¡VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

 

I ended my last post on the Mexican Revolution with the question, “what did it all mean?” On the surface the Revolution was a success, the Diaz regime was forced out and replaced with a functioning constitutional democracy, success, right? Unfortunately, the truth is more muddled. That’s probably why, at least in part, Americans don’t know more about the Revolution, it’s not a simple story with clear cut good guys and bad with a definite conclusion. Even the dates of the revolution are in dispute. Most agree that it started in 1910, but some say it ended in 1917 with the constitution, the 1920 date is probably the most commonly used date, while still others argue it didn’t end until the late-1930s.

To understand the later date, you have to realize the fighting didn’t stop in 1920. There were still regional holdouts and there were several attempted coups in the 1920s. What emerged in the 1920s and early 1930s were a series of presidents from a party that eventually became know as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). So rather than rule by a single person, Mexico became a country ruled by a single party with a handpicked successor each election. The mineral rights that were supposed to be held exclusively by Mexicans had enough loop-holes wrote into the legislation that it allowed American corporations to continue exploiting the country’s resources. Most of the promised land reforms never took place. It was a more things change, the more they stay the same situation.

This isn’t to say the Mexican people weren’t better off in many ways, they had more rights and a greater say in the government than before the revolution, but at the end of the day, the same type of people were still running the show. However, an unexpected thing happened in 1934, a man named Lazaro Cardenas was selected by the party to be the president, but rather than continue business as usual, he set about fully realizing the revolutions original intentions. Cardenas remove the party officials who put him in power and moved to break up large haciendas and redistribute the land that had been stolen from the peasants decades earlier. He also nationalized many of the large industries including control of Mexico’s large oil reserves. Cardenas reshaped nearly every level of Mexican social life including sweeping educational reforms and extending voting rights to women. 

Today he’s considered one of heroes of the Mexican Revolution although there’s still debate over the lasting impact of his reforms. Many of the nationalized industries he created became bloated and corrupt over time. It’s only been during the last 30 years that one-party rule in Mexico has finally given way to true multiparty elections.

Of course, Mexico still has problems, gang violence and corruption are seemingly perennial problems. Despite this, the Democracy Index gave Mexico high marks for its “electoral process and pluralism,” but perceptions of corruption brought down their overall score. This pluralism was on display during Mexico’s 2018 presidential election as long time opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was overwhelmingly elected on an anti-corruption and pro-universal healthcare and college acceptance platform. The once dominate PRI party finished a distant third with only 16% of the vote. Mexico’s economy is also booming which is largely responsible for the drastic decline in Mexican workers migrating to America. Not unlike America, which took 90 years to end slavery after declaring that all

men are created equal, it took Mexico decades to become a truly functioning democratic country after their revolution. The country Mexico is today can trace its roots back to Francisco Madero’s decision to cross the Rio Grande and launch a revolution against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz in 1910.