ity and political participation: "The political fact of monopoly--dictatorship--meant for those who lived by their brains few and fewer bottlenecked jobs" (Brenner, 1971, p. 27). And Mexicans from the lower classes fought for basic rights. There was broad support for reforms in the areas of education, military conscription, freedom of speech, and the repressionary tactics of the rurales. The power of the Catholic Church was another key issue in the demands made by Mexico's revolutionaries.
Peasants and workers focused their demands on labor issues. These included demands for better pay and working conditions. The workers wanted job security, the right to organize, and other labor rights: "Mexican labor, considered inferior biologically, had its wages fixed accordingly" (Brenner, 1971, p. 26). Peasants, most of whom were sharecroppers and renters, were concerned about land ownership: "the peasants--more than three-fourths of the population--had been stripped of land by laws which gave the hacendados more lee
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