Emiliano Zapata’s roots were in the Amerindian world, its love of the land and its zeal to retain its land. In 1810, at the beginning of the War of Independence, in Central Mexico alone where Zapata’s community was situated, over 4,000 Amerindian communities had survived the colonial period and retained their own particular identities.

By 1910, the population of rural Mexico had physically become primarily mestizo through the intermingling of bloodlines over 400 years, but the social and psychological character of that population was Amerindian to a considerable degree. The various communities jealously guarded their lands from various overarching units of government, from the predations of the hacendados, or from the incursions of adjoining Amerindian communities. It is estimated that over 40% of the Amerindian communities had still been able to hold on to their lands in 1910.

Anencuilco was used to independence as a small Amerindian community that propitiated the various demands of stronger neighbors. It had paid tribute to the Aztec empire before the Conquest of Mexico. It had survived by its wiles and retained at least some of its lands during the Colonial period, the Republic, the empire of Maximilian, the presidency of Benito Juárez, and the porfiriato.

By 1909 the situation of Anenecuilco became dire. One of the large, nearby haciendas had taken the land from the campesinos who protested all the way to Porfirio Díaz in Mexico City. While Porfirio Díaz professed sympathy for the campesinos he did nothing and the hacienda peremptorily dismissed the community of Anenecuilco. The hacienda administrator said: “If the Anenecuilcans want to sow, let them do it in a flowerpot, because we won’t even permit them a tlacolol (Nahuatl word for the eroded, washed out sides of a hill).” The hacienda had denied the Amerindians the land even as tenant farmers. The town elders did what they normally did in times of grave danger. On 12 September 1909 they elected Emiliano Zapata as their wartime leader.

In the summer of 1910, faced with the indifference of the government, the town elders authorized what was effectively to become the Revolution of the South. Emiliano Zapata organized men under his command and by force took of the lands of the nearby haciendas and distributed the land to the campesinos.
Campesinos were drawn to the charismatic Emiliano Zapata and the Revolution had begun in the South although it wasn’t until Francisco I. Madero issued his 5 October 1910 Plan de San Luis Potosí that Zapata and his community became interested in Madero and his movement and decided to help the maderistas.