olution was inevitable.
Certainly the poor of Mexico had better lives because of the Revolution, but they were not removed from poverty. It took much time: "In 1929 more villagers got more land than in any previous year" (Leighton 86), but that was twenty years after the start of the revolution. Many peasants died and lost their villages (Leighton 59). Nevertheless, the land reform plan was instituted and brought improvement and more comfort than had ever been experienced under Diaz (Leighton 67-69). Still, as Beteta wrote, "We have chosen the 'ejido' as the center of our rural economy. Within its limits, 'land belongs to him who works it with his hands'" (Burns 218). Banking and credit arrangements funded land reform and "new and smaller farmers" (Leighton 73). The "hacienda" system under Diaz was broken, and reform institutionalized under "three systems: restitution, donation and ampliation" Burns 215-216). Did the revolution remove poverty? Certainly not, but the peasants for the first time were able to do more than eke out their existence on land they did not own.
Led by an educated man from the relatively privileged sector of Cuban society, the Cuban Revolution under Castro was supported eventually by the rich and powerful, and even by the United States, once it became clear that Batista would fall. However much those sectors supported the revolution in fact, the excerpts from Burns do not give much evidence of it, for Castro, the author of the bulk of those excerpts, is not about to suggest that the rich and powerful helped bring about the revolution. The rich and powerful were and are the enemies in the eyes of Castro and his communist ideology.
The Government of Fulgencio Batista was a typical government of force, a government which suited the United States monopolies in Cuba. But it was not, of course, the type of government which suited the Cuban people. With great loss of life and much sacrifice, the Cuban people o...