The Mexican Revolution took place in 1910 and was followed by a period of civil war and U.S. intervention before Mexico developed a new constitution in 1917. Porfirio Diaz was the dictator at the time, praised by financiers and industrialists and more and more hated by the people. He had ruled for 34 years when the revolution removed him (Brenner 5). Hellman notes one problem in that over his period of rule, Diaz had his portrait painted many times, and "in each painting the dictator appeared less Mexican and more European" (Hellman 45). The revolution can be seen in part as a groundswell of Mexican feeling against the foreign elements brought in by Diaz, who sought the approval of the Hapsburgs before he served the needs of his own people. The revolutionaries represented several groups in Mexican society and thus showed how much Diaz had ignored the needs of the Mexican people.
Brenner notes that Diaz had surrounded himself with a group of elderly advisers who had given up politics and devoted themselves entirely to promoting business (Brenner 6). Hellman says that Diaz stimulated the modernization of Mexico by opening the country to foreign investors, but this also led to the widespread foreign ownership of Mexican banks, electric power, large mining enterprises, and the railroads. As have other dictators since, Diaz attracted foreign investment with the promise of social peace, though this peace was actually based on the "ferocious repression of the working class and the peasantry, as well as middle-class and elite opposition forces" (Hellman 46). Diaz exercised rigid political control and created great resistance to his rule at the same time:
Revolutionary rumblings can be traced to the final years of the last century and reached a thunderous pitch among Mexicans like the Flores Magon brothers, who lied in exile in Los Angeles while plotting the overthrow of the regime . . . But the actual outbreak of hostilities did...