Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama

Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama (23 January 1880 – 14 March 1967) He studied in San Luis Potosí, first at the Instituto de la Immaculada Concepción and later at the Instituto Literario. He was also the secretary and vice president of the Ponciano Arriaga Liberal Club (named after the 19th-century lawyer) and was imprisoned by the regime of Porfirio Díaz for his activities, and later forced into exile in United States. After Victoriano Huerta ousted Madero in the February 1913 Decena Trágica, Díaz Soto y Gama joined the movement of Emiliano Zapata.

He played a prominent role at the Convention of Aguascalientes in 1914, following Huerta's victory. During the convention, Díaz Soto's speech and disrespect for the Mexican flag, which he said symbolized the "triumph of clerical reaction", caused a protest from some of the participants, many of whom threatened him by pointing their guns at him. However, his presence at the convention contributed greatly to the adoption of the Zapatista Plan of Ayala. Since Zapata's backing came mostly from rural campesinos, Díaz Soto y Gama also served as his representative to urban workers, including the anarcho-syndicalist union Casa del Obrero Mundial. After Zapata's murder in 1919, Soto y Gama continued to advise Zapata's successor, Gildardo Magaña, and eventually joined the movement of Álvaro Obregón (whom Antonio called "the executor of the ideas of Emiliano Zapata") He was the leader of the National Agrarian Party (Partido Nacional Agrarista, PNA), which he founded on 13 June 1920. The platform of the party called for redistribution of land to peasants.

In the late 1930s, Díaz Soto y Gama received a chair in history and agricultural law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and also worked as a newspaper columnist.