In front of a striking mural at the center of the sun-baked town of Anenecuilco stands the ruins of a house in which the iconic revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was born and grew up. Born in 1879 to a mestizo (mixed Indigenous and Spanish ancestry) and campesino (rural peasant) family, Zapata was orphaned at a young age. His early life was marked by misery, poverty, and exposure to the brutality and injustice of the hacienda system. At the time, Mexico’s hacienda system was roughly analogous to the feudal system of medieval Europe. Rich,…
