Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata Salazar (8 August 1879 – 10 April 1919) was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz that broke out in 1910.

Sourced

• I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.
  • As quoted in Heroes of Mexico (1969) by Morris Rosenblum, p. 112

• Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.
  • It's better to die upon your feet than to live upon your knees!
    • As quoted in Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe‎ (1979) by Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, p. 281; this is sometimes misattributed to the more modern revolutionary, Che Guevara, and to Dolores Ibárruri ("La Pasionaria"), especially in Spain, where she popularized it in her famous speeches during the Spanish Civil War, to José Martí, and to Aeschylus who is credited with a similar declaration in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life."
  • Spanish variants:
  • ¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
    • As quoted in Operación Cobra : historia de una gesta romántica (1988) by Alvaro Pablo Ortiz and Oscar Lara, p. 29
  • Variant translations:
    • Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
      • With an extension, as quoted in Timeless Mexico (1944) by Hudson Strode, p. 259
    • I would rather die standing than live on my knees!
    • It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
    • I prefer to die standing than to live forever kneeling.
    • Prefer death on your feet to living on your knees.

Unsourced

• ¡Tierra y Libertad!
  • Land and Liberty!
  • This was a slogan popularized in the South by Zapata.

• Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny...
  • A letter to Pancho Villa (date needed)

• La tierra es de quien la trabaja con sus manos.
  • The land belongs to those that work it.