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Home , Mexican Revolution, Porfiriato, President of Mexico

about the more general theoretical issues involved different from the Indian peasant THE MEXICAN in analysing social . The Mexican villagers who formed the core of the revolution is a crucial case to consider in making forces of in the South. any general argument, since: Local ‘’ bands, particularly in the North, might be made up of people Introduction • Although some historians have tried to from different social classes within a downplay the ‘popular’, agrarian side of community - landowners, shopkeepers, It is difficult to understand the Mexican the revolution, it is difficult, in the end, miners and cowboys: it looks as if what revolution properly without understanding how to deny that it did involve massive, and we’ve got here are entire local some of the social and political conflicts which extremely violent, rural . These communities revolting against were fought out in the Revolution had their roots ‘rural’ social movements were not all of something, and that ‘something’ would in the earlier 19th century. It is also important to the same kind, and some rural regions more plausibly be the central state in understand how the political ideologies of the remained quite tranquil during the City. ‘Class relations’, in the harked back, at least revolution, until they were disturbed by sense of economic inequalities, may not initially, to 19th century precedents. We can then the interventions of revolutionary armies be central to all forms of popular see more readily how far the final outcome of the from outside. Some of these ‘quiet’ mobilization - or at any rate, class Revolution represented a break with the past, a regions, like the Yucatan, were places divisions within the local community are new set of structures. The initial political where the most vicious and brutal forms overriden by oppositions between the revolution of Francisco Madero was very much of exploitation of rural people took community as a whole and the larger centred on the Liberalism of the epoch of Benito place, so there is definitely something to society which may not be exclusively Juárez. The Revolution was to prove that this explain here. They had also been oppositions of class. programme was, in fact, an irrelevance to 20th explosive earlier in the 19th century. • Even more important, perhaps, is the century Mexico. The Revolution did, eventually, Nevertheless, the scale and difficulty of analysing the Mexican lead to social and political change of significance, extensiveness of agrarian movements revolution in terms of the kind of but one could argue that very little of the ultimate alone makes it difficult to sustain this teleological, ‘world historical’ outcome was what was envisaged or planned by ‘revisionist’ view that the agrarian side formulation so deeply entrenched in any of the revolutionary factions. Ultimately what wasn’t really important. And if we go on western thought about social revolutions. made the Mexican Revolution revolutionary was to try to gauge the impact of the agrarian This is reflected in a famous analysis the way change was canalised by popular movements on Mexico’s subsequent presented by Adolfo Gilly. Gilly struggles: the final outcome was, one could argue, social development, this view seems subscribes to a general model of the in many respects a continuation of the project of even harder to sustain. necessary movement of history. First we the pre-revolutionary regime of Porfirio Díaz - • On the other hand, a purely ‘agrarian’ have ‘’, then bourgeois that is, a project to ‘develop’ and ‘modernize’ the model of the Mexican revolution seems revolution, then . country through the action of a centralized state. equally unsatisfactory. Firstly, there’s As Gilly acknowledges, Mexico doesn’t The post-revolutionary élite were state-builders the problem of the non-peasant fit neatly into either the ‘bourgeois’ or just as Díaz had been: but unlike Díaz they were leaderships who play such a prominent ‘proletarian’ pigeon-hole. Its outcome is forced to build a state apparatus which part in the affair. Secondly, there’s the not a transition to , but it’s incorporated the ‘masses’ - indeed, the problem of actually describing some of equally hard, Gilly suggests, to see pre- Revolution laid the basis for creating a ‘mass the popular forces which fought in the revolutionary Mexico as ‘feudal’, and society’ in place of the more socially fragmented, revolution in agrarian terms. Pancho interpret the revolution as ‘bourgeois’. regionalized kind of system which existed before. Villa’s popular army from the North was So Gilly describes the Mexican Knowledge of the social and political structures made up of people who were very revolution as ‘mixed’, a kind of ‘half- of 19th century Mexico also helps us to think way house’ between bourgeois and http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 1 - proletarian revolution: it failed to secure Knight argues, however, that the international difficult to argue that no significant the breakthrough to a new social order dimension of revolutionary crisis which is so social change took place as a result of provided by the later 20th century important to Skocpol’s analysis of France, Russia the Mexican Revolution: though revolutions, because its ‘mass’ base was and China was not really relevant to the Mexican capitalist development continued apace, ‘peasant’: nevertheless, the participation case. Another reason for wanting to look at and the peasantry hardly enjoyed the of the masses gave it a very different Mexico before the period of the of millenium, the old form of landed character to anything which had Porfirio Díaz is that the role of international oligarchy and its systems of agrarian happened in history before. factors becomes more significant in this context. exploitation was eventually abolished, Leaving that aside for the moment, one point even if the same people who had been It is important to stress that ‘socialist’ ideologies, which Knight certainly does seem justified in rich and powerful under the and socialist or communist parties, did not play a criticising is, the Eurocentricity of most general continued to be rich after the Revolution. significant role in organizing the popular theories of . One could argue that There was a lot more social and movements which underlay the Mexican what makes the Mexican case so complicated is economic mobility, and the relationship revolution. Some of the more radical non-peasant that Mexico’s social and political structures between the Mexican state and its people leaders did make limited appeals to the notion of cannot be fully understood in terms of was changed significantly, even if the ‘socialism’, but generally meant something very conventional European categories. Certainly, result was not a so-called ‘liberal different from ‘socialism’ as we understand it: the Mexico was a ‘country’ formed by a particularly democracy’. It is, however, important to governments of the post-revolutionary period comprehensive form of European colonial stress that the most sweeping social favoured capitalist development, but sponsored penetration: ‘aboriginal’ culture and civilisation transformations did not occur until the ‘socialist education’ - i.e. secularisation of the was more comprehensively assaulted by the Cárdenas period: though the tendency educational system. Marxist perspectives were imposition of European forms than was the case towards increasing land concentration not really significant until the era when Lázaro in, say, most of Asia. Even so, there is an ‘ethnic’ was arrested early in the Revolutionary Cárdenas (no friend of up to this dimension to the revolutionary social movements period, the regimes of Carranza, point) became president (1934-40). Even so, the which requires analysis. But it is equally Obregón and Calles all adhered to Communists enjoyed only a brief period of important, I think, to examine the way in which models of economic development which political favour. But a more important objection the social and political structures of ‘white’ and were not too different from those of the to the framework offered by writers like Gilly is ‘’ Mexico also differed from the kinds of Porifiriato. the argument presented by Theda Skocpol in her structures envisaged by classical European social book States and Social Revolutions. Skocpol theory. [1] THE , 1810-1821 argues that the so-called ‘bourgeois’ revolution in France is essentially the same sort of phenomenon • Some people would, of course, argue 1810 marks the beginning of the armed as the so-called ‘proletarian’ revolution in Russia, that the Mexican revolution wasn’t a insurrection against Spain known as ‘the and also similar to the revolution which brought revolution at all, because of the nature of Insurgency’. Surprisingly few historians are down the Imperial state in China: all are triggered the social system which emerged in the interested in studying the Insurgency as a social by political crisis in a "proto-bureaucratic" state post-revolutionary period. It’s certainly movement. But it was, in fact, a popular uprising regime with a particular kind of agrarian true that things turned out very of considerable violence, which involved a good structure, and all are more similar to each other differently to what many of the deal of what we might call, albeit with than they are to the earlier so-called ‘bourgeois’ themselves had had in reservations, ‘class warfare’. In many respects, it revolution (The ) in England: she mind, though it’s important to stress that deserves the title of a failed revolution. We suggests, en passant, that her analysis might even people like were in no obviously have to begin this discussion by saying possibly embrace the case of Mexico too. In his sense antagonistic to capitalist something about the colonial state and social book The Mexican Revolution, the historian Alan development. But I think it is quite system. The Hispanic-American empire falls

http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 2 - fairly readily into Skocpol’s ‘proto-bureaucratic’ private landlord interests, as Skocpol suggests is preserved a genuine notion of their historical Absolutist or imperial state category, and much of always the case in ‘imperial state’ regimes. In the sociocultural identity, but a matter of what she says about France could be readily case of a large in Western Mexico that I manipulation of post-revolutionary legislation on applied to the Hispanic-American empire, which studied, Guaracha, in the Ciénega de Chapala, the land restitution by groups which were neither was, after all, actually ruled by Bourbons in the Bourbon government actually encouraged an ‘indigenous’ nor peasant. 18th century. The ‘dominant class’ enjoyed Indian community which had lost land to The Guaracha example also happens to be proprietary wealth based on ownership of landed hacienda to reclaim it in the courts, not out of particularly relevant to the present topic of estates and could purchase public offices from concern for the Indians’ welfare, but because it discussion, the Insurgency, because the new which it could enrich itself in various venal ways. feared that they would cease to be able to pay hacendado and his entire family were killed in the There are, however, two special features of the their taxes to the Crown. They didn’t, in fact, get course of the uprising. Once the military Spanish colonial world which made it different their land back, because the estate was bought up protection offered by the colonial state broke from Absolutist France. The first crucial by a rich local merchant, who had sufficient down, the underclasses rebelled and slaughtered distinctive feature is the existence of the original influence with the local to block the their exploiters. Even hacienda tenants who didn’t inhabitants of the New World. The Spanish Indians’ petition. This kind of example suggests join the Insurgent army refused to pay their rents colonial state turned the "Indians" as it chose to that private class interests had achieved such once the landlords lost their coercive power. So call them into Crown tributaries - it sought to power in colonial society that the Crown couldn’t the Insurgency appears to have involved ‘class ‘protect’ the Indians’ land from expropriation by really do much to interfere with private agrarian struggles’ of the most direct kind, a revolt by private landlords in order to exploit them itself. property rights - i.e. that the colonial state was various different kinds of rural people against This ‘protection’ was very incomplete: the Crown really quite weak in relation to the dominant class different forms of landlord domination. couldn’t and didn’t stop the owners of landed in ‘civil society’. Most of the redistribution of What we should perhaps ask about this type of estates () from encroaching on Indians’ land to Indian communities which took place rural ‘class struggle’ is how far it corresponded to lands and irrigation water to a significant extent. under the Bourbons was redistribution from one a revolt of the rural underclasses as a whole It also adopted various policies which forcibly Indian community to another: in other words, the against the ‘ruling class’. I think the answer is integrated the Indians into the Spanish economy, Indians’ ability to pay taxes was sustained by a that much of this often violent confrontation both as suppliers of labour and as suppliers of ‘sharing out of ’ which made the situation remained very localized: particular groups of commodities to the urban market. By the second of Indians in general worse than it had been, by ‘peasants’ had particular grievances, and took the half of the eighteenth century, Indian populations penalising those who had managed to retain more opportunity presented by the disorganization of were generally well on the way towards resources in the face of the depradations of their state power to do something about them. As the recovering and exceeding their pre-conquest colonial masters. Nevertheless, from the experience of the 1910 Revolution was to levels. Because haciendas had taken over land left landlords’ point of view, the ideal situation would demonstrate, I think, the widespread occurrence vacant by Indians who died earlier in the colonial have been one of the total abolition of Indian of popular agrarian struggles doesn’t necessarily period, there was now a serious land shortage in communal land tenure. imply that different groups in different regions many regions. In central Mexico, most Indian It was also important that these colonial rights to were capable of extensive cooperation with each villagers had worked as seasonal labour on village land had existed from the point-of-view of other, or were interested in the pursuit of common haciendas since early in the colonial period. But later events, including the revolution of 1910. revolutionary goals according to some larger plan by the 18th century an increasing number of Indians could reactivate these primordial claims or ideology. Indians were sustaining themselves as full-time when the political wind changed, and many The second peculiar feature of the Spanish workers or more frequently tenants on land communities resisted liberal attempts to abolish colonial regime in comparison with France lay in owned by landlords. Nevertheless, despite all this, colonial land tenure arrangements very vigorously the fact that the colonial dominant class was the Indian communities in many regions did still before the revolution. In some cases, however, the divided. The most important offices in the possess a significant amount of communal village notion of achieving restitution of lost village land colonial government were reserved for land. And there was a kind of contradiction wasn’t really the effect of a continuous history of peninsulars, Spaniards born in Spain. So were the between the interests of the colonial state and struggle by ‘indigenous communities’ which very top positions in the Church, the army and the http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 3 - most important monopolies controlled by the Miguel , the first creole leader of the competing for labour which remained in short- Crown in the colonial trading system. The movement, lost his hacienda under supply until the later 18th century. Mexican-born élite, the Creoles, could enjoy the redemptions. The Church was also upset, and In the late 18th century, things began to change. enormous wealth, be extremely well-educated and again it was the lower creole clergy who were The population had grown, and labour ceased to cultured. But they didn’t have access to the particularly upset, because a lot of them depended be in short supply. The economic elite of the centres of power in colonial society and naturally on income from the type of religious foundations Bajío started cutting wages and increasing rents resented this. So there were two types of the Bourbons had now wound up for their paid by hacienda tenants, and lower class conflictive situation in late colonial society in livelihood. Hidalgo was also a cleric. So the discontent increased further when Bourbon Mexico. A latent political conflict between Bourbon’s behaviour over the redemptions had a mercantilism hit colonial manufacturing exports, Creoles and Peninsulars, or Creoles and the serious impact on the creole part of the colonial most of which came from the Bajío urban centres. colonial state, and a potential for dominant class, and therefore exacerbated the Life in the Bajío rapidly ceased to be enviable. between hacienda tenants and landowners, and existing resentments over the privileges enjoyed When the rains failed for a second year in impoverished communal Indians and landowners. by peninsulars. This wasn’t the only reason the succession in 1786, 15% of the rural population Both types of conflict came together in the War of creoles were discontented. The Bourbons had starved to death. This catastrophe reflected a Independence, with highly illuminating results. introduced mercantilist policies which established fundamental shift in the nature of regional class Let me briefly run through the scenario of what much stronger control over colonial trade than relations. Unable to compete with "self- happened. had existed before, and favoured the Spanish exploiting" peasant family labour farms in the The start of the processes which led to metropolitan economy. Though a lot of maize market, estate owners had switched to Independence again has certain similarities with smuggling went on, legally imported goods growing wheat and vegetables for the urban upper the process which brought about the French became more expensive, which discontented the income market, taking advantage of their Revolution: the Bourbons did something which landowners in the colonies, who liked to consume monopoly control of irrigation water. This meant provoked conflict with the dominant class. In Spanish brandy and fine clothes. But there was a that the landlords’ storehouses no longer 1804, Spain went to war with Great Britain: as in more serious economic impact, which explains contained maize stocks to distribute as food aid, the French case, war created a fiscal crisis. The why the Insurgency started in a particular region, but even had they possessed the means to help, Bourbons tried to resolve this problem by making the Bajío, north of . they lacked the will. Much of the growing rural their colonies pay for the war. The way they did The economic and social development of the population was now expendable from the landlord this is a little technical. They ordered the Bajío was unusual. It had become the most point of view, eking out an existence on the immediate redemption of mortages notionally important region for commercial grain farming in margin of subsistence survival as insecure tenants held by various religious foundations in the Mexico in the 18th century. It acted as middle- and squatters on estate land. Totally dependent on Americas. These mortgages were a way in which man in the trade with the Northern cattle ranches, landlord power, unlike the communal peasants of Hacienda and mine owners and merchants in supplying them with both grain and manufactured Central Mexico, this rural underclass may not endowed foundations which goods. This is the third point about the Bajío: it have received much sympathy from established provided income for members of the lower clergy. was highly urbanized, containing not only tenants and resident estate workers initially, but The foundations didn’t actually possess the cash, Mexico’s silver mines, but her most dynamic the ruthless exercise of the rights of property was so the wealthy people who stood behind the artisan-based industries. The Bajío elite lived in soon to increase the insecurity of all. endowments had to pay up the full value of the the local cities, not Mexico City. The region was Having already taken advantage of growing mortgages. In other words, this was all a one which had been colonized by Indians as well demographic pressure to raise rents and lower manoevre by which the Crown secured a forced as Spaniards after the conquest, but there were wages, at the end of the 18th century the loan of 40 million pesos from the dominant few surviving corporate Indian communities. landlords began to evict even more prosperous classes in the colonies. The very rich were Barriers of ethnic status had been broken down, tenants whose families had lived for generations disgruntled, but smaller creole landowners and and Indians merged with the rest of the on the estates, leasing their land to people with merchants actually had to sell off their lands and population socially, because the mine owners, capital: merchants, owners of textile workshops, other assets to raise the money. hacendados and workshop owners were all officials and tax collectors. The peasants believed http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 4 - that tenancy arrangements had a morally binding rapidly growing force rallying to their cause to create a more disciplined Insurgent army, with force of custom and even of "contract"; the sack the properties of Peninsular Spaniards, on some success. He and his colleagues also evictions fuelled feelings of moral outrage against the understanding that they would leave developed a fully coherent republican and social landlords who were condemning people to starve properties owned by Creoles who supported programme, based on the abolition of all ethnic so that already wealthy "speculators" could farm Independence alone. This was an error, because distinctions, slavery and tribute. He founded a the land that had given them a livelihood in Hidalgo had no means of controlling the popular ‘Congress’ on the American model, and it’s selfish pursuit of surplus wealth. The Bajío did forces he had now unleashed. Political conflict important to stress the extent to which the creoles not rise in 1786, or even in 1800, and to analyse turned into class warfare, as all landed property identified with the North American independence the case more fully it would be necessary to came under attack. Hidalgo’s forces attacked the movement in this period. consider a counter-factual: what would have civic granary of , and the creole But when died in 1815, the Insurgency happened had the colonial political system not officers could only look on in horror as the rabble began to lose momentum. The class warfare entered what appeared to the peasants to be a proceeded to massacre all the defenders. As the continued sporadically, but the Church and big crisis of intra-elite conflict, which turned a revolt spread, killings were repeated on any estate landowners remained implacably opposed to criollo-led political into a popular social where members of the ruling class were still be Independence, and the Royalist cause received a revolution in which the target of the slogan "Kill found: most of those who did not already live in big boost from the defeat of the Napoleonic forces the Spaniards!" was the entire agrarian ruling distant cities fled, but amongst those who died, as in Spain and the restoration of Bourbon rule. class without distinction between criollos and I noted earlier, were the family of the resident What made Independence possible in the end was peninsulares? owner of the Guaracha hacienda in western not revolution but reaction. In 1820, liberal army Class war erupted in Mexico, as in France, once Michoacán, Don Victorino Jaso. officers staged a coup in Spain, imposed the State became embroiled in a political conflict Such atrocities immediately produced a backlash constitutional government and introduced a whole with the ruling class, and the peasants and artisans on the part of wealthy Creoles, who now rallied to range of measures designed to secularize the state. perceived their oppressors as disorganized. In Spain, to defend their property interests as a class. The Church hierarchy in Mexico now decided to 1810, Napoleon deposed the Bourbon King of As a result, Hidalgo was unable to take Mexico support Independence, in order to preserve the Spain. This gave the Creoles their chance to seek City, and turned west to at the head traditional power of the Church in Mexico. They redress of their grievances. As it happened, the of an army of 80,000. At this point, and for the looked for a suitable leader for this new Viceroy of Mexico at the time had a close first time, he attempted to give a direction to the conservative independence movement, and found liaison with the mine owners of the popular movement he had so unwittingly released him in an officer in the Royalist army. Iturbide Bajío - i.e. he took bribes. In the disorganization by announcing a ‘social programme’, which guaranteed both the rights of landowners and the created by events in Spain, he agreed to cancel the included the abolition of Indian tribute rights of the Church in Independent Mexico. redemptions and announced that Creoles would obligations and land distribution to the needy. Iturbide extended these guarantees to all no longer be barred from high office. This Creole intellectuals had been arguing the need for peninsular Spaniards who chose to become provoked an immediate reaction from the reform for decades, inspired by the American and ‘Americans’, promised all Royalist officers a key Peninsular Spaniards, who saw their privileges French revolutions. The creole bishop of place in Independent Mexico, and then proceeded being threatened. With almost unbelievable Michoacán had been one of the most outspoken to do a deal with the remaining leaders of the stupidity, they staged a coup d’état and deposed of these humanist intellectuals and was a personal Insurgent forces, who naturally accepted, not the Viceroy, thus preventing a reasonable friend of Hidalgo. But he, like most of the Creole simply because their radicalism was not very compromise. The creoles who were particularly intelligensia, now got cold feet, and started deeply entrenched, but because they could see this disgruntled with Spain for economic reasons writing pamphlets defending the colonial system was their only way of winning. After seized their chance to begin a movement for as the guarantee of civilized values and a society Independence Iturbide got carried away, declared Independence. They sought to achieve their ends where people knew their proper place. Hidalgo himself emperor and was overthrown, but his by rallying the disaffected masses to the banner. was excommunicated, and then defeated and personal fate isn’t very important for As an inducement, Hidalgo and his associates executed. Francisco Morelos, another creole understanding the kind of state structure which announced that it would be permissable for the cleric, took over the leadership, and attempted to was created in post-Independence Mexico. The http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 5 - outcome of the struggle for Independence was The first point to grasp is who controlled the on the rapid polarization of those societies into an not, in the end at all social revolutionary. In fact, central government. Although there were 44 extensive ‘’ and a dominant all the social and political structures of the governments between 1821 and 1855, eleven of ‘’. In the 19th century Mexican colonial system were preserved unchanged - them were headed by the same man, Santa Ana of context, it is better to emphasize characteristrics actually conserved in what was ultimately a the seige of the Alamo fame. Until 1855, of these urban ‘petty bourgeois’ which are not reaction to liberal in Spain. conservatives were in the ascendant, and the really concerned with ‘class’ in its classical The masses were ruthlessly repressed. The only conservatives were essentially a military Marxist or Weberian senses of position with difference was that the old distinction between oligarchy, the old officer corps of the Royalist respect to control of means of production or the Creole and Peninsular was abolished the army. There was a brief interlude, terminated by a market. dominant class became more unified in this sense. military coup in 1830, when Vicente , First of all, the Liberals were from the provinces. heir to Morelos and hero of Independence, was Liberalism was particularly strong in the Bajío [2] POLITICS AND THE President. Guerrero favoured social reform, and and western Mexico, which had a broadly similar LIBERAL REFORM, 1821-1876 embraced the lower as well as middle classes in social structure: small commercial towns and The next phase will take us from 1821 to the his plans. But he was replaced by conservatives small-holder farmers coexisted with giant beginnings of the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in who had no such popular sympathies, and haciendas like Guaracha. The smaller landowners 1876. After the collapse of the colonial state, favoured the rebuilding of a strong central and provincial merchants identified with Mexico entered one of the most tumultuous government. liberalism, but the leadership itself consisted of periods in her history. In the first 33 years of So part of the dynamic of caudillo politics was a journalists, lawyers, school teachers, minor Independence, Mexico had forty-four different matter of conflict between ‘federalists‘ and bureaucrats and junior army officers - most were governments. This pattern of instability was ‘centralizers‘, though people of different political creoles or , and a few, like Benito Juárez, characteristic of most Latin American states after orientations with regard to social programmes later , were actually Indians. Independence, and it reflected the sharp could belong to both camps, as they were to do (Juárez was a Zapotec from ). All of them of power which followed the again in the Revolution of 1910-20. The fact, were, hoever, essentially urban people, with little ending of Bourbon rule, the system known as however, that Guerrero achieved power at all, and understanding or sympathy for the rural poor this caudillo politics. The writ of the government in that conservative regimes had such difficulty in was just as true of the Indian Juárez as any of the Mexico City virtually ceased to run in the stabilising themselves, also reflected the others. This urban orientation of political radicals provinces, which were dominated by regional continuing role of inter-class tensions and social is very important for understanding Mexico’s ‘strong-men’, the , whose power rested unrest after Independence: though the Insurgency subsequent development. What these people were on their landed estates and the use of the wealth was defeated by the compromise between its reacting against primarily was the continuing they extracted from them to recruit a clientele of leaders and Iturbide, the underlying problems did power monopoly created by the conservative armed followers. The core of the caudillo’s not go away. But this type of inter-class conflict perpetuation of colonial structures: though rich following was recruited by personalistic patron- was not the whole of the story. As the 19th creoles had obtained an entre into the client ties. But caudillos also competed for power century proceded, political conflict increasingly commanding heights of power, poorer provincials by involving themselves in the continuing social became a matter of conflict between liberals and and mestizos were still excluded: they were not struggles of the period, promising justice to conservatives. This conflict cannot be understood gente decente. They could neither advance to the peasants, including Indians, for example, when it in economic class terms, but it did have roots in more important civil or military offices, nor suited their ambitions. In fact, the traditional Mexico’s social structure. achieve real economic class power, because all model of caudillo politics, which only emphasizes The liberal leaders were mostly people of what these avenues for advancement were still blocked patron-client relations between strong-men and we might term urban ‘petty bourgeois’ origin, by the old oligarchy. peasant clients misses the fact that all this though the Marxisant term ‘petty bourgeois’ is So this is the second underlying structural apparent disorder was in fact structured. There really rather Eurocentric: it goes along with determinant in Mexico’s post-Independence was a sort of order underneath all the chaos. models of the development of 19th century political instability: the opposition between European industrial capitalist society which focus political centre and periphery. The liberals were http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 6 - violently anti-clerical, promised constitutional remained steadfastly opposed to the so-called blind them to the fact that they were all mortaged democracy, and also had a social programme ‘reformers’, and the Church rapidly ceased to be up to the eyeballs by her, and that they’d make an which espoused the principle of creating a rural an opposition element under the Porfiriato. enormous windfall profit if those mortgages were middle class of prosperous private farmers. They But this is running a bit too far ahead in the story. cancelled and the temporal wealth of the Church also, of course, promised to end ethnic and other After Guerrero was forced to retire to his distributed, which was what the liberals forms of discrimination against Indians, but it’s hacienda in 1830, the new conservative regimes eventually proposed. But the conservatives might vital to understand that their ‘modernizing’ set about trying to rebuild a centralized state. In have been able to deal with these contradictions if programme wasn’t actually very attractive to poor many ways, the intentions of these governments they hadn’t faced another foreign intervention. Indians: they wanted to abolish all forms of were similar to those which were implemented In 1845, the USA annexed Texas. In 1848, it communal land tenure, and make Indians private successfully in Germany later on. They thought it added New Mexico and California. These proprietors like other citizens. Many poor Indians was necessary to modernize their countries’ catastrophes were followed by a wave of correctly surmized that this would lead to their economies. In the late , the government of spontaneous agrarian rebellions in Central getting totally dispossessed and impoverished, by Lucas Alemán, who came from a rich Bajío Mexico and the famous rising of the Maya removing their last legal protection against mining family, tried to create a modern capitalist Indians in the Yucatan known as the ‘War of the encroachment by haciendas and the exploitation textile industry in the Bajío. He imported British- Castes’. Haciendas were looted and destroyed. At of poor members of Indian communities by the made machines, set up a state bank to finance the first, the liberals and conservatives forgot their richer ones. Indian communities therefore development, and erected tariff barriers against differences out of fear of the masses, in a sort of frequently supported Conservative factions in the foreign imports to protect Mexico’s ‘infant re-run of the events at the time of Independence. civil wars of 19th century Mexico (as they also did industries’. In other words, the state was to be Indians might be given the status of citizens by in Guatemala), although there are cases, such as used as an instrument for ‘modernization’ from their liberal masters but they were not, it seemed, that of the Sierra Norte de discussed by above. But Alemán’s policy did not prove popular going to free themselves from exploitation by Florencia Mallon in her book Peasant and in certain quarters. First of all, the new more modern methods. For the liberals, social Nation, where they supported liberals, putting protectionist trade policy didn’t go down well progress was seen as a matter of "whitening" their own readings on the liberal land laws. with the powerful import-export merchants of Mexico, and Indians remained a living symbol of Although they are intelligible within specific , who suddenly decided they were liberal the country’s backwardness that needed to be regional circumstances, such alliances tended not social reformers. Secondly, this whole strategy expunged by forced cultural assimilation and to be particularly advantageous to the Indians in was dependent on the state’s being able to tax "race mixture". the longer term, since Liberals secure in power people, including landowners. The policy of these In consequence, Santa Ana was returned to power tended to turn on their erstwhile indigenous allies. conservative governments was centralist. In for the last time as a dictatorial strong-man In general terms, it is clear that the liberals were reality, the state was still dreadfully weak, but the fronting a conservative government. He assumed not really interested in protecting peasant famers: attempt to rebuild it provoked resistance from the quasi-monarchical powers, and found himself in they regarded the peasant subsistence plot as an regional caudillos and landlord class in general. desperate need of money, so he sold southern anachronism and a barrier to economic progress. So there were now two types of opposition to the to the USA. This was the beginning of They didn’t worry too much about hacendados structure of central power defended by the the end for conservatism. Santa Ana was taking over peasant land, or propose any sort of conservatives: liberals, who wanted an end to the overthrown for the last time, and the incoming radical agrarian reform programme, beyond restrictions on social mobility imposed by the Liberal government finally enacted the legislation assuming that the breakup of Church property colonial status order, and socially conservative which was to bring the end of the key colonial would enable a rural middle class to emerge. The landowners who wanted to ensure that the state institutions. In 1856, it was decreed that all conservatives’ problem was that the liberal didn’t interfere with them, and eventually became church real estate urban and rural had to be sold programme was actually quite attractive to the quite sympathetic to the liberal agrarian to its existing tenants and lessees. This legislation, landlord class. So in the long term the balance of programme and policy towards the Church’s the Ley Lerdo (after Miguel Lerdo, minister of forces in Mexican society favoured the triumph of wealth. Though the big landowners were devout Finance), was rapidly followed by a new liberalism - only the Church and poor Indians Catholics, their devotion to mother Church didn’t constitution which in effect abolished all http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 7 - corporate property ownership (in favour of This is the episode which led to France’s expansion of the great estates, and development individual private ownership): it therefore applied temporary installation of a new emperor, of the most exploitative forms of agrarian equally to the communal lands of Indian peasant Maximilian Habsburg, in Mexico, an episode - Maximilian’s labour protection villages. which ended with Maximilian’s execution at legislation became a dead letter. The liberals The great irony of the Liberal programme was Queretaro in 1867. It is rather ironic that the repaid the support they received from the that an increasing number of landowners came to unfortunate Maximilian was rather more of a real Veracruz import-export merchants by adopting a support the liberal cause, and violent resistance in moderniser and social reformer than Juárez was - policy of free trade - thus laying the country open the countryside came from the Indian community. he legally abolished debt-peonage and the use of to further ‘peripheralization’ by the industrial In fact the resistance from the Indians was so company stores, restricted child labour and made capitalist powers. Lastly, the liberals created only violent that the implementation of the Reform in it illegal for hacendados to beat their workers. He the formal constitutional framework for a modern the Indian villages was stopped within a few also restored quite a lot of communal land to national state: the central government had little months. But this still left the Liberals locked in a Indian villages. Maximilian also believed that the administrative or fiscal control over most of the desperate struggle with the Church, even though rich should pay taxes, on the model of European country, and could only implement the reform quite a lot of landowners had decided that it was national state regimes. None of this made him because local dominant class interests wanted the no longer rational to remain actively conservative. popular with the Mexican ruling class: the reform to be implemented. This brings us to 1876, In 1857, there was a conservative military coup: landowners were quite outraged at both the and the period of the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, Benito Juárez escaped from custody, declared thought of paying more taxes and the new which was finally ended by the Mexican himself constitutional president, and the country government’s interference with their rights to Revolution. entered a violent civil war, known as the "War of exploit their peones as they pleased. So they the Reform". The Lerdo Law was revoked, but defected to Juárez again. Furthermore, the French [3] THE PORFIRIATO, 1876-1910 the Liberals succeeded in forming what was in intervention marked the end of the road for the The first question to pose is why Mexico effect a separate government controlling much of Conservatives. Having lost the support of enough succumbed to a dictatorship and didn’t achieve a the country outside the old colonial centre in of the dominant class to be incapable of liberal-democratic regime, since this is what most central Mexico. In 1959 the constitutional remaining in power, they supported the French liberal politicians claimed they wanted. The government of Juárez added further clauses to the intervention out of desperation. Once the answer, I think, has two sides to it: Lerdo Law abolishing all Church mortgages on landlords got fed up with Maximilian, Juárez was (1) No representative political institutions were private property - this was its trump card, since able to enjoy the reputation of the leader of a created by liberalism at local level. The regional almost the entire landowning class was up to its national liberation movement, and the caudillos remained firmly in control, and what eyeballs in debt. Since the Church had so clearly conservative cause was lost for ever. I think it is Mexico had in the way of ‘state institutions’ were financed the conservative coup, it was easy to important to stress the way that the foreign concentrated still in Mexico City. The liberal attack it more radically than even before, and the interventions played a key role in fostering leadership simply joined the ranks of the existing liberal position was growing stronger as a still Mexican nationalism, which to some extent landed oligarchy. greater proportion of the landlord class defected percolated down to the lower classes, even if it (2) The totally urban-based liberal political to the liberal cause out of naked self-interest. In was not turned into a true mass ideology until the movement had done nothing to bring the agrarian 1861, the conservative government in Mexico post-revolutionary period, when it was fostered masses into any form of participation in national City collapsed, and Juárez won a sweeping by the post-revolutionary state through mass life: indeed, liberalism created new types of rural victory in new elections. He was, however, education programmes. unrest. master of an empty treasury, and began to The liberal reform did not achieve its avowed This second point is, I think, particularly nationalize Church property. He refused to pay ends. It did not create a rural middle class. It important. In the early decades of Independence, the foreign creditors of the former conservative created a speculative boom in real estate which as we’ve seen, the different political factions in government, which provoked a further combined enriched the speculators and drained the country Mexico tended to unite in the face of fear of foreign intervention by Britain, Spain and France. of investment capital. It laid the basis for the popular rebellion and inter-class conflict. Those further impoverishment of the Indian community, who were inclined to liberalism were too scared http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 8 - to rock the boat. The constitutional republican Church to calm conservative opinion, very like Cristero rebellion reflected the fact that the state created by the liberals left private class Díaz: but in France the Church lost most of its Porfirian state had provided the conditions for the power not simply untouched, but absolutely property, and the state took over the job of paying Church to recover its social power, so the struggle rampant. The only problem was that it was so its priests. In Mexico, in contrast, the Church’s to do that had to be renewed under the post- weak and ineffective that it could not guarantee wealth had remained largely untouched by the revolutionary regime. It also reflected the internal social tranquility or do anything about reform - it was simply more disguised. The substantial degree of alienation which existed Mexico’s ‘national’ problems - in particular the Church no longer owned haciendas - it simply between the rural masses and the post- continuing threat posed by the USA to the financed other people’s. Members of landed revolutionary state élite, and the extent to which country’s national integrity. families entered Holy Orders and the clergy acted the kind of secular ideologies by which that state Díaz’s regime offered an end to civil wars, greater as administrators and financiers to the landed and sought to incorporate the rural masses were social stability, and promised a form of national commercial sectors. In fact, the Church’s rejected initially. development: from the ruling class point of view relationship to the landlord class became an even Now let’s turn to a second, and in many ways the it probably didn’t matter too much that this more organic one under the Porfiriato. As the crucial issue, Porfirio Díaz’s attempt to create a national development involved the increasing tendencies towards class polarization and rural stronger and more effective central state machine. domination of foreign capital initially, since the proletarianization which we’ve already discussed At the start of Díaz’s dictatorship, it was pretty major problem through the 19th century had been increased, the clergy played an increasingly evident that no Mexican government could afford the loss of national territory to the USA, and important role in the ideological control of the to offend the landlord class in any way, and that securing effective domination over the lower masses and the campaign against the agrarian power was effectively held by that class in a classes. The export economy was beneficial to reform movement which gathered momentum decentralized form in which whole areas of the Mexican landowners; it’s only later, when US through the period of the Wars of the Reform and country were effectively controlled by regional capital began to take over large sections of the the Díaz dictatorship. But the Church was caudillos. What Díaz did, in essence, was to try to Mexican economy, that some members of the extremely astute in its strategy. It managed to beat the caudillos at their own game. He either elite began to feel that there was an issue of combine putting itself at the service of agrarian coopted local strong-men and made them into his national integrity at stake in terms of economic capitalism with retaining its social power over the personal clients, or he inserted his own men as domination, but as I’ve said, I don’t think this was masses. What it did was embark on a campaign of military or civil governors, so that they could a key issue in terms of explaining the revolution, spiritual reconquest of the masses, launched control local opposition. His state still had very i.e. I don’t think it should be seen as some kind of against traditional folk Catholicism and secular little in the treasury at first, so he was forced to ‘nationalist’ revolution. ideologies alike. It rather cunningly advocated the rely on foreign capital to prop up this expanding Díaz had been a liberal general, and in some ways policy of a ‘third way’ between capitalism and structure of central patronage. He channelled he continued the trend set up by liberalism, socialism. Though the Church Hierarchy did money into infrastructural development railways, particularly in the countryside. Before I say make serious mistakes - like welcoming the irrigation schemes, etc. - which increased the something about the relationship between counterrevolutionary coup of Huerta - the way the wealth of the landlord class, and landlords were agrarian structures and the Revolution, I want to Church as a whole had hedged its bets supported by the state as they sort to take over mention some other, crucially important things. ideologically stood it in extremely good stead peasant land and create a cheap rural proletariat. First of all, there’s the question of Church-State when it subsequently had to face a particularly All this, of course, meant promoting the export relations. Díaz differed from his liberal strong anti-clerical post-revolutionary state in the dependence of the Mexican economy, though it predecessors, and the caudillos who ran the post- . should be said that Díaz was quite astute in trying revolutionary state, particularly in the 1920s, by This was important, since the greatest challenge to play one foreign interest off against another: abandoning a strongly anti-clerical stance. It is which the post-revolutionary state faced came not US capital, for example, didn’t succeed in extremely important to stress that the Church from the old landlord class or the military, but achieving its objective of total control of the remained an independent corporate power in from the Cristero rebellion - a large-scale mass Mexican petroleum industry. I don’t think it’s Mexican society after the Reform. In France, movement with genuinely popular roots which correct to see the Porfirian state in terms of the Napoleon also reached a concordat with the swept the country from 1926 to 1929. The notion of ‘dependency’ the reliance on the http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 9 - development of the export economy and something that was unique to Mexico, and so one from Guaracha, described in the classic penetration of foreign capital were all the result of must argue that the Mexican revolution was the anthropological works of Paul Friedrich, was the fact that decades of civil wars and foreign product of some special combination of factors: promoted by changes which began under the interventions had drained the country of the factors taken individually may all have been Porfiriato, as a result of which Naranja lost most investment capital, and the state machine was too present in other cases, but the combination of of its communal land. Guaracha’s peones weak to support any German- process of agrarian, social and political conditions must have acasillados were not revolutionary, and the local rapid industrialization from above based on state been a special one. As I’ve already suggested in agrarian movement began, instead, in the finance. There wasn’t really any other option. contrasting the Bajío with central Mexico, municipal head-town. All this suggests, as Eric Díaz did, however, succeed in strengthening regional social and agrarian structures were really Wolf, Adolfo Gilly and others have suggested, centralized state power considerably. He built up quite diverse. There was not one Mexico, but that the ‘village community’ was an essential the , and enormously enhanced the many, and some regions, like the Yucatan and ingredient in agrarian revolt in the Mexican case. state’s ability to collect taxes. Local communities , were scarcely part of the country at all. It should not be assumed, however, that the which hadn’t seen any manifestation of state Very broadly and crudely, we can distinguish ‘village community’ here means the Indian power for decades now had to contend with three major types of agrarian system: in the village community exclusively: some ‘indigenous recruiting sergeants and federal tax collectors. North, with its strong emphasis on cattle- pueblos’ were completely ‘mestizoised’ by the There was, therefore, some significant ranching, mining and so on, there was a 19th century, and revolutionary villages might development of bureaucracy and a new predominance of ‘free wage labour’ systems, never have had any ‘Indian’ ethnic affiliation, administrative apparatus under the regime, a whereas the deep south was more charaterised by even in theory. Furthermore, the existence of a siginificant degree of state ‘modernization’ and the expansion of tropical plantation agriculture ‘village community’ seems an essential ingredient consolidation. The weakness of the Porfirian state based on semi-servile labour and physical of another kind of rural rebellion which is central lay in the fact that its structure was held together coercion. In the centre, landlords enjoyed a near to the Mexican revolution - what Alan Knight by Díaz’s personal patronage system, and kinship monopoly of land, but could recruit virtually calls serrano movements, where the chief issue is relations among the Porfirian elite. Government inexhaustible and growing supplies of wage not hacienda encroachment on village land, but had a tendency to remain arbitrary, not to mention labour from the peasant villages. resistance to political centralization - the corrupt. But worse than that, Díaz failed to give In the case of the Guaracha hacienda, the recruiting sergeant, the tax man, and the arbitrary any real thought as to how to replace his personal municipal head-town, Villamar (then, rule of the ‘political chiefs’ (jefes políticos) power and integrative function with institutions symptomatically, called Guarachita), originally an installed by Díaz. Serrano movements were which would endure after he was gone: he simply ‘Indian town (pueblo)’ had lost all its land during certainly nothing new, but the transport and refused to go, and he also refused to allow the the Porfirian period. The hacienda drew on economic developments under the Porfiriato Porfirian élite as a whole to steer his régime seasonal labour supplies from the villages when it caused them to develop in new places - in towards a more institutionalised and needed them, and rented land to villagers working particular the mestizo north. The core of Pancho constitutional system. The Porfirian political as share-croppers, but relied on a core of Villa’s army were people who had been sent out system therefore created conditions for political permanent workers called peones acasillados, as settlers in the 18th century to fight the Apache, crisis of the kind which could lead to social who were waged and had a written contract. military colonists. Some of these communities revolutionary crisis. Guaracha had ‘modernized’ its production were being squeezed by the expansion of cattle technology, and was an entirely commercial ranches, but in many cases there was no real [4] AGRARIAN REVOLUTION 1910-1940 enterprise: everything it sowed was shipped out agrarian element involved in their willingness to Now let’s look briefly at the implications of the by train and sold to the urban market. All this fight. Many, though certainly not all, of the Mexican case for producing a general theory of reflected the new situation created by the people who fought in the Cristero rebellion agrarian revolution. The Porfiriato certainly Porfiriato’s investments in transport against the post-revolutionary state might also be brought about a major process of infrastructure, irrigation and land reclamation, seen in terms of this notion of a serrano commercialization and capitalist expansion in the and its support for land concentration by movement, the immediate issue then being Mexican countryside. This was not, however, haciendas: the revolt at Naranja, some fifty miles http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 10 - secularization and the enforced closing of work were extended by force against the peones’ cultivate their subsistence plots instead of churches by the national government. resistance. Share-croppers were robbed when working in the cane fields, for example. The only Alan Knight has argued that taxation was less of accounts were settled after the harvest, and they spontaneous agrarian movement in the Ciénega an issue in the Revolution of 1910 than it had faced the armed ‘White Guard’ of the hacienda if villages came from the kulaks, after 1910, and been in earlier periods, or was in, for example, the they felt like arguing about it. There was a general they were aided by urban revolutionary case of Indochina in the 1930s, as described by decline in rural living standards, as real wages politicians with influence in the post- James Scott, because Díaz had abandoned the old fell, and the terms of and tenancy revolutionary state. Not all ‘village communities’ regressive head-tax system in favour of property agreements deteriorated. If the peón or in Mexico were revolutionary, and still more taxes, stamp duties and import duties. sharecropper provided dissident, he and his important, places which had been active in earlier Nevertheless, taxation was still an important issue family were either simply thrown off the estate, phases of agrarian or serrano conflict were in the case of serrano revolts, especially where it perhaps to starve, or, if the person concerned did quiescent during the 1910 revolution. was levied on an arbitrary basis by local bosses anything which seemed to constitute a ‘threat’ What we have to take into account here is the who enjoyed effective impunity. What was from the hacendado’s point of view, they might pattern of change locally, and the context: the critical in the case of agrarian revolts was much be consigned to the chain-gang. Behind the peones of Guaracha were clearly not ‘happy’ with more usually the land itself. It was not just landlord stood the power of the Porfirian state and the hacienda, but they clearly felt that the world haciendas which were taking the land of the its repressive apparatus. outside the hacienda was less secure and agrarian villages: Porfirian economic policy did do This certainly provided the kind of conditions we revolt was unattractive because it seemed to something to increase the prosperity of smaller might expect to provoke ‘agrarian revolution’. An threaten what little they had. Everything in their commercial farmers, the rancheros, and they were inflexible landlord-class, whose income is experience confirmed this view, including the also interested in taking over community land, ultimately based on monopoly control of land, way agrarian reform was managed in the village provoking agrarian conflicts in regions where big backed by an equally inflexible state, uses its communities which did get land restitutions - landed estates were not prevalent. Furthermore, coercive powers to drag the last ounce of surplus violent caciquismo (local boss rule) and the Porfirian economic policies encouraged of a peasantry in a kind of ‘zero-sum game’. In grabbing of land by the former leaders of the differentiation of wealth within communities and the Guaracha case, better-off kulaks from the agrarian rebel movement. The hacienda had also growing inequalities between one community and municipal head town were forced to take their offered them a degree of military protection another - for example, the location of railway commercial surpluses to market as ‘contraband’, against the violence of the revolutionary world: lines could transform the situation of different because the hacienda guard used to stop them before the revolution it was far too effective a communities in a region, enriching some, crossing the hacienda’s terrain in a bid to repressive apparatus to be seriously challenged. impoverishing and marginalising others. monopolise its control of all commercial Peasant communities outside the haciendas were Land engrossment by haciendas was nothing new agriculture. As emphasized by Jeffery Paige in his better equipped to revolt: even if they were in Mexican history. But the Guaracha case book Agrarian Revolution, to understand what unequal internally, they had community provides a perfect illustration of what was new particular type of ‘peasant’ is likely to engage in organisations of their own, like the French under the Porfiriato: the surrounding villages lost agrarian revolt, we need to see conflict (or its villages in the 18th century. What pushed them not just some, but all of their land, the people absence) as a product of both the peasant’s and into a readiness to revolt was the Porfirian being proletarianized. As Guaracha also shows, the landlord’s position - the product of a class expansion of the hacienda and commercial they might be taken into the new commercial relationship, rather than of the discontents a ranchero sector, which turned what had been an agriculture as share-croppers rather than straight ‘type’ of peasant producer taken in isolation. asymmetrical symbiosis and situation of wage-labourers or peones, but the important point Nevertheless, there are other factors at work exploitation into a zero-sum game which here is that in both cases ‘non-economic’ coercion which affect the outcomes. The peones promised the complete extinction of the last was added to the pressure of economic necessity acasillados-cum-sharecroppers of the Guaracha vestiges of community autonomy. In fact, it was in order to extract a surplus from the agrarian region were not, in fact, revolutionary, despite the the dominant class’s actions which enabled these producer. Peones were brutalised, their wages had fact that they practiced other forms of "everyday" communities to overcome their internal divisions to be spent in the , and hours of resistance to exploitation, by attempting to and act in a relatively solidary way in the face of http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 11 - an unacceptable and illegitimate threat by leadership was, however, just as capable of acting oligarchy except it was now an oligarchy which landlords to their continued survival. It seems that in a way which was offensive to that world-view contained the old liberal leadership. This, then, is even non-revolutionary peones, like the as the landed élite. Indeed, it could sometimes really a continuation of an established pattern of Guaracheños, did not hold their masters in high seem even more authoritarian than its Porfirian political and social conflict, whose basis lies in regard: in fact, the hacienda administration’s predecessor. Even active agraristas of the 1920s the heavily urbanized nature of Mexican society emphasis on coercive discipline, and the severe often made comments to me which imply that and its proliferation of professional occupations. punishments meted out to anyone who showed they had little real enthusiasm for the ‘políticos’ Porfirian centralization created more provincial ‘disobedience’ or ‘insolence’ suggests that the who ran the state: they simply had to ally bureaucrats and lawyers. These urban people Porfirian order created antagonisms which were themselves with that state machine in order to were also the promoters of the more radical more widespread than the conditions which could have any hope of continuing their struggle for the agrarian reform movements in places like turn such antagonisms into agrarian revolt. It was land where they did not possess the autonomous Michoacán the ones which called for the breakup not simply a matter of ‘economics’ and a military power to seize it for themselves unaided. of the old haciendas and the distribution of land to deteriorating standard of living or security of Even the peasant movement in Morelos found landless workers as well as ‘indigenous subsistence: Porfirian ‘modernizers’ sought to itself in this situation after the defeat of communities’. eliminate every non-commodity form of . Because the peasants could not retain The difference between the time of the relationship from their dealings with the rural their initial military gains, or create a movement Revolution and the reform period is that these underclasses, and realizing that this would which unified the underclasses as a whole at a people now embraced a different perspective on provoke tension and resentment, resorted to a national level, their long-term incorporation into how social transformation could be implemented. whole range of ‘disciplinary’ practices to keep the the state was assured. This, one might argue, is They could perceive the potential power which uprooted masses they were creating under control. the paradox of agrarian revolution in general. would accrue from mobilizing the ‘masses’. The Had their been no political crisis, this tactic might Peasant revolution can only realize peasant masses now included a small but organized urban actually have worked until social change had objectives by destroying state power utterly: working class, which played an important role in worked itself out and the transformation of rural peasant revolution lacks the capacity to destroy stabilising the post-revolutionary regime by society had been completed. state power utterly. lending their support to Obregón against the Knight suggests that one of the most significant The onset of political crisis, then, ensured that the ‘peasant’ movements led by Villa and Zapata. effects of the armed, popular phase of the masses would erupt with unprecedented vigour After popular insurrection had swept Díaz from revolution was to destroy ‘traditional’ patterns of onto the historical stage in the Mexican case, by power, Madero’s attempt to revive what was deference and submission to landlord authority. It opening the floodgates to accumulated essentially the 19th century liberal programme does seem clear that overt deferential behaviour resentments and opposition to both agrarian had failed, and the counterrevolution which by the lower orders declined after 1910. But if we expropriation and political centralization. If we sought to restore the Porfiriato had failed, the look at the agrarian history of the 19th century it consider the roots of the political crisis against the revolution became a contest between two sets of becomes clear that latent antagonism is there all background of the 19th century, it becomes clear forces - the popular movements headed by Villa the time, and growing in intensity. Even un- that Díaz’s style of centralization and state and Zapata, and the ‘Constitutionalist’ forces revolutionary peones were not really ‘passive’ or building had not resolved the contradiction which headed initially by . This ‘fatalistic’. The core of even the nonrevolutionary had originally produced liberalism. Much of the ‘War of the Winners’ is an important phase in the peasantry’s view of the old agrarian and social popular agitation against the regime came from revolutionary process because it allows us to order was that it ‘humiliated’ them - this is the the still unsatisfied urban ‘petty bourgeoisie’ evaluate the nature of the ‘popular’ agrarian recurrent leitmotif of every interview I have ever especially in the provinces. The Cárdenas family revolution, on the one hand, and clarify the role of conducted with poorer people who lived in the itself represented this stratum. They were the provincial urban caudillos, on the other. It is Porfirian epoch. The grievance of the peasantry educated people without real prospects of clear that the ‘Constitutionalist’ forces embraced was more than an ‘economic’ one: it was, as economic class power or political advancement people of very different class backgrounds and James Scott suggests, morally grounded in an under the Porfiriato: both economic and political political ideologies, as equally did the Villistas underlying world-view. The post-revolutionary power were still monopolized by a small and, to a lesser extent, Zapatistas: but what united http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 12 - the Constitutionalist side, in the last analysis, was politics. Zapatismo, at any rate, did have its history must be understood in terms of successive a concern with state-building. They were the new attached ‘bourgeois’ ideologues, like Manuel attempts to build a new central state machinery. centralizers, men whose revolt against Díaz had Palafox, but the majority of the ordinary people Díaz’s state was really quite weak, because it always implied the recreation of a new, who fought in the armed phase of the Mexican relied on clientalism to maintain centralization. modernizing, national state. revolution were not thinking in terms of ‘modern’ Knight rejects Jean Meyer’s argument that the The movements of Villa and Zapata were not political ideologies. Cristiada represented a reaction to the creation of centred on such a ‘national’ project. It may, Perhaps the interesting question to pose is a more centralized ‘Leviathan’ state. But it seems however, be too facile simply to dismiss them, whether the supposedly ‘progressive’ versions of ridiculous to reject the idea that the processes of and subsequent ‘counterrevolutionary’ these ideologies - those which argue that the attempting to recreate a more centralized political movements like the Cristiada, simply as capture of the state apparatus is the route to order was not one of the processes which led to ‘backward looking’ reactions to unwelcome freedom and emanicipation - are really so the Cristiada. What we do need to emphasize is change, with no positive projects of their own. ‘progressive’ after all, even if they are ultimately the reason why an attack on the Church provoked Zapatismo, for example, not only had a vision of realistic. After all, the promises made by the later such a violent and extensive popular response a new type of agrarian social order, but also called revolutionary caudillos to the peasantry, in against a government which promised various for a reform of the justice system and "municipal particular the promises of Cárdenas, were not to kinds of social reform. In my view, the Cristero autonomy" — the right of local government, be fulfilled. rebellion reflected two things: representing communities, to determine not How, then, should we periodise the revolution? (1) the extent to which the previous weak simply local affairs, but the amount of state power When did it actually end? The conventional date incorporation of the lower classes into a national it should finance and what the proper functions of is 1921, the effective end of widespread armed political system had increased the social power of national government should be. The contradiction revolution. But there was only a limited political the Church as the only institution providing of the Zapatista vision was that its lack of stabilization under the regimes of Obregón and meaning and social identity to people in enthusiasm for national-level institutions Calles. Carranza and his constitutionalist conditions of great economic insecurity, prevented it from securing the national-level successors once again set about centralizing, and dispossession and class relations of a frequently political transformations which would have they began the process of incorporating the brutal kind. The violence of the revolution simply enabled it to defend their gains effectively. When masses into politics with the wooing of workers’ increased the power of religion in this sense. the armies of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa organizations. Yet the agrarian issue was not in (2) distrust of a ‘government’ which was found themselves effective masters of the country any sense resolved in this period. Calles’s attempt perceived as a government of alien urban social after they occupied Mexico City in 1914, they to establish a ‘modern’ fully secularized state strata, was not rooted in rural life and collective simply handed over the government to provoked the Cristero rebellion. Dealing with the organizations, and which put itself further beyond professional politicians who promptly betrayed Church remained a problem, still unresolved from the pale by its attacks on religious observance. them to the Carrancista faction. What the peasant the 19th century. Knight argues that the post- Most of the rural priests fled to the big cities movements of the Mexican revolution certainly revolutionary state under Obregón and Calles was when the Cristiada broke out, and didn’t therefore were were movements rooted in particular congenitally weak. I would accept that this is true, provide a leadership for the struggle, which was regional societies and based on a vision of the but it totally fails to appreciate the impact that truly popular and self-organizing. The Cristeros world which did not centre of the capture of state even weak states can have on the development of were recruited from various different sections of power. This is an important facet of the Mexican the societies in which they operate, and the fact the ‘popular’ classes — hacienda workers, small- revolution of 1910-1920: no organized that the post-revolutionary leadership’s actions holders, people who had recently been turned into revolutionary ‘vanguard’ attempted to take direct have to be interpreted in terms of the process of urban workers — and young women factory control over the popular agrarian movement - ‘state building’. The colonial state was weak in workers ran the ammunition used by the Cristeros they were left, more or less, to their own comparison with the emerging modern national out of Mexico City (one third of the "industrial autonomous devices, and it was not until the state regimes of western Europe and North proletariat" of Mexico in 1910 was female). Cárdenas period that the peasantry were finally, America. But there was scarcely a state at all after The question one should ask about the Cristiada and effectively, incorporated into national its demise, and much of Mexico’s subsequent was whether it wasn’t a fairly reasonable reaction http://www.les1.man.ac.uk/multimedia/Mexican%20Revolution.htm - 13 - on the part of these groups what confidence simple resolution of the social revolutionary participation in the drugs trade) unmolested. He should these people have placed in the post- situation, laying the basis for a continuation of brought the mass organizations under control, not revolutionary state of Calles, which didn’t try to mass mobilization and patterns of class conflict in the sense that they became totally subservient organize the rural masses, didn’t promise any which forced the more radical solution imposed to ‘the state’, because even the corrupt leaders of radical rural programme of a kind which would by Cárdenas, who clearly did create a mass- the official worker and peasant organizations and have abolished agrarian capitalism, and didn’t incorporating state of a more effective kind. unions engaged in various kinds of factional offer any real political participation to the masses Nevertheless, the continuing social dominance of conflicts within the state, whilst their besides those who were organized in trade private capital circumscribed the possible actions memberships periodically tried to resist the unions? The state as run by Calles was not, of the Cardenista state. What Cárdenas did was imposition of leaders and reestablish a degree of therefore, a fully successful mass-incorporating create a more effective apparatus for central independence. What Cárdenas succeeded in doing state. It did create a rural clientele for those who control — he bureaucratized the military, for was creating a ‘a system’ of political control that sought the kind of it offered, which example, so that they no longer constituted a was flexible enough to resolve the periodic crises did not remember, envisage the expropriation of potentially autonomous power bloc which might caused by its failure to deliver on the modern agro-industrial enterprises. But because take over the state, although they did have some revolutionary regime’s promises of social justice its drive for secularization actually exacerbated influence in policy, acted as an agency of and greater equality. underlying social disorder, and prevented a repression, and could pursue private business restabilization of the rural situation, it prevented a deals (including, in more recent years,

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