second upholding the right to the land of the peasantry.

Likewise, both Zapata and Flores Magón shared similar positions and political interests in relation to the situation of the country in the turbulent revolutionary years: both professed the same distrust towards Francisco I. Madero, who seemed to them a standard-bearer of the northern bourgeoisie, and they repudiated Victoriano Huerta, who betrayed the former to seize power.

However, despite all the similarities between the positions of one and the other, and despite the fact that there are indications to think that both could have corresponded in the days of the revolution, there is no letter from the Liberation Army of the South or from Emiliano Zapata that contained the motto "land and freedom".

Zapatismo, on the other hand, always used as its motto: "Reform, justice and law." And, although there was a certain influence from Flores Magón to Zapata, especially thanks to the intellectuals who joined more late to the Zapata movement, which brought Marxist and anarchist ideas, there is no news that Zapata ever used this motto.

"Land and freedom", it should be noted, is a phrase as old as the struggles for the right to land. It has some of its antecedents in Russia, where since 1861 the peasant movement had adopted it to demand more dignified conditions in agricultural work. It had also been the name of a Spanish anarchist newspaper founded in 1888.

Literature professional, graduated from the Universidad de Los Andes. Passionate about literature, history and philosophy. He has worked creating, writing and proofreading in publishing, advertising, journalism and digital content since 2008.