Emiliano Zapata: Plan of Ayala

On November 25, 1911, in the beginning stages of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Emiliano Zapata, a mestizo of mixed Nahua Indian and Spanish ancestry from the southern state of Morelos, announced the Plan of Ayala, which some have referred to as the Mexican equivalent of the English Magna Carta. The Mexican president, Francisco Madero, tried to prevent Zapata from issuing this land reform manifesto with bribes of a hacienda and promises of future land reform, but Zapata proved unbribable, and his Plan of Ayala galvanized the support of peasants in southern Mexico (the state of Morelos) whose land had been appropriated by large landowners, the hacendados.