In Our Time - The Mexican Revolution

Episode Date: January 20, 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mexican Revolution.In 1908 the President of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, gave an interview to an American journalist. He was 77 and had ruled the country in autocratic fashion for over thirty years. He discussed the country's economic development and spoke of his intention to retire to his country estate after overseeing a transition to multiparty democracy.Things did not turn out quite like that. Two years later Diaz was toppled by a popular uprising. It was the beginning of a tumultuous decade in which different factions fought for supremacy, and power changed hands many times. The conflict completely changed the face of the country, and resulted in the emergence of Mexico's most celebrated folk hero: Emiliano Zapata.With:Alan KnightProfessor of the History of Latin America at the University of OxfordPaul GarnerCowdray Professor of Spanish at the University of LeedsPatience SchellSenior Lecturer in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1908, an American journalist James Creelman visited Mexico to interview the country's president, whom we described as the foremost man at the American hemisphere,

General Porfirio Diaz was 77 at the time, an authoritarian leader who'd ruled for more than 30 years. The President talked of Mexico's economic miracle and revealed plans to retire to the country after overseeing a transition to peaceful democracy. Things didn't turn out quite like that. Two years later, General Diaz was forced from power. The Mexican revolution had begun. The resulting armed struggle lasted 10 years and involved landowners, the church, bandied chiefs, outstandingly Pancho Villar,

and a peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, who a century later remains Mexico's most celebrated folk hero. With me to discuss the Mexican revolutions of 1910, and subsequently are Alan Knight, Professor of the History of Latin America at the University of Oxford, Paul Garner, Caudre Professor of Spanish at the University of Leeds, and Patient Shell,

Senior Lecture in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Alan Knight, after 300 years of colonial rule, Mexico won independence from the Spanish in 1821. Can you sketch out briefly what happened between 1821 and the coming to power of Porfirio Diaz in 1876? After 300 years of colonial rule ended, as you said, and ended amid a very costly, bloody 10 years of civil war, Mexico entered upon its period of time as an independent country, largely a republic, and for about 50 years from the 1820s to the 1870s, the country went through serious political instability,

probably because there was no legitimate government to replace the colonial regime, and thus battles between liberals and conservatives and other groups. Secondly, because the economy had been ravaged, and the economy lacked basic infrastructure as a result of which production was low. There were few exports, and so Mexican economic production was bad compared to Brazil or Argentina.

And finally, because of the economy, Mexico was also victim of two major foreign interventions, an American invasion in the 1840s, a French invasion in the 1860s, which was finally successfully repelled. Those factors taken together meant that the country failed to achieve a solvent, stable government until Porphyrio Diaz emerged out of the pack in the 1870s and turned that sort of vicious cycle of economic stagnation and political instability

into what he and his people saw as a very virtuous cycle of political stability, solvency and economic growth. At that time, can you give us some idea of the mix of the Mexican population? Was it largely Indian, and they were the peasants and the poor, ruled by descendants of the Spanish, and they were the rich land-honing and powerful? There's a good deal of truth in that. Quite who's an Indian, who is Creole, descendant of the Spaniards, and who belongs to the large mixed mestizo group in the middle

is complicated and fuzzy. broadly speaking, the mestizo group were the largest in the population. They are the mixed group, are they? Yeah, they are in some sense a mixture of the European and the Indian, and to some degree also of African Americans who had been brought into Mexico. So you have a mixture of ethnic groups, but the most important thing is there is a strong correlation between ethnicity and class in the sense that, as you suggested, by and large,

the Indians are the poorer people, the mestizo's rather better of, and the Creoles who may or may not be descendants of Spanish conquistado, tend to be the rich landed elite. So in a sense, class and ethnicity underpin each other. I would stress, particularly looking at the revolution, that class is probably more important as a determinant of social identity and mobilisation than ethnicity per se.

Pofia, the period beginning in 1876, which lasted for about 35 years. We'll come on to what type of... It was run by this one man. He himself was a mixture, wasn't he? Yeah, he came from fairly poor background in the southern state of Waxaca, He was of part Indian background, therefore a mestizo.

He'd risen through the ranks from a poor background, and he'd become a liberal general, fighting in the liberal armies. And the civil wars were, in some ways, kind of Darwinian processes, whereby able people could rise to the top, which Porfirio Diaz did, then following the leadership of Benito Juarez, the great liberal patriotic hero and president. And Diaz, apart from being militarily success, was also politically very adroit

and managed to move his way up through the ranks and to become one of the leading generals, eventually to seize power by force in 1876, and then set about, rather surprisingly, I think, for many, consolidating an unusually unprecedentedly stable political regime in Mexico. Can you give us two or three things that he did? He encouraged foreign investment from America and from this country, first out, with railways and canals and so on. Creating an infrastructure was crucial because, as I said, the Mexican economy was backward. There were no canals, no navigable rivers. so a railway system was absolutely central to developing the economy along with telegraphs and ports.

And this meant that for the first time, Mexico was really integrated into world circuits of trade and investment. Large tranches of American and European investment came into Mexico, partly to build the railways, to develop mines and oil. And with this also went a very important trend, which was the quickening of commercial agriculture, which now became much more marketable and profitable, which it hadn't been, and therefore there were huge incentives for the big land, estates to produce and expand in a way that there hadn't been before.

Coupled with that, the Porphyrian regime, a stable regime, by and large, was a government almost by landlords and for landlords, and its legislation, its policies very much favoured the landed elite over the peasant subsistence producers. Patian Shell, he's been described Perfio Diaz, even by his admirers, as an autocrat. Can you give us some idea of his style of leadership? Yeah. It wasn't a military or police state. That's the most important thing to start off with. but yes, he was an autocrat. Yes, he was a strong man.

And he balanced between some repression, but also co-optation and consensus. When he came to power in 1876, he gradually sought to either sideline or bring into his political wing, shall we say, different sections of power throughout the country. So, for example, local strongmen were either pushed out, Diaz sent a loyalist to counterbalance that person's strength or that person became a loyalist as well. And Diaz was very good at offering people incentives that made it useful for them to become supporters and financially useful as well to become supporters. It was in name a constitutional democracy, but in fact it was not. There were regular elections which were regularly defrauded.

The Supreme Court had no power. the legislature had no power. People didn't even necessarily know who their congressional representatives were. And Diaz strongly tried to centralize the state with the power concentrated in him and with his appointees running local and state government. There does seem to be a real mixture. There's this ecstatic interview with James Creelman and American journalist in 1908. I have literally never read anything like it.

for basking and fawning in the grey hair and the gentle eyes and the noble visage and the heroic statement. Anyway, it goes on like that. That's only the beginning. And he believes everything this chap says that everything is... But even in the middle of that interview, Diaz says that, you know, if people cut telegraph wires, he has them summarily executed, and if people on the land over which these wires go don't stop them,

he'll have them executed summarily as well, because you spill some bad blood, it keeps the good blood. So he was a fairly ferocious benign autocrat, wasn't he? Well, he was ferocious when it was necessary, but wasn't necessarily his preferred mode of operation. He, for instance, reduced the standing army from 30,000 to 20,000 people, and he took the army out as a political player. I mean, that's the thing.

If you use military repression, you're also giving another focal point of power. And in his attempt to centralize power, He saw the military, for instance, as a potential threat and wanted to downplay its importance. But in terms of the policing of the state, it was based on the army to a certain extent, the rurales, which were a force that was put together in the 1860s to deal with rural banditry and other problems, and then there was also the police. And the railway network that Alan mentioned could be used to send all over the country very quickly to quell rebellion and revolt as necessary.

So, would you say that between, say, the last quarter of the 19th century, he had, on the whole, a benign and helpful influence in Mexico? I wouldn't say it was benign and helpful. It depends on which segments of society you're looking at. If you're looking at the elites, as Alan mentioned, yes, it was benign and helpful, and economically it was terrific for them. And there's consolidation of power. and there's a convergence of political and economic interests.

But for the vast majority of the population, in particular the rural population, things get progressively worse under Diaz. Why was Creelman and so many others so easily fooled? Because of the surface stability, and because for 35, 36 years, Diaz had succeeded in being the strong man. He had succeeded in quelling revolts.

He had succeeded in playing off different opposition factions against each other. He'd been very good at that. But by the time we get to the Creelman interview 1909, he's in his late 70s, and there's no succession set in place, and there's all kinds of other possibilities and opportunities that this potential crisis of presidential and executive authority opens up. Is the mood changing in Mexico in the beginning of the 20th century anyway?

Yes. There are leading into the revolution. There are a couple of changes that are important. One thing in terms of the context, I've already mentioned how old, we've all mentioned how old Diaz was, and that was a problem. It wasn't just Diaz, though it was all the people around. And the average age of ministers was 70. Youngens in the Diaz regime were in their 50s.

So there's just the facts of life that these people are going to die. There's going to be a new political generation coming to the floor, one way or another. Also in the first decade of the 20th century, there were serious economic crises. For instance, the price of corn doubled from 1900 to 19. And those crises certainly created difficulties in living standards for many people. But what really sets the stage for revolution is a combination of the political crisis, the rising middle classes saying to themselves, we want our constitution respected. We want effective government that actually respects elections.

We want greater freedoms and we want liberalism. And at the same time, the problems in the countryside, the rise of the asiendas, the rise of agricultural export that we've just heard about meant that communal lands were being taken over at an incredible rate. And that created problems in the countryside as villages saw their land and their political autonomy disappearing. So the stage you set there, Paul Garner, and the revolution began in 1910. How was Diaz toppled? Yes, I'd like to just add something to what's been said because I think it's a debate to be had here

because I think the Diash regime is a constitutional regime. It also is very much a hybrid political regime. In other words, it has very strong authoritarian tendencies, but it also has its greatest form of its legitimacy as a regime is based upon its adhering to the constitution of 1857. So these are trends which obviously have been in existence in Mexico, all the way through the 19th century, and they'll continue actually indeed into the 20th. So in other words, to govern Mexico, one needs to understand different political cultures,

ones of authoritarianism, ones of constitutionalism. And so, yes, there is a really, there's a convergence of crises, various crises, I think, towards in 1910. And 1910 is also the time when the Dias regime is celebrating, at the time that Creelman is in Mexico. Two years after that, Mexico celebrates its centenary of independence. And that's a very important event, too. 1810 to 19.

Yeah, 1910. There's a whole month of celebrations in September of 1910, which are very important because what I think they demonstrate is that the DAS regime has a coherent project of state building and nation building. And this is something, in fact, many of the, I would say, establishing what are going to be the characteristics of modern Mexico in terms of its cultural projection, its economic strategy, and also its hybrid political system. The roots of all that are to be found in the DAS period. It's an important celebration in 1910, but it does mask a lot of the social problems for urban poverty and so on. So how did Diaz get toppled? Yeah, okay. Well, there are the three crises. Basically, I think there's an economic crisis

which has already been mentioned. There's the Mexico going on to the gold standard in 1905, to stabilize the peso. But in fact, what it does, it coincides with an economic crisis in the United States in 1907. So there's basically a credit crunch that's happening.

There are problems in terms of declines in agricultural production. So there's ways in which, and again, the way the regime has developed has disrupted, should we say, the fabric of local societies, with migrations and so on. So that has a major impact on what basically the Dietrich regime has sold itself as a regime

of economic development and so on. There's also, so there's economic crisis. There's a diplomatic crisis as well. The relationship with the United States is very important. And that also, you know, the way that the fact that Creerman interview takes place is precisely to tell a North American audience that Diaz is still in control, but the United States very clearly

wants to get rid of Diaz. I mean, I think there's quite a lot of evidence to suggest that. And then there's all the political crisis. Yeah, but we've got to move on. How did he get toppled? Well, there is the Madero, the leader that emerges from this is Francisco Madero.

Madero emerges from this group of from Coahuilla, the northern state of Coahuila. He's got involved in local politics. He's probably one of the least revolutionary leaders, I think, in the 20th century. He becomes

notorious and well known for publishing a book in 1908, which he's talked about the presidential succession. And basically he praises Diaz, but he also says Diaz has abused the Constitution, we need a democratic system in Mexico. And he's a very effective political campaigner, Madero.

He founds an anti, first of all, a National Democratic Party then. Yeah, and he's a very rich land of one of the richest people in Mexico. He is indeed, yes. He's very unprepossessing chap, and Diaz makes the mistake of putting him in jail. Basically, yes. He arrests him before the anti-relectionist convention and so on. And discovers when it has escaped that there's plenty to work on if he wants to form a faction against Diaz. And he launches a plan of San Luis Potosi, which is the revolutionary proclamation,

which calls for the revolution, calls for the Diet regime to be overthrown on the 20th of November, precisely at 6 o'clock in the evening, which is very un-Mexican. actually in terms of punctuality. But not much happens in, and there's not much of a response, but there are interesting pockets of response to the matter of the call for arms. In Puebla, in Chihuahua, it's when Pancho Villa, first of all, becomes involved

in the revolution, and also Milliono Zapat in Morelos, and so on. So there are pockets of rebellion that develop. But essentially the Dias regime is toppled by a military defeat in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso in Texas, in May 1911 and negotiations are basically Madero what Madero wants

is for Diaz to leave power and in fact it's a revolution doesn't really topple Dias Dias decided is to resign he resigns and says he doesn't want to spill any more blood and if by going he's going to save this situation then he will do so

and he makes a rather prophetic statement he says Madero has unleashed a tiger and Madero did thank you and about the same time all the night Emiliana Zapatre began to emerge a significant figure What was the significance?

Just to link, apart to what's been said already, it seems to me that if you try and explain the revolution why it happened, how it happened in grand terms, leaving aside a lot of contingent factors, there are two structural problems with the regime that provoke discontent. There is political discontent because the regime is so palpably undemocratic. It may be a constitutional hybrid, but most of it consists of re-election and authoritarianism.

That offends a lot of people, particularly the middle class, who've been mentioned. Madero was, in some sense, their leader. On the other hand, you have the structural problem of dispossession of peasant land holdings, and this is particularly acute in certain areas where you have commercial assyenders growing in production. And a classic example, the best example, but not the sole example, is the state of Morelos, which is just south of Mexico City, the state of mountains and lush, semi-tropical valleys, very good for sugar production.

And sugar had been produced since the Spanish conquest. In the late 19th century, given the nature of the Porfurian regime and the market incentives, Sugar production begins to really boom. Technologies imported railways come in, and this creates a much great attention between the sugar planters and the existing peasant villages, including one called Ennequilco, and Emiliano Zapata is a peasant farmer of recognized family in this village,

who emerges as the local spokesman for these people, along with many others in the same state, and he, like other peasant protesters elsewhere, begins on a perfectly legal route of petitioning, going through the courts which gets nowhere. He then gets involved in local politics. And finally, when the opportunity arises because of Madero's national revolution, Zapata leads his people as an essentially local agrarian and peasant force

in what is now in emerging very loose national coalition of revolutionaries directed against Diaz. And so he's there in the south, and the landowners are taking over because there's prosperity in land now. And so they're taking more and more land from the common land. There's a real grievance there. He has those people behind. Impatian Shell. The Madeira government didn't last long.

In 1913, he was removed. Can you tell us how? And then he was virtually assassinated. Madeira didn't satisfy his supporters. He was caught between two sides. On the one hand, he was a political reformer, and the Zapatistas, for instance, were frustrated that he did not institute agrarian reform,

which is what they had risen up in arms for. On the other hand, the conservatives are unhappy. the remains of the previous regime are unhappy about the transition and loss of power. And Madero did not seek to replace the Porfetian leaders. Yes, which meant that, for instance, the army was still the old federal army. A lot of the officials were still the officials. So he doesn't have support on either side. and the coup against him started in 1913.

It was basically the Federal Army conspiring in February of 1913 to stage a coup against Madero being led by two previous Felix Diaz, the nephew of the former dictator and Bernardo Reyes. In any case, they failed to take over. And so there was this period of 10 days in Mexico City where there was warfare with Madero in the national, Palace hold up and with the rebellion in a local arsenal hold up as well. Medero made the mistake of appointing Victoriano Werta as the head of Federal troops to try

and quell this rebellion and Werta basically switched sides, double-dealed and with the connivance of the U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. How important was the connivance of Henry Lane Wilson? It was very important. Can you briefly and specifically say why his support was crucial? Wilson was negotiating between both factions, trying to put pressure on Madero to resign, insinuating that the US did not support Medero anymore,

that US intervention was a serious risk, that it was in everybody's best interest for Madero to resign, and meanwhile giving support to the rebels. So he was playing both sides. eventually got what he wanted. So Paul Garner, we've got this seter. We've got the landowners fighting to extend their land and get richer, richer.

We have Diaz off to Paris. He does in 1915. Madero there and then overthrown by somebody he'd appointed Huerta, and he is killed while trying to escape. That's the usual term they use, assassinated. And Huerta comes in with the American support. And Zapata, moving with his forces,

South America, considered, but in the north with bigger forces is another folk here of the revolution, Pancho Villia. How does he fit into this story? Yeah, well, he represents along with Zapato in the south very much the popular revolutionary forces. He has a very, very interesting character.

He emerges from, you know, from basically from a very dynamic economic environment and so on. Because his career, he's on various, he had various trades, he's been a butcher, he's been a cattle trader, he's been a cattle rustler. he's also been an agent for a number of United States and some British mining companies and so on in northern Mexico

so that's his career he's developed he is not really a very political animal although he proves to be quite an effective revolutionary governor of Chihuahua when he becomes as a result of the struggle against once Werta has been overthrown and so it's again as I say a very interesting character who he basically has some sort of personal

visceral hatreds, you know, which are demonstrated by his... But how did he get his forces together to become a factor in these revolutionaries? Well, he's a very effective military strategist from the very beginning when he's involved with Madero in the... So how many men does he have? Because we don't know...

We're ignoring the fact that people are killing each other all the time. And in a population of 15 million, between 1 and 1.5 and 2 million were killed in these revolutions. So there's a lot of that going on. Yes. How many... He's a very effective military organiser. What he does, as the revolutionary governor, what he does, he does expropriate lands of the landowners in his territories.

But what he does, instead of redistributing that land, he uses that land in order to purchase arms and so on in the United States. A very strong connections with the United States. So he's a very effective military strategies. In fact, the army that he developed, the Divisional, Norteur, the Northern Division, is in fact the largest of the revolutionary armies. Maximum around about between 80 and 90, perhaps even as much as 100,000 troops at one point,

at his strongest between 1939. 1914. So as I say, so he's not a particularly political, I mean, he's an extraordinarily good military strategist. I think that's, that's really... So he could be described in a sense as a warlord? I think so very much. I think actually when he, towards the end of his career, when he's actually pensioned off, which perhaps will come onto that, he becomes a Hassendalo himself, you know, he actually rather relish as that role. Alan Knight-Huerta, too, was overthrown in this strange, eventual history of these 10 years. It is the pattern. And who is responsible this time? And are we...

And do we still have an American? Is America now focusing in and playing more of a part? Or what is the relationship? I'm trying to get all these forced sort out. It's a party in the South, still very powerful with what he stands for, and the forces he brings. Paul has told us about the power of, I didn't realize, there's 100,000 in the army.

In the north, we have the government hold of in the city. Oddly enough, it's the countryside that's in uproar, and the cities are holding to the centre. But nevertheless, hold they do not, Huerta's overthrown. How'd that happen? Well, first, I don't think the US plays a bigger role as some people think. And even, it's true, Henry Lane Wilson as ambassador did play a part in helping Wurter to come to power. But he actually was acting as a kind of maverick. He didn't represent the US government.

The US government took against Werta because of the way he came to power. The then-President Woodrow Wilson, being a Democrat, tended to object to this way of coming to power. So the Americans oppose WERTA, but I don't think that's crucial. What is crucial is what's happening in Mexico. Werta really is trying to reimpose the system of government which Diaz had created, roughly speaking, to restore authoritarian, oligarchic rule, but to do so essentially by brute force. I mean, his phrase was to do it questy-lo-equesti, cost what it may. And this meant a huge build-up of the army, and the federal army was a well-resourced army. It controlled the major cities and the railways, as you mentioned.

In order to defeat that re-entrenched old regime, a highly militarised old regime, the revolutionaries had to step up a gear, which meant that regional guerrilla forces, such as Zapata's, and even more Via, had to turn into major conventional armies. And so what you see in 1913-14, which enables the defeat of Wurta, is the creation of major armies, particularly the division of the north running into tens of thousands with artillery, troop trains, with the famous solderederos, with machine gums and barbed wire and so on. the northern revolutionaries, particularly via, can do this in part because they can import stuff from the US. That's important in terms of the US connection.

But it's not because of the US government. It's because of the resources they can get across the border to kit out a major conventional army. And it's that army which bludgeoned the federal army into defeat in a series of very big battles in the first half of 1914 and brings about the collapse of Werta. And I'd say finally, the other reason Werta fell was because he was highly unpopular. People did not want to return to the old regime. So in some sense, you can say majority public opinion throughout Mexico was in favour of the revolutionaries, Via, Zapata and a lot of others as well.

There was a temporary alliance between Zapata and Veyer, wasn't there? There was a very loose, even broader coalition against Werta. The problem was that once Werta was ousted in the summer of 1914, that loose coalition fell apart, at which point Via and Zeparta do form a very loose, but really rather militarily ineffective alliance. And you enter then what is the last big bout of civil war, sometimes called the War of the Winners,

which is different from what had gone before because it was a war between rival revolutionary forces. Via Zapata and others on one side and a group we haven't mentioned led by Carranza and Obrigon, northern leaders, and these two rival revolutionary forces clash in another series of big conventional battles. Via and Zapata lose, and therefore this means that for the foreseeable future, the victorious revolutionaries are Caranza Obrigon. They take power and they set about trying to create the new revolutionary state. Shell, in 1970, in 1917, when Carranza won a presidential election, he decided the country needed a new constitution, and they created a remarkable constitution. Now, the question will be whether

they stuck to it, but it was a remarkable constitution, said to be the most modern in the world at the time. Can you tell us something about it? Yeah. Carranza called this constitutional convention, and his idea was simply to update the 1857 constitution, which Alan's already mentioned, but instead the delegates who were all Carranzistas but had been elected, through rigged elections possibly, created this most progressive constitution of its time. For instance, it took the separation of church and state that the 1857 constitution and the mid-19th century had already established and went even further. It prohibited, for instance, the church from owning any property. It prohibited lay, I'm sorry, religious primary education.

It prohibited, it didn't recognize religious vows. In terms of land, which is one of the things it's most noted for, it said that the Mexican state was the original owner of the land, both above and below the soil, which gave the government the right to allow private property or to expropriate in the public interest and give communal land back to communities, to villages. And also it set the stage for the expropriation of oil

by making the government the owner of subsoil mineral rights. finally in terms of labor rights things like minimum wage maximum eight hour day sorry there was no suffrage for women no I wasn't for I didn't finish for something for suffrage for men yes there was universal suffrage for men

not for women but women for instance were guaranteed maternity leave breastfeeding rights there's an end to debt peonage so it's quite progressive in many ways was it implemented at all certain aspects of it over time. But it wasn't, the Constitution itself needed supplementary legislation in order to be implemented. So without that legislation, it wasn't possible to implement it. Zapata was assassinated in 1919 on the night.

Was that inevitable or he walked into a trap, basically, didn't he? He was called on to these people going to join him and he went down and they shot him to bits. I can say it was inevitable, what was quite likely. I mean, the mortality of these people was very high. So, as I say, it's a kind of Darwinian structure. and some survive and make it through to the 1920s when some degree of stability is achieved. Zapata, yes, is betrayed. And the fact he dies in this way, having been betrayed, just at the time when the revolution is about to consolidate itself,

gives him a kind of tragic aura. And I think there's no question that his subsequent reputation. He is clearly the most popular, the most revered of the revolutionary heroes, has to do with the fact that, A, he's a common person. B, he is the person who puts land reform on the agenda in the constitution as patients. just said, and also because he dies this tragic death. One suspects, had he lived, he would have gone the way of many other local warlords, that is to say he'd have got probably older and fatter and richer with time, and he might have become more corrupt, and his reputation would have been different.

His son actually did become a rather corrupt political boss in his home state of Morelos. But Zapati himself had led a genuine peasant struggle, and the last important point to stress is that his people, the Zapatistas, did in some ways inherit power in the state of Morales. They became the local municipal presidents, in some cases the governors, and there was a rapid, quite substantial land reform in Morelos, more rapid and radical there than elsewhere, but nevertheless, there was a genuine agrarian reform in Mexico beginning in the 20s and rapidly accelerating in the 30s. In that sense, the revolution did deliver the goods in terms of distributing land to the peasants. Paul Garner, Caranza was assassinated in 1920, and Obregon, his general, came into power.

what did he bring to this revolutionary Obrigon reminds me very much of Porfirio Dias in lots of ways I mean he's very good at negotiating building up regional alliances what Karanza has failed to do I think is he's very unpopular he also sees the military solution to the problems of security and stability Obregon has been a very effective military campaign

the defeat of Villas Armies in 1915 which Alan's already mentioned is really crucial to the outcome of the revolution, to the victory of the constitutionists. But it's the day that after the promulgation of the constitution, Kudans is elected, and in that very day, Obrigan resigns, basically, and goes back to his estates in Sonora to export chickpeas. But what he's doing, he's done, this has been a strategy which has been pursued by a number of Mexican political leaders

in Mexican history, retiring to the hacienda to then assault to come back to power. And what he's very good at, he understands the social dimension, the social revolutionary aspect of the revolution. And so he's very good at the strategy of linking with labour unions, with trade union organisations, with syndicalists movements. Also with the agrarian dynamic as well, that's one of the great features of constitutionism is very adaptable. It actually picks up on it. It doesn't start as being an agrarian, a social revolutionary movement, but it picks up and it, if you say, it attracts an. understands those dimensions. So there's a strong rhetoric of agrarian reform, there's a strong rhetoric of labour reform and so on. And there are still, what Carranza has been able to do while

he's president is actually control the whole country. Large parts of the country are out of the control of the constitutionists and the Caransistas. And it's Obrigan who negotiates with those various groups. And in fact, when he comes to power as a result of a coup against Carranza, who is as a result of which he's assassinated, Obregon has a number of regional alliances. So you've got old, the old enemies coming together in 1920. And 1920 is, well, again, the way that the revolution has been

periodized, you know, the ending in 1920 has been questioned in some ways, but certainly most of the fighting is over in 1920. So Obruggani becomes an agent of pacification and of reconciliation. Patient Shell, you mentioned the church. It did play a role and then it had

a sort of a kickback in 1926, the Christero rebellion, the church rebellion, which was very effective. Can you tell us about that and how, in terms of this conversation, it seems to have come out of the blue? It seems to come out of the blue in this conversation, but in terms of the issues that the revolutionaries had, anti-clericalism was quite strongly felt in certain segments of the revolutionary factions. The Zapatista's being a notable exception. So you see that strong anti-clerical current in the Constitution,

as I've mentioned. And over the first half of the 1920s, that constitution is in four. regionally every now and again, and there's a growing tension between church and state, which eventually erupts into violence in the summer of 1926 because Caius decides to enforce the anti-clerical articles of the Constitution, including nationalizing church property, including obligatory lay primary education, including the government registering all clergy in a state and deciding how many priests could operate in a given state. And so Catholics, there are protests amongst, there are non-violent and violent protests both.

And non-violent protests include boycotts and lobbies and street demonstrations, and in the summer of 1926, as I've already mentioned, some Catholics rise up in arms. And it's estimated this battle, this war goes for three years, and it's estimated that there were about 100,000 federal troops involved and maybe 50,000 Christos involved at the time. Yeah, I think the church-state conflict, which becomes very acute in the 1920s, it's the biggest issue on the agenda in the late 20s,

reflects the fact what you have now is a new government, which is very different from the preceding Porphyrian government because it's in a way trying to control hearts and minds. It has a much more aggressive agenda of forming mass parties, mass organizations. It's a populist nationalist government. It's often called Bolsheviks. by foreigners, it isn't, but it's moving a little in that direction. And the result is there is

inevitably a conflict between a powerful Catholic church, which Mexico has, a church that's on the march. It's not a vestigial colonial church. It's a powerful church with lots of lay associations, which is inevitably going to conflict with this new revolutionary government that wants to control hearts of minds of men, women and children.

And result is this major cultural, political, and military conflict. Yes, that's the point I wanted to emphasize that it's a socially active church facing a socially active revolution. And they have a lot of goals in common, but ultimately there is this question about who's going to have authority.

Now, President Cardenas comes in the 1930s and there are more changes, but can't we just reflect now on this what has happened to Mexico? We've had this massive unshackling of 300 years of colonial rules,

some would say oppression and subjugation in 1821. They battled through and then Porfirio, whatever else it did, sort of settled the thing for a while, and then we've had 10, 12 years of disruption, assassination, slaughters, some of the things we've hinted at and conflicts all over the place in this enormous, enormous country. Where are we...

Until at the end of the century, Vargas said, as Vargas says, for about 90 years, this has really been the perfect dictatorship, so he doesn't think of great this happened. What do you think, are you? I wouldn't take Vargas Yosa as my guide to Mexican history, but you need to periodise a bit. We've talked about the armed revolution.

We've also got into the whole question of social reform and state building, which is extremely important and almost unique in Mexico compared to the rest of Latin America. And you mentioned Cardenas, who is the great reformist president of the 1930s, period of depression, which provokes an even more radical acceleration of revolutionary policies. That period then comes to an end roughly in the 40s in the Second World War. You then enter into a whole new phase of Mexican history, by which time you can't speak of a revolution in any real sense. By then the revolution is over as an old.

ongoing project. There's a lot of rhetoric and talk, and the governing party calls itself revolutionary, and that's what Vargas Yosa was referring to. But in a sense, I would argue the revolution is that generational period from the 1910s to the end of the 30s, early 40s, which does see very substantial changes in Mexico in terms of incorporating people, land reform, labor reform. It's a very vital, important experience in Mexico, and to some extent in Latin America more generally. Can you take that on, Paul Garner? How has Mexico changed in those 20, 30 years? Yes, I mean, I think what the task of the revolution obviously is to reconstruct, having destroyed the regime, the previous regime, the profan regime, it then has to reconstruct.

And this is a very long and painful process. And I think most of us would agree with what Alan said about, by the 1940s, both that process has been achieved. It's done so by basically building a corporative estate. I mean, the elements you have now formal organisations that have been built up in the 1920s and 1930s, peasant organizations, labour organisations. but they're patronised by the state, they're created by the state, they're not independent organisations, and they form part of the revolutionary party eventually,

which you have the foundation in 1929 of the first of the revolutionary state, part of the one-party state, and that's what Vardagasiosi is really talking about. It's a creation of a one-party state, an authoritarian system with very limited democracy, but basically has kept control and understands through its revolutionary rhetoric, which it maintains all the way through up until the year 2000, really. Well, the party changes its name, but it's also, it's brought, it's reconciled these different interests,

those different social groups are represented within the political system, and it produces an incredible degree of political stability, but it's an authoritarian system. So that's why Vargasiosi calls it a perfect dictatorship. It's a different one from the previous dictatorship. It's also a highly interventionist state in terms of people's private lives, for instance, trying to dictate how they cook, how they clean, how they raise their children, and how they keep healthy. So it's a social revolution that wants to go into homes

and create new types of people, revolutionary people. How successful do you think it has been in doing that? I think it's been fairly successful in terms of changing the way people live their lives. For instance, there was a great program to roll out mills to grind corn to free up Mexican women from spending hours and hours grinding corn every day, to feed their family, which radically changed the way in which women's time was available and allowed them to do other things. Did the Mexican Revolution have wider consequences in Latin America and beyond?

It had a kind of demonstration effect in that particularly leftist radical groups elsewhere looked to the Mexican Revolution for inspiration. Sandino in Nicaragua, who was a radical liberal, also contesting with the United States, States looked to Mexico for support and did get some measure of support. Radicals in Peru who set up the APRA party also looked to Mexico. But the Mexican Revolution never did what the French or the Russian revolutionaries did. They never tried to export their revolution at gunpoint, partly because they didn't have the gun power to do it.

And also, of course, the Americans were on their doorstep, and they always had to finesse their policies in order not to offend the US too much and to encourage potential US intervention. So in that sense, the revolution had to be careful in its foreign policy and keep the revolution chiefly for its own domestic use. I'm afraid, Paul, we have to, I wanted to ask a question about America, but we have run out of time. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Patial Shell, Alan Knight and Paul Garner.

Next week we'll be discussing Aristotle's Poetics 4th Century BC, the earliest surviving work of literary criticism. Thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social social social social Science Research. To find out more, visit BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four.