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• two  The Kingdom of Zapata I n the early 1950s, when Hollywood producers made a movie about the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, with Marlon Brando in the title role (Viva Zapata! 1952), theychose SouthTexas, particularly Zapata County, as the location for shooting the film.Why they did so, when Zapata had lived and waged war mostly in south-central Mexico, in the vicinity of his native state of Morelos, is a mystery.The contrast could not have been greater than between the semiarid brush country of the lower Rio Grande Plains and the lush sugarcane-growing region of Emiliano Zapata’s birth. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to depict authentic Mexican architecture, such as could be found in San Ygnacio in northern Zapata County, or in Roma in neighboring Starr County, even if the geography was not authentic. Most likely, the movie people—even the writer John Steinbeck, who penned the script—believed that Zapata County had been named after Emiliano Zapata and thought it fitting to film his life there. They surely had never heard of Col. Antonio Zapata, who had lived, fought, and died almost a century before the better-known revolutionary and at the northern extreme of Mexican territory, where Emiliano Zapata had never set foot. Zapata County,Texas, was organized in 1858 and was named in honor of Col. Antonio Zapata at the behest of the first county judge, an EnglishmannamedHenryRedmond ,whowasobviouslyanadmirerof thecolonel. Redmond was a resident of Carrizo, the county seat that was later renamed Zapata too. However, before the county seat acquired its present name in 1898, the site, in addition to having been called Carrizo (after the Carrizo Indians who inhabited the area in the eighteenth century), was also known as Habitación, which means “dwelling” in Spanish, or Habitación de Redmond , for wherever Henry Redmond dwelled was the county seat. • 24  From the Republic of the Rio Grande According to Virgil Lott and Mercurio Martínez in their history of Zapata County, Redmond was a merchant who came to the area in the 1830s and married a woman from Guerrero, Tamaulipas. He carried on trade between present-day Zapata County and settlements in the neighboring Mexican state of Nuevo León, such as Cerralvo and Agualeguas, as well as the Villas del Norte along the Rio Grande (42–44). As a merchant , Redmond would have been acquainted with Antonio Zapata, who, according to Lorenzo de la Garza, devoted himself in the 1820s and 1830s to commercial activities, mainly the buying and selling of livestock in the area around Revilla/Guerrero (La antigua 38). Cattle traders, like horse traders, may be admired for their shrewd dealings but not necessarily for their honesty. Yet, almost twenty years after his defeat and violent death, one of Antonio Zapata’s fellow merchants —and perhaps competitor—petitioned the State of Texas to honor Colonel Zapata by naming the county after him as a tribute to his character . Lorenzo de la Garza states that, in business, Zapata’s credit was unlimited , because of his reputation as an honorable man (La antigua 38–39). As an example of Zapata’s honesty, it is often related that in the mid- to late 1830s, coinciding with the rebellion in Texas, or because of it, Antonio Zapata suffered catastrophic business losses. Most likely, his cattle were requisitioned without payment by the centralist forces under Santa Anna on their way to and from the battlefields of Texas. Zapata, having operated under “unlimited credit,” found it necessary to liquidate all his property to pay off his debts, which, according to some versions, amounted to seventy thousand pesos, a veritable fortune at the time. In order to meet the debts, he had to sell even his wife’s jewelry (Huston 67). However, one creditor, Don Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, did not call in Zapata’s debt, thereby showing his faith in the man who later became his military antagonist when they found themselves on opposite sides of the Federalist Wars, the movement that spawned the Republic of the Rio Grande (Gallegos 9). It is remarkable that a man like Antonio Zapata—who, unlike a prophet, achieved great honor and respect in his own land—came from very humble origins. Juan José Gallegos, in his exhaustive studyof Antonio Zapata, cites the parish records of Nuestra Señora del Refugio in Revilla, which contain the baptismal entry made on the twenty-ninth of January in 1797 by the priest who baptized “José Antonio Serapio,” a...

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