Modern Mexico

The Revolution and its Aftermath: A Photographic survey:

6 December 2010

Diaz in September 1910

Zapata and Villa in July 1914

Periodisation• i) Crisis and collapse of the Diaz Dictatorship, 1904-1911.

• ii)- Madero regime, 1911-1913

• iii)- Huerta regime, 1913-1914

• iv)- Revolutionary Civil War, 1914-1919

• v)- Sonoran Dynasty, 1919-1936

Social Revolution or Great rebellion?

• Knight: Alan Knight, “The Mexican Revolution: Bourgeois? Nationalist? Or just a ‘Great Rebellion’?” Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1985: “multiple sovereignties”

• Ruiz, Ramón Eduardo. The Great Rebellion, Mexico 1905- 1924 (New York, 1980): “a cataclysmic rebellion but not a social revolution”

Francois-Xavier Guerra, Le Mexique de l’Ancien Regime a la Revolution (1985, 2 Vols)• “De Toquevillian” approach: social and cultural

changes precede the Revolution that gives them political shape

• Reforma- “democrat fiction”...Mexico still composed of traditional “collectivities” and “sociabilities”.

• Porfiriato: modernisation transformed traditional collectivities and sociabilities.

• Revolution Mexico enters modernity….

John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution. The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War (Berkeley, 2002)

• Foreigners held 35% of M’s land surface in 1910, Americans the largest share, 27% 130,000,000 acres

• • Foreigners owned 60% of coastlines and borders (Americans

nearly all of this, just under 60%).• • 20,000 American-owned ranchos, 160 US

companies/individuals owned estates of over 100,000 acres, totalling 90,000,000 acres of agric, livestock, timberland (doesn’t include the 180,000,000 acres belonging to Lower Calif Devel Co controlled by Morgan or 7,000,000 owned by Randolph Hearst)

•

John Mason Hart, Empire and Revolution. The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War (Berkeley, 2002)

Discrepancy in salaries between US supervisors and Mexican skilled labourers 20/1 in mines and 30/1 on plantations (in US it was 2.5/1)

•  Hart: “By 1914, a mix of Mexican miners, agrarian workers and village citizens had attacked virtually all the larger American estates and most of the smaller ones. The rise of anti-Americanism intensified as the fighting among the Mexicans deepened and broadened,”

• Yet Alan Knight rejects view that anti-Americanism was a significant factor in the Mexican Revolution

Historiography of the Mexican Revolution

• - Classic historiography: • Andres Molina Enriquez, Luis Cabrera, Martin Luis Guzman, etc.• Frank Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution (1932)

• - Revisionism: • Stanley Ross, (ed.) Is the Mexican Revolution Dead ? (1965)

• - Post-Revisionism• Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution (2 Vols. 1985) • Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution, Teachers,

Peasants and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (1997)

Historiography• “Los Revolucionados”

• Luis González y González, Pueblo en Vilo (1972) San José de Gracia Mexican Village in Transition (1974)

• Jean Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People between Church and State 1926-1929 (1976)

• Edward Wright-Rios Revolutions in Mexican Catholicism Reform and Revelation in Oaxaca, 1887-1934 (2009)

John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 1909

Chiapas Indians clearing land for coffee, 1909

“Enganche” labour on Valle Nacional Sugar Plantation, 1909

José Guadalupe Posada. Anti-Reeleccionist Demo, 1910

Rurales and Firing Squad, c 1900

Posada, Capital punishment

Posada, Capital punishment

José Guadalupe Posada.

José Guadalupe Posada.

José Guadalupe Posada.

José Guadalupe Posada.

• María Elena Díaz, • “The Satiric Penny Press for Workers in

Mexico, 1900-1910: A Case Study in the Politicisation of Culture,”

• Journal of Latin American Studies 22 (1990): 497-526

Maderista revolutionaries, 1911

Posada, “La Calavera Revuelta”, c.1911

Madero arrives in Mexico City, April 1911

Madero arrives in Mexico City, April 1911(Posada broadsheet)

Madero arrives in Mexico City, April 1911(Taller Gráfico de la Revolución, 1934)

Emiliano Zapata, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Nov 1910

Madero in the Palace, 1912

Huerta’s Cabinet, 1913

General Victoriano Huerta, 1913-1914 (Taller Gráfico de la Revolución, 1934)

1913-14 War against Huerta

• North Coahuila and Sonora, led by Venustiano Carranza, Pablo Gonzalez, Alvaro Obregon and Pancho Villa (Chihuahua) Plan de Guadalupe, April 1913 , promised land reform.

• South Zapata (Morelos and Puebla) and the Figueroas

(Guerrero), Plan de Ayala of November 1911, promised land reform.

Zapatistas, Cuautla, 1914

“Federales” 1913-14

“Federales” 1913-14

“Federales” 1913-14

“Federales” 1913-14

“Soldaderas” 1913-14

Zapatistas in the Zocalo, 1914

Zapata, Villa, Fierro et al. Mexico City,1914

Villa in presidential chair & Zapata, 1914

Zapatistas at Sanborns Coffee Shop, 1914

Zapatistas at Sanborns Coffee Shop, 1914

Zapatismo as Banditry

Villa in 1914 after the Fall of Ciudad Juarez

Villistas on Border newsreel, 1914

Submission of Villa, 1919

Villa as Hacendado, 1920

Villa at the plough, 1920

Villa and Compañeros at ploughs, 1920

Villa at threshing machine, 1920

Alvaro Obregón, 1915

Mexico City Workers, 1911

Mexico City Workers: Pact with Constitutionalists,1916

“Red Battalions”

Carranza at Convention of Querétaro, 1917

Assassination of Carranza, May 21 1920

Obregón and Calles: “The Sonoran Dynasty”, 1920-1934

Cristero Commanders, 1927

Cristero peasants awaiting arrival of priest, 1928

Illegal mass in village in Los Altos, 1928

Cristero Commander and Family 1928

Diego Rivera poster, Land Reform Propaganda, 1933

Diego Rivera, National Palace, 1930

Tina Modotti, Workers’ Parade, 1926

Zapatista veterano, Morelos 1975