The Mexican Revolution
A revolt against the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz becomes a decade of civil war among Madero, Villa, Zapata, Carranza and Obregón, killing perhaps a million or more and producing the 1917 Constitution.
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
- Zapata and the Mexican Revolution — John Womack Jr., Alfred A. Knopf (1968)
- Missing Millions: The Demographic Costs of the Mexican Revolution — Robert McCaa, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2003)
- Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996 — Enrique Krauze, HarperCollins (1997)
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
The Porfiriato
General Porfirio Díaz ruled Mexico, with one short break, from 1876 to 1911. His regime of “order and progress” brought railways, mines, oil wells and foreign investment, much of it American and British, and a stability Mexico had not known since independence. But it rested on rigged elections and repression, and on a huge concentration of land: by 1910 most rural families owned none, while vast haciendas swallowed village lands.
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
From Madero to civil war
In 1910 Francisco I. Madero, a wealthy liberal from Coahuila, challenged Díaz in a rigged election and, from exile in Texas, called for revolt on 20 November 1910. Uprisings spread, Díaz resigned in May 1911 and sailed for Paris, and Madero was elected president. But he moved too slowly for peasant rebels like Emiliano Zapata in Morelos, whose Plan de Ayala (1911) demanded the return of village lands, and too fast for the old regime. In February 1913, with the encouragement of the US ambassador, General Victoriano Huerta overthrew Madero, who was murdered days later.
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
- Zapata and the Mexican Revolution — John Womack Jr., Alfred A. Knopf (1968)
A coalition of northern revolutionaries, the “Constitutionalists” under Venustiano Carranza, with Pancho Villa’s Division of the North and Álvaro Obregón’s army, drove out Huerta in 1914, helped by the US occupation of Veracruz that April. Then the winners turned on each other. Obregón defeated Villa at Celaya in 1915. In 1916 Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, and the United States sent General John Pershing’s “Punitive Expedition” into Mexico for nearly a year, without catching him.
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
- México frente a Estados Unidos: un ensayo histórico, 1776–2000 — Josefina Zoraida Vázquez and Lorenzo Meyer, Fondo de Cultura Económica (2001)
The 1917 Constitution
Carranza’s government produced a Constitution in February 1917 that was among the most radical of its day. Article 27 gave the nation ownership of land, water and subsoil resources such as oil, and allowed land redistribution; Article 123 guaranteed an eight-hour day and the right to strike; Article 3 set up secular public education. It is still Mexico’s constitution, though much amended.
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
The cost
Violence did not end in 1917. Zapata was ambushed and killed in 1919, Carranza in 1920, Villa in 1923 and Obregón in 1928; between 1926 and 1929 the Cristero War, a Catholic rebellion against the anticlerical state, killed tens of thousands more. Counting the dead is hard: the figure most often cited is about one million, while demographer Robert McCaa estimated a total population shortfall of about two million, of which roughly 1.4 million were excess deaths from fighting, hunger and disease, including the 1918 influenza, with the rest made up of lost births and emigration to the United States.
- Missing Millions: The Demographic Costs of the Mexican Revolution — Robert McCaa, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2003)
- The Course of Mexican History — Michael C. Meyer, William L. Sherman and Susan M. Deeds, Oxford University Press (2014)
What it made
The Revolution created a new national culture as well as a new state. Muralists such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros painted the story of the Mexican people on public walls; corridos sang of Villa and the soldaderas, the women who fought and followed the armies. Mexico came to see itself as a mestizo, revolutionary nation, proud of its Indigenous past and wary of foreign domination.
- Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996 — Enrique Krauze, HarperCollins (1997)
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
A single, popular revolution in which the people rose against dictatorship and foreign capital and won land, rights and dignity, its heroes united in a shared cause.
- Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996 — Enrique Krauze, HarperCollins (1997)
Many revolutions in one: Zapata's villagers wanted their land back, Villa's northern cowboys and workers wanted something different again, and the middle-class northern leaders who won, Carranza and Obregón, crushed the popular movements before adopting some of their demands. Alan Knight calls it a genuine popular revolution whose winners built a new elite state.
- The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) — Alan Knight, Cambridge University Press (1986)
- Zapata and the Mexican Revolution — John Womack Jr., Alfred A. Knopf (1968)
Why it matters today
The Revolution is the founding myth of modern Mexico. Its heroes name streets in every town, its promises of land, labour rights, public education and national control of resources were written into the 1917 Constitution still in force, and the party that claimed its mantle ruled for 71 years. Every 20 November Mexico celebrates it.