The Porfiriato, 1876–1911
The Mexican Revolution also known as the Mexican Civil was a major armed struggle, lasting roughly from 1910 to 1920, that radically transformed Mexican culture and government. Although recent research has focused on local and regional aspects of the Revolution, it was a genuinely national revolution.[4] Its outbreak in 1910 resulted from the failure of the 35-year-long regime of Porfirio Díaz to find a managed solution to the presidential succession. This meant there was a political crisis among competing elites and the opportunity for agrarian insurrection.[5] Wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election, and following the rigged results, revolted under the Plan of San Luis Potosí.[6] Armed conflict ousted Díaz from power; a new election was held in 1911, bringing Madero to the presidency.
The origins of the conflict were broadly based in opposition to the Díaz regime, with the 1910 election becoming the catalyst for the outbreak of political rebellion. The revolution was begun by elements of the Mexican elite hostile to Díaz, led by Madero and Pancho Villa; it expanded to the middle class, the peasantry in some regions, and organized labor.[7] In October 1911, Madero was overwhelmingly elected in a free and fair election. Opposition to his regime then grew from both the conservatives, who saw him as too weak and too liberal, and from former revolutionary fighters and the dispossessed, who saw him as too conservative.
Madero and his vice president Pino Suárez were forced to resign in February 1913, and were assassinated. The counter-revolutionary regime of General Victoriano Huerta came to power, backed by business interests and other supporters of the old order. Huerta remained in power from February 1913 until July 1914, when he was forced out by a coalition of different regional revolutionary forces. When the revolutionaries' attempt to reach political agreement failed, Mexico plunged into a civil war (1914–1915). The Constitutionalist faction under wealthy landowner Venustiano Carranza emerged as the victor in 1915, defeating the revolutionary forces of former Constitutionalist Pancho Villa and forcing revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata back to guerrilla warfare. Zapata was assassinated in 1919 by agents of President Carranza.
The armed conflict lasted for the most of a decade, until around 1920, and had several distinct phases.[8] Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order under Díaz to a multi-sided civil war in particular regions, with frequently shifting power struggles among factions in the Mexican Revolution. One major result of the revolution was the dissolution of the Federal Army in 1914, which Francisco Madero had kept intact when he was elected in 1911 and General Huerta used to oust Madero. Revolutionary forces unified against Huerta's reactionary regime defeated the Federal forces.[9] Although the conflict was primarily a civil war, foreign powers that had important economic and strategic interests in Mexico figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role.[10] Out of Mexico's population of 15 million, the losses were high, but numerical estimates vary a great deal. Perhaps 1.5 million people died; nearly 200,000 refugees fled abroad, especially to the United States.[1][11] Many scholars consider the promulgation of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as the end point of the armed conflict. "Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions", with the constitution providing that framework.[12] The period 1920– 1940 is often considered to be a phase of the Revolution, as government power was consolidated, the Catholic clergy and institutions were attacked in the 1920s, and the revolutionary constitution of 1917 was implemented.[13]
This armed conflict is often characterized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century;[14] it resulted in an important program of experimentation and reform in social organization.[15] The revolution committed the resulting political regime with "social justice", until Mexico underwent a neoliberal reform process that started in the 1980s.[16]
Role of the United States
The first time the United States intervened in the revolution was in 1914, during the Ypiranga incident. When United States intelligence agents received word that the Ypiranga, a German merchant ship, contained illegal firepower for Huerta, President Wilson ordered American troops to the port of Veracruz to stop the ship from docking. Wilson never actually declared war on Mexico. The United States skirmished with Huerta's troops in Veracruz. The Ypiranga successfully docked at another port and unloaded the arms, which greatly angered Wilson. The ABC Powers arbitrated and U.S. troops left Mexican soil, but the incident added to already tense Mexican-American relations.[126][127]
In 1916, in retaliation for Pancho Villa's plunder on Columbus, New Mexico, and the death of 16 United States citizens who were killed when a group of Villistas attacked a train on the Mexico North Western Railway, near Santa Isabel, Chihuahua,[128] President Wilson sent forces commanded by Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing into Mexico to capture Villa. Villa was deeply entrenched in the mountains of northern Mexico, and knew the terrain too well to be captured. Pershing could not continue with his mission and was forced to turn back. This event not only damaged the fragile United States-Mexico relationship, but also gave way to a rise in anti-American sentiment among the Mexicans.[129]
Constitution of 1917
An important element the Revolution's legacy is the 1917 Constitution. It was pushed forward by populist generals within Carranza's government to undermine the popular support that Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata held.[16] It was not written by liberal elites or the military itself, but rather young radicalized professionals, giving the document some authenticity for the peasantry. The document brought numerous reforms demanded by populist factions of the revolution, with article 27 empowering the state to expropriate resources deemed vital to the nation. These included expropriation of hacienda lands and redistribution to peasants. Article 27 also empowered the government to expropriate holdings of foreign companies, most prominently seen in the 1938 expropriation of oil. In Article 123 the constitution codified major labor reforms, including an 8-hour work day, a right to strike, equal pay laws for women, and an end to exploitative practices such as child labor and company stores. The constitution strengthened restrictions on the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. In the early 1990s, the government introduced reforms to the constitution that rolled back the government's power to expropriate property and its restrictions on religious institutions.[150] Just as the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari was amending significant provisions of the constitution, Metro Constitución de 1917 station was opened.
Land reform
Under the Porfiriato, rural peasants suffered the most. The regime confiscated large sections of land, which caused major losses to the agrarian work force. In 1883 the government passed a land law giving ownership of more than 27.5 million hectares of land to foreign companies. By 1894 one out of every five acres of Mexican land was owned by a foreign interest. Many wealthy Mexican families already owned huge estates, resulting in landless rural peasants working on the property as virtual slaves. In 1910 at the beginning of the revolution, about half of the rural population lived and worked on such plantations. The rapid and brutal uprooting of the peasantry contributed greatly to the violent furies unleashed in the Mexican Revolution and its subsequent course, giving it the character of a gigantic peasant war for land that attacked the structure of the Mexican state.[123]
Salvador Alvarado, after taking control of Yucatán in 1915, organized a large Socialist Party and carried out extensive land reform. He confiscated the large landed estates and redistributed the land in smaller plots to the liberated peasants.[124]
Maximo Castillo, a revolutionary brigadier general from Chihuahua was annoyed by the slow pace of land reform under the Madero presidency. He ordered the subdivision of six haciendas belonging to Luis Terrazas, which were given to sharecroppers and tenants.[125]