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).


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     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