In various posts since February 3, I have sought to formulate an understanding of the Mexican Revolution, utilizing as a principal source the classic work by Adolfo Gilly, The Mexican Revolution, originally published in 1971 as La Revolución Interrumpida.  The book has been adopted as a textbook by many departments of history in Mexico.   

     Revolutions do not inevitably lead to the ultimate frustration of the popular interest in taking power and governing in its own name.  The failure of the Mexican Revolution to triumph as a popular revolution was rooted in particular disadvantages.  Its principal charismatic leader, Emiliano Zapata, lacked the experiential foundation for the formulation of a national program that could unify the various popular sectors.  Moreover, the working class struggle was developing in a manner separate from the peasant revolution, making difficult the forging of a peasant-worker alliance from below.  In addition, the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie was not sufficiently advanced to lead a peasant-worker alliance from below.  The current most prepared to do so was led by Ricardo Flores Magón, who was isolated and in exile at the time of the triumph of the revolutionary army in 1914.  At the same time, the ascending petit bourgeoisie was able to offer a coherent national project.  All of these factors contributed to the inability of the revolution to maintain popular direction at the critical moment of its triumph. 

      As we have seen, in the October Revolution, when armed militias took control of the capital city, Lenin immediately convoked the establishment of new political power, which immediately issued decrees that responded to popular demands, including the demands of the peasantry (“The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014).  In future posts, we will see that, similarly, in the cases of Vietnam and Cuba, when popular armies took control of capital cities, the leaders of the people in arms took immediate steps toward the implementation of popular programs, thus establishing that the revolutions would triumph as popular revolutions.  In both cases, the revolutionary movements were led by a leadership cadre that was overwhelmingly petit bourgeois in composition.  In the two cases, charismatic leaders emerged who were nourished and formed by both petty bourgeois Third World nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and they forged a synthesis of these two currents of thought, providing a solid ideological foundation for the consolidation of the revolution as a popular revolution.

      Classical Marxism taught that the proletariat is at the vanguard of the revolution.  But the unfolding of revolutions in the twentieth century teaches us a different lesson.  Popular revolutions are characterized by the active participation of peasants and the petit bourgeoisie as well as workers.  And in the second half of the twentieth century, other popular sectors would emerge to identify themselves as actors independent of their class: Afro-descendants, women, and indigenous peoples. 

     In this mixture of popular classes in movement, we can see that the role played by the petit bourgeoisie is critical.  When revolutions failed to be consolidated as popular revolutions, one finds a petit bourgeoisie in which confusion, division and opportunism prevails.  On the other hand, when popular revolutions are able to sustain themselves, one sees the emergence of a petit bourgeoisie that conducts itself in an informed and dignified manner and in accordance with universal human values, led by a charismatic leader who is lifted up by the people, and who leads the people to the consolidation of the popular revolution.  Examples of the former include the Mexican Revolution and the US Revolution of 1968 (which we will discuss in future posts).  Examples of the latter include the October Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, and the Cuban Revolution.

     Revolutions, whether or not they are able to sustain themselves as popular revolutions, are exceptional moments that call persons to action and self-sacrifice, and therefore they produce heroes and martyrs.  The Mexican Revolution produced three of universal significance: Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, and Ricardo Flores Magón.  All three dedicated their lives to the better world that they envisioned, and all three were killed by the forces that correctly perceived them as a threat to the established order.  We today have the duty to remember them in a form that recognizes their limitations but that also appreciates their exceptional qualities.  We must do this not only because they deserve it, but also because we must overcome the cynicism, rooted in a consumer society, that seeks to induce us to believe that there are no heroes.

       All popular revolutions have their imperfections, even those that have been able to sustain themselves as political and cultural projects dedicated to the protection of the interests and needs of the people.  We must seek to understand why this is so, and we should be aware that those who seek to preserve privileges for the few will exploit these imperfections to induce us to think that revolution is not possible.  There are various factors in each national case that contribute to limitations and contradictions in the revolutionary project.  The single factor that pertains to all national cases is the fact that, in the context of a political economic world-system that has global structures, revolutionary transformation in a single country is not possible, and any effort to do so will necessarily have its limitations.

     Thus let us understand the Mexican Revolution as a particular heroic moment in a global process of revolutionary transformation, a transformation that continues to unfold, and that ultimately will triumph, because of the unsustainability of the world-system itself, and because of the demonstrated heroism of those who seek a better world.

     

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

     Adolfo Gilly describes the Mexican Revolution as a peasant revolution.  He writes that during the period of 1910 to 1920, “the peasant masses—that is, the people of Mexico, 85 percent of whom lived in the countryside in 1910—underwent the most dramatic experiences: they took up arms, forced their way into a history that had previously unfolded above their heads, marched across the country in every direction, shattered the army of their oppressors at Zacatecas, occupied the national capital, raised Villa and Zapata (two peasants like themselves) to the summit of the insurrection, issued a series of laws, and embarked on a systematic attempt at self-government in the South, creating elementary decision-making bodies and a new juridical structure” (2005:330).

      But the peasants did not arrive to power.  As we have seen in various posts since February 3, the ascending sector of the petit bourgeoisie, concentrated among the officers of the Revolutionary Constitutionalist Army, was able to take advantage of the changes provoked by the peasant revolution to seize land and to constitute themselves as a new elite in a new political-economic system, characterized by revolutionary rhetoric and modest concessions to working class demands.

        In addition to being understood as a frustrated peasant revolution, the Mexican Revolution can be understood as a nationalist anti-imperialist revolution.  Anti-imperialist nationalism was a perspective shared by the various competing and conflicting tendencies.  The liquidation of the landholding oligarchy had nationalist implications, inasmuch as that the estate bourgeoisie had commercial ties with foreign enterprises and tended to serve as direct agents of imperialist interests.  Reflecting a nationalist perspective, the Constitutionalist government in 1914 tripled the tax on foreign-owned petroleum companies, and in 1915 it issued decrees designed to control foreign investments in land, oil, and minerals (Gilly 2005:212, 214). 

     The administration of President Lázaro Cardenas (1934-40) represented an attempt by the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie to revitalize the Mexican Revolution.  It nationalized the petroleum industry and stimulated the development of industry, the expansion of the domestic market, and the strengthening of workers´ organizations.  In addition, an agrarian reform program converted twenty million hectares of land into cooperatives.  However, the rapid growth of rural and urban consumption provoked a high inflation, a situation that was used by international and national opponents of the project.  President Manuel Ávilo Camacho (1940-46) reversed many of the Cardenast reforms, although he did so with a populist rhetoric that obscured his intentions (Harperin 2002:413-15).

     During the 1940s and 1950s, the Mexican government functioned relatively well as a developmentalist state that was typical of Latin America during the period.  From 1960 to 1980, there occurred the metamorphoses of the Mexican state from a developmentalist state into a neoliberal state, displacing from power those sectors of the Mexican national bourgeoisie most oriented to the strengthening of the domestic market.  This period was characterized by the privatization of state enterprises and by the oppression of those elements of the Left opposed to the process of de-nationalization (Regalado 2008:44-45).

     Thus, the Mexican Revolution can be understood as having two phases.  The first was the period of 1910 to 1920, during which a peasant revolution facilitated that the ascending sector of the petit bourgeoisie could constitute itself as a new ruling elite.  During this phase, there were three significant revolutionary developments:  (1) The alternative political structures and land redistribution of the Zapatist commune in Morelos, which was brought to an end through military occupation from 1916 to 1919; (2) the 1917 Constitution, which affirmed the goals of the peasant revolution and the workers’ movement, reflecting the influence of the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie, but which was for the most part was not implemented, a reflection of the influence of the ascending sector of the petit bourgeoisie; and (3) nationalist policies designed to protect natural resources before imperialist interests.  The second phase of the Mexican Revolution was the period of 1934 to 1940, during which there occurred a renewed struggle by the revolutionary sector of the petit bourgeoisie to implement the goals enshrined in the 1917 Constitution, which up to that point had simply functioned as rhetoric to obtain the support of workers and peasants for the project of the ascending petit bourgeoisie.  However, many of the gains of 1934 to 1940 were soon reversed.  The second phase also was characterized by a deepening of nationalist policies in opposition to imperialist interest, which were erased in the transition to neoliberalism following 1960. 

     In spite of its incapacity to sustain itself as a popular revolution, the Mexican Revolution was an event that transcended the frontiers of Mexico.   It inspired and influenced revolutionaries in Cuba in the 1920s, such as Julio Antonio Mella and Antonio Guiteras, and it inspired the indigenous rebellion in El Salvador of 1929-32.  These nations later would forge revolutionary movements that would challenge the structures of the neocolonial world-system, as we will discuss in future posts.

     The memory of Emiliano Zapata was invoked in Chiapas in 1994, when a new stage of the Latin American popular struggle was inaugurated with the Zapatista rebellion.   This new stage was characterized by popular mass demonstrations throughout the region in opposition to free trade agreements and the neoliberal project.  After 1998, beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela, the popular struggle would pass to a more advanced stage, in which progressive and leftist parties and organizations would arrive to participate in government, establishing a situation in which many Latin America governments, to a greater or lesser degree, are seeking to bring to an end the structures of neocolonialism, thereby establishing the definitive independence of the region (Regalado 2010).  The new political reality of Latin America is a theme that we will discuss in future posts.

     Although the Mexican Revolution ultimately was contained by the structures of the neocolonial world-system, it was an advanced expression of popular aspirations for a more just and democratic world.  It remains an event of universal significance, which should be studied as we seek to understand the components and dynamics that are necessary for advancing the global popular revolution of our time.


References

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

Halperin Donghi, Tulio.  2002.  Historia contemporánea de América Latina.  Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

__________.  2008.  Encuentros y desencuentros de la izquierda latinoamericana: Una mirada desde el Foro de São Paulo.  México D.F.: Ocean Sur.

__________.  2010.  “Gobierno y poder en América Latina hoy,” Curso de actualización: América Latina: entre el cambio y la restauración conservadora, Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional, La Habana, Cuba, 22 de noviembre de 2010.   


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

     The petit bourgeoisie is critical to the success or failure of a popular revolution.  On the one hand, the middle class plays a central role in the opposition, as can be seen in: the petit bourgeois counterrevolution in Russia that was tied to the rise of Stalin and bureaucratic control from above (see “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014); the flight of the Cuban middle class from 1960 to 1962 and its formation of a counterrevolution in exile; and the role of the Venezuelan middle class today in opposition to the Chavist revolution.  But on the other hand, the most important charismatic leaders of the twentieth century revolutions were of the petit bourgeoisie, and they surrounded themselves with followers and advisers also petit bourgeois for the most part.  Examples include Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, Chávez, and Rafael Correa.

     In Mexico, Gilly notes that the political ossification of the Porfirian regime blocked upward mobility by the petit bourgeoisie (2005:41).  This gave rise to two tendencies within the petit bourgeoisie.  First, an ascendant or opportunist tendency, which sought to take advantage of the peasant revolution to seize land and constitute itself as a new bourgeoisie (see “The new Mexican bourgeoisie of 1920” 2/12/2014).  This tendency was most strongly represented among the officers of the Constitutionalist Army.  Secondly, a revolutionary or Jacobin tendency, which could discern that the economic and social development of the nation, by promoting a higher standard of living for peasants and workers, would create possibilities for the expansion the petit bourgeoisie, in areas such as commerce, education, and health.  Its presence was most strongly felt in the Conventionist government, established as an alternative to the Constitutionalist government in 1914, and in the Querétero Constitution of 1917, and it would later re-express itself in the Cardenas government of 1934-40.  As we have seen, the revolutionary tendency was not sufficiently advanced to forge a unity based on a peasant-worker alliance from below.  It was unable in 1914 to define a direction that would enable the revolution to be consolidated as a popular revolution.

       The most promising possibility was represented by Ricardo Flores Magón.  Born in 1873 in the state of Oaxaca, Flores Magón was the son of a mestizo military officer.  The family relocated to Mexico City in 1881, and Flores Magón studied law in in the capital, although he did not complete his studies.  He began to participate in protests against the Porfirian regime at age 19, and he forged a career as a revolutionary journalist and politician.  In 1900, he founded with his brother Jesús the journal La Regeneración, which became an influential journal of opposition.  In 1906, with his brother Enrique, he founded the Mexican Liberal Party, which organized strikes of miners in Senora and industrial workers in Vera Cruz in 1906 and 1907.  Based in Los Angeles, California at the time of the breakout of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Magonists launched an insurrection in Baja California, taking the cities of Mexicali y Tijuana.  But the insurrection was isolated from events elsewhere in Mexico, and it was overcome by the federal army.  Flores Magón was forced to seek exile in the United States, where he was located in the critical year of 1914.

     As we have seen (“The proletariat and the Mexican Revolution” 2/14/2014), the program of Flores Magon synthesized the goals of the peasant revolution with the demands of the working class organizations.  Flores Magón combined all the components necessary for the forging of a united popular revolution: anti-imperialist nationalism, which was shared by the various tendencies, although sometimes violated by the bourgeoisie in pursuit of particular interests; an understanding and endorsement of the program of the peasant revolution; and an affirmation of the demands of the workers’ movement.  And he combined intellectual work with militant political action. 

      Gilly maintains that the Magonists did not have sufficient material resources or organized forces to make their peasant-worker program a reality, and they did not have the means to establish contacts and form alliances with peasants in arms (2005:88).  But it is possible that the isolation of Flores Magón was in part a consequence of a tendency toward sectarianism.  Unlike Zapata, Flores Magón rejected the San Luis Plan issued by Maduro in 1910, in spite of its calling for land redistribution, because he considered it to be a bourgeois plan that did not have adequate social provisions.  And there is some evidence that he did not accept an invitation by Zapata in 1913 to establish the headquarters of the Mexican Liberal Party and the publication of La Regeneración in Morelos, because he viewed the Zapatist project as merely a rural program of land redistribution, not adequate for the nation as a whole. 

     From today’s vantage point, on the basis of observation of popular revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we can more fully understand the strategic decisions that Flores Magón faced.  We can see that the popular revolutions that were able to sustain themselves adopted a strategy of forming alliances with various tendencies, and defining the right path in the context of the on-going struggle, unifying the people on the foundation of a national program.  It is in this context that charismatic leaders emerge, defining the correct way and calling the people to its fulfillment, bringing on board most of the principal actors who emerge from the various tendencies.  In addition, we can see today that sectarianism, or the tendency to disassociate from tendencies with insufficient revolutionary consciousness, created divisions in many popular revolutions of the twentieth century, and thus it should be considered an error that must be avoided.

       Errors are an unavoidable component of revolutionary processes, and they do not take away from the heroic qualities of revolutionary leaders.  Ricardo Flores Magón possessed the most advanced understanding of his time of the direction in which the Mexican Revolution ought to go in order to sustain itself as a popular revolution, an understanding to which he arrived as a consequence of his life commitment.  The trajectory of his life can lead us to no other conclusion than that, in any strategic errors that he may have made, he was motivated by a desire to push the revolution in a popular direction, avoiding the pitfall of being channeled by bourgeois interests.  In exile in the United States, Flores Magón published with Librado Rivera in 1918 a manifesto to the anarchists of the world, which led to his imprisonment.  Suffering harsh prison conditions, he died in the federal penitentiary of Leavenworth, Kansas on November 20, 1922, at the age of 49.

       When Zapata and Villa were in control of the nation in December 1914, they agreed to turn power over to the “educated people” of the Conventionist government, entrusting to them the task of carrying forward the popular revolution.  But the revolutionary petit bourgeois Conventionists were confused and divided.  There was not among them a leader who could show the way: an alliance of peasants and workers forged from below on the basis of a program that defends their interests.  What would have happened if Ricardo Flores Magón, who possessed the understanding, the commitment, and the political experience, had been present?  Is it possible that a charismatic leader, necessary for revolutionary processes, would have emerged?

References


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

"Ricardo Flores Magón." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

“Ricardo Flores Magón.” Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.  Oct. 6, 2013.


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, petit bourgeoisie, Ricardo Flores Magón

      In his classic work on the Mexican Revolution, Adolfo Gilly notes that the working class played a secondary role in the revolution (2005:332).  This was rooted in several factors:  the relatively small size of the proletariat; the dynamic and influential organization of peasants into revolutionary armies by Zapata in the South and Villa in the North; and the formulation of a national plan by an ascending petit bourgeoisie, which was able to attract sectors of the working class to its project.

     The rapid construction of railways in Mexico beginning in 1880 through investment by British and US companies led to the formation of a modern working class, and it expanded as a result of foreign investments in the mining industry in the 1890s as well as the emergence of new industries in steel and electric power in the first decade of the twentieth century.  The emerging working class formed labor organizations, organized strikes, and founded journals and newspapers, and in these activities they were influenced by the working class movement in Europe and by European social democracy.  Their demands for the most part were focused on the wages and working conditions of workers (Gilly 2005:20-22, 28-39).

     A potential in the evolution of the Mexican working class movement was represented by the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), a petit bourgeois group headed by Ricardo Flores Magón, which was active in organizing workers’ strikes in 1906 and 1907 in Senora and Veracruz.  The PLM program combined issues of workers with those of peasants: it called for a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, a ban on child labor, and workers’ compensation insurance as well as the cancellation of peasant debts to landowners, the restitution of village land, the redistribution of unused land to peasants, and the protection of indigenous peoples.  But the potential for a peasant-worker alliance represented by Flores Magón and the PLM was not realized.  When Madero called an armed uprising in 1910 (see “The Mexican Revolution” 2/3/2014), Magonists organized an insurrection in Baja California, taking the cities of Mexicali y Tijuana.  But the rebellion was isolated, and it was defeated in June 1911 by the federal army.  In the critical year of 1914, when the revolutionary armies triumphed and the conflict among the revolutionary factions emerged (see “Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014), Flores Magón was in exile in the United States (Gilly 2005:50-52, 86-88). 

     From 1911 to 1914, the working class movement was isolated from the two peasant armies of Villa and Zapata that were advancing the revolution.  With the taking of Mexico City by revolutionary armies in 1914, the principal actors were the peasantry, the petit bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie.  In 1915, workers’ organizations gave support to the Constitutionalist Army of Carranza, in exchange for concessions in regard to workers’ wages and conditions.  They organized Red Battalions, which played a decisive role in the successful military campaign against the peasant army of Villa in 1915 (Gilly 2005:190-92; see “A peasant-worker alliance from above” 2/10/2014).  Thus, instead of an alliance of workers and peasants organized from below, what occurred was armed conflict between workers and peasants, orchestrated from above.

      Following the successful military campaign against Villa’s Northern Division, the government in 1916 turned against workers’ organizations and arrested leaders.  In response, a three-day general strike by 90,000 workers in Mexico City broke out, the first general strike in the history of Mexico.  And a National Workers Congress was called, attended by workers’ delegates from throughout the country, which approved the foundation of the Mexico Regional Federation of Labor.  But these actions were carried out in isolation from the peasant struggle spearheaded by the Morelos Commune and the army of Zapata in the South and the guerilla war of Villa in the North.  And the statutes of the Federation of Labor appear to affirm the proletarian class struggle without seeking to define the role of the proletariat in the context of the peasant revolution of Mexico (Gilly 2005:217-22).

     Beginning in 1918 and with the transition from Carranza to Obregón (see “The consolidation of reform from above” 2/11/2014), workers organizations played a main role in the consolidation of the new class system led by the triumphant “revolutionary bourgeoisie” (Gilly 2005:223).

       The secondary role of the working class in the Mexican Revolution suggests the need for further reflecting on the insights of Marx, who formulated his understanding on the basis of the emerging proletarian movement in Western Europe, a movement that was then at the forefront of popular struggles in opposition to the structures of the capitalist world-economy.  But during the twentieth century, the workers’ movements of the core nations would become reformist, and Third World revolutions would move to the forefront of the global revolution.  In the context of the colonial situation of the Third World, the revolutions would have characteristics different from those that Marx anticipated, in that the petit bourgeoisie and the peasantry would play a central role (see “The social & historical context of Marx” 1/15/2014).  This is a theme that will be addressed further in future 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).

"Ricardo Flores Magón." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

“Ricardo Flores Magón.” Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.  Oct. 6, 2013.


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, proletariat, working class, Ricardo Flores Magón

     From 1913 to 1917, the peasants of Morelos, led by Emiliano Zapata, established an alternative political-economic system.  There were three fundamental characteristics of what Adolfo Gilly calls the “Morelos Commune,” invoking an analogy with the Paris Commune of 1871 (see “The Paris Commune” 1/20/2014): (1) Nationalization and radical land redistribution; (2) the development of structures of popular democracy and popular power; and (3) the military defense of the alternative system by the armed people.

     (1)  The Zapatist revolution appropriated, without compensation, the large haciendas and the sugar mills in the state of Morelos.  Agrarian commissions “handed over all the land to the villages, nationalized the sugar mills, and effectively eliminated the capitalist and landowning class.  All the capitalists and big landowners living in the state fled abroad or to the capital.”  The nationalized sugar mills were managed by the workers, proving “that the industry could go on functioning perfectly well without the bosses” (Gilly 2005:241, 245-46, 289-90). 

      There was a tendency among the peasants, once they had acquired land, to cultivate subsistence crops for their own consumption and for sale in the local market.  But Zapata believed that the peasants also should produce sugar for export, in order to generate income necessary for economic development.  Measures designed to encourage sugar production were adopted, but they had only limited success (Gilly 2005 245-46). 

     (2) In villages under Zapatist control, structures of self-government were established.  The men in each village met each month to discuss and decide on issues that they considered important, and they elected delegates who served in a municipal assembly, which in turn elected delegates to represent them at the district level.  Alongside these structures of village self-government, the villages formed associations that created primary schools for children and night schools for adults and that functioned as committees to address everyday problems (Gilly 2005:268-72, 290-92).  With reference to these popular associations, Gilly writes: “As each village association gained experience, it assumed many tasks: to read and explain declarations from the revolutionary headquarters; to settle disputes between villagers; and to arrange talks by revolutionary lecturers.  In short, it operated as a true peasant committee for all the political matters and everyday problems of peasant life” (2005:271). 

     The structures of village self-government and popular association of the Morelos commune are more participatory and more truly representative than bourgeois structures of representative democracy, which limit popular participation to biannual elections in which voters choose from among candidates with whom they have not had opportunity for interchange in village, municipal, or district assemblies.  The structures of popular democracy in Morelos were similar to the soviets of the Russian Revolution (see “The Russian Revolution (February)” 1/22/2014; “The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014).  They also are similar to the structures of popular power that would later be developed in Cuba after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, although Cuban popular power and popular democracy would be characterized by the full and equal participation of women (see “The Cuban revolutionary project and its development in historical and global context”).

     (3)  As we observe revolutionary processes in the world, we see that revolutions that are able to sustain themselves are characterized by the development of some structure of popular armed self-defense.  This occurred in Morelos: the federal army was expelled, at least for a period of time, and the functions of protecting villages and peasant land and defending the rights of citizens were assumed by the Southern Liberation Army of Zapata, an army led by and consisting of peasants (Gilly 2005:56-57, 62-63, 66, 72, 290).

     The Morelos Commune was a regional alternative to the official revolutionary government of Carranza in Mexico City.  Once Villa’s Army in the North was eliminated as a serious threat, the Carranza government undertook the re-conquest of Morelos.  In May and June of 1916, the federal army occupied the major cities of the state, killing hundreds of persons, including combatants and civilians and including women, children and the elderly.  However, Zapata’s Army organized into small guerrilla units of 100 or 200, and with its base in the local population, it was able to control the countryside.  But in late 1918, in the wake of an influenza virus that killed thousands, the federal army launched a new offensive and occupied the main towns, forcing the Zapatist Army to retreat to the mountains.  This situation provoked vacillation, confusion, and contradictions within the Zapatist leadership.  Emeliano Zapata was assassinated on April 10, 1919, bringing to an end the peasant revolution (Gilly 2005:261-66, 284-88).


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, popular power, popular democracy, Zapata, Morelos Commune

     The tendency that eventually prevailed in the Mexican Revolution was forged by leaders of the capitalist petit bourgeoisie form the state of Sonora, who grouped around them Constitutionalist Army officers from the Mexican provincial urban petty bourgeoisie.  They were able to prevail over the peasant forces, in spite of the far greater numbers of peasants, because the Sonora group had a program for the development of the nation, whereas the peasant leadership did not, as we have seen (“Peasant armies occupy Mexico City, 1914” 2/5/2014).  The Sonora group was also able to prevail over the Carranza landholding tendency, because it was prepared to promise more concessions to peasants and workers, thus enlisting popular support for its project (Gilly 2005:332-33).

     In his classic work on the Mexican Revolution, Adolfo Gilly describes the manner in which petty bourgeois military officers of the revolutionary army were able to acquire land.  The agrarian reform law of January 6, 1915 mandated the restoration of land unjustly appropriated during the regime of Porfirio Díaz.  Gilly notes that the law stipulated that all claims for the restitution of land should be addressed, not to the elected village officials as was being done in Zapatist controlled areas in Morelos, but to the governors of each state.  In addition, the law permitted claimants to address “senior officials specially authorized by the Executive Power.”  This centralization of the decision-making process in the executive branches of the state and federal governments “was the foothold for a huge land-seizure operation conducted by Constitutionalist generals, senior officers, functionaries, and politicians.  The most direct beneficiaries of the ‘agrarian reform,’ they would enrich themselves with a voracity comparable to that of the bourgeoisie in the great French Revolution,” constituting a landholding nouveaux rich that came to be known as the “revolutionary bourgeoisie” (Gilly 2005:187, 333).

     Gilly further writes:  “The officers of Carranza’s army had enriched themselves by buying up the best lands of the old Porfirian oligarchy at knockdown prices, while the agrarian redistribution for which the peasants had fought the revolution barely went further than the parchment of the Constitution.  Under Obregón, this system of capitalist class formation reached quite scandalous proportions, and state-organized plunder became a veritable national institution through such forms as economic concessions, handouts, public contracts, and even more brazen diversion of public funds.  The postrevolutionary bourgeoisie developed through this peculiar system of ‘primitive accumulation’ . . . then invested its gain in banking, industrial, and commercial concerns and went on enriching itself by the normal mechanism of capital accumulation.  Forces newly attached to the state political apparatus then took their turn to become capitalists through the plunder of state funds” (2005:325).

     Thus the state apparatus was central to the formation and growth of the Mexican bourgeoisie.  The large landholders were excluded from the state, displaced from power by the rising petit bourgeoisie from the provinces.  The victorious provincial petit bourgeoisie legitimated its rule by recalling its leadership role in the armed struggle and by adopting popular revolutionary rhetoric (Gilly 2005:333).

     The failure of the Mexican Revolution to triumph as a popular revolution was rooted in particular disadvantages, which we will highlight in a subsequent post.  And we also will note that the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutions, in different historical and social conditions, were able to maintain the popular direction of the revolution at the critical moment of its triumph, thus consolidating popular revolutions. 


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 bourgeoisie, revolutionary bourgeoisie

      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