Mexican Revolution Questions of the Day # 3 Daniel W. Blackmon IB HL History Coral Gables Sr. High.

Mexican Revolution Questions of the Day # 3

Daniel W. Blackmon

IB HL History

Coral Gables Sr. High

The Question

• To what extent were the aims of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa realised during the Mexican Revolution (1910 to 1940)? (HL) (2002)

Key Terms

Thesis

The Aims: Zapata

Zapata: The Local Situation

• Morelos was dominated by sugar planters who, in an effort to modernize their holdings, which required expensive machinery, decided to do so by squeezing the peasants extremely hard.


• The Porfirista governor, Pablo “Escandón openly, blatantly and bigotedly favored the planters against the villagers . . . . The owners of the sugar plantations were now free to declare open season on the villages. . . .


• In 1909 more and more villages were deprived of water, their cattle stolen, their lands fenced off, and all appeals to political or judicial authorities were ignored. It was now clear that Escandón aimed to break the pueblos as institutions,


• leaving an almost Marxian division between the plantocracy and a vast body of dispossessed ex-villagers who had only their labor to sell.” (McLynn 46-47)

Zapata: Reasons for Becoming a Revolutionary

• Zapata is all about land reform. When the people of Anenecuilco protested the illegal seizure of fields and water belonging to them by the local hacendado, the reply was,


• “If the people of Anenecuilco want to sow their seed, let them sow it in a flowerpot, because they will get no land even on the barren slope of a hill.”


• The village reply to the governor was “We are willing to recognize whoever the owner of said lands may turn out to be . . . . but we wish to sow on said lands so as not to suffer, because the sowing is what gives us life, from which we draw our livelihood and that of our families.” (Krauze 277)

Zapata: Political Policies

• Plan de Ayala: (1) “restitution to the ‘pueblos or citizens who hold the proper deeds” of “lands, mountains and waters usurped by the hacendados, cientificos, or caciques.’


• Plan de Ayala:

• (2) “Furthermore, a third of the ‘lands, mountains and waters’ monopolized by these owners would be expropriated–but with compensation–


• Plan de Ayala:

• (2) “–so that the pueblos and citizens could make use of them and ‘improve in every way . . . the lack of prosperity and well-being among Mexicans.’


• Plan de Ayala: (3) “Those who directly or indirectly ‘resisted this program’ would have their holdings nationalized and two-thirds of their former wealth . . . would then be applied


• Plan de Ayala:. . . would then be applied to ‘paying war indemnities–pensions for widows and orphans of the victims who fall in the struggle for this Program.” (Krauze 288)

Zapata: Tierra y Liberdad!

• “The land will be our own possession, it will belong to all the people–the land our ancestors held and that the fingers on paws that crushed us snatched away from us.” Manifesto issued in Náhuatl by Zapata in 1918

Zapata: Economic Policies

• “The dream of Zapatista redemption was to create a mosaic of small autonomous holdings whose owners would be united by a strong sense of community” (Krauze 288)


• In 1914, Zapata issued an agrarian decree which was more radical than the Plan de Ayala.


• “The nationalization of enemy possessions would for the first time extend to urban property and–also for the first time–forms of ownership were to be established that recalled the Aztec calpulli (shared communal ownership of land).


• In embryo, this was a call for the ejido, an institution that would later develop out of the Mexican Revolution and involve the collective ownership and cultivation of fields. . . . “ (Krauze 291)


• Zapata’s land distribution would lead to more subsistence agriculture.

• McLynn argues that under Zapata, the state in Morelos was “withering away”

• His program resembles anarchism rather strongly


• Zapata is not a communist!

• Conversation between Zapata and Enrique Villa:


• “Emiliano, what do you think of communism?

• “Explain to me what that is.”

• “For example, all of the people of a village farm . . . their lands together and then they distribute the harvest equally.”


• “Who makes the distribution?”

• “A representative, or a council elected by the community.”


• “”Well, look, as far as I am concerned, if any ‘somebody’ . . . would try to dispose of the fruits of my own labor in that way . . . I would fill him full of bullets.” (Krauze 298)

Zapata: Religious Policies

• “Religious devotion was another vital aspect of Zapatismo.” (Krauze 297)

• The Virgin of Guadalupe was displayed on their banners. Priests were not persecuted, and many supported the revolutionaries.

Zapata: Social Policies

• “Another notable feature of that war of wandering villages was its bias toward indigenous values and consequent respect for the Indians.” (Krauze 296)

• Zapata frequently addressed village in Náhuatl

Zapata: Land Reform

• From a conversation between Villa and Zapata in 1914: “They feel so much love for the land.” (Krauze 294-5)

Zapata: Power

• Conversation on the occasion of the famous photograph in Mexico City, when Villa sat in the President’s chair.

Zapata: Power

• Villa: “Now it’s your turn.”

• Zapata: “I didn’t fight for that. I fought to get the lands back. I don’t care about politics.” (Krauze 295)

Reasons for Defeat

• Zapata fights guerrilla-style war. His bands were small, some 30 - 200 men. The commander might be a woman, called coronela or capitana. Their war was primarily a war of raids.

Reasons for Defeat

• Fighting in Morelos was brutal, bloody, and extremely destructive. Opponents such as Victoriano Huerta, Juvencio Robles, and Pablo González were extremely ruthless.

Reasons for Defeat

• Executions, hostages, resettlement, looting, rape and burning were common coin.

• When pressure was too severe, Zapata would withdraw to the most forbidding territory, and then return when pressure eased.

Reasons for Defeat

• He supported his armies by “taxes” on hacendados.

• Zapata’s was “an army divided into small units, mindful of its Indian roots and devoted to religion.” (Krauze 296)

Reasons for Defeat

• The inability to easily supply himself with weapons and ammunition was a critical disadvantage. Morelos had no easy access to supplies from the US.

The Aims: Villa

Villa: The Local Situation

• Northern Mexico has a dramatically different economy. Sonora and Chihuahua (where much of the fighting would take place) have traditions of federalism, opposition to national authority, and of military self-reliance


• Water was the crucial factor in the economy; most of the land is desert. The economy included ranching and mining. Both Sonora and Chihuahua have common borders with the US, which provided a source of supplies, weapons, and ammunition, as well as a refuge in need.


• Sonora had been wracked by war to the knife against the Yaquis, who were fighting for their cultural existence.

• The Yaquis were formidable fighters, and rebellion still simmered in 1900. (McLynn 53-54)


• Chihuahua had been terrorized since the 1830's by the Apache: Cochise and Mangas Colorado of the Chiricahuas, Victorio, Delgadito and Nana of the Mimbres, as well as Geronimo.


• Luis Terrazas had cemented his leadership role in Chihuahua by trapping and destroying Victorio. The culture of Chihuahua was martial. (McLynn 55-58)


• Economically, the Terrazas-Creel clan controlled almost all jobs via their great estates and the Banco Minero de Chihuahua


• The Terrazas-Creel clan was either “broker or partner in all foreign investment schemes in the state.” (McLynn 64) Diaz coopted them by appointing Enrique Creel as governor. “Creel turned on [the villagers and colonists] ruthlessly.


• He and his family coveted new land so that they could make a killing from land speculation. The key was the new railways, for the Mexican Northwestern line, the Kansas Orient and the Pacific Railroad were all laying new track through Chihuahua .


• In 1904-5 Creel passed two laws of special moment: the first replaced heads of municipalities with officials appointed by the governor;


• the second . . . so that the state, not the federal government, became the final arbiter in the case of expropriation of village lands. Creel’s hatred of the free villages was noteworthy. . . . In short, Creel was a genuine cientifico ideologue.” (McLynn 66)


• First, his expropriations created “a new class of landless labourers,” then he refused to acknowledge customary rights of the military colonies


• The US depression of 1908 hit Chihuahua very hard as mines closed as the price of silver and copper dropped; food prices shot up, and Creel responded by raising taxes on the peasants (but not the hacendados). (McLynn 67)

Villa: Reasons for Becoming a Revolutionary

• There are three different versions: the Black, White, and Epic Legends. “The black legend makes Villa out as a double-dyed psychopath, motivated only by hatred and revenge; the white is that he was a simple man wanting a simple life who was catapulted reluctantly into a revolutionary milieu;


• and the epic that he was no bandit lusting only after loot but a genuine Robin Hood, desirous of righting wrongs, taking from the rich to give to the poor.” (McLynn 61)


• The author of the epic legend is John Reed, the socialist American journalist who would later write Ten Days That Shook the World. Reed does concede that between 1901-9, Villa certainly murdered 4 men and participated in at least 10 premeditated crimes.


• A more sophisticated explanation lies in Villa’s relationship with the Terrazas-Creel clan. The courageous journalist Silvestre Terrazas exposed the corruption in Chihuahua, and Villa met him in 1910. Later that year, he met Madero’s representative in Chihuahua, Abraham González, and fell under his spell


• The Terrazas-Creel clan identified Villa as an enemy due to his connection with Silvestre Terrazas and Abraham González. At the same time, McLynn notes, Villa had become politicized by these two. (69-70)

Villa : Political Policies

• Villa was an “effective” governor of Chihuahua from 1913-14. (McLynn 190) This is the time period to judge what his policies were.

• Villa told John Reed that he had three priorities: his troops, children, and the poor. (McLynn 190)

Villa : Economic Policies

• While land reform was important, the nature of the land and the economy gave it a different priority and approach. The pastoral economy and shortage of water meant that land units had to be very large.


• Villa expropriated the estates of rancheros who fled, selling the cattle to the US, Cuba, and Europe and using the money to fund his army and government.


• These confiscations were not compensated; but McLynn argues that, since the rancheros had always undervalued their lands to evade taxes, that seizure was more a “sequestration” than an “expropriation.” (192)


• Rancheros who supported him kept their estates.

• Some of the estates were given to his supporters, simply to keep them loyal and happy.


• Silvestre Terrazas was authorized to distribute land at his discretion, but seized Terrazas-Creel land was reserved as a military colony. (McLynn 193)


• Although he is best known in the US for his later attacks in New Mexico, in this period he was scrupulous to protect the persons and property of foreigners, especially US citizens.


• US support was important to him. And in fact, he did not definitively lose that support until the Battle of Celayo proved to Woodrow Wilson that Villa would be the loser in the civil war.


• So far as personal wealth was concerned, Villa’s regime was noted for little corruption, in contrast to Carranza’s.


• Villa’s land program “enjoying the proximity to the USA, both exported and redistributed the profits away from the peasantry.” (McLynn 194)


• McLynn argues that in Chihuahua, the state was “stronger than ever, intervening at all points in economic and social life.” (194)

Villa : Religious Policies

• Villa was very anti-clerical. Priests were beaten up, arrested, and shot. Churches were desecrated.

Villa : Social Policies

• “He provided pensions [for widows and orphans], free food and cheap mat for his followers and their families. He cut the cost of food and other basics, organized distribution and rationing, punished all abuses by death and set his army to work on infrastructure projects–


• “–repairing railways, telephones and telegraph lines, running electrification projects, streetcars, the water supply and even slaughterhouses. He also sent his men south to harvest the cotton crop in Durango.” (McLynn 190; cf also Krauze 315-6)


• Villa loved children and was intensely committed to education. He built 100 schools, decreed there should be a school for each hacienda, increased teacher salaries built a military college, and decreed that all homeless children should be found a home and a school. (McLynn 190)


• Social groups which suffered severely under Villa included Spaniards and Chinese.

• Villa’s men engaged in considerable looting, arson and rape.

Villa : Land Reform

• From a conversation between Villa and Zapata in 1914: “Well, we should give the people these bits of land they want.”

• Villa to John Reed: “Socialism, is it a thing?” (Krauze)

Reasons for Defeat

• Villa’s army was all-cavalry, made up of men who were accustomed to weapons and a hard, outdoor life. It was therefore a very mobile force. He inspired men by personal example.

Reasons for Defeat

• On behalf of the Constitutionalists, Villa’s División del Norte seized the rail hub at Torreón in 1913. Later that year, he seized Ciudad Juarez, which gave the Constitutionalists access to the customs post at the US border.

Reasons for Defeat

• He used the railroads effectively, not only to move men but also to provide medical care.

Reasons for Defeat

• “American observers conceded that the fighting spirit, stoicism and endurance of the villistas went beyond anything even the US Marines could match. . . .

Reasons for Defeat

• “. . . . The villista warrior could live off the land, encumbered by nothing more than arms, ammunition, canteen and a single blanket. Villa’s use of trains impressed all observers. . . .

Reasons for Defeat

• “One of the reasons morale was so high was that Villa allowed his men to take wives, mistresses, and girlfriends on campaigns with them. . . . Women also took up arms and fought as soldaderas.” (McLynn 208-9)

Reasons for Defeat

• Villa cultivated good relations with peasants, paying cash for services. (McLynn 59)

Reasons for Defeat

• Villa is very badly defeated by Alvaro Obregón at Celaya.

• Villa’s men charged recklessly again and again with cavalry; Obregón, having paid attention to what was happening in Europe, responded with artillery and machine guns.

Realisation by the end of Cárdenas ‘ term of office

Land Reform

• Villa / Zapata’s dream of land reform: fulfilled or not?

• Yes, under Cárdenas

Implementation: Cárdenas

• Agrarian Reform

• “Agrarian reform more than anything else dominated the administration’s concern during the first few years. . . . Cárdenas early made up his to fulfill twenty years of promises. . . . .


• [B]y the time his term expired, he had distributed 49 million acres, about twice as much as all his predecessors combined. By 1940 approximately one third of the Mexican population had received land under the agrarian reform program.


• In fact, most of Mexico’s arable land had been redistributed. Only the large cattle haciendas on arid or semiarid land remained untouched.


• “The vast majority of the land distributed did not go to individuals or even heads of households but rather to the communal ejidos.” (598-9)


• The largest ejido was Laguna, with 8,000,000 acres.

• The complex grew cotton, maize, wheat and alfalfa, provided schools and had a hospital.


• Cárdenas created the Banco de Crédito Ejidal to provide loans for the small farmers.

• Its performance is weakened by a population which grew faster than its assets, and by favoritism in its loans.


• Still, this is a very positive step–agrarian reform must go beyond merely redistributing the land.


• Economically, the ejidos were not as efficient, and agricultural production declined.


• However, “Cárdenas’ dedication to agrarian reform spelled the demise of the traditional hacienda complex in Mexico. Millions of peasants were given a new faith in the revolutionary concept. . . .


• . . . the type of servitude that had bound hacendado and peón for centuries was broken by 1940. . . . If the ejido system was an economic failure, it was a political and social success.” (600)

The Church

• Villa / Zapata’s religious policies: fulfilled or not?

• The two men have dissimilar policies. Cárdenas resembles Villa more, as he is anticlerical, but he has to make some compromises


• The Church

• Cárdenas is clearly anti-clerical. He instituted a socialist curriculum into the schools, which angered the Church.


• When he added sex education, the Church became still more incensed.

• In response, he backed off the sex education, and softened the socialist education by emphasizing positive attitudes and avoiding anti-religious propaganda.

Education

• Villa / Zapata’s dream of education: fulfilled or not?

• Yes, and no. Cárdenas appropriates much more money for education, but population outstrips resources


• Education

• Twice as much money is appropriated for rural education than any previous president.

• Rapid population growth and high inflation however meant that the literacy rate actually seems to have fallen. The government could not keep up.

Indigenismo

• Villa / Zapata’s dream of indigenismo: fulfilled or not?

• Yes, Mexico today is a genuinely mestizo society. The Muralists--– Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros–help to create a new national self-consciousness that blends the Indian and Spanish cultures.

The End

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Mexican Revolution Questions of the Day # 3 Daniel W. Blackmon IB HL History Coral Gables Sr. High.

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