Zapata

Hoisting posters, waving banners and shouting "La lucha sigue"--the struggle continues--more than 150 people paraded downtown Sunday to commemorate the life of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata. "Zapata, listen to us, your people continue to fight!" blared in Spanish from loudspeakers during the march. Mexican Americans and other Latinos today are facing the same problems Zapata fought against decades ago, said Jaime Cruz, one of the event's coordinators.

Bricklayer Orlando Zapata Tamayo didn't commit murder. He didn't plot an assassination or the violent overthrow of the government. He was arrested on March 20, 2003, in Cuba, while taking part in a hunger strike to demand the release of political prisoners, and was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of showing contempt for Fidel Castro as well as public disorder and disobedience, according to Amnesty International. Over the next six years, he is believed to have had eight more hearings and was convicted at least three more times, bringing his total sentence to about 36 years -- a figure his friends say may be inexact because the proceedings were secret.

The 1993 rape and murder of Mia Zapata, the singer for the band the Gits, sent shock waves through Seattle's tight-knit rock community. When two months passed with no progress toward solving the crime, Zapata's bandmates mobilized. Bassist Matt Dresdner, drummer Steve Moriarty and guitarist Andy Kessler contacted a private detective, and to finance the investigation they organized benefit shows featuring such local bands as 7 Year Bitch and Nirvana.

Here lies the royal purple in repose, The elegance, the carriage, and the flair, The voice, a clarion whose sweet fanfare Was tempered in its time by kisses, blows. Love's page, love's bugle girl, her cry once froze, Once summoned to the fray. Back then. Out there. Her stilling binds in prison past despair A crowd of sorry echoes, fans, lost souls. The smile, the pout, the legendary leer-- But do we sense a stirring in the dark? Bravisima, comedienne of scorn: King Death applauds, then stops confused, unsure If you are playing dead just for a lark Or dying live, defying us to mourn.

The Zapatistas are up in arms. Not the gun-wielding rebels of Chiapas state, but the quiet, dutiful residents of this farm-and-shop town in Morelos where Emiliano Zapata once rallied peasants to the Mexican Revolution. Like millions of other Mexicans, the residents, known as Zapatistas, went peacefully to the polls Sunday in midterm elections. And this former bastion of the ruling party experienced a kind of uprising.

A U.S. immigration agent who was killed Tuesday in a part of central Mexico increasingly under the influence of drug traffickers has been identified as Jaime J. Zapata. Zapata was shot to death and another special agent was wounded when they were apparently ambushed by gunmen at a fake roadblock, the type often used by traffickers and their henchmen. U.S. Immigration and Customs officials said Wednesday that Zapata was a native of Brownsville, Texas, and four-year veteran of the department on loan from the Laredo, Texas, ICE office.

Zapata Corp., a onetime oil driller trying to break into the world of cyberspace, said Thursday it was seeking to buy Excite Inc., a leading Internet company that's five times its size. The offer, worth $1.5 billion in newly issued Zapata stock, was immediately rejected by Redwood City-based Excite and dismissed on Wall Street as unlikely if not impossible.

Mexican officials on Monday announced the capture of one of the country's most wanted fugitives, an army deserter who authorities say helped create the vicious Zetas gang and is suspected in the slaying of a U.S. federal agent. Mexican federal police paraded Jesus Rejon Aguilar before reporters early Monday, a day after he was caught — not in the Zetas stronghold of northeastern Mexico but barely an hour outside Mexico City. Among numerous alleged crimes, Rejon was wanted in connection with the Feb. 15 ambush death of Jaime Zapata, an agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on temporary assignment in Mexico.

After refueling helicopters during the war in Iraq, Marine Lance Cpl. Alexander Zapata had hoped his wife and 10-month-old daughter might be there to greet him when he got back to the United States. Instead, his family remained 1,500 miles away in the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, unable to join Zapata in the country he helped defend. Zapata, a so-called green card Marine, is not a U.S. citizen.

Cuban President Raul Castro made the rare gesture Wednesday of "lamenting" the death of a political prisoner who succumbed after an 85-day hunger strike, according to international news agencies reporting from Havana. Castro spoke during a tour of Cuba's Mariel port with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and a statement containing his remarks was sent to Havana-based journalists. He was commenting on the death Tuesday of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year-old plumber imprisoned in 2003 who was serving a 36-year sentence for disobedience of the government, among other charges.