Zapata

A flamboyant farm-workers organizer who called himself a modern-day Emiliano Zapata has been slain in a brazen ambush that also killed 14 members of his family and staff, officials said Saturday. Prosecutors in the border state of Sonora, where the slayings occurred, said they were investigating a number of possible motives. Sonora, like much of Mexico, has been hit by a wave of killings tied to drug-trafficking gangs. The union leader, Margarito Montes Parra, was killed in the southern part of the state that borders Sinaloa, a major center for the production and transport of marijuana and heroin.

A Colorado man who says he bludgeoned his date to death out of rage and shock after discovering she was biologically male was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder and a hate crime. Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding Allen Ray Andrade, 32, guilty of killing Angie Zapata, 18, of Greeley last July. District Judge Marcelo Kopcow swiftly sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole -- the state's mandatory sentence for first-degree murder.

To her sister, Angie Zapata was a teenage girl in every sense but the biological one. She spent hours spraying her long hair into compliance with Aqua Net, painting her eyelashes with L'Oreal and her skin with Cover Girl. She combed discount stores for clothes that would emphasize her curves. The effect was stunning. When the 18-year-old visited the store where her older sister, Monica, worked, men would make excuses to hover.

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.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos on Thursday took his campaign for indigenous rights into the heartland of the Mexican Revolution, placing a floral wreath on the spot where peasant hero Emiliano Zapata was assassinated 82 years ago. On the 13th day of a 2,100-mile trek from his base in the southern state of Chiapas to the nation's capital, Marcos pointedly followed Zapata's famous trail in the central state of Morelos.

From the first inning on, Sonia Zapata nursed a strained abdominal muscle she injured stretching for a ground ball. The Canyon High shortstop proved a bigger pain in the side of the opposing West team Monday in the 14th San Fernando Valley all-star softball game. She had three hits, drove in two runs and scored twice, including the game-winner in the bottom of the ninth, to lead the East to a 4-3 victory at the Glendale Sports Complex.

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.

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 man with the mysterious name said to meet him at Super Antojitos, the Mexican restaurant on Bristol Street. He calls himself Ozomatli Mazatl and he wanted to tell me about a new brigade formed in Orange County to support the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. "How will I recognize you?" I asked in Spanish. "I'll be the one who looks like an Indian," Ozomatli said. I wondered if ethnicity was enough to pick him out in a Santa Ana crowd. But there was no mistaking this Indian.

How weird is this whole Internet-stock thing getting? Consider: Zapata Corp. shares more than doubled Wednesday after the Houston-based fish oil and meat casings company said it's returning to the Internet business--just two months after it canceled its planned cyber-expansion as financial markets soured. Zapata, which said in October it was backing out of its planned purchase of or investment in about 30 Internet firms, saw its shares zoom $7.06 to $14.