Book Review: The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 by Michael J. Gonzalez

The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940

by Michael J. Gonzalez

      Tons of books have been written about the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. They vary widely in length, attention to detail, attitudes towards the people involved, and political bias in general. They also contradict each other depending on what information the authors had access to. Content can be confusing as well since different leaders and factions of the Revolution changed allegiances and sometimes fought with those they previously supported. And from the top political leaders to the military commanders to the common rank and file soldiers, there is an extremely wide range of reasoning for joining in the battles. Whether it was even one revolution or a series of loosely related rebellions and counter-rebellions is still an open question. In short, learning about the Mexican Revolution can be a mind-boggling task. Some places are better than others to start. Michael J. Gonzalez’s The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 is one of the better entry points into this vast and overwhelming period of Latin American history.

As a historical text, this one reaches back into the 19^th century, charting the rise of Porfirio Diaz. He can largely be credited with ushering Mexico into the modern age by introducing industrial technology into the country and embracing liberal, big business economic policy. While this benefited the wealthy class most, it also left the majority of Mexicans behind in poverty. The hacienda system of economic organization also disinherited some agriculturalists from their holdings. American businessmen and multinational corporations, especially oil companies, were given almost free access to Mexico’s natural resources. None of this benefited the Mexican people except for the well-connected oligarchs and technocrats. It is the old story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Porfirio Diaz became more autocratic and dictatorial while the rest of the country went into economic decline.

A pro-democracy movement started with the Portuguese aristocrat Francisco I. Madero. The initial battles of the revolution started when the peasantry joined forces with members of the middle and upper classes to overthrow the Diaz regime. This inspired land reform movements led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. After Madero’s assassination, the Huerta counter-revolutionary presidency took over. It was short lived and after the revolutionary conference of Aguascalientes, another landowner named Venustiano Carranza took office and established a new Mexican constitution. As the warfare wore down, leaders like Obregon, Calles, and Cardenas institutionalized the ideals of the Mexican Revolution although the Zapatista ideal of land reform that received so much support from the rural peasantry fell by the wayside. Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, was established but, unfortunately sold out by becoming more autocratic and corrupt, allowing foreign corporations to access their resources once again though to the chagrin of the American empire, the PRI nationalized the oil fields. They continued making noises about pushing Mexico towards the status of a first world nation, but forward movement progressed only in bits and pieces. The PRI betrayed some of the dreams of the Mexican Revolution, but not all of them. The realization of that dream is yet to come.

Gonzalez’s analysis of the years following the end of revolutionary combat operations is one of this book’s strong points. A lot of books on this subject end with the political ascendancy of Obregon. It’s as if the forces set in motion by the revolution just abruptly stopped in 1920 according to many accounts. Of course, any student of history will tell you that isn’t a realistic way of looking at political upheavals. Otherwise this book is mostly a top down view of the Mexican Revolution meanng the emphasis is placed on politics at the governmental level. While the activism and leadership of Villa and Zapata are readily acknowledged, they take a back seat to what went on at the federal level. Villa’s stint as governor of Chihuahua is never even mentioned. Details of different battles are almost entirely left out and biographical information about key figures in the revolution is absent too. This book really just documents and summarizes the high points of the movement according to Gonzalez’s viewpoint. He does this in a way that is accessible, clear, and engaging though.

The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 serves as an easy introduction to this pivotal conflict in Mexico’s modern history. It draws you in and prepares you for further reading from more in depth sources. It can also be of interest for those who already know about the Mexican Revolution and who the major figures were. It can clarify the intricate mess that more complete studies make it out to be. It can also be a good recap or refresher if you’ve previously read about it and want to get back into the subject matter after some time has passed. Michael J. Gonzalez has written a good functional book that doesn’t exhaust the subject matter but does prime you for more. The Mexican Revolution is a significant event in the formation of the Mexican national identity and understanding what went on will help you understand the roots of contemporary Mexico and their relations with the rest of the world, especially with the United States. This book is a good place to start. 

 

Book Review: Revolution! Mexico 1910-20 by Ronald Atkin

Revolution!

Mexico 1910-20

by Ronald Atkin

      Mexico exploded right after the turn of the twentieth century. Political change looked impossible and life for the poor was stagnant and increasingly looking more and more hopeless. Ronald Atkin’s Revolution! Mexico 1910-20 gives an account of this most turbulent decade from multiple points of view.

This history starts with an explanation of the social, economic, and political circumstances that made the Mexican Revolution almost inevitable. The president Porfirio Diaz had stayed in power through dictatorial means for several decades. He had close relations with international businessmen and cientificos, educated members of the upper class who played a similar role to what conservative think tanks do in the USA. Diaz centralized his power through influence over the governors of each state in Mexico. Also of importance was the hacienda system of agricultural production. Led by wealthy hacendados, each hacienda was like a medieval kingdom in miniature with a feudal class structure. The haciendas were like villages where the villagers, campesinos and peons of mostly mestizo and indio ethnicity, lived and worked as sharecroppers and subsistence farmers with most of what they produced being taken to market by the hacendados who enriched themselves on it without giving anything back to the farmers. Outside the haciendas, the peons lived in villages with ejidos or communally owned land where they grew their crops. Since the land was not legally owned by anybody, the hacendados were seizing the ejidos and incorporating it into their haciendas, forcing the peons to work for starvation wages on the haciendas to survive.

Atkin begins by addressing the political structure from the top down. He gives a history of Porfirio Diaz’s regime and how he worked through corruption, nepotism, the media, and fake elections to remain in his place. Despite his old age and growing unpopularity with the Mexican masses, he refused to step down. As we should know by now, the most likely way of ending a dictatorship is through political violence or revolution. That is exactly what happened in Mexico.

From another angle, Atkins writes about the Mexican Revolution and how foreign governments and businessmen were either responsible or influential over it. Those businessmen, mostly American and British, though some were also French and German, were extracting natural resources in Mexico and paying little more for them than shipping costs. This was made possible through a loose network of diplomats and journalists who had access to the president, advising him that relations between their countries would remain strong as long as he allowed the businessmen to do as they pleased. This was not popular in a nation struggling to modernize itself at the end of the Industrial Revolution. Many believed that those resources belonged to the Mexican people and not to wealthy foreigners who cared nothing for their country. When the Mexican Revolution started, however, American president Woodrow Wilson took sides with the rebellion because of his commitment to democracy and political stability. Some of the weapons used by the revolutionaries were purchased from the nortenos and the US actually invaded Mexico twice during the revolution, once in Veracruz and once at the border in Ciudad Juarez.

Ronald Atkin also identifies the significant leaders of the Mexican Revolution. Francisco Madero was the ideologue who sparked the upheavals. After some battles in Sonora and Chihuaha, his forces moved on Mexico City and seized the National Palace. Porfirio Diaz fled the country, and Madero got elected president. Unfortunately he was naive and politically inept. His military general Victoriano Huerta overthrew his government, seized the presidential office, had Madero murdered, and returned Mexico to a dictatorship. This caused another round of battles in the northern states and the Constitutionalist Vensutiano Carranza chased Huerta out of the country. Carranza was an hacendado and even though he sided with the Mexican Revolution, he ultimately used it as a vehicle for seizing the presideny and then throwing the lower class revolutionaries under the bus once he took office.

The alliance between the democratic Constitutionalists and the revolutionaries was never that strong. Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata were concerned with land reform and economics while the Constitutionalists were more concerned with gaining and maintaining power, mostly for their own benefit. Pancho Villa was the strongest of the agrarian revolutionary leaders. His populist revolt took place in northern Mexico and sometimes it even spilled over the border into the USA. He was the first to see the value of using the newly built railroads to transport troops and war materiels throughout the country. He also saw the value of sabotaging train tracks as a strategy to prevent the movement of the Mexican military.

The other leader of importance was the charismatic Emiliano Zapata. His initial rebellions in Morelia and Puebla started without any imput from the northern revolutionaries. It wasn’t until the Conference in Aguascalientes, in which Zapata’s representatives were in attendance, that the forces agreed to join. Their alliance was not a strong one though. Even though Villa and Zapata eventually did meet once, the two never succeeded in coordinating their military assaults on the government.

Ronald Atkin gives a thorough, fact based account of the Mexican Revolution. He clearly identifies the important people involved, the issues at stake, and the events that impacted the course of the revolution the most. His inclusion of the foreign influences on the Mexican Revolution is also unique in its execution, even if it makes the narrative a little biased towards the American and European point of view. He does capture a lot of nuance though and the minute details are written with clarity despite their complexity. The writing is a little dry though and sometimes lacks the spark it needs to be interesting. It is a history book and historians are not known for being great authors. The biggest disappointment about this book is the overemphasis on the Villistas in the north and the underwhelming account of the Zapatistas in the south. Atkin writes like he has no interest in Zapata’s guerilla warfare campaigns and mentions him only because he feels like he has to. There is so little detail about that aspect of the Mexican Revolution that you have to wonder why Atkin left so much of it out.

If you want a good introduction to the Mexican Revolution, then this is a good place to start. It might be a little dull at times, but it does point you in the right direction if you want to pursue this subject in more depth. It may not be of great interest to experts in Mexican history, but for the general reader it serves its purpose well.