Zapata Lives!: Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico

10. The Formation of the Ejido of Unión Zapata

unión zapata, oax., 27 april 1937 señor gral de div. d. lázaro cárdenas méxico, d.f. Very Respectable Mr. President, Please permit us to direct our attention to you in order to offer you our most abundant thanks for the kind assistance that you have sent to us in order to alleviate our precarious existence. At the same time we are pleased to report to you that señor Ingeniero D. Cliserio Villafuerte was in a meeting with the señor Delegate of the Agrarian Department telling him what he thought was pertinent to the urbanization of our community, which is now being designed to our great satisfaction. Now they are gathering the construction materials to make the house of the campesino with the collaboration of the people of this community. The commissioned engineer who is working very hard is making plans for the introduction of running water. . . . At the same time, under his direction, the school is almost finished, using the donation you sent, and will probably be inaugurated on the first of May. The señor Engineer Villafuerte gave us the good news that you have ordered that we be presented with five oxen with their respective plows and a sewing machine for the Feminine League of Social chapter 10 The Formation of the Ejido of Unión Zapata Cárdenas y Zapata, presente! 267 Struggle [Liga Femenil de Lucha Social], which has already been formed. For all of this we very sincerely thank you. We will inform you in a timely manner, Mr. President, of the date on which our water pump will be installed, which will bring this liquid to our community, as well as the date for the installation of the corn mill, which will bring so many benefits to our compañeras. In the name of all of the children of this town we beg you to do us the favor of giving our most abundant thanks to your respectable wife for the presentation of one hundred pesos she made to the children for their sweets. . . . We have also received and thank you for the first-aid kit and the clothing that was sent for the children in the school. We are deeply grateful to you and to your respectable wife Mr. President and we shall retain eternal gratitude to you and your family members. Yours with all respect, Anacleto Olivera President of the Ejidal Commission Unión Zapata Like that of Santa María del Tule, the local history of Unión Zapata is strongly tied to the figure of Lázaro Cárdenas. The letter above was written shortly after a visit the president paid to the community in 1937. Unlike Santa María del Tule, Unión Zapata barely existed as a population site prior to the formation of the ejido. In fact, it was cobbled together in the early 1930s to facilitate such formation. Twenty families were needed to form a group to petition for land. Such a group quickly came together as Loma Larga, which later changed its name to Unión Zapata. The families involved came from local communities as well as from resident populations of several local haciendas. The community petitioned for land in 1933, prior to the beginning of Cárdenas’s presidential term, and after his inauguration, the future ejido authorities of the community developed an intense correspondence with him, culminating in a visit by him and his wife in 1937, part of a larger swing through Oaxaca. The visit occurred one year after the community received a positive presidential resolution, signed by Cárdenas, granting ejido land. The correspondence between ejido authorities and officials 268 New and Old Zapatismo in Oaxaca from the Agrarian Department in both Oaxaca and Mexico City, as well as a series of letters written directly to President Cárdenas, offer a rich record of an ejido organized at the height of the Cárdenas government’s program to organize rural peasants, educate them, and establish national culture and policy in the countryside. The new ejidatarios of Unión Zapata were adept at filling their letters with revolutionary rhetoric and enthusiastic proclamations of commitment to the programs advocated by the Cárdenas government. At the same time, they succeeded in obtaining fairly speedy resolution of their initial ejido petition—three years— and in securing additional land within a year, as well...