The Mexican Revolution
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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
. . .
r basic labor rights. Peasants . . . made demands that varied according to their work and their relationship to the land (Hellman 47).
Agricultural workers who received wages on commercial estates, for instance, had grievances similar to those of the workers and demanded higher pay and better working conditions. Sharecroppers and renters wanted their own land and to be free of the obligation to return to a landlord in cash or kind a large proportion of their produce. Peasants who were tied to traditional estates wanted to escape from the burdens of debt peonage.
Many of the tensions of the time are evident in photographs from that era. Many of the peasants were forced off the land to work in factories, and this was near-slavery in that they were often herded to work by riders with carbines (Brenner Plate 40). Strikes and small rebellions took place before 1910 and showed that the people were dissatisfied. In 1908, there was a planned strike at the Rio Blanco textile works, owned by Spanish and German capital interests. This strike is illustrated in Plate 42.
Interestingly, Brenner also finds another force at work in the development of the revolution--portents and omens in the form of the eruption of Mt. Colima in 1909,
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1473
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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