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I. Revolution - What is it?

• A. Definition - A sudden, forceful overturn of established cultural, political, social, and economic institutions, usually accompanied by violence, and their substitution with new institutions.
• B. A key question will be the "authenticity" of the Mexican Revolution

II. The Beginning of the End

• A. 1910 - few wanted Diaz to stay in power
• 1. Many rivals
• 2. But few interested in armed rebellion
• B. Election of 1910
• 1. Diaz tells American journalist he will retire
• 2. This draws out potential rivals
• 3. Diaz does run

III. Run-up to Francisco Madero's Rebellion

• A. To Diaz's shock, Francisco Madero begins campaigning
• B. Francisco Madero
• 1. Liberal landowner from Monterrey
• 2. Family had stakes in banks, textile mills, mines, wine.
• 3. Devoted to a humanistic liberalism
• 4. Abhorred autocracy of Diaz, servile Congress, corrupt judges
• 5. Defender of public education, personal liberty, enemy of one-man rule
• 6. For the benefit of other Diaz rival, wrote The Presidential Succession of 1910
• 7. Also represented the discontents of Northern elites
• 8. But he is not a "revolutionary"
• 9. A rebellion against Diaz, not a revolution against Mexican society
• C. Platform for election of 1910
• 1. free and honest elections
• 2. Municipal autonomy
• 3. Largely silent on social issues
• 4. Improve the "material, intellectual, and moral condition" of workers
• 5. Dwelt on need to curb drinking and gambling
• 6. Saw free public education as cure-all for social ills
• 7. In essence, classic Mexican liberalism
• D. Election
• 1. Madero tossed in jail on trumped up charge
• 2. Diaz, 80, overwhelmingly re-elected
• 3. Madero released on bail
• 4. Escaped to Texas

IV. Madero's Revolution: The Collapse of the Old Order (1910-1913)

• A. Announced Plan de San Luis Potosi
• 1. Essentially election platform
• a. Diaz must resign
• b. calls for electoral reforms
• c. demands honest, constitutional government
• d. Key idea - "Effective suffrage and no re-election"
• 2. Declared election of Diaz null and void
• 3. Set November 20 as date for rebellion
• B. Madero's Allies
• 1. Northern elites - Orozco
• 2. Northern malcontents - Villa
• 3. Peasant rebellion in south - Zapata
• C. The Rebellion
• 1. Madero dragged into fighting largely against his will
• 2. Villa and Orozco did most of the fighting
• 3. Both went against his wishes - he would put neither in his government
• D. Diaz resigns
• 1. Professional army defeated in most battle by ill-trained rebels
• 2. Diaz had a toothache - resigned
• 3. Madero, legalistic, would not take power without elections
• 4. Diaz's foreign affairs minister became caretaker till elections
• 5. Nor did he disarm the old army
• 6. Indeed, told rebels to disband
• 7. Nor did he call for new Congressional or state elections
• 8. Thus edifice of old regime remained in place

V. Madero in Power

• A. Inaugurated in November, 1911
• B. No vision or theory for Revolution, had unleashed forces he could not control
• C. A symbol for the need for change, himself a cautious reformer
• 1. Pursued moderate, classic Liberal reformism, which did nothing for poor
• 2. Wave of strikes, Madero made only tentative efforts
• 3. Biggest conflict was Zapata - could only see him as a bandit
• 4. Narrow urbanite, middle class base
• 5. Elites rebelled at his inability to control Zapata
• D. Overthrown by Victoriano Huerta in February, 1912 - and executed

VI. Huerta in Power - The Revolt of the Masses (1913-1915)

• A. Had been encouraged by US ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson
• B. Not a full-fledged return of Old Regime - some tentative reforms
• C. But rejected by many
• 1. Constitutionalists in the north - reasons Northern elites revolted
• a. Rejection of coup and military government
• b. Slump in the North
• c. Non-recognition by Wilson
• 2. Zapata in the south - agrarian Revolt
• D. Defeated in July, 1914 - the Porfirian army is defeated

VII. Three main armies involved in anti-Huerta war

• A. Emiliano Zapata - Agrarian Revolt
• 1. Small landholder - ran mule train, and sharecropped on a hacienda
• 2. Initially the leader of village of small landholders under pressure
• 3. Would come to lead large guerilla army of mestizo and Indian peasants
• 4. His army would fight the longest
• 5. Most radical of major revolutionary leaders
• 6. Came to represent agrarian revolt, social revolution
• a. Plan de Ayala, November, 1911 - "Tierra y liberatad" - "Land and Liberty"
• b. Want land - many followers fighting for land they lived on
• c. End power of local bosses
• d. small and large landholders
• e. Came to be recognized as national peasant leader
• f. Many urban leftists saw him as true revolutionary, joined him
• B. Pancho Villa - Misfits Revolt
• 1. From Durango
• 2. Wanted for cattle theft and murder at time of Madero rebellion
• 3. Highly professionalized army - largest
• 4. The misfits of society
• 5. Peasants, unemployed cowboys and miners, bandits, second sons
• 6. Sought not to overturn society but to gain its spoils
• 7. Soldiers fought for position and promotion, middle-class respectability
• 8. Officers rose on military merit
• 9. Soldiers also fought for confiscated land, and refused to leave it
• 10. In many ways, the most conservative of the revolutionaries
• C. Venustiano Carranza - Northern Elite and Liberalism - The Constitutionalists
• 1. Former governor of Coahuila, took up Madero's standard
• 2. Devoted to constitutional rule and liberalism
• 3. Loosely allied to Wilson
• 4. Represented Northern elite
• 5. Believed that Mexico could only be ruled by the strong
• 6. A capitalist and hacendado, had no time for left or for Zapata
• 7. Led a professional army of mostly mercenaries
• 8. Officers were ranchers, minor entrepreneurs, hacendados

VIII. Characteristics of leaders

• A. Young (except Carranza)
• B. Almost all middle class
• C. Most from small towns, provinces
• D. Few were peasants or rural
• E. Occupations
• 1. Lawyers the largest group
• 2. School-teachers the next largest group
• a. Teachers played same role as lesser clergy in independence wars
• b. Most obvious example was Plutarco Elias Calles
• 3. Engineers were an important group
• 4. Physicians, journalists, and bankers played roles as well
• 5. Salesmen, clerks, merchants
• 6. Students

IX. Defeat of the Masses (1915-1920)

• A. Carranza in Dominant Position by October 1915
• B. Villa and Zapata reduced to small, guerrilla armies
• C. Carranza uninterested in social and agrarian reform
• 1. Did not regard land reform as a key issue
• 2. Issued a decree that gave very limited power to return seized land
• 3. Very much believed that capitalist competition would do the trick
• 4. Knew that people had to be considered; did not include them in power
• D. Two major failings
• 1. Unable to control corruption of generals, who divert reconstruction funds
• 2. Failure to reach out to masses means Zapata, Villa reassert themselves
• E. Weakening power seen in Constitution of 1917, which is more radical than he is
• 1. At odds with his own ideology
• 2. Delegates saw agrarian reform as key to settling countryside
• 3. Though the reform was ambiguous
• 4. Nationalistic - Mines was water could only be owned by Mexicans
• 5. Included a labor code
• a. legalizes unions, right to strike
• b. 8-hour day
• c. minimum wage, Sundays off
• d. But, put state in charge of arbitration
• 6. Gave Provinces power to regulate the Church
• F. Carranza brought down
• 1. Flu epidemic - 400,000 died
• 2. Economic slump
• 3. Tried to pick his own successor
• 4. Brought down by Alvaro Obregon, garbanzo farmer

X. Consolidation of the New Order (1920+)

• A. Carranza brought down, Obregon emerges triumphant, June 1920 - last man standing
• B. Zapata and Villa neutralized by Obregon by this point
• C. Military revolution is essentially over
• D. Northern (Sonoran) bourgeoisie now in power

I. 1920 - What to do?

• A. Enormous Destruction
• 1. One million dead
• 2. ruined mining, ranching, farming
• 3. No major bank or newspaper survived the war
• 4. only oil improved (needed in war)
• B. What Ideology?
• 1. No single ideology fueled the war
• 2. A revolution of discontent, but no single vision
• 3. Much side-switching had taken place
• 4. many plans meant no plans
• 5. Painfully obvious that government would have to build an ideology out of experience

II. Alvaro Obregon and the Founding of the Sonoran Dynasty

• A. Obregon and the Sonorans
• 1. People now in charge largely from Sonora
• 2. Sonoran Dynasty will create a government of "savage pragmatism"
• 3. survivors of war and the harsh land of the northern frontier
• 4. alien to most Mexicans - saw themselves as Californians of Mexico
• 5. Greate cultural divide
• B. Obregon in power (1920-1924)
• 1. enlightened despotism + capitalism + corruption
• 2. Enlightened despotism meant Sonorans governed as an empire, imposing rule and order on a heterogeneous majority
• 3. Began building a capitalist, modern state
• 4. Power based on triad - army, agraristas (Zapata's people), unions
• 5. Each leg supported government, checked the others
• 6. bound together by nationalism
• 7. Wealthy elites enriched but kept out of power
• 8. Catholic Church becomes de facto opposition party

• A. Minister of Education under Obregon
• B. Patron of the arts - would establish a new nationalism
• C. Key organizer of ideology of the revolution
• 1. Old, pre-Revolution concept of nationalism had focused on Spanish heritage
• 2. Old nationalism had been dismissive of Amerindian and mestizo culture
• 3. Vasconselos sought to create a unifying nationalism
• 4. Two main ideas:
• a. Indigenismo - Mexico should be proud of Amerindian heritage
• b. Cosmic race - Mexico strong because it mixed the best of all the world's races
• 5. New focus on indigenous culture
• 6. Cuahtemoc (last Aztec leader to fight Spanish) becomes new national hero
• D. Education
• 1. rapid building of schools and libraries
• 2. Millions of cheap books provided to libraries (promoting government approved ideas)
• 3. Rural teachers become missionaries of new regime - the "new Franciscans"
• 4. Inevitable conflict with the Catholic Church
• E. Arts
• 1. all arts must support the new crusade
• 2. Mexico, Vasconselos warned, must not be Americanized, like Texas or Puerto Rico
• 3. Key development is new school of muralists, largely commissioned by Vasconselos
• a. muralism a pre-Spanish tradition, thus fits neatly in new ideology
• b. also, great as a teaching art in society with many illiterates - teaching art important to Vasconselos
• c. Diego Rivera the most important - also Siqueiros and Orozco
• F. Of course, one problem - how do define "Indian" or "indigenous"?

IV. Other Reforms Under Obregon

• A. Obregon something of a reformer - had forced the more radical portions of the 1917 Constitution
• B. Some land redistribution (3 million acres)
• C. Unions legalized
• D. But....
• 1. redistributed land often belonged to Obregon's enemies
• 2. much "redistributed" into hands of the generals
• 3. Land reform extensive in Morelos, where Zapata's soldiers were, not so much elsewhere
• 4. Unions legal, but riddled with corruption, represented only a fraction of the people

V. Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-1928) and the later part of the Sonoran Dynasty

• A. Former schoolteacher, last survivor of the major revolutionary leaders
• B. Essentially a nationalist
• 1. Got into conflict with USA over attempt to nationalize oil - backed down
• 2. looking to save face, picks on Church instead
• C. Cristero Revolt
• 1. Calles sought to enforce anti-clerical provisions of Constitution
• 2. Church, provoked by educational reforms, Calles, and efforts of some to create a new church, preaches rebellion
• 3. Church goes on strike July 31, 1926
• 4. Spontaneous rural revolts break out - full scale rebellion by January, 1927
• 5. Eventually, a compromise is forced
• D. Calles begins process of institutionalizing revolution
• 1. Creates a political party, the PNR
• 2. This is the ancestor of modern PRI, which still governs Mexico
• E. Agrarian reform
• 1. not much - start and stop
• 2. by 1934, less than 10% of land redistributed
• 3. Often resulted in local violence
• F. Maximato - Calles rules from behind the scenes, 1928-1934

• A. Breaks the power of Calles, brings and end to Sonoran Dynasty
• B. Radical nationalist project - last great reformist period of the Mexican Revolution
• C. Culmination of the social revolution
• D. Continuities with Sonoran Dynasty - state-building, developmental capitalism
• E. Origins of Cardenismo (his political ideas/movement)
  • 1. In the Revolution itself
  • 2. In the Depression and the resentments it brought
  • 3. In the successive political crises
  • 4. Rejection of Sonoran values by disillusioned veterans of the wars of 1910-1920
  • 5. In the increasingly interventionist economic policies of Calles

• A. Why?
  • 1. Strict political reasons - do in enemies, reward supporters
  • 2. Cardenas had a rural background, and a real affection for peasants
  • 3. Vision of the ejido tied to state-run capitalist development
    • a. ejido - the communal lands of an Ameridian community
    • b. became principal vehichle to rejuvenate the countryside
    • c. land distributed collectively for political and economic reasons
    • d. liberate the peasants from large landowners
    • e. way to give peasants land without breaking up the countryside into tiny plots
    • f. this meant the peasants could be empowered by getting land while working large farms to produce goods for export
    • g. money earned from export could be used for national development
    • h. thus it is a way to marry peasants' cravings for land with government's desire to build industry
• B. Achievments
  • 1. Distributed 45 million acres, compared to just 19 million by Sonoran Dynasty
  • 2. 800,000 people got land this way
  • 3. 47% of Mexico's arable lands went to ejidos - this was not junk land
  • 4. Government pumped money into ejidos - support, training, roads, electricity, etc.
  • 5. This government support was crucial to ejido's economic success
  • 6. Done all-out, not gradually
  • 7. Provided real social uplift
  • 8. Not as productive as private farms, but commercially viable
• C. Problems
  • 1. weakened as political will faded
  • 2. After Cardenas, much of the supporting institutions evaporated
  • 3. Stratification between those on ejidos and rural laborers
  • 4. became way of controlling peasantry
• D. Long-term
  • 1. Since 1910, 245 million acres have been redistributed in Mexico
  • 2. But unable to keep up with population growth
  • 3. Thus in 1980s there were 4 million landless rural workers - more than in 1910

• A. Agrarian reform and education closely linked
  • 1. Cardenas carried on Obregon's use of the rural teacher as foot-soldier of the revolution
  • 2. Only a "modern" peasant could take advantage of ejido and agrarian reform
• B. "Socialist Education" - revolution imposed from above
  • 1. secularization of education - taking control of education away from priests
  • 2. sex-education
  • 3. collectivist ethic and class consciousness
  • 4. social change through education (something the Positivists had believed in)
  • 5. Promotion of Vasconselos's idea of indegenismo as an assault on poverty and inequality
• C. Response of Peasants
  • 1. peasants mostly tepid
  • 2. failed to inspire them or invigorate rural loyalty to government
• D. Implementation
  • 1. many more public schools built
  • 2. Particularly in communities defined as Indian (those communities that spoke Indian languages)
  • 3. Designed to liberate Indians without destroying their cultures
  • 4. Problematic, as they were taught as peasant, not as Indians
  • 5. Makes Indians a problem for national government, undermining local bosses
• E. The rural teacher (maestro)
  • 1. meant to be new priest - government saw Indians as a mass that had to be molded
  • 2. teachers had success where they responded to local needs and customs
  • 3. work was inherently political and risky
  • 4. many were met with violence when they challenged established practices too much
• F. Catholic response
  • 1. provided primary competition/opposition
  • 2. took strong stance against "socialist" education, including sex ed, medical services.
• G. Long-term impact
  • 1. illiteracy went down
  • 2. schools became strong vehicle for nationalism, for binding nation together
  • 3. generally failed to radicalize the peasantry

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