The Mexican labor movement began 10 year before the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Constitution of 1917 embodied the aims of the Revolution by revising land ownership, by drafting a labor code, and by curtailing the power of the Roman Catholic Church.
In its effort to modernize the country, the Diaz regime--the government in power before the Revolution--embarked on a radically new agrarian policy. Joining ranks with local hacendados, it launched a campaign of large-scale expropriation of village lands and political subordination.
The regions most affected by this new policy were central and southern Mexico, first, because increased market production and new railroads had caused land values there to increase, and second, because most free villages were concentrated there. Initially, the campaign proved successful to the government, for it left the villages in possession of only a minimal amount of land and a smidgen of political control. Some land was left them as a token of their former status as well as for a sound economic reason: to keep a large enough labor force in the vicinity of the plantations and to tide them over the seasons in which the planters had no need of them.
Ultimately, the campaign bred considerable discontent. At first, it had generated only sporadic unrest in various parts of central and southern Mexico. When the expropriations extended into Morelos and Guerrero, the foundation was laid for the largest peasant revolt in the history of independent Mexico. Many circumstances made those regions prime for peasant unrest. One was their proximity to the capital city, which had prevented their succumbing to provincialism. Another was the easy availability of arms.
While peasant unrest did not assume revolutionary proportions until 1910, the expropriation of land and the suppression of traditional rights did precipitate sporadic uprisings long before the revolution began. The peasants, how...