About this product
On horseback, cartridge belt across his chest, sombrero wide and level — the halftone portrait of Emiliano Zapata sits on a mustard ground rendered entirely in deep olive green, one color doing the work of a century. The image reads like a corrido broadsheet from 1911 — the kind that circulated through Morelos villages on paper so cheap it dissolved in rain, carrying the news that the land was being taken back. "ZAPATA" runs above in wide, heavy block letters, clean-edged and deliberate. Below: "MORELOS, MEXICO – APRIL 1911 / TIERRA Y LIBERTAD TOUR."
April 1911 — Zapatista forces are taking Cuautla in an eight-day siege that breaks federal control of Morelos. He's 31 years old. He's been organizing the ejido communities of Anenecuilco since he was 27, before the revolution had a name, before Madero's call to arms gave the movement a national frame. The Plan de Ayala — his own program, his own terms — comes later that year. This shirt catches him before the manifesto, in the middle of the campaign, on the ground that started it all. Poetas Y Punks mark at the neckline. 4.2 oz Airlume combed ring-spun cotton, retail fit.