Intro to la Revolución Mexicana

* Francisco Madero versus Porfirio Díaz

- Díaz's Porfiriato had run a long time, enriching just a small elite

-> excluded elites, workers, peasants, everyone was done with Díaz

-> Díaz himself was old, so jockeying for power was natural

- despite Díaz's inequality, the economy had advanced, especially in rail and factories

-> created a modernizing bourgeoisie that hated him and a working class that really hated him

-> his wildly anti-poor land policies meant that rural poor were first to revolt

- Madero was no social revolutionary, but he wasn't Díaz

-> in 1910 election, which was fixed like the previous ones, Madero was arrested on election day

-> Díaz proclaimed himself the winner, but this time it didn't stick

-> Madero escaped from prison and fled to Texas, where he called for revolution

=> Madero's "Plan de San Luis Potosí" called for agrarian reform, elections, no re-election, etc.

=> many uncoordinated rebellions bloomed and Díaz's own government began to collapse internally

- some of Díaz's generals took over the regions they were in control of

- Pancho Villa and General Orozco captured Juarez

- by 1911, Madero and his allies had brushed aside Díaz

-> a new election was called, which Madero won

-> US and all the major revolutionaries supported Madero

* The War of All Against All

- Madero wasn't up to the job

-> peasants and workers wanted radical reforms

-> factory owners and big landholders threatened to flee Mexico with money if things got radical

-> US support limited how reformist he could get

- Emiliano Zapata in Morelos was the first to break

-> he and the peasants of Morelos weren't willing to wait and be betrayed

-> issued the Plan de Ayala

=> tierra y libertad = land and liberty

-> basically, wanted an anarchistic agrarian commune of small landholders

=> hacendados lands were expropriated

-> wasn't really concerned with working with anyone else

- the Villistas in the north also began to set up a de facto government

-> his group made up largely of miners, workers, railroad people, ranchers (fewer peasants)

-> access to raw materials from mines and to rail lines leading to the US, Villa was better supplied

- Victoriano Huerta, Madero's main general, turned on Madero

-> eventually, Huerta had Madero arrested and Madero was shot while "trying to escape"

-> at first Huerta had US support, but President Wilson disagreed with ambassador Henry Lane Wilson

-> Huerta made himself "President" but was basically a military dictator

- Venustiano Carranza, another general, opposed Huerta, thus creating the Constitutionalists

-> the United States eventually occupied Veracruz, thus cutting off Huerta's supplies

- by 1914 Villistas, Zapatistas, and Constitutionalists were all competing for power of one sort or another

-> Zapatistas mostly just wanted isolation and tierra y libertad