Emiliano Zapata, Anarchist or Jeffersonian Agrarian?

Continuing with our Truth is Stranger than Fiction series, we consider the politics of Emiliano Zapata, hero of the Mexican Revolution.

In the Mule Tamer III, Marta’s Quest, we witness an interaction between Marta and Captain Pedro del Calle on the subject of Emiliano Zapata’s politics. Del Calle, a military man naturally assumes that what he’s read in the newspapers is true, that Emiliano Zapata is an anarchist and will bring the country down, and the red menace will soon spread north, into the United States.
 
The great John Steinbeck, who knew a little about being painted with the red brush, asserted that Emiliano Zapata was, by his actions and words, a Jeffersonian Agrarian, despite the accusations fomented by Hearst and other papers, such as the Rockefeller owned El Imparcial.
 
Steinbeck’s reasoning on this issue was, that despite the help given to Zapata in crafting his plan of Ayala by the zealous anarchist Otilio Montaño Sánchez, he was interested in land ownership for all people, and neither a state collectivism or monopoly by hacendados. He wanted all people to have access and the right to land ownership, or have lands that were stolen from them returned.

But Hearst and others in the US had a specific interest in maintaining the status quo. They liked the totalitarian dictatorship style of Porfirio Díaz and his minions, and as Hearst was a considerable landholder in Mexico, he had a lot to lose by allowing the Zapatistas to prevail. Thus he made the hero out to be an out-of-control proponent of anarchy or anarcho-communism.