We have seen in yesterday’s post that the Carranza government was characterized by the appearance of concessions to popular needs.  This same tendency toward appearance rather than substance was evident in the Constituent Congress of Querétaro, which opened on November 21, 1916 and approved a new constitution on January 31, 1917.  Consisting of representatives of the various petit bourgeois tendencies of the Constitutionalist Army and government, the Congress was not very representative of the people.  In the debates, the radical tendency, favoring the promise of concessions to peasants and workers, prevailed.  As a result, the Mexican Constitution was the most advanced in the world.  The Constitution declared: the liquidation of large-scale holdings and the redistribution of lands to the peasantry; the restoration of village communal lands; the nationalization of mineral and oil wealth; the limitation of the rights of private property on the basis of social need; an eight-hour workday; a minimum wage; a ban on the employment of children; the protection of women from dangerous or unhealthy work; equal pay for equal work, with no distinction of sex or nationality; and the right to strike and to form labor unions (Gilly 2005: 231-38).  

     Although the social and agrarian reforms declared by the Querétero Constitution increased the popular legitimacy of the government and contributed to social stability, the Constitution was not implemented: “the democratic clauses of the Constitution would largely remain a dead letter for subsequent governments, while its social clauses only received application insofar as popular organizations created a favorable relationship of forces.”  Only with the government of Lázaro Cárdenas of 1934 to 1940 would the social and agrarian clauses of the Constitution be implemented (Gilly 2005: 238-39, 267).

     From 1917 to 1920, Carranza increasingly sought to forge an alliance with the old Porfirian landowning class, from which he himself originated.  This led to opposition from the radical current among the petit bourgeois military officers, culminating in the fall and assassination of Carranza in 1920.  Alvaro Obregón, who had consistently represented the more progressive forces within Carranzism, launched a presidential campaign in 1919 in opposition to Carranza, and he made new agreements with labor leaders and with a sector of the Zapatist leadership.  The transition from Carranza to Obregón represented a change from a policy of stifling the masses through repression to containment of the masses through more significant concessions, but concessions that nonetheless did not jeopardize the property interests of the new bourgeoisie.  It represented the consolidation of the peasant-worker alliance forged from above and the consolidation of a new class system ruled by a new bourgeoisie (Gilly 2005:312-26).

      Thus, the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20 was a peasant revolution advanced by the military victories of peasant armies, but peasants did not come to power.  Rather, there emerged a new political-economic elite, consisting of ascending petit bourgeois officers of the Constitutionalist Army.  Thus it was a revolution:  the taking of power by a sector of the people, displacing the ruling oligarchy.  It was a popular revolution in the sense that the popular classes, particularly the peasants, were its driving force.  But it did not triumph as a popular revolution, in that only one sector of the popular classes came to power, and it in turn would institute a new form of class rule.  Central to the new form of class rule was popular rhetoric in support of revolutionary goals, and a degree of concessions to the popular classes.  It was a system of reform from above, designed to enlist the support of workers and peasants while protecting the property interests of a newly triumphant bourgeoisie.


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, Mexican Constitution of 1917, Querétero Constitution, Carranza, Obregón

    Venustiano Carranza, a large landowner who had been a Madero supporter (see “The Mexican Revolution” 2/3/2014), declared himself in opposition to the February 1913 coup d’état of Victoriana Huerta, which ended the government of Francisco Madero.  Invoking the principle of constitutional continuity, he called for the overthrow of the Huerta government, and he established the “Constitutionalist Army,” of which Pancho Villa’s Northern Division was part (see “Pancho Villa” 2/7/2014).   Carranza represented a tendency in the bourgeoisie that believed that making concessions to the peasantry was the only way to contain the peasant revolution.  Carranza’s provisional government, established in Sonora in October 1913, had the support of peasants and the two sectors of the nationalist petit bourgeoisie: those who, on the one hand, sought individual upward mobility; and those who, on the other hand, embraced Jacobin and revolutionary ideas.  The advances of the two peasant armies led by Villa and Zapata enabled the Northwest Army of the Constitutionalist forces, led by Alvaro Obregón, to occupy Mexico City in August 1914, which made possible the establishment of a government headed by Carranza in Mexico City (Gilly 2005:96, 103, 127). 

     Following the occupation of the capital by the revolutionary forces, conflict among the various sectors that supported Carranza emerged. The Carranza government had adopted important social reform measures, including the cancellation of peasant debts, a minimum wage, and an eight-hour workday.  But the measures did not include agrarian reform and land redistribution, thereby provoking the opposition of Zapata and Villa.  A convention of petit bourgeois and bourgeois military leaders of various political tendencies was held in October 1914.  As a result of the force of the peasant revolution in 1914, the convention embraced peasant goals and established a government headed by Eulalio Gutiérrez (see “Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014).  Thus there were two governments claiming to represent the triumphant revolution: a Constitutionalist government headed by Carranza and supported the Obregon’s Northwest Army, which was led principally by petit bourgeois officers; and a Conventionist government headed by Gutiérrez and supported by the peasant armies of Villa and Zapata (Gilly 2005:127-28, 140-42).

     Recognizing the inferiority of its forces, the Constitutionalist Army of Carranza and Obregón abandoned Mexico City, thus allowing the occupation of the city by the armies of Villa and Zapata in late November and early December 1914.  But seeking to protect their respective regions, the peasant armies did not pursue the retreating Constitutionalist army, giving the latter time to regroup.  As a result, the Constitutionalist Army, under the command of Obregón, was able to retake the capital in January 1915 (Gilly 2005:146-47, 162-64, 183-85).

     Seeking to undermine support for Villa and Zapata, the Carranza government sought to forge from above a peasant-worker alliance.  The agrarian reform law of January 6, 1915 declared null and void the appropriation of land during the liberal and Porfirian eras that began in 1876, and it decreed the distribution of land to small private owners.  In practice, the land was appropriated from the old Porfiirist oligarchy and distributed to a new bourgeoisie being formed by Constitutionalist petit bourgeois generals seeking upward mobility, with the result that land distribution remained equally concentrated.  However, the proclamation of the distribution of land to small private owners, although not carried out in practice, was effective in attracting the support of a sector of the peasantry, and it therefore undermined support for Villa (Gilly 2005:186-87). 

     The agrarian reform law also had the effect of confining the influence of Zapata to the state of Morelos, where land distribution to peasants was carried out in practice.  However, this regional implementation of peasant goals was soon brought to an end.  With the threat of Villa in the North reduced, military operations by the Constitutionalist Army against the Zapatists in Morelos were undertaken in 1916 and were culminated successfully in 1919 (Gilly 2005:186, 251-53, 261-67, 284-88).

     The forging of a peasant-worker alliance from above also included the adoption of social measures designed to attain support among workers, artisans, and the urban poor.   Following the occupation of the Mexico City in January 1915, Obregón took various measures to attend to the material needs of the city’s poor, establishing relief stations for the distribution of necessities in short supply and imposing taxes on the wealthy and the Church in order to finance the program.  In February, when the Mexican Telephone and Telegraph Company refused to accept demands of striking workers, the government placed the company under the management of the workers.  At the same time, an agreement was made with workers’ unions, in which the government agreed to improve workers’ conditions, and the unions agreed to form “Red Battalions” to be enlisted in the war against Villa, who now was portrayed as a reactionary.  The Red Battalions played an important role in the successful military campaign against Villa’s peasant army in the North in 1915.  But beginning in December 1915, when Villa’s forces were reduced to a regional guerrilla threat, the Red Battalions were disbanded, and union leaders were arrested (Gilly 2005:174-75, 188-92, 216-22).

      Thus the peasant-worker alliance from above was based on the appearance of concessions to peasants and workers rather than actual implementation of policies designed to address popular needs, accompanied by repression directed against uncooperative union leaders.  And it was based on efforts to isolate and bring to an end the more radical expressions of the peasant revolution, represented by Zapata and Villa.  There were leaders among the workers who opposed this alliance with the ascending petit bourgeoisie, but they were unable to formulate an alternative strategy of a worker-peasant alliance forged from below.  Neither, as we have seen, was the peasant leadership able to formulate a national plan that included the needs of urban workers as the basis for a peasant-worker alliance forged from below (“Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014).


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa, Zapata, Carranza, Red Battalions

          Pancho Villa responded to Francisco Madero’s advocacy of the restoration of unjustly appropriated indigenous land and his call to arms of October 5, 2010 (see “The Mexican Revolution” 2/3/2013) by organizing peasant units that inflicted successive defeats on the federal army that had been dispatched to put down the peasant uprising.  The initial victories attracted growing numbers of outstanding peasant riflemen and horse riders.  When Villa led an assault on Ciudad Juaréz on May 10, 2011, it became the first town to fall to the revolution.  He subsequently was sent to prison for insubordination, but he escaped, and after the fall of Madero, he became the chief military officer of what came to be known as the Northern Division, the most effective of the four revolutionary armies.  Villa’s Northern Division registered a series of important and spectacular victories from September 1913 to December 1914, when it joined the army of Zapata in the occupation of Mexico City (Gilly 2005:55-57, 79-82, 97-105).

     Gilly writes that Villa’s army “was a pole of attraction for the insurgent peasants, their women, their families.  Its officers had all sprung from the same peasantry: audacity, bravery, and fighting capacity were the criteria for selection. . . .  On train or horse, accompanied by their women (who if necessary, would also shoulder a rifle) and their children, the soldiers of the Northern Division embodied the irresistible force of the revolution” (2005:105). 

     Villa’s soldiers found meaning and empowerment in an armed struggle dedicated to the just distribution of land.  “The vast multitude of northern peons and landless peasants found life-purpose in Villism: for the first time they could express themselves, fighting to win and take control, not to suffer repression and defeat” (Gilly 2005:105).

     And they identified with Villa, who expressed to the fullest the characteristics of the Mexican peasant-in-arms, combining hatred and cruelty toward exploiters with tenderness and solidarity toward the poor.  “It was Villa’s own personality, as the best soldier, horseman, and countryman, that came to represent the insurgent peasantry.  The soldiers saw themselves in Villa, and he inspired them with absolute confidence.  He raised to a heroic level the characteristic features of them all: courage, hatred and mistrust of the exploiters, implacability and cruelty in battle, astuteness and candor, tenderness and solidarity toward the poor and oppressed, and also their instability” (Gilly 2005:105-6).

      Gilly also notes that Villa was a brilliant military strategist who demonstrated a great audacity in military maneuvers as well as a capacity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the contending forces.  He also was a master organizer, and he constantly showed concern for the conditions of his troops (2005:107-8).

     Villa’s political program and vision, however, was limited to the countryside, and it had little formulation beyond the basic principle of land redistribution.  His legacy does not include the development of alternative structures of local government, as does that of Zapata, as we shall see in a subsequent post.  And like Zapata, Villa did not have a plan for the nation as whole.  As result, when Villa and Zapata were in a position of political and military control of the nation in December 1914, they turned power over to the petit bourgeoisie, facilitating the triumph of the ascending reformist petit bourgeoisie, which was becoming a new bourgeoisie (see “Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014).

     With the triumph of reformism in 1915, Villa continued to lead guerrilla activities in the North until 1920.  By mutual agreement with the government on July 28, 1920, Villa laid down arms, and he took up residence in a hacienda deeded to him as part of the agreement.  He worked the hacienda for three years, and he established a primary school for the children of the hacienda and the region (Gilly 2005:205, 209-10, 317-18). 

     Francisco Villa and five of his men were assassinated on June 20, 1923 by government agents (Gilly 2005: xiii, 318).


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa

     The acquisition of land by the liberal and Porfirian project (see “Liberal reform and the Porfirian era” 2/4/2014) generated constant peasant uprisings. But prior to 1910 they had been local phenomena, dispersed in time, and brutally repressed by the rural guards of the federal army.  The call to arms declared by Madero in 1910 stimulated the formation of armed peasant units and the seizing of haciendas by armed peasants throughout the country, establishing the peasant revolution as a national phenomenon (see “The Mexican Revolution” 2/3/2014).  The peasant uprising of 1910 was above all a quest for land, expressed by the seizing of haciendas as well as by peasant political demands for the redistribution of land, the restoration of village lands, and the armed protection of peasants cultivating land that had been seized (Gilly 2005:52, 56, 63, 92).

     In March 1911, Emiliano Zapata and other local peasant leaders of the state of Morelos organized the armed appropriation of several haciendas, thus beginning what would become the Southern Liberation Army, recognized by Madero as the southern army of the revolution. The state of Morelos had been a stronghold of peasant resistance, because there were many free villages, beyond the terrain of the haciendas, that had retained or sought to recover their lands, and because there was a sizeable and concentrated agricultural proletariat formed by the extensive sugar plantations in the state.  By May, Zapata’s forces numbered 4000, armed with weapons captured from the haciendas and the federal army.  They took the town of Cuautla on May 10, establishing headquarters there, and on the following day, they entered Cuernavaca, the Morelos state capital, without encountering resistance from the federal army.  They proceeded to develop guerrilla units, utilizing a variety of strategies to attack the federal army (Gilly 2005:56-67). 

     Emiliano Zapata was born into a peasant family on August 8, 1879.  He was neither rich nor poor by peasant standards, and he had acquired a solid and trustworthy reputation among the local peasants on the basis of his involvement in animal trading and horse-breaking.  Due personal qualities increasingly recognized by peasants in arms, he emerged as the leader of the Southern Liberation Army (Gilly 2005:62, 66).

     On November 28, 1911, fifty-nine officers of the Zapatist army, who constituted the Revolutionary Council of the State of Morelos, signed the so-called Ayala Plan, which would function as the political expression of the nationwide peasant revolution.  It was written by Zapata and Otilio Montaño, a local schoolteacher who had joined Zapata’s forces at the beginning.  In reaction to Madero’s pact with Porfirio Díaz of May 2011 (see “The Mexican Revolution” 2/3/2014), the Ayala Plan declared Madero to be a traitor to the revolution; it no longer recognized him as President of the Republic, and it called for his overthrow.  The Plan also condemned the usurpation of land from villages and peasants under Porfirio Díaz, and it called for the restoration of land to villages and citizens possessing deeds.  It called for the appropriation of large haciendas, with partial compensation, for distribution as common land and individual property.  It called for the nationalization of the haciendas of the landholders who oppose the Ayala Plan.  Rather than advocating the eventual distribution of land after ownership is established in court, the Ayala Plan called for the immediate seizing of land by armed peasants, with the provision that the previous landholder could subsequently challenge the seizure in revolutionary court.  Unlike bourgeois proposals for land reform, designed to pacify the peasantry, the Ayala Plan was extensive and immediate, and the burden of proof was placed on the large hacienda owners who had acquired land during the Porfirist era (Gilly 2005:69-72, 130-32).

      As we observe the various popular revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we see the phenomenon of the emergence of charismatic leaders who possess exceptional qualities of leadership and understanding rooted in a commitment to universal human values (see “Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013; “The problem of dependency” 12/11/2013; “Toussaint seeks North-South cooperation” 12/12/2013; “The isolation and poverty of Haiti” 12/17/2013; “Lessons from the Haitian Revolution” 12/18/2013; “The social & historical context of Marx” 1/15/2014; “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014).  

     Gilly describes the charismatic authority possessed by Zapata:  “It is a remarkable fact that the political leadership of the southern revolution was concentrated in the person of Emiliano Zapata.  Many historians and commentators have tried to deny this. . . .  They find it inadmissible or intolerable that a peasant, rather than a ‘cultured’ person, should be the main leader of a revolution.  But the peasants of Morelos were never in any doubt about the true head of the movement.  They saw themselves exercising power through Zapata, just as they exercised local power in the villages [as we will see in a subsequent post].  It was this which gave Zapata . . . an authority over the peasant officers and soldiers that was based on their complete trust. 

     “Emiliano Zapata’s role in the revolution was part of the confident, self-assertive drive of the Mexican peasantry to run their own lives and determine the country’s fate.  For this reason, his figure transcends the borders of Mexico and, alongside that of Pancho Villa, stands as a universal symbol of the agrarian revolution” (Gilly 2005:292).   

     Zapata, however, was a charismatic leader of an agrarian revolution, not a popular revolution.  All human knowledge possesses a social foundation, and the social context of Zapata’s understanding pertained to the countryside, and not to the nation as a whole.  Recognizing this limitation, when in a position of military and political control of the nation, Zapata turned power over to the petit bourgeoisie, with the hope that they would possess the political capacity, the intellectual understanding, and the moral commitment to direct the nation in accordance with the needs and interests of the various popular classes and sectors.  As we have observed, the radical Mexican petit bourgeoisie of 1914 was not prepared for this task (see “Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014). 

      After the triumph of reformism at the national level in 1915, Zapata and Zapatism continued to be the dominant force in the state of Morelos until 1919.  Under Zapatist control, alternative political structures were established in Morelos.  These are themes that we will address in subsequent posts.


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, Zapata, Zapatist

     On October 10, 1914, military officers from three of the four revolutionary armies, not including the army of Zapata, held a convention in Aguascalientes.  They declared themselves to be the governing body of the nation, and they named General Eulalio Gutiérez, who could count on the support of peasant leaders, as President of the Republic. In addition, the Convention issued a declaration that called for: the restoration of communal land to indigenous villages; the elimination of large haciendas and the redistribution of land to the people; and the nationalization of property belonging to enemies of the revolution.  Although the convention consisted almost entirely of petty bourgeois military officers, it was dominated by officers sympathetic to peasant goals or prepared to make concessions to peasant interests at a time when the peasant force was at its height.  Thus, by October 1914 peasant interests dominated the newly formed revolutionary government (Gilly 2005:127-146).

      By December 1914, the two revolutionary armies under peasant leadership attained military control.  On November 24, 1914, the army of Zapata entered Mexico City; and on December 3, the Northern Division of Pancho Villa also entered the capital.  Thus, by December 1914, peasant armies occupied the capital city as well as the northern and central regions of the country (Gilly 2005:146-47).

      Thus, by December 1914, the peasant revolution was in control militarily and politically.  But the peasant leaders did not take power.  They turned power over to the petit bourgeois leaders of the Conventionist government.  Although the convention had declared its support for peasant goals in October, at a moment in which the peasant surge was at its height, in reality the Conventionist government consisted of various contradictory petit bourgeois and bourgeois currents, and therefore it was not in position to protect peasant interests in the long term.  As a result, in order to guarantee the long-term protection of peasant interests, it was necessary for the peasant leaders to take the power that was in their hands.  Gilly maintains, however, that the peasant leaders could not take power, because they did not have a national plan, program, or political party.  The peasant program was a rural program, with a focus on the redistribution of land and the formation of local alternative governmental structures in the countryside.  The peasant leaders were not able to propose a plan for the development of the nation as a whole, which would take into account the needs of the cities, urban workers, and industrial workers as well as national needs in the face of the imperialist intentions of the global powers (Gilly 2005:148).       

     In a historic meeting of December 4, Villa and Zapata agreed that the government should be turned over to the “educated people,” who would be entrusted to govern in accordance with the needs of the people (Gilly 2005: 155).  But the Conventionist government could not fulfill the responsibility assigned to it by the peasant revolution, inasmuch as it was divided among contradictory currents, and even the radical sector supportive of the peasant revolution did not have an understanding of how to restructure government and its bureaucracy to serve the interests of the people. 

     At this critical moment, the Mexican Revolution needed a revolutionary petit bourgeoisie that was sufficiently advanced to forge a peasant-worker alliance in support of a national popular program of economic and social development.  Although the radical wing of the petit bourgeoisie was able to exploit the peasant revolution to obtain progressive reforms (Gilly 2005:229), it was not able to play the role required for the consolidation a popular revolution able to protect the interests of the popular classes and sectors in the long term.

      The stage was sent for the taking of power by reformist elements representing a rising petit bourgeoisie that was converting itself into an new bourgeoisie, as we will discuss in a subsequent post.


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, Zapata, Pancho Villa, revolutionary petit bourgeoisie

     The liberal reform that began in Mexico in 1855 was pushed by an emerging urban commercial bourgeoisie that sought to expand the domestic market through the creation of a class of agrarian smallholders, taking land from the Church and the indigenous communities.  But in spite of the intentions of the urban commercial bourgeoisie, the redistributed land became concentrated.  The modern hacienda emerged, producing for world and national markets, distinct from the colonial multi-purpose hacienda, in which production had a more local orientation (Gilly 2005:2-4, 12-16).  

      From 1876 to 1911, the massive and violent seizing of land from peasants and indigenous communities was central to the policy of Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico during the period.  The acquisitions provided not only land for the modern haciendas but also labor, as peasants became dislodged from their means of sustenance.  The Porfirian hacienda produced sugar, livestock, cotton, henequen, and coffee for the expanding world market (Gilly 2005:15-19). 

      The inability of the urban commercial bourgeoisie to create a class of smallholders, which would have strengthened the domestic market, resulted in the limited expansion of industry.   There was some development in light industry under Mexican ownership, such as the food and drink industry.  There also was some development of textile and steel industries, but through a combination of foreign investment and Mexican capital.  Mexican capital was primarily concentrated in the estate bourgeoisie (Gilly 2005:25-26).

     Thus, although Mexico in the Porfirian era was ruled by large landowners and industrialists, the former were far more powerful (Gilly 2005:38, 41, 93).  The elite classes shared a common interest in protecting their privileged position above the popular classes, but there were conflicts of interest between them.  The aggressive acquisition of land by the large landholders undermined the intention of the urban commercial bourgeoisie to create a class of agrarian smallholders, which would have provided a social base for industrial expansion.  This provided the social foundation for a reformist opposition among the bourgeoisie.  Although the bourgeois opposition stimulated the peasant revolution in 1910, bourgeois interests were fundamentally opposed to those of peasants, and the reformist bourgeoisie made various efforts to end, constrain, and direct the peasant revolution.

     In addition, the inadequate social base for a domestic market limited the possibilities for the petit bourgeoisie, giving rise to reformism as well as revolutionary and Jacobin currents in this class (Gilly 2005:41, 99).  But the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie was not sufficiently advanced in its understanding to be able to lead an alliance of peasants and workers in the taking of power by the popular sectors, an issue that we will discuss in subsequent posts.

        Although the liberal reform that began in 1855 and accelerated in the Porfirian era of 1876 to 1911 was opposed to the long-range interests of the urban bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie, the liberal reform was above all an attack on the peasantry and the indigenous villages.  As a result, the Porfirian hacienda became the object of peasant revolutionary fury in 1910, such that in popular oral tradition, the revolution is treated as a series of hacienda seizures (Gilly 2005:17).

     Thus we can see that the liberalism and Porfirianism of 1855 to 1910 established the conditions for the peasant revolution of 1910.  In the Mexican Revolution, the peasants would form the unwavering revolutionary force, enabling them to take military control by 1914. But they did not have the social base that would have made possible an understanding of how to consolidate power at the national level.  This is a theme that we will discuss in subsequent posts.


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution, liberal reform, liberalism, Porfirio Díaz

     The Argentinian Adolfo Gilly was a political prisoner in Mexico when the first edition of his book, La Revolución Interrumpida, was published in 1971.  Friedrich Katz, Professor of Latin American History and Co-Director of the Mexican Studies Program of the University of Chicago, writes in the Forward of the 2005 English-language edition of the book: “The aim of the author was to return the revolution to the people.  The book’s success was phenomenal.  Thousands of copies were sold in spite of the fact that the author was being held in jail.  It was adopted as an official textbook by many faculties of history in Mexico.  It was not only hailed by radical students who rediscovered the revolution through the book, but by people and intellectuals who had very different political opinions from those of the author.  In an open letter to Adolfo Gilly, Mexico’s Nobel Prize winning author, Octavio Paz, wrote:  ‘You have said many new things, you have reminded us of others that we thought we had forgotten, and you have clarified things for us that seemed obscure’” (Gilly 2005:ix-x).

     Gilly’s classic work enables us to understand that the Mexican Revolution was a peasant revolution that culminated in the taking of power by a rising petit bourgeois class, mostly military officers of the revolutionary armies.  This rising petit bourgeoisie would constitute itself as a new bourgeoisie and establish a new system of class rule, while preserving important progressive measures and significant concessions to workers and peasants. 

     The revolution began in 1910.  Francisco Madero, a member of a rich family of landowners and industrialists, was a political reformer who called for free elections and a single-term presidency.  When Porfirio Díaz rigged the election of June 1910 to have himself reelected, Madero, the opposition candidate, declared the election results null and void and proclaimed himself interim president.  He issued a call to arms; and he called for the restoration of land, expropriated by an abusive law, to their original owners, most of whom were indigenous peasants (Gilly 2005:54-55).

     Madero’s call stimulated peasant uprisings throughout the country, including the formation of small peasant armed units that attacked the federal army and well as the armed appropriation of haciendas by peasants.  Two important peasant leaders who emerged were Pancho Villa, who led peasant armed units in the northern state of Chihuahua; and Emiliano Zapata, who led seizures of haciendas in the southern state of Morelos (Gilly 2005:55-56).

     Madero, however, made an agreement with Porfirio Díaz in May 2011, which stipulated the resignation of Porfirio, the organization of general elections, and a cease-fire between governmental and revolutionary forces.  Inasmuch as the accord made no mention of the land question, the seizure of haciendas by armed peasants continued.   Whereas the bourgeois opposition considered the uprising to be over, for the peasants the revolution had just begun (Gilly 2005:57-59). 

      From 2011 to 2014, armies led by Villa and Zapata advanced and took control of the northern and central regions of the country.  But the revolutionary army led by Alvaro Obregón, who was part of the moderate sector of the nationalist petty bourgeoisie, occupied Mexico City.  Conflict between bourgeois and petit bourgeois moderates and reformers, on the one side, and the radical nationalist petit bourgeoisie, peasants and workers, on the other, led to the breakout of fighting among the revolutionary armies, resulting in the retreat of Obregón’s army from Mexico City, which was subsequently occupied by the armies of Villa and Zapata (Gilly 2005). 

     Thus by December 1914, the two peasant armies controlled the northern and central regions of the country, and they occupied the capital.  But the peasant leaders did not take political power.  They turned power over to the petit bourgeoisie, which was composed of various ideological currents.  Not taking the power that was in their hands, the peasant leaders took the first step toward the ultimate triumph of reformism under the direction of the new bourgeoisie being formed from the petty bourgeois sector connected to the revolutionary army.  The result was a new class system that made concessions to the peasants and workers, but in which delegates representing peasants and workers were excluded from power (Gilly 2005).

     Thus the Mexican Revolution overthrew the old ruling estate bourgeoisie, but it established rule by a new bourgeoisie and not rule by the popular classes and sectors.  To accomplish rule by the popular classes, an alliance of peasants and workers, forged by the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie, was required.  We will be examining in subsequent posts the factors that prevented the formation of such an alliance.


References

Gilly, Adolfo.  2005.  The Mexican Revolution.  New York: The New Press.  (Originally published as La Revolución Interrumpida by El Caballito, Mexico, in 1971).


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Mexican Revolution