Appropriately, I read this one on our trip to CDMX. When visiting a place like Mexico City, I always feel like I’m kicking myself by half-remembering details about its history, so getting ahead of things felt nice. This is a quick read and covers the Porfiriato (the existing military dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz prior to the Revolution) and proximate causes, Madero’s rise and fall from power, how the Zapatistas and Villistas were eventually surpassed by the Carrancista faction, and Mexico’s post-Revolutionary period from 1930 onward.
I appreciated the chapter on the “institutional Revolution”, which spanned 1920-1934 under the “Sonoran dynasty”. Knight describes how the victorious revolutionaries transitioned the basis of their power from the military to the state, ultimately conflicting with the Catholic church as they attempted to establish a centralized, nationalist, and secular republic. The federal government’s provisions of public education was one of these arenas. During the reconstruction after the war, public schools constructed by the federal government accounted for most of the growth in pupils across the country, but progress was slow: adult literacy was still under 50% in 1940 (in 1930 it reached 36%, and in 1940 it was 44%). Artists (such as Diego Rivera) were engaged to paint didactic murals to help “inculcate revolutionary values-secularism, nationalism, and progress-in the hearts and minds of the—largely illiterate—masses” (p.94).
Agrarian land reform was another important fracture point between the church and the revolutionary government. Peasants had provided the bulk of the revolutionary rank-and-file during the war, and thus the revolutionary state needed to retain their support. While the reforms were most prevalent in the state of Morelos, the revolutionary government began transfering land to peasants in the form of ejidos (communal land grants). The liquidation of large estates disrupted the power basis of landlords, and upset the church (which tended to favor private property rights). Here’s how Knight describes the reparto (land distribution) during this period (p.81, emphasis mine):
The early reparto of the 1920s thus roughly reflected the strength of the peasant insurgency of the previous decade. The ejido was a reward for services rendered to the Revolution; it was also a guarantee against future rebellion and a measn to attach the peasantry to the paternalist revolutionary state. The nature of the ejido facilitated attachment: the grant was to the community, not to individuals; and it conferred usufruct, not ownership. Thereby, it was argued (quite sensibly), land grants could not be bought and sold, to the advantage of rich landlords; but the conditionality of the ejido made it an effective tool of state clientelism.
Conflict between the revolutionary government and the church erupted into open conflict during the Cristero War (1926-29), testing the new state’s capacity and economy relatively soon after it was established. During the war, paramilitaries composed of agraristas (recipients of land grants) were among the most loyal and effective fighters that the revolutionary government fielded.
In all, this book made me much more curious about Benito Jaurez (president between 1858-72) and Lázaro Cárdenas (president between 1934-40). From listening to Mike Duncan’s excellent podcast, I have a fairly good sense of the Revolution’s arc starting in the Porfiriato and through the establishment of the Carranza government. But the careers of these two figures (Juarez being an early liberal reformer; Cárdenas, a left-wing president who oversaw land reform and nationalization of key industries) feel like natural milestones on the edges of the Revolutionary period. I’m glad to have this book on my shelf— 150 pages isn’t nearly enough to do the period justice, but it’s a decent starting place.