With the 1994 developments in Mexico, I thought some historical background might be welcome. Although the following concentrates on central Mexico---Emiliano Zapata's home---it places the development of _Zapatista_-type groups in historical context. This is the appendix to _Zapata of Mexico_ by Peter E. Newell, published 1979 by Cienfuegos Press, Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW17 2BL, U.K. The Ejidos and the Land Question PEOPLE have lived in Mexico a long time. Their roots are planted deep in the soil. They are part of the great migration that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia, fought the bitter cold of the Fourth Glaciation which covered much of Asia and North America, and then moved south. No one knows exactly when what is now called Mexico began to be populated, but the anthropologist, William Howells, reports the finding of a human skeleton, together with the skeletons of two mammoths at Tepexpan, northeast of Mexico City, in a glacial layer at least 12,000 years old. Hand-made artifacts have been found at Valsequillo in central Mexico dated from 20,000 years ago. Settled farming communities existed in Mexico from about 7,000 BC. By 6,000 BC beans were being raised, and 1,000 years later, squash. Corn, cultivated since at least 5,000 BC, became Mexico's major crop around 1,500 BC. The first Mexicans of whom there are records, lived in the Valley of Mexico and surrounding areas, including what is now called Morelos. They settled there about one century BC. They occupied permanent villages, and subsisted chiefly on the products of their common fields. They produced sufficient for their needs. They appear to have been peaceful. Their irrigated lands and artificial island gardens were enormously productive, and crops were planted several times a year. About AD 400, a new people spread into the Valley of Mexico from Puebla and beyond Morelos. These have been called Toltecs or Master Builders. Tenochtitlan was their capital. The Toltecs have been described as great architects. ``The were skilled likewise in agriculture, cultivating corn, cotton, beans, chili peppers, and all other domesticated plants known to Mexico,'' comments George C. Valiant. They held a market every twenty days in Cuernavaca and many other towns. They prospered and multiplied. But by AD 1,000, Toltec culture began to decline, and shortly after came to an end. >From then until about 1,300, Mexican society was chaotic, resulting in a mixture of cultures, and eventually giving rise to what has generally been called Aztec civilization. This is not the place for a detailed account of the development of Mexican society and the ultimate dominance of the Aztec Confederacy in the Valley of Mexico and southward to Puebla and the Valley of Morelos. Briefly, Bamford Parkes observes that the Aztecs' ``cultural level was roughly equivalent to that of the Egyptian Pharaohs and the priest-kings of Chaldaea, or the Jewish people under Joshua and the Judges. Society was still theocratic; the gods were, for the most part, still tribal deities and had not yet been universalized, nor had the individual been freed from priestly control.'' What we are interested in, however, is the Mexican Indians' attitude towards the land and land-ownership, from early times, through the Aztec period, the Spanish Conquest, and right up into the present century---particularly in central Mexico, including Morelos, where the mass of the population of Mexico lived. THE original hunting tribes of Mexico, as elsewhere, had no conception of landed property. Hunting and fishing was practiced jointly, and the produce shared in common. The idea of private, or even family, ownership of land developed very slowly indeed, even when the Indians ceased to lead a nomadic existence and lived in villages or _pueblos_. Indeed, the Mexican Indians' attitude towards the land and land-ownership changed very little over the centuries. Of the situation in the fifteenth century, Parkes remarks: ``The mass of the people cultivated the land. Land was not held as private property. Ownership belonged to the tribe or to some smaller unit within it. Each family, however, was allotted a piece of land which it cultivated independently. Certain lands were reserved for the expenses of the government and the support of the priests, these lands being cultivated by the common people.'' But in the areas dominated by the Aztec Confederation, there began to emerge to a small extent a form of peasant slavery or _peonage_ over members of some of the subject tribes. Nevertheless, of the Aztecs, Lewis Henry Morgan writes: ``The Aztec and their Confederate tribes still held their lands in common [and] lived in large households composed of a number of related families.'' The majority of the people possessed some personal property, ``but the land belonged to the tribe, and only its produce to the individual.'' Indeed, ``agriculture was the basis of Aztec life, and corn, _zea mays_, was the chief food plant. The cultivation of plants ensured a food supply near at hand, which was not subject to the fluctuations of game, and thereby enabled man to take thought for the morrow. The clan system recognized that the fruits of the land supported the tribe. Therefore, it was only natural that the tribe should own and control the land which supported its members.'' Beyond the Valley of Mexico the situation was very similar. ``The people of the provinces,'' notes William H. Prescott, ``were distributed into _calpulli_, or tribes, who held their lands of the neighborhood in common. Officers of their own appointment parceled out these lands among several families of the _calpulli_; and on the extinction or removal of a family its lands reverted to common stock, to be again distributed. The individual proprietor held no power to alienate them. The laws regulating these matters were very precise, and had existed ever since the occupation of the country by the Aztecs. Land, therefore, was all-important to the Mexican Indian, but it was not the private possession of any one person. In a sense, it belonged to all and, at the same time, it belonged to no one. Of course, the colonization of Mexico by the Spaniards often changed such relationships and behavior-patterns---but not all at once or without resistance and conflict, however. Indeed, at the end of the last century, Peter Kropotkin says that ``it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to cultivate their fields in common. And Ricardo Flores Magon wrote in 1906 that ``in Mexico there are some four million Indians who lived, until twenty or twenty-five years ago, in communities that held land, water and woods in common. Mutual aid was the rule in these communities and authority made itself felt only when the rent collector made his periodic appearance or when the _rurales_ came in search of recruits for the army. . . . All had a right to the land, the water for irrigation, the forest was for cutting timber, and the timber was used in the construction of cabins. Ploughs passed from hand to hand, as did the yoke of oxen. Each family cultivated its special strip of land, which was calculated as being sufficient to produce what the family required; and the work of weeding and harvesting the crop was done in common, the entire community uniting to get Pedro's crop today, Juan's tomorrow, and so on.'' The common lands usually lay on the outer edges of the _pueblo_---hence the term _ejido_ (pronounced e-hee-do) which means ``exit'' or ``way out.'' THE Spaniards first arrived in Mexican waters in 1517. In 1519, an adventurer by the name of Hernan Cortes sailed to Mexico with five hundred men. First, he established a town, which he called Veracruz. His small force moved inland, and three months later they arrived outside the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Neither he nor any of his men had ever seen such a place before. Babylon in all its glory had never been so splendid! But Cortes was not able to capture the city, or destroy the Aztec Empire until the end of September, 1521. The Mexicans were not defeated by military conquest but by disease---an epidemic of smallpox, unknown to the Mexicans, brought from Europe by the Spaniards. Tenochtitlan was systematically destroyed by the Spaniards, and then rebuilt on the model of a Spanish town. It was to become Mexico City. It also became the center for a series of expeditions, in which the Spaniards founded more towns and cities and, over the next two decades, conquered what was to become New Spain. The Aztecs, as well as all the other peoples of central Mexico, were subjugated; and the Spaniards gained control over enormous tracts of land. New Spain was largely conquered by private adventurers known as _conquistadors_, whose ambitions were to become rich. The _conquistadors_, however, were firmly controlled by a small group of agents of the Spanish Crown, called _gachupines_---Wearers of Spurs. New Spain was despotically ruled by a Viceroy. The leaders of the Catholic Church, who were all _gachupines_, worked closely with the Viceroy, and were part of the colonial bureaucracy. Their aim was to make Christians of the Mexicans and, thereby, increase the power and wealth of the Church and themselves. Victor Alba describes the system which Spain imposed upon the people of Mexico. ``First, there was the _encomienda_, by which a _conquistador_ received a certain amount of land and the Indians who lived on it, in exchange for protecting and Christianizing them. The arrangement was in essence a transplant of the feudal system which had long since become moribund in Europe. To save the Indians from being entirely at the mercy of the new lords, and to preserve the ancient system of communal ownership, each Indian village was guaranteed a tract of common farm land---eventually standardized at one square league in size. These _ejidos_. . . could not be sold; with these lands, waters, pastures, and woodlands, the Indians were able to subsist. The new lords, however, found ways to make the _encomienda_ and the _ejido_ profitable for themselves. The former gave them _de facto_ domination over the Indians; the latter enabled them to put the Indians to work on the _conquistadors'_ lands without pay, since the natives could presumably live on the produce of their _ejidos_.'' The _conquistadors_ numbered only a few hundred, and the first generation of colonists a few thousands; yet more than five hundred Spaniards acquired _encomiendas_. At first, the Emperor tried to limit the exploitation of the Indians. He ordered payment for all labor exacted from free and _encomienda_ Indians. Indeed, under the rule of the early Viceroys, the conditions of the tribes of central Mexico were not all that worse than they had been under the Aztecs. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Indian villages began to suffer from illegal exactions of the _corridors_ and from the encroachments of the emerging _creole_ landowners. All attempts to protect the _ejidos_ were frustrated by corrupt officials. Parkes comments: ``According to Spanish law, all the land of Mexico was ultimately the property of the Crown, and only a royal grant gave legal title to ownership. Since most of the Indian villages had never obtained grants, it was easy for the _creoles_ gradually to enlarge the boundaries of their estates, claiming that they were occupying land which belonged to the Crown. After such a usurpation had been tolerated for a considerable period, it was regularised by the government through a _composicion_. . . . By a slow process of attrition extending through generations, the relatively small holdings of the original _conquistadors_ were gradually enlarged into enormous _haciendas_ which covered most of the fertile lands of central Mexico.'' Nevertheless, while Mexico remained part of the Spanish Empire, many _pueblos_ preserved a precarious independence. But a considerable proportion of the population---probably almost forty per cent---were compelled to become laborers on the _haciendas_. They were transformed into _peones_---debt-slaves, and their debts were inherited from generation to generation. The _hacendados_ were not interested in improving their methods of production. The Indians were deprived of farm implements and domesticated animals like oxen. Agriculture, therefore, stagnated. Only the comparatively small number of independent small-scale farmers---_rancheros_ like the Zapata family for example---could be relied upon to use the land reasonably efficiently. But early in the nineteenth century, a form of ``plantation capitalism'' slowly began to emerge. _Haciendas_ developed whose aims were purely commercial. By 1810, shortly before Mexico gained her independence, there were 5,000 such estates, of which about one quarter raised livestock. Many of these were, however, in the arid north of the country, and employed very few _peones_ or wage-workers. The sugar-producing _haciendas_ were generally located in Morelos and the central heartland where the Indian population was most numerous. Yet, in 1810, there were still 4,500 autonomous Indian communities with their _ejidos_. ``Thus,'' says Eric R. Wolf, ``Mexico emerged into its period of independence with its rural landscape polarized between large estates on the one hand and Indian communities on the other---units, moreover, which might be linked economically, but which remained set off against each other socially and politically.'' AFTER a long and bitter struggle, Mexico achieved her independence in 1821. ``Independent'' Mexico stripped the Church of much of its power, and forced it to sell off considerable amounts of land as well. But the _hacendados_ improved their position. A law passed in 1856, the _Ley Lerdo_, despite the intentions of some of its supporters, made the situation worse for the _peones_. The purposes of the law were to increase government revenues and to stimulate economic progress. The Church was forbidden to own land, but was to receive payment for its estates. No provision, however, was made for the division of large clerical _haciendas_. Only the already wealthy landowners, therefore, were able to pay the purchase price of the Church lands and the heavy government sales tax. Furthermore, the _Lay Lerdo_ ordered the sale of Indian _ejidos_ attached to the new Spanish towns, as well as the traditional _pueblos_. When many of the land-hungry _mestizos_ (people who were part-Indian and part-Spanish) realized that they would not be able to buy the Church lands, they rebelled. The immediate result was a series of minor _mestizo_ and Indian revolts throughout central Mexico. Nevertheless, the number of small _rancheros_ did increase, but the most conspicuous result of the _Ley Lerdo_ was to increase the concentration of land ownership on a scale hitherto unknown. By 1889, twenty-nine ``companies'' had obtained 27.5 million hectares, or fourteen per cent of the total land area of Mexico. And between 1889 and 1894, another six per cent was alienated. ``At the same time,'' comments Wolf, ``cultivators who could not show a clear title to their lands were treated as illegal squatters and dispossessed.'' By 1900, there were about fifty _haciendas_ of over 100,000 hectares. One _hacendado_, Luis Terrazas, owned fifteen _haciendas_, comprising two million hectares, 500,000 head of cattle, and 250,000 sheep! Of the situation under Diaz's dictatorship, Gerrit Huizer observes: ``The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 and in which the armed peasantry played a crucial role, should be seen against the background of the usurpation of communal lands by large _haciendas_, which took place in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many indigenous communities tried in vain to retain or recover the communal lands of which they had been deprived under legislation which favored private property. Particularly in the densely populated state of Morelos, the sugar estates expanded at the cost of the communities. The peasants' homes and crops were destroyed to obtain land for sugar cultivation. The peasants affected were forced to work on the estates.'' BETWEEN 1910 and 1920, Mexican society was turned upside down. In a number of states like Morelos and Puebla, the _peones_ were able to take much of the land back from the _hacendados_. Nevertheless, in many instances, by 1920, some of the _hacendados_ had been able to repossess it again. During his term as president, Carranza did little more than make promises to the _peones_. Between 1917 and 1920, only 48,000 _peones_ received any land. And even these usually possessed neither water, seeds, nor tools, and were forced to work for the local _hacienda_. But Obregon, once elected, made plans for the rural areas. Naturally, they were of a paternalistic nature. In 1923, he had a law passed which gave a parcel of land to each member of an _ejido_ as his personal, private property, though the recipient could not sell it. Agrarians like Soto y Gama supported the law enthusiastically. And the landowners received compensation in the form of government bonds. During Obregon's presidency, about 1.2 million hectares were distributed. In 1924, General Calles was elected president. His regime was more authoritarian than that of Obregon, but he continued to distribute land to the _peones_. He even proclaimed himself the heir of Zapata! What Calles actually did, in an attempt to destroy the power of the local _jefes politicos_ and the village _caciques_, was to divide the _ejidos_ into individual plots. He also established agricultural banks, but four-fifths of their loans went to the _hacendados_, and not to the ordinary _peones_. Altogether, Calles distributed just under 3.3 million hectares to 1,500 villages. Calles left office in November, 1928. And he was followed by Portes Gil, whose policies were largely dictated by the ex-president. He lasted less than a year. Nevertheless, during that period, Gil distributed more than one million hectares. In 1930, Ortiz Rubio became president. He lasted two years, during which time he distributed less than 200,000 hectares. He was followed by Alberland Rodriguez, who showed little interest in the land question---or anything else for that matter. Up to the end of 1933, perhaps less than eight million hectares of arable land had been given back to the _peones_. Parkes observes that ``there were still nearly two-and-a-half million families with no land at all. In other words, at the end of twenty years of allegedly revolutionary administration, Mexican rural society was still basically feudal.'' But between 1934 and 1940, during the presidency of Lazaro Cardenas, the rural feudalism, to which Parkes refers, was largely broken. Cardenas was an idealist, but he was also a very practical man and a modernizing reformer. In six years, he parceled out and distributed over twelve million hectares. And he organized an _ejidal_ bank, to give credit to the new _rancheros_ and farmers. Nevertheless, even by 1940, there were still many large _haciendas_ in Mexico. ``. . . the big owners still held more than three times as much land as the _ejidatarios_; sixty per cent of the land was held by less than ten thousand _hacendados_, and there were still three hundred _haciendas_ of more that 40,000 hectares apiece.'' Fifty per cent of the population engaged in agriculture were still _peones_ or wage workers. WITH the slow, but inevitable, development of industrial capitalism in Mexico, the old as well as the newly-created _ejidos_ naturally took on a different form. They tended to become merely cooperative farms, financed largely by the government. The agricultural bank, which was founded in 1926, soon found itself in a difficult situation due to the duality of its functions. On the one hand, it was supposed to help organize the _ejidatarios_ into cooperatives and, at the same time, operate the cooperative farms as non-profit-making concerns; and, on the other hand, it was to make loans to _rancheros_ and even some large landowners and _hacendados_ producing crops for commercial profit. In 1931, however, the National Agricultural Bank was reorganized. It ceased to lend to the _hacendados_, and only lent money to the _ejidatarios_ organized into cooperatives. But in 1934, it was fused with the rural bank; and, once again, these banks were allowed to extend credit to non-_ejidatarios_---but only to small and middle-sized _rancheros_. Another problem was the legal status of the _ejido_. Originally, the land was, and was to be, held and worked in common. The _ejidatarios_ could neither alienate nor mortgage their land. They were to enjoy it ``in usufruct'' rather than ``fee simple.'' The subject of the right was the community, not the individual. In theory, at least, the land belonged to the _pueblos_. Even the tractors---where they existed---were used in common and the marketing of the produce was also done collectively. A law of ``_Ejido Patrimony_'' was promulgated. But by 1935, only about twenty per cent of all _ejidos_ had been ``legalized.'' Other methods of ``solving'' the agrarian question were, therefore, tried. One of them was the ``colonizing projects,'' in which, where there was said to be no more land available for distribution in a given area, the _peones_ were to be persuaded to move to other regions with more land. It was not a success. Since 1940, more land has been distributed. But, in the main, government-organized _ejidos_ and cooperative farms have not been all that successful or productive, though their establishment---together with an increasing number of _rancheros_---has undoubtedly assisted in breaking the power of the old feudal _hacendados_ and many of the planters. Furthermore, the general standard of living (or, perhaps, we should say existence) for the majority of _peones_ has not improved all that much. This is borne out by Dr. Josue de Castro, the former Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, who observed in 1952: ``The _ejido_ was undoubtedly a step forward for Mexico in the struggle against hunger, but unfortunately, the results fell short of expectation. The Mexican revolutionaries were idealists rather than technicians, and they forgot that mere redistribution of land is not enough. In order to cultivate it adequately, technical and financial resources are also necessary. The result was that the Indians, who were generally unprepared, disoriented, and without adequate technical knowledge, were unable to make proper use of the plots they received. The agrarian reform did not lead to the increase of production or to the indispensable diversification of crops which were needed to raise the national living standards. As proof of this, one may cite the fact that even today Mexico imports appreciable quantities of her basic food element---corn---and still does not have adequate supplies of many protective foods.'' And of the situation, Segovia writes: ``From 1936 onwards there have been attempts, through agrarian reform, to solve the human problems of the rural sector, especially by distributing land to the peasants in the form of _ejidos_. These lands represent thirty-seven per cent of the registered land of the country. Both _ejidos_ and small holdings, owing to population growth, have shown a pronounced tendency to split into uneconomically small sub-holdings; the absolute growth of the rural population has today (1968) created a situation in which over two million peasants have a statutory right to share in an _ejido_.'' Yet, despite all the so-called idealism of the official ``revolutionaries'' and politicians, the land that has been distributed has been distributed in an authoritarian and paternalistic manner, often as a means of heading off further _Zapatista_-like insurrections and struggles, as well as a method of destroying feudal land ownership in the countryside. Such schemes---at least for the _peones_---were bound to fail. In fact, in the main, even during Cardenas' presidency, government policy has consistently been to encourage _rancheros_ and ``middle'' farmers to the detriment not only of the old _hacendados_ but also of the _ejidatarios_. Such policy is, of course, in line with the development of an industrial capitalist economy---in Mexico, as elsewhere. Morelos, as always, spotlights the trend. Like the rest of Mexico, it began to change. Factories sprang up, and highways were constructed. Moreover, it became a center for cash crops---peanuts, rice, and, of course, sugar cane. Zapata would not have been pleased. Over the years, the population was more than twice that of 1920; and by 1970, over fifty per cent of the inhabitants had come from elsewhere, or were the children of those from elsewhere. By 1966, there were 32,000 _ejidatarios_ in just over two hundred _ejidos_, comprising almost 300,000 hectares of fields, pasture, and timber forests. But there were also 10,000 private proprietors and _rancheros_, often with tiny plots of uneconomical land. Between 1927 and 1967, the number of _ejidos_ and _ejidatarios_ doubled; and the number of hectares of land that they worked also more than doubled, but the pressure of population and, perhaps even more important, the lure of ``high'' wages in the factories during the post-war boom, ineluctably drove the _peones_ from the land. FEUDALISM in Mexico has gone. A new bourgeois, middle-class, has emerged, as well as its opposite, a propertyless, wage-earning proletariat. But there are still large numbers of _peones_, often living in appalling poverty. Indeed, in absolute numbers, due to the increase in population, there are more landless peasants in Mexico today than there were in 1910. In October, 1972, Hugh O'Shaughnessy reported that ``the poor are getting relatively poorer, and the rich, richer in what is for the moment a businessman's paradise.'' He quoted Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank, as saying that in Mexico during the last twenty years, the richest ten per cent of the population had increased its share of the national wealth to just over half, while the poorest forty per cent had seen their slice of the national cake shrink to eleven per cent. And Luis Echeverria, in his inaugural presidential address, admitted that, after one hundred-and-fifty years of independence, very many Mexicans lived in ``lacerating poverty,'' with not enough food, clothes, or even drinking water. ``Let us produce more food, and get it to the poor man's table,'' he added. According to Dr. Bartolome Perez Ortiz, a nutrition expert at the Mexico City children's hospital, over seventy per cent of Mexican children suffered from malnutrition in 1974. Possibly, the situation has worsened since then. For many years, however, neither the peasants nor the industrial workers attempted to do much about the situation. The had become apathetic, demoralized, even frightened. Mexican governments had become increasingly repressive. But by 1968---the year of student and worker unrest throughout much of the world---Mexico began to stir. ``In 1968,'' writes Victor Alba, ``more than halfway through Diaz Ordaz's term, which had been characterized by the widening of the economic gap between rich and poor, there was an outbreak of fury, and during it the president was attacked, cursed, and booed. The Mexicans could hardly believe what occurred themselves.'' In October, on the eve of the Olympic Games which were being held in Mexico City, there was a student demonstration in the Plaza de Tlatelolco. Units of the army were called in to disperse it; over two hundred people were killed by the army (government sources claim that some of the troops were fired upon), and many hundreds were jailed, some for more than three years without trial. Accusations were also made to the effect that the trouble was stirred up by Russian-trained KGB agents. True or not, subsequent unrest in Mexico---particularly in the countryside---has been rooted in socioeconomic conditions. AFTER May 1969, numerous _Zapatista_-type groups were formed, and have been active in different parts of the country. Early in 1973, for instance, a group of _guerrilleros_ ambushed government troops in the Acapulco area on a number of occasions, killing a score or so. During the same year, there was considerable unrest in both the state of Puebla and in Puebla City itself. Following a series of land occupations and expropriations, the whole state was in turmoil. There were numerous assassinations. Among those murdered were three university professors who had supported the peasants. A number of _peones_, who had been occupying privately-owned landholdings, were also murdered by fanatical rightist vigilante groups, encouraged, according to the _peones_ by the local archbishop of the Catholic Church. In the state of Guerrero, a guerrilla ``party of the poor''---which was not, in fact, a political party, but a _Zapatista_-type organization---had considerable grassroots support among the peasants. The ``party of the poor'' operated in the vast, and almost impenetrable, mountain areas between Acapulco on the Pacific Coast and eastern Morelos. Its armed ``wing'' was called the ``brigade of peasant executioners.'' The ``party of the poor'' helped local _peones_ to establish _ejido_-type cooperative farms. Its leader, the highly talented former school teacher, Lucio Cabanas, was finally shot by the army in December, 1974. During 1975, large numbers of poor peasants developed a broad movement of ``illegal'' occupations of lands throughout Guerrero, Hidalgo, Michoacan, Sonora, and Tlaxcala. They were, in many instances, attacked by regular army units. Scores of them were killed and injured, In Michoacan, in January, 1976, forty-five families were driven from the lands which they had occupied. And during the first five months of the year, fifty _campesinos_ were killed and over five hundred injured in clashes with government forces in various parts of the country. In November, two hundred landless peasants occupied four large _ranchos_ in Culiacan. In a desperate attempt to head off further unrest, the outgoing president, Luis Echeverria, expropriated about 100,000 hectares of private land in the state of Sonora for distribution to the peasants. The peasants had been seizing much of the land anyway! And they refused to give it back. Nevertheless, by the end of 1977, land seizures began to slacken off. Attempt have been made to build and organize autonomous labor unions. ``The change of tactics corresponds to a growing realization by agricultural workers that local seizures or grants of tiny, individual plots of land, will never give them the power base they need to become self-sufficient. . .'' The _Coordindora Campesino Revolucionaria Independent_, founded in Mexico City, co-ordinates groups from Colina, Morelos, Qaxaca, Pueblo, Sinaloa, Veracruz, and elsewhere. A number of traditional agricultural unions, as well as two or three so-called ``revolutionary'' parties, also vie for the _campesinos_ support. In one form or another the struggle continues. . . And in the words of Mary Charlesworth: ``The Mexican revolution is still incomplete, as great inequalities in wealth exist and the peasant-land problem is still unsolved. But at least there is the ideal of the revolution to struggle towards, and this is important for the Mexican temperament.'' The spirit of Zapatismo lives on.