Lucio Cabañas Barrientos (, 12 December 1938 – 2 December 1974) was a Mexican schoolteacher who became a revolutionary, albeit not a Marxist one. Cabañas regarded Emiliano Zapata as his role model and he never abandoned his Christian faith, as can be seen in Gerardo Tort's film documentary on him. Early life Lucio was born on December 12, 1938 into a peasant household. His paternal grandfather had been a Zapatista and his uncle Pablo, had participated in the Vidales brothers' guerilla in the 1920s. He completed his basic education in the town of El Cayaco. Later in February 1956, he entered the Ayotzinapa Normal. Teacher He was born in El Porvenir, of Atoyac de Álvarez, in the state of Guerrero. He became politically active when he studied at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College and was a leader of the local student union. In 1962 he was elected to the post of General Secretary of the Federation of Socialistic Peasant Students of Mexico. When he began work as a teacher, he also mediated problems at other schools. Revolutionary When a rector of Juan Álvarez school in Atoyac demanded that all pupils wear school uniforms, Cabañas argued that some families were so poor they could hardly feed their children, let alone buy school uniforms. The rector was fired but his supporters remained. When a strike on 18 May 1967 ended in shooting and deaths, Cabañas fled to the mountains and joined the group of Genaro Vázquez Rojas until Vázquez' death on 2 February 1972. Cabañas led a guerrilla group, the Party of the Poor (PDLP) and Peasants' Brigade Against Injustice (PDLP-BCA). They numbered perhaps 300 members and lived in the Guerrero Mountains. He financed his group through kidnappings and bank robberies. The Mexican government sent 16,000 soldiers to the Sierra Madre de Atoyac Mountains to hunt him. Fifty of them died during the chase. Death On May 20th, 1974, the PDLP kidnapped Rubén Figueroa, senator and close friend to President Echeverría, and presented the government with a list of demands. The Mexican government refused to negotiate with the guerrillas and instead increased their attempt to eliminate the guerrilla group. The military recovered Figueroa in September, but continued their increased attacks against the guerillas. The kidnapping marked the beginning of the end for Cabañas and the PDLP. According to the Mexican government, Cabañas and three other guerillas were found in El Otatal, Tecpan