So pleased to see that Helga Baitenmann's "Zapata's Justice" ( @JLAScamb 51/4) won the 2020 @LASAMEXICO best social-sciences article prize.

The article begins by noting that Zapata's Plan de Ayala ended with the slogan "Justice and Law," not (as often thought) "Land and Liberty"

The article shows that when the Zapatistas dispensed justice in the areas under their control, they often reached back to Mexico's nineteenth-century legal tradition, including to legal innovations from the 1870s civil-law code.

Against common understandings of Zapatismo as defending pueblo "traditions" and "autonomy" (and, one might add, against Maderista, Huertista, and Constitucionalista propaganda), Baitenmann argues that Zapatismo was "profoundly based" on "nineteenth-century Legal principles."

Makes me think that Zapatismo was the last of Mexico's radical 19th. c. movements, which is obscured by its common association with 20th c. land reform.

As in the 19th c., land reform was seen as a means to protect peasants' individual rights and curb extra-legal private power.