Society for Latin American Studies

The Mexican Revolution: Bourgeois? Nationalist? Or Just a 'Great Rebellion'?

Author(s): Alan Knight
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1985), pp. 1-37
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies
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Bull Latin Am
Res.,
Vol.
4,
No.
2, pp. 1-37,
1985.
0261-3050/85 $3.00
+
00
Printed in Great Britain.
Pergamon
Press Ltd.
Society
for Latin American Studies
The Mexican Revolution:
Bourgeois?
Nationalist? Or
just
a 'Great Rebellion'?
ALAN KNIGHT
University ofEssex
What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution? The nature of the
ques?
tion is such that
any answer?especially
a brief answer like this?must be
tentative: for it involves not
only
consideration of a broad and
complex
historical
process (on
which there
may
be
major empirical disagreements)
but
also the
application
of
appropriate
theories or
organising concepts (on
which
a
priori assumptions may radically differ).
Historical
arguments,
of
course,
are never
entirely empirical,
and
always depend
on the
application
of some
exogenous theories/concepts/'laws':
overt theoretical constructs
(Marxism,
modernization or
dependency theory), Hempelian 'covering laws',
or?covering
laws decked out in fustian?the maxims of 'common sense'. As
regards
some
historical
questions, exogenous 'theory'
is at a discount: 'the facts
speak
for
themselves'. But these are rarer than often
thought. Many questions, especially
questions
of
moment,
demand some
theoretical,
conceptual, comparative
import.
Historians?and others?who
reject any
such
approach (either tacitly
or,
in the case of Richard
Cobb,
with a certain
aggressive panache)1
do them?
selves a double disservice:
(a) they
rule out a wide and
legitimate range
of
historical
inquiry
and
(b) they
fool
themselves,
in that the vaunted absence
of
'imposed',
'alien'
theories/concepts/comparisons opens
the door to
obscurity,
arbitrariness and
camouflaged
'common-sense'
usages.
Some historians of the Mexican Revolution
go
this
way. Others,
to their
credit,
introduce
general
theories and
concepts;
but too often
they
do so in
dubious fashion. A
common,
sad
spectacle
is that of the narrative historian
who, striking
out from the shallows of
empirical history (usually
in a brief
preface
or
conclusion)
clutches
instinctively
at a Marxist life-belt
which,
entirely
inadequate
for the
purpose, promptly deflates, leaving
the victim to flounder.
In his recent The Great
Rebellion,
which
appears?with
no
apologies
to
Clarendon?in
yet
another 'Revolutions in the Modern World'
series,
Ramon
Ruiz asserts that Mexico did not
experience
a revolution but a
'great
rebellion'.
This
striking argument (what
did the series editor make of
it?)
derives from
Ruiz's model of a
twentieth-century revolution,
which?as in
Russia,
China or
Cuba?must achieve 'a transformation of the basic structure of
society',
radically changing
'class structures as well as the
patterns
of wealth and income
distribution',
and further
'modify(ing)
the nature ofa nation's economic
depen?
dency
on the outside world'.2 1917 thus
provides
the
yardstick and,
compared
with the
Bolsheviks,
Mexico's 'revolutionaries' are a
poor
lot?mere 'rebels':
'measured
by
the standards of Lenin and his
disciples... (Zapata)
fails
woefully
short of
being
a
revolutionary'.3
We should
note,
for future
reference,
that
2 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
Ruiz
readily
accords the French Revolution
'revolutionary'
status;
and he
recognises
some
vague kinship
between the French and Mexican Revolutions?
in that the latter 'harks back' to the former. But whereas in France the Revolu?
tion
'upended
the Ancient
Regime
and
replaced
it with a
capitalist
state run
by
the
bourgeoisie',
Mexico
experienced
no such dramatic
transformation;
at best
it was a
rebellion,
or a form of
'bourgeois protest',
which could
only
'stream-
line and
update'
a
pre-existing capitalism.4 By
1910 the
only proper
revolution
?deserving
of the name?was a socialist revolution. The
agenda
of
history?
the
passage
of Vorld
time',
to use a fashionable term?made this inevitable.5
Ruiz's life-belt thus
deflates, taking
him to the bottom. Others
hang
on
tight
and can be seen
threshing
in the water for some time. James
Cockcroft,
for
example,
is convinced of the
capitalist
nature of Porfirian
society,
and is
thus
warmly receptive
of Frank's
general
theorisation of the
pervasiveness
of
capitalism
in Latin America since the
Conquest.6
Cockcroft's definition of
capitalism,
like
Frank's,
stresses relations of
exchange
rather than
production;
conversely,
he views feudalism as a form of *closed
economy',
in a manner
radically
different from Kula or
Banaji.7 But,
if the market and
money economy
are
paramount,
Cockcroft also notes that their
growth
is
accompanied by
a
'corresponding development
of
wage labor',
which he asserts as an
empirical
fact of Porfirian
society:
80% ofthe labour forces were
agricultural proletarians.8
Thus,
the Mexican
economy
was
undeniably capitalist before, during,
and after
the Revolution.
What, therefore,
did the Revolution achieve? It did 'little
more than overthrow Porfirio Diaz and
change part
of the
ideology
of social
change'.9
There were no 'radical
changes
in the class structure and in the
power
relationships
between classes'.
Nevertheless,
the Revolution was the
product
of class conflict?of
'explosive
confrontation between
proletarians
and
capital-
ists'. It
was,
in
effect,
a failed
proletarian/socialist revolution,
which
challenged,
but could not
defeat,
an established
bourgeois order,
and which has left a
legacy
of 'intense class conflict'. The task of the
(radical)
historian is therefore
to stress the role of the Precursor Movement
(especially
the
P.L.M.)
and to
assimilate them to an unbroken tradition of
revolutionary protest stretching
from Flores
Magon through Zapata
and the 1930s Sindicato de Petroleros down
to Lucio Cabanas. Adolfo
Gilly's
thesis of the revolucion
interrumpida
is sub-
stantially
similar.10
Although
this
interpretation
has the merit of
stressing
the
central role of
popular
forces?and of
seeing
them act in autonomous
fashion,
not as the 'inert material moulded
by
the will of a few leaders'?it is
rarely
critical and too often romantic in its
depiction
of these forces.11
Major
differ?
ences and
antagonisms
are
blurred,
as
groups
are
lumped together
under the
revolutionary
rubric;
the roles of historical
actors,
like the
P.L.M.,
and historical
forces,
like
'anti-imperialism',
are
grossly exaggerated;
hence it is
possible
to
read off a reconstituted historical
script
in order to make
contemporary points.12
Above
all,
this
interpretation
has to stress the failed?or
'interrupted'?
character of the revolution. The revolution is
important
not for what it
did,
but
for what it did not do
(it
did not establish
socialism); or,
for
what,
at some
future
time,
after a
long 'interruption',
it
might yet
do.
Ruiz,
Cockcroft and
Gilly
all
reject
the notion of 1910 as a
bourgeois
revolu?
tion
(Gilly emphatically repudiates
this as a
'petty bourgeois,
centrist-socialist'
heresy).13
Ruiz and Cockcroft do so
(a)
because
they
conceive ofthe old
regime
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 3
as
capitalist anyway;
and
(b)
because
they
adhere to a
demanding, simplistic,
but common notion of 'revolution'. For
them,
as for Theda
Skocpol
in her
recent,
rather over-rated
comparative study,
revolutions are
'rapid,
basic trans-
formations of a
society's
state and class
structures, accompanied
and in
part
carried out
by
class-based revolt from
below';
to
qualify
for this select
group
(for,
as
Skocpol acknowledges,
these are
'relatively
rare occurrences in modern
world
history'),
a would-be revolution must involve 'successful
socio-political
transformation?actual
change
of state and class structures'
(her italics).14
Ruiz and Cockcroft
are, indeed,
even more
demanding (for
this
reason, Skocpol
is
prepared
to concede the Mexican Revolution
revolutionary
status;
we shall
see
why
in a
moment).
For
them,
there can
only
be
'bourgeois'
and 'socialist'
revolutions,
and the former is ruled out on both
empirical
and theoretical
grounds. Implicit
in their
'theory'
is a mistaken notion of what a
'bourgeois'
revolution looks like.
Ruiz,
we have
noted, accepts
1789 as a
bourgeois
revolu?
tion. But historians no
longer
believe that 1789
(that is,
the
process
of
change
initiated in 1789 and continued
to,
say, 1815) destroyed
'feudalism' and in?
stalled
'capitalism'.
In
respect
of social and
property
relations,
the French
Revolution neither
expropriated
entire
classes,
nor subverted the
pattern
of
pre-1789 landownership;
'the transfer of
property brought
about
by
the Revolu?
tion was ... far less radical than that effected
by
social
upheavals
ofthe
present
century'.15
Nor does it
appear
that
nineteenth-century
French
peasants?the
supposed
beneficiaries of
revolutionary change?were dramatically
better
off than their fathers and
grandfathers.16
The
parallel
with
Mexico,
evident
in these
conclusions,
is reinforced if
political changes
are
included,
and
Tocque-
ville's acute
analysis
is borne in mind: 'the Revolution had . . . two distinct
phases:
one in which the sole aim . . . seemed to be to make a clean
sweep
of
the
past;
and a second in which
attempts
were made to
salvage fragments
from
the
wreckage
of the old
order';
as a result of which there
emerged
'a
govern?
ment both
stronger
and far more autocratic than the one which the Revolution
had overthrown'.17
Ruiz is
hardly consistent, therefore,
in
according
the French Revolution
the
'revolutionary'
status which he denies the Mexican. More
generally,
it is
unhistorical and
theoretically stultifying
to
expect
the Mexican?or
any
other
revolution, especially
a
Tocquevillean', bourgeois
revolution?to
accomplish
sweeping changes
in social relations
(or,
more
specifically,
the relations of
pro?
duction)
in a
relatively
short
time, by violent, political
measures. Even
Leninist,
socialist revolutions are
processes
rather than discrete events
(that is, they
are
processes
initiated and
punctuated by
salient
events;
the Chinese Revolution
is,
in this
respect,
an even better
example
than the
Russian).
And
bourgeois
revolu?
tions
are,
in
comparison, dilatory
affairs. Thus
Enrique
Semo's
image
of succes-
sive waves of
bourgeois revolution?1810, 1854,
1910?is more
convincing,
realistic and
historically
faithful.18
Here,
the revolution in the relations of
pro?
duction is a matter for the
longue duree,
but it is
punctuated
and
decisively
accelerated
by political
events and social conflicts. The
parallel
with France?
1789, 1830,1848?is apparent.19
Historians should not be
looking
for the
single,
knock-out, revolutionary punch,
but for the accumulated blows which
dispatch
the old social
order; they
should evaluate their individual
percussive effect,
and
their
sequential relationship. This,
in the
space permitted,
I shall
try
to do.
4 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
Any
such
exercise, however,
runs a risk which a
good many
recent
Marxist/
marxisant
analyses?not just
those of the Mexican Revolution?have
incurred;
a descent into some sort of Marxist functionalism.20 Aware of the
complexities
of the historical
record,
and
rightly
dismissive of a
crude,
instantaneous transi?
tion from 'feudal' to
'bourgeois',
some writers have
ingeniously multiplied
their
explanatory concepts, producing grotesque hybrids
like Manuel
Aguilar
Mora's
feudocapitalista
Porfiriato.21 Juan
Felipe
Leal has constructed an entire func-
tionalist
chronology
of the ancien
regime:
creation of a
capitalist
state
(ca.
1854); hegemony
of the liberal-landlord
fraction,
under a
parliamentary
form
(1867-76); hegemonic
crisis
(1876-80); 1880,
recomposition
of the
power
bloc,
hegemony
ofthe
imperialist
fraction ofthe
bourgeoisie,
executive dictator?
ship; 1890, irruption
ofthe Mexican industrial
bourgeoisie,
'transformation and
diversification of the
landlords',
and 'new
components
of the
power
bloc';
1908,
'expulsion
of a sector of landlords from the
power
bloc'.22 Not
only
is
much of this
open
to
empirical question?above all,
on the
grounds
of
seeing
rupture
where there is
continuity,
and of
making quite misleading political
attributions, e.g.
the
supposed 'parliamentary'
form of
1867-76;23
it is also
theoretically dubious,
in that it
appropriates
conventional?often
very
con-
ventional?'bourgeois' political history
and then invests it with
supposed
class content and
significance.
Administrations are
mechanically
reduced to
classes or class
fractions;
shifts in the
-superstructure
are attributed to
profound
seismic motions below.
Though
there
may
be
precedents
for such
analysis among
the classics of
Marxism, e.g.
Marx's The Class
Struggles
in France 1848 to
1850,
these are not the
weightiest
of theoretical authorities.
Nevertheless,
this
approach?whereby
class attributions are read off from conventional
political
narrative?is all too
common; as,
for
example,
the work and influence of
Nicos Poulantzas
suggest.
'In
place
of theories based on the
analysis
of accumula?
tion and class
struggle',
it has been
pointed out,
exponents
of this
approach
'utilize the
political concepts
of
Poulantzas?'power bloc',
'hegemony', 'govern?
ing class',
etc.?like
pigeon-holes
which can be filled with the relevant
concepts
from a
political analysis
of the class structure of
any given
state'.24 Similar
analyses
of the
Revolution,
in which
political factions,
like Villismo and
Carrancismo,
are reduced to classes or class
fractions, usually
on the basis of
ideological
obiter dicta
and/or
a narrow
prosopography,
are also
familiar;
I have
offered criticisms of this
approach
elsewhere.25
Two
particular
variants of this 'class fraction'
interpretation
of the Revolu?
tion deserve closer attention.
First,
there is the fashion for
Bonapartist explana-
tions
(which, again, display
the influence of Poulantzas and his
school).26
According
to this
analysis,
the Revolution established a
Bonapartist regime
in which a stalemate of class forces enabled the
revolutionary leadership?
the
'revolutionary
caudillismo' of the Sonorans?to assume
political control,
relatively
autonomous of class forces
(though, ultimately,
in the interests of
the
bourgeoisie).27 Again,
there are
major problems,
theoretical and
empirical.
Marx's
original
formulation of
Bonapartism
is itself
confusing.
The
bourgeoisie,
ruling 'absolutely'
one
moment,
then surrender
power
to Louis
Napoleon,
and 'all
classes, equally impotent
and
equally mute,
fail on their knees before
the rifle
butt';
the state is not
just 'relatively
autonomous'
but,
it seems 'com?
pletely independent'.28 Yet,
at the same
time,
'the state
power
is not
suspended
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 5
in midair.
Bonaparte represents
a class ... the
small-holding peasants'.29
Pre?
viously,
we should
note,
it is the
lumpenproletariat?the 'scum,
offal
(and)
refuse of all classes'?which constitute the
only
class
upon
which he can
base himself
unconditionally'.30 And,
in
power, Bonaparte
'is forced to create
an artificial
caste', viz.,
the
bureaucracy,
which, standing 'alongside
the actual
classes of
society', underpins
his
regime.31 Finally?as proponents
of the
theory
stress?Bonapartism ultimately
sustains
bourgeois capitalism; Bonaparte
'feels
it to be his mission
tosafeguard "bourgeois
order" \32 Rumbustious and
polemical,
replete
with
paradox
and
epigram,
Marx's
Eighteenth
Brumaire is
hardly
a
piece
of
rigorous theorising.
Yet it has formed the basis for an entire
landscape
of
theoretical constructs:
Bonapartism,
Caesarism,
the
'exceptionaF
and
'relatively
autonomous'
capitalist
state, interpretations
of fascism in
Europe
and
populism
in Latin America
(for some, populism
and
Bonapartism
are almost
interchange-
able).33
It is not
surprising, granted
the
shaky
theoretical
foundations,
that these
constructs are
wobbly. And, compounding
the
irresponsibility
of their
architects,
they open
their doors to all and
sundry.
So
many regimes
are admitted to the
Caesarist/Bonapartist
salon that their
very 'exceptionality' (which
constitutes
their theoretical raison
d'etre) begins
to look dubious:
relatively
autonomous
states are
ten-a-penny.
Admission is
easy,
because criteria for
membership
are loose.
Populism,
it has been
convincingly argued,
offers a
poor organising concept
for
understanding
Latin American historical
development.34 And,
in the
specific
case of
Mexico, Bonapartism
exercises an
appeal by
virtue of its
very ideological
flaccidity.
Yet there are
strong empirical objections:
no 'enormous
bureaucacy,
well-gallooned
and well-fed'
governed
Mexico in the
1920s; nor,
I shall
argue,
was the Sonoran state the 'enormous bureaucratic and
military organisation'
which
(according
to
theory)
maintained
Bonapartist
rule in
France,
and con-
ferred on the state its decisive relative
autonomy.35 Putting
it
simply,
the
Mexican state of the 1920s was too weak to rise above classes in
Bonapartist
fashion;
and the fact that it was not the
agent
of a
single, hegemonic
class
indicated less its relative
autonomy
than its role as the
object
and victim of
class conflict.
Ergo,
classes were not
'impotent
. . . and mute before the rifle
butt', but, rather,
active and vocal in
trying
to
get
the rifle butt on their sides.
Maybe
this was an
'exceptionaF situation,
but it
endured,
I would
suggest,
until the late
1940s,
when the battle for state
power
was won and
lost,
and the
state assumed its 'normal'
role,
in which 'relative
autonomy'
was
(to degrees
that
might
be
debated)
weak or non-existent.
Linked to this
interpretation
is the common notion of a
major
shift?
accomplished by
the Revolution?from the
hegemony
of the
comprador
to
that of the national
bourgeoisie.
The Revolution
might
not have dismounted
feudalism,
but it wrenched
power
from one class fraction and bestowed it on
another,
whose
'project' radically
differed in
respect
of economic
policy
and
attitudes to
foreign
trade and investment.
However,
as eminent
proponents
of
this
interpretation
have to
admit,
the
newly
ensconced national
bourgeoisie
displayed
a
strange
ambivalence and
hardly
delivered the
goods: during
the
1920s
foreign
trade and investment
grew, dependence
on the U.S. increased.36
What for them is a
puzzle and/or
a
betrayal is,
in
fact, quite unproblematic
and consistent if
(a)
the
project
ofthe
revolutionary regime
is seen as
essentially
6 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
moderate, pragmatic,
and
evolutionary
and
(b)
its
pedigree
is traced back to the
Porfiriato,
rather than to some
mythical genesis
in the heat of the
popular
revolution. The revolutionaries
failed?indeed, hardly attempted?to
break
Mexican
'dependence'
because
they
never had
any
intention of
doing
so. Like
their Cientifico
predecessors (I
refer to the Cientificos of the
1900s) they
sought only
to
renegotiate
Mexico's relations with
foreign capital,
consonant
with the
changes wrought by
a
generation
of Porfirian
growth.
Given their
statements and
policies during 1910-20,
and the relative absence of
any deep,
popular xenophobia (directed against foreign capitalism; Spanish
and Chinese
immigrants
were a different
matter),
this outcome was
entirely predictable.
The Revolution was
not,
in this
sense,
a nationalist
revolution,
nor even a
nationalist revolution
betrayed.
So
far,
the
argument
has been
negative:
the demotion of the Revolution to
a mere?however
'great'?rebellion
is
theoretically stultifying;
the
promiscuous
fathering
of class fractions warrants a
snip
from Occam's razor. Neither
Bonapartism
nor the revolution of the national
bourgeoisie
are
convincing
hypotheses.
What
positive alternative(s) may
be offered
by way
of a
general
conceptualization
of the
Revolution,
its character and results? Amidlhe numer?
ous studies of 'revolution' now available
(most
of which I shall
pass over)
two
different kinds of definition seem to hold
sway:
what I shall call the
descriptive
and the functional.
Furthermore, arguments
about what constitutes a 'real'
revolution sometimes
hinge upon (unacknowledged) allegiance
to these defini-
tions. A
descriptive
definition
says
what a revolution looks like: it
usually
embraces
major violence,
political?maybe
class?conflict of a serious
kind,
and attendant social
upheaval.
Revolution is here
distinguished
from minor
rebellion or cuartelazo?a
useful,
conventional and old
distinction,
epitomised
by
Louix XVPs famous
exchange
with the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.37
In the same
vein,
historians of the Mexican Revolution have
carefully
and
rightly distinguished
between the Revolution and
revolutions,
i.e. individual
coups
and minor revolts.38 But a
'revolutionary'
mountain
may
strain to
bring
forth a
post-revolutionary
mouse: historical outcomes do not stand in direct
proportion
to the violence and casualties which make them
possible.
In the
case of
France,
for
example,
'there is. .. some
apparent justification
for
regard-
ing
the Revolution as a
largely ephemeral phenomenon
whose relative
violence,
in an
age
accustomed to
greater stability
than our
own,
led to its
being
credited
with more
lasting significance
than was
actually
the case'.39
By
the same
token,
there are 'failed'
revolutions,
like
Taiping
or
1905; descriptively revolutionary,
functionally ineffective, except
inasmuch as
they (perhaps)
laid the
groundwork
for
later,
successful revolutions. To
go
further: a valid
descriptive
definition
should,
I would
argue,
contain three
key
elements which
inter-relate;
which
distinguish
revolution
(failed
or
successful)
from
coup
or rebellion
(again,
failed or
successful);
and which thus
preserves
the
specificity
of
'great
revolu?
tions'.40 These elements are:
(i) genuine
mass
participation, (ii)
the
struggle
of rival
visions/ideologies (which may
or
may
not be class-based: I would not
wish to exclude multi-class movements
of, say,
nationalist or
religious per-
suasion:
English Puritanism,
the
Risorgimento,
anti-colonial nationalist move?
ments),
and
(iii)
a
consequent,
serious battle over
political authority.
These three elements
go together.
A revolution involves
genuine
mass
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 7
participation (though, necessarily, only
a
minority
of the masses is
directly
involved). Participation
is
'genuine'
in that the masses are not mere cannon-
fodder;
there is a
significant degree
of
autonomous, voluntary
mobilisation.
In
Trotsky's
celebrated formulation: 'the
history
of a revolution is for us first
of all a
history
of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of ruler-
ship
over their own
destiny'.41
Needless to
say
this state of affairs is
relatively
rare and
usually
short-lived?as it was in Mexico
where, many
now
suggest,
it never
happened
at all. While it
endures, however,
mass mobilisation
requires
a set of commitments:
religious, millenarian, nationalist, regional, personalist,
or class-based. These
popular appeals may?in
the
eyes
of ex
post facto
critics
?seem
nai've, delusory,
even indicative of a lamentable false consciousness:
take the case of the
'non-revolutionary' peasants
of Oaxaca who followed
their serrano
caciques
to battle after 1910 as
they
had back in the
1870s;
who
entertained no
far-reaching,
i.e.
functionally revolutionary, aims,
but who
performed
a
descriptively revolutionary role,
in that
they participated
in
direct,
effective fashion in the
Revolution, serving
what
they
saw as their own
interests,
not
acting
as the
dragooned
victims of the levcu*1 These
participants
have been
termed
'non-revolutionary'
since
they espoused backward-looking,
'conserva?
tive',
hence
'non-revolutionary' objectives?which
,
in
itself,
is
broadly
true and
valid. But
if, displaying
what
Thompson
has called the 'enormous condescension
of
posterity',
we set
up
such a
single,
functional
criterion,
and then
proceed
to
segregate 'revolutionary' sheep
from
'non-revolutionary' goats,
we risk
impos-
ing
an
arbitrary
division which
greatly prejudices
historical
understanding.43
For
backward-looking,
'conservative'
(in
the
Tillys' vocabulary 'reactive')44
popular
movements have
played
a
major part
in revolutions: as authorities as
diverse as Lawrence Stone and Karl Marx have attested:45
just
when
(the living)
seem
engaged
in
revolutionising
themselves and
things,
in
creating something
that has never
existed,
precisely
in such
periods
of
revolutionary
crisis
they anxiously conjure up
the
spirits
of
the
past
to their service and borrow from them
names,
battle cries and
costumes,
in order to
present
the new scene of world
history
in this time-
honoured
disguise
and this borrowed
language.
Indeed,
a strict
interpretation
of this rule would
require
us to discard
Zapatismo
and a host of lesser
popular
movements
which, during 1910-15, challenged
the
status
quo
and revolutionised the
country,
but on the basis of
largely
backward-
looking, prescriptive
norms and
symbols.
This raises the second criterion of
'revolutionary' status,
which
may
be
invoked to the detriment of traditional movements like
Zapatismo.
Revolu?
tions
are?rightly?judged
on what
they
achieve as well as what
they
look
like.
Here,
1905 and 1917 stand
poles apart.
There are numerous formulations
of what a revolution must achieve
functionally
to
qualify
as a
revolution,
though
many
are variations on the same
theme(s). Skocpol,
we have
noted,
combines
a functional
requirement (a 'rapid,
basic transformation of a
society's
state and
class
structure')
with a
descriptive
rider
('accompanied
and in
part
carried out
by
class-based revolt from
below').
'A
revolution', Huntington states,
'is a
rapid,
fundamental,
and violent
change
in the dominant values and
myths
ofa
society,
in its
political insitutions,
social
structure, leadership
and
government activity
8 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
and
politics'.46
Historians of the Mexican
Revolution,
like
Ruiz,
advance func?
tional criteria so
demanding
that the Revolution becomes a rebellion
(a
demo-
tion which other
'great' revolutions?certainly
those of
'bourgeois'
character
?would suffer if
similarly inspected)
and a whole host of
revolutionary partici-
pants
are,
in
effect,
denied
'revolutionary'
status. Meanwhile other historians
?like Cockcroft?accord
'revolutonary'
status
by
virtue of
assimilating partici-
pants
to a
preferred norm,
that of the
militant, proletarian, anti-capitalist
P.L.M.47 Yet
pre-eminent
rebel
movements,
like
Zapatismo,
cannot be so assimi-
lated:
they
were neither
proletarian
nor
socialist; and,
especially
in their
early
years, they
entertained no
grand project
for the future transformation of
Mexico.48 No more?to take another
example?did
the Cedillos set out to
build Jerusalem in the
green
and
pleasant
Valle del Maiz. Talk of 'communism'
notwithstanding,
the Cedillos
envisaged?and
Saturnino Cedillo later
imple-
mented?a
local, rural, personalist
and restorative solution to their
grievances.49
Zapata
and the Cedillos
(and many
like
them) were,
in a
sense,
reformists who
could
only implement
their desire reforms
by revolutionary guerrilla
war;
and
the vision which
impelled
them
(for visions, myths
and moral
imperatives
were
crucial)
was drawn from the
past, perhaps suitably gilded.
Arnaldo
Cordova,
who understands this well
enough,
is
logical
and consistent in
setting
it
against
his own
(functional)
definition of revolution:50
can we
legitimately speak
of a revolution in the case of the
Zapatista
movement? Much of what we now know about
Zapata
and
Zapatismo
...
suggests
no. That return to the
past
on which the movement's localism
was
founded,
the lack of both a national
project
of
development
and
a
conception
of the
State,
are elements which
prevent
our
conceiving
it
as a revolution. A
revolution,
social or
political,
is never
local,
never looks
to restore the
past;
a revolution is national and for that
very
reason the
seizure of
political power figures
as its
prime objective.
Following
Stone and
Marx,
I would dissent. And I would do
so, first,
on the
common-sense,
semantic
grounds
that to
deny
the
'revolutionary'
character of
Zapatismo
and most
popular
movements of the Mexican Revolution
(sic)
is
pedantic
and
misleading;
and
second,
because it involves the a
priori segregation
of
rebel/revolutionary
movements on the basis ofa
single, imposed
and
exagger-
ated criterion: that of
ideological position.
It therefore exalts
ideology?on
which the fundamental
progressive/backward-looking, 'proactive/reactive'
distinction is based.
By
the same
token,
it
neglects
active commitment and
efficacy,
not least in terms of class
struggle.
The
Zapatistas may
have lacked
the
ideological sophistication
of the Flores
Magon;
but
they
did
vastly
more
to rend the old order and
attempt
the creation of
something radically
different.
And that
radically
different
something, though
it was not
socialism,
did
present
a stark contrast to the Porfirian status
quo
ante.
Zapatismo,
and
many
lesser
movements of similar
type, fought
for the
implementation
of an alternative
vision,
which could elicit fierce
popular allegiance (so, too,
did certain serrano
groups).
If the vision was
nostalgic,
the action was
revolutionary?often
class-
consciously revolutionary.
And it is not unknown for
nostalgic,
'traditional'
visions to be
transmuted?especially
in the heat of revolution?into more
forward-looking,
radical
ideologies:
thus the millenial traditions of the Russian
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 9
and Chinese
peasantries (evidenced
in the raskolniki and
Taiping rebels)
fed
into the
revolutionary
movements of the twentieth
century;
while in Mexico
the
inarticulate,
localised rebellions of 1910-15 often
paved
the
way
to better
organised,
more
sophisticated protest later,
especially
in the 1930s.51 This
brings
me to the
third, final,
and briefest element in
my descriptive
definition?
which is also raised
by
the
poncluding
sentence of
Cordova,
quoted
above. It
may
be true that
popular movements,
like
Zapatismo,
were reluctant to seize
state
power?and
that this
proved
a fatal weakness. But their mobilisation
of the rural masses behind a
genuinely popular programme
involved a
major
confrontation with the
state,
and
significantly helped
in the dissolution of
the state
(which,
as Lorenzo
Meyer points out,
had
effectively
ceased to exist
by 1914).52 They
thus contributed to the creation?if not the resolution?of
a situation which has been seen
(by proponents
of what
Skocpol
calls the
'political-conflict' approach)
as
distinctively revolutionary:
that
is,
the com?
petition
for
political power
between rival
forces, leading
to
'multiple sovereignty'
?i.e. the breakdown ofthe state.53 Of this Mexico was a classic
example.
I would
therefore,
justify
the use of
'revolutionary'
to describe
broadly-
based
popular
movements, possessed
of
powerful,
rival
visions,
locked in a
sustained
struggle (political, military, ideological),
in a situation of
multiple
sovereignty. Irrespective
of outcome and
function,
the Mexican Revolution
clearly
fits these
descriptive criteria;
common
usage
is therefore valid. But
before
moving
on to the
second,
more contentious
question
of
function,
it will
be
necessary
to flesh out the skeletal
description already presented.
I have
elsewhere
suggested
that the Mexican Revolution
may
be best
analysed
in
terms not of two contenders
(old regime
and
revolution)
but four: old
regime
(Porfirismo
and
Huertismo);
reformist liberals
(chiefly, though
not
exclusively
urban middle
class); popular
movements
(subdivided
into
agraristas
and
serranos);
and the ultimate national
synthesis, Carrancismo/Constitutionalism,
which
mutates,
without
significant genetic innovation,
into the
governing
coalition of the 1920s.54 It will at once be noted that these are not
homologous
categories, e.g. regimes,
classes,
ideologies. They
are, rather,
historical
actors,
representing
clusters of
interests,
in which class is
crucial,
but other
allegiances
?ideological, regional,
clientelist?also
compete; they
are useful at this
very
general
level of
analysis but,
of
course,
must be broken down for
many
other
analytical purposes.
Class
may
be seen as central to some of these basic
divisions,
e.g. nationally,
between the old
regime
and the
popular movement, locally
in
specific
cases such as
Morelos,
the
Laguna,
the
Yaqui Valley,
the Huasteca.
Other
divisions,
such as that between Villismo
(a hypertrophied
section of the
popular movement)
and Carrancismo
(a category
in its own
right),
cannot be
reduced to class
interests,
not even 'in the last
analysis'.
No more can the
Cristiada ofthe 1920s.
The denial of a neat
congruence
between
political
factions and class interests
does
not, according
to
my definition,
detract from the
revolutionary
character
of the
process
initiated in 1910.
Here,
it is the
strength
and
autonomy
of
popular
movements which count.
Recent,
revisionist
accounts,
which
deny
this
feature of the
revolution, are,
I
believe, basically
mistaken and sometimes at
odds with the evidence
they
themselves
produce.
Some
deny
or
seriously qualify
the
importance
of
peasant rebellion, stressing
instead
peasant passivity;
some
10 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
emphasise
instead the
revolutionary
role of the middle
classes,
the
well-to-do,
or the now
popular
rancheros
(rancheros
and
peasants being neatly,
but rather
misleadingly, segregated,
not least
by
the shibboleth of
'communalism').55
There is
often, too,
an
underlying implication
that to
qualify
as a
'revolutionary'
class the
peasantry
must
display
a level of
revolutionary
commitment?in
terms of
sustained, majority activity,
broad
geographical support,
class con?
sciousness and
political sophistication?which
few classes
(bourgeois, pro?
letarian or
peasant)
have ever attained. Of
course,
if the fences are built too
high,
the
peasant nag
will fail at the first. In this
respect,
the
old,
'populist'
historians
(such
as
Tannenbaum),
and?for all their faults?the new Marxists
(Cockcroft, Gilly, Semo)
at least
grasp
that the revolution
was,
as its
participants
knew well
enough,
a
mass,
popular movement, pitting against
each other hostile
groups,
classes and
ideologies,
and
revealing,
in dramatic
fashion,
the
bankruptcy
ofthe old
regime.
The character of the
revolution?popular, ideological, profound?had
obvious
implications
for its
outcome;
definition and function therefore
overlap.
A dismissal or
de-emphasis
of the revolution's
profound, popular
character is
likely
to
encourage
a view of its outcome which stresses
continuity
over
change.
But discussion of the revolution's outcome is
notoriously difficult,
and
any
attempt
must be
prefaced by
some
preliminary
clarification. We
may try
to
stop
the clock and ask 'what has
changed?';
but we must be careful to relate
change
to the
revolution,
i.e. not to fail into the old error of
post
hoc
ergo
propter hoc, whereby
all
post-revolutionary developments
are attributed to
the
revolution,
even those which were immanent in
pre-1910 Mexico;
and we
must decide at which
point
to
stop
the
clock?1917,1920, 1923, 1929,1934,
1940,
1985? The later the
date,
the
greater
the risk of
smuggling
in 'revolu?
tionary' changes
which are not
primarily
of
revolutionary origin (for example,
the economic nationalism of the
1930s,
which must be seen in a
global
as well
as
post-revolutionary,
national
context).56 Yet,
if Semo's
approach
is
right
(and
I believe it
is)
it would be
wrong
to
stop in, say, 1920?important though
that
conjuncture
was in the
crystallisation
of the
post-revolutionary regime. By
the same
token,
it would be
wrong
to close a
general analysis
of the French
Revolution with
Thermidor,
or even the Restoration
(note
the last sentence
of this
essay).
We
face, therefore,
a familiar
problem:
how to slice
up
the seam-
less
garment
of
history.
But the
problem
is
especially
acute when?like
Joseph's
coat of
many
colours?the
garment
is
rich, variegated,
and the
object
of bitter
contention.
1920,
for
example, may
afford a
good vantage point
to
judge
certain
conjunctural political changes;
but even 1985
may
be too
early
to
reach firm conclusions about the revolution's
epochal significance.
The
optimal
solution,
I shall
suggest,
is a combination of
long
and short
term
perspectives:
the latter
focussing
on the 1920s
(the
immediate
outcome),
the former on
general consequences
down to the
present day.
But
analysis
of
general consequences
is
fraught
with a
particular difficulty
which must be
tackled at the outset. Discussion of
post-revolutionary
Mexican
history
is often
confined within a
teleological straightjacket.
The revolution
puts
Mexico on
fixed lines of
development,
hence all
subsequent progress (I
use the term
neutrally)
can be traced back to the
revolution,
to the orientation and
impulse
it conferred. Three
principal teleologies
are influential.
First,
there is the old
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 11
revolutionary orthodoxy,
which sees the revolution as a
unique
national
experi?
ence: Gesta Dei
per
Mexicanos. Thanks to the
revolution,
Mexico has
proceeded
?and still
proceeds?towards
social
justice,
economic
development
and
national
integration.
It is the stock-in-trade of PRI candidates on the
stump.
The historical
implication
is that all
participants
in the revolution
(including
those who
fought
and killed each
other)
made a contribution to this
happy
outcome. Powerful in the rhetoric of the
regime,
this
teleology
is less evident
in serious
historiography?though
elements can be found.57
Two alternative
teleologies represent
radical
critiques
of this
interpretation.
One
gives priority
to the onward march of
capitalism?to
which the revolution
and all
'revolutionary' regimes
have
contributed,
official discourse notwithstand-
ing.
The revolution itself was a
bourgeois
revolution
(at
least in the weak sense
that it was not
socialist,
and
maybe
involved the
bourgeois
defeat of
peasant
and
proletarian forces; sometimes, too,
in the
strong
sense that it also over-
threw a
feudal,
or at least
pre-capitalist,
ancien
regime', and/or
that it
repre?
sented the conscious
project
of the national
bourgeoisie).
And
subsequent
regimes,
Cardenas'
included,
have in their different
ways
furthered this
capitalist
development,58 According
to this?what
might
be called the
'logic
of
capital'
school?the state has served as an
agent
of
capitalism,
national
and/or
inter?
national;
it
is,
in the
jargon
of one
debate,
an 'instrumental' state.59 A
third,
influential,
rival
teleology
also derives its
key concept (the 'relatively
auto?
nomous'
state)
from
grand theory. Here,
the
state?prior
to and hence
relatively
autonomous of
capital?becomes
the chief motor of Mexican
development,
and the rise of the state dominates Mexican
history (at
least since the Revolu?
tion)
much as the ascendant middle class dominated the
Whig interpretation
of British
history.
When framed within a Marxist
discourse,
this view
necessarily
stresses the
relativity
of the state's
autonomy,
and thus often blends with
the
Bonapartist theory
mentioned above.
Non-Marxists,
on the other
hand,
for whom the state's
autonomy
causes no theoretical
discomfort,
veer towards
a kind of
statolatry,
which now
pervades
a
good
deal of recent historical
studies.60 *When all is said and
done',
a
recent,
excellent
monography
con-
cludes,
'all the
complexities
of the Mexican revolution can be reduced to this
one dimension: the state'.61 Guillermo de la
Pena,
in his
anthropological study
of the Morelos
highlands,
takes a wider
perspective:
'the theme of the
State',
he announces at the
outset,
'runs
throughout
the whole
book', and,
further-
more,
stretches back far into the colonial
period;
the
state?or, rather,
its
'power
domain'?constitutes 'the external
power
which has defined com?
munal
goals;
from colonial tributes and labour
control,
to land distribution
and
contemporary
tax
collection';
the 'historical force of the State' can be
seen
'pervading
economics and
politics, religion
and
kinship, ethnicity
and
class'.62
No-one,
of
course,
doubts the
importance
of the
state?any
more than the
importance
of class. like so
many
historical
questions
this is one of
degree,
though degree
which cannot
easily
be
quantified. Putting
the
question simply,
it
may
be asked: should the rise of the
post-revolutionary
state be seen as the
crucial,
formative
development
in modern Mexican
history?
Is the
state,
in
other
words,
the
key organising concept
for the
understanding
of that
history?
It is
my
contention that those who have veered towards
statolatry
have
gone
12 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
too
far,
and that to
exchange
class reductionism for
statolatry
is no
gain; indeed,
it is
probably
a loss. There are three main
objections
to
this,
the most fashion-
able of the three
teleologies. First,
it
imparts
a kind of
Whiggish unilinearity
to modern Mexican
history,
in that all
major developments,
in all
periods,
are
hooked
up
to this basic
engine
of
change.
And the
engine keeps going,
in
pretty
much the same direction: that
is,
towards
centralisation, corporatism
and
bureaucracy. Secondly,
this view
empirically exaggerates
the
power
and role
of the
state,
especially
for the earlier
period (roughly, pre-1940).
Its
proponents
read back the modern Mexican state?with its
developed bureaucracy
and
corporate structures,
massive
budget, pervasive
economic
presence
and sheer
longevity?into
an
age
when it did not
exist;
when
today's
Leviathan was
yesterday's
minnow. Nor was the
generation
of Leviathan
necessarily
foreseen.
We should not overlook?as Maitland reminded us?that
things
now
securely
lodged
in the
past
were once
part
of an unknown future.
The Sonoran state of the 1920s was
precarious,
its
authority challenged by
caudillo and Catholic
Church,
its survival
predicated
on
Washington's
favour,
its
character, according
to James
Wilkie,
still
basically 'passive'.63
Even the
Cardenas
presidency?rightly
seen as a
key period
in the
development
of the
modern
state?began
with a
major
schism within the state
apparatus
and
ended with the traumatic election of
1940,
when the
outgoing
President,
opting
for a
irriddle-of-the-road, safety-first successor,
had to reckon with a strenuous
opposition,
a
majority
vote
against
the official
candidate,
and a
legacy
of
political
bitterness and
disquiet.
1940 revealed the
limitations,
as well as the
strengths,
of the
maturing revolutionary
state
(and, indeed,
had Cardenas
opted
for
Mugica
rather than Avila
Camacho,
i.e. for his
preferred
candidate rather
than for the safe
candidate,
these limitations
might
have been more
drastically
revealed).
Third, following
from
this, statolatry
conceives of the state in
anthropo-
morphic
terms: it is a discrete
entity,
like an individual which acts
upon
others
(more
than it is acted
upon),
which
possesses aims, interests,
and fast
burgeoning
powers.
This is not the
liberal, pluralist
state
(the
neutral arena where interests
clash and are
resolved);
nor is it the
classic, Marxist,
'instrumental'
state, serving
class interests?for these interests are
rarely specified;
rather it is an
indepen?
dent,
i.e.
very relatively
or even
absolutely autonomous, actor,
a historical
prime
mover which cannot be
disaggregated,
behind which
nothing
or no-one
can be discerned. The interest
groups
of
pluralist theory,
Marxist social
classes,
do not
impinge; or,
if
they do,
it is as
supplicants
and
recipients
ofthe state's
favour,
or as victims of its wrath. In extreme versions this
anthropomorphic
state indeed assumes human form andit is
supposed
that the
destiny
of Mexico
is done and undone in Los Pinos and in the
government departments
and that
the
people
are no more than the raw material with which the ruler?wise or
not?shapes
the
history
ofthe nation'.64
Statolaters misconceive the role of the Mexican state. Prior to 1940
(to
take
a
rough dividing line)
the state was
weaker,
often much weaker than
they
suppose;
after 1940 it was much less autonomous.
Indeed,
it would be difficult
to find a state in Latin America
which,
over the
past forty years,
has so con?
sistently
and
successfully
framed
policies
favourable to
capital
accumulation,
and the
socio-political
foundations which
underpin
it
(this
is a
point
I will
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 13
return to in
conclusion).
All three
teleologies, therefore,
must be
rejected.
There are no
grounds
for
homogenizing
the entire
post-revolutionary period.
The revolution did not set the
country
on a fixed and immutable course.
Rather,
in the short term
(taking
a
vantage point
in the
1920s),
the revolution effected
certain
important changes,
some of which could not be undone.
Furthermore,
in the
longer term,
the revolution made
possible
certain later
developments,
while
closing
off others. It
created,
in other
words,
windows of
opportunity;
though
whether these
opportunities
would be seized would
depend
on later
events,
themselves the
product
of social and
political
conflicts. The first
task,
therefore,
is to
specify
what had
changed, irrevocably
and
significantly, by
the
1920s;
then to consider how
subsequent options?in
the fields of
agrarian
reform, state-building,
economic nationalism?were
proffered, taken,
or
refused.65
As of the
1920s,
two kinds of
change
were evident. At the formal level?
the level of
laws, decrees,
official
policies
and constitutional
provisions?the
degree
of real
change
can
easily
be
exaggerated. True,
the new Constitution
promised
fine
things, 'predating
the Soviet . . .
constitution';
and the new
regime
was suffused with
populist
rhetoric.66
But,
as so often in the
past,
rhetoric and
reality diverged.
As in the 1860s and
70s,
the victorious revolu-
tionaries inherited a
prostrate country
and a chaotic
government; they
there?
fore
placed strong government
and economic reconstruction
(a
recurrent
phrase
in the
post-1917 period,
as it had been
exactly fifty years before)
above con-
situtional
fidelity
and
promised
reforms.67 The Maderista
promise
of
Sufragio
Efectivo,
No Re-eleccion was
hardly
honoured?still less if Womack's transla?
tion,
'A Real Vote and No Boss
Rule',
is
preferred.68
Elections were still
fixed,
bosses?like 'Don Melchor' of Paracho?still
ruled,
and the Sonoran version
of re-eleccion was
only
averted
by
Toral's bullets.69 No more did the realities
of labour
politics?typified by
Morones and the
CROM?faithfully
reflect
Article 123. In the
agrarian sector,
reform came: between 1915 and 1928
5.3m hectares were distributed to over half a million
recipients
in some 1500
communities.70
Though, by 1930, ejidal property
constituted
only
6.3% of
national
agricultural property (by area)
or 9.4%
(by value),
there were states
where the
respective percentages
were much
higher (Morelos:
59 and
62;
Yucatan: 30 and
15;
the Federal District: 25 and
13;
Tlaxcala: 19 and
21).
Particularly
in the states of the central
plateau, therefore,
the
agrarian
reform
had
substantially
modified Porfirian
property-owning
and
power
relations
even before the
sweeping
Cardenista reforms.
Forthright
assertions of
agrarian
continuismo need to be
qualified.71
However,
the
practical consequences
of
this limited but
significant formal
reform
depended
a
good
deal on the
informal
context within which it was
enacted,
and to which I shall turn in a moment.
Taken on their
own,
the
figures
of formal reform
(whose accuracy may
be
questioned)72
tell
only part
of the
story.
Of the
remaining 'revolutionary' policies,
the role of economic
nationalism,
I have
already suggested,
is
easily exaggerated. Apart
from recurrent
squabbles
with the oil
companies (in
the
1920s,
as in the
1930s,
oil was
something
of
a
special case)
the Sonorans showed no
disposition
to
squeeze foreign
invest?
ment,
or
radically
to
change
Mexico's economic relations with the
capitalist
'core'.
Rather,
for much ofthe
1920s,
the
greatest governmental
commitment
14 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
to reform?in rhetorical and
practical
terms?was to be found in its anti-
clericalism,
and its related
espousal
of state education. These twin issues bulked
large (much larger
than other 'socio-economic'
issues)
at the Constitutional
Congress
of
1916-17;
they
dominated the
politics
of the
subsequent decade,
especially
after
1926;
they
were still dominant as the maximato drew to a
close.73 In the short term
(in, say,
the
twenty years following
the fail of
Huerta)
the chief
legacy
of the revolution in the realm of formal
governmental policy
was therefore a virulent
anti-clericalism,
linked to an
ideology
of
aggressive
state-building.
This
substantiates,
rather than
contradicts, my
earlier
point:
Sonoran etalisme derived
precisely
from an awareness of the weakness of the
state,
its lack of institutional and
ideological support (of, perhaps, ideological
hegemony).
Policies of
state-building
are themselves
poor
evidence of the
strength
of the state.
Furthermore,
it is
arguable
that the Sonoran
response?
anti-clericalism?compounded
the
problem
as much as it solved it. Thus we
are asked to believe that Leviathan
governed
in a
country
where
'poverty,
anarchy
and violence
reigned'
and
which,
from 1928 to
1935,
'lived in a state
of
permanent political
crisis'.74
Formal
policies, then, displayed
an indifference to 'Maderista' concerns
for
representative government (hence
Vasconcelos' 1929
'crusade');75
and
a
greater
commitment to an
unpopular
Jacobinism than to labour or
agrarian
reform But formal
policies
were not the whole
picture. Indeed, my argument
for a
(relatively)
weak
state,
acted
upon
more than it
acts, requires
that other
factors be
given
due
prominence:
that
is,
informal
(unofficial)
forces and trends
which occurred without
governmental fiat; often,
in
fact,
without
anyone's
(conscious)
fiat. The revolution?in
other, paradoxical,
words?had a 'Burkean'
as well as a Jacobin face. These
informal, unofficial,
'Burkean'
changes may
for
analytical purposes
be divided into
political
and economic
(though,
in
practice, they constantly intertwined,
as we shall
note). Politically,
the revolu?
tion
destroyed
much of the old order. After
1914-15,
it is
true,
this
obeyed
conscious
policy,
as the Constitutionalists?and successors like Carrillo Puerto
in
Yucatan?systematically purged
their enemies.76 But these official
purges
followed
years
of
unscripted, popular
retribution.
During
1910-15 the national
cacique,
Diaz,
and his Cientifico camarilla had been
ousted;
Porfirian
governors
had
tumbled, along
with
many (not all)
local
caciques, especially
north of the
Isthmus;
and with them went
many
of their well-to-do
supporters.
Huerta's
counter-revolution
(for
that was what it
was)
stimulated a brief revival of these
interests,
which
only
made their
subsequent
downfall more certain.77 Some
Porfirian families and officials
survived, especially
in
regions,
like los Altos de
Jalisco,
which were
relatively quiet,
or like
Chiapas,
where the
mapache
rebels
had the
strength
to
defy revolutionary
incursions.78 But even survival
required
the
acquisition
of new
political techniques,
sometimes the deliberate colonisa-
tion of the revolution
(1920
was the annus mirabilis of
entryism),
and often
the abandonment of
political aspirations.
The Terrazas
family
were allowed
back to
Mexico,
but as
businessmen,
not
politicos.19
The
Chiapas
landlords
clung
to
power, political
and
economic,
but
(we
shall
note)
in a
radically
changed
environment.
In
short,
the Porfirian
political
elite was eliminated as a
distinct,
coherent
entity.80
It either
disappeared,
or
adopted
new, 'revolutionary' political
mores,
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 15
or
swapped politics
for business. As for the Federal
army,
it
disappeared entirely:
a rare event in Latin American
military history.
Those few Federals who sur?
vived in uniform did so
by
virtue of an
early,
unusual commitment to the
revolution.81 As an
institution,
the old Porfirian
army
vanished.
Instead,
a
new,
conglomerate army
of
revolutionary provenance
now held
sway:
one
which,
though
it soon
acquired many
of the
military
faults of its
predecessor (these
were at once evident in the
campaigns against Villa, Zapata
and others after
1915),
nevertheless
performed
a different
political
role. Unlike
Diaz's,
the
army
of the revolution was
highly political
and
fractious,
and remained so
until the 1930s
(again,
therefore,
we note a
major
constraint on the
power
and
independence
of the national
government). Furthermore, though
the
military
often reached a modus vivendi with local vested
interests?defending
land?
lords
against agraristas,
for
example?it
also contained
pockets
of
abiding
populism:
in
Morelos,
where
ex-Zapatistas
ruled;
in San
Luis,
where Cedillo's
veterans underwrote his local
power;
with the armed
agraristas
who
fought
for
Obregon
in
1923;
with
Tejeda's
armed
peasant league.82
A
relatively docile,
professional army?Diaz's?gave way
to a
rumbustious, heterogeneous,
politicised host,
which would
only gradually
be tamed and slimmed down.
And, though
Amaro
began
the
job,
it was not until the 1940s that
profession-
alisation
finally triumphed
and
military
force was confined to its notional role
as an ultima ratio.83
Indeed,
in
reviewing
the revolution's demolition of the
institutions of the old
regime,
it is ironic to note that it was the one which
faced the most
systematic
attack
(the
Catholic
Church)
which survived with
most
vigour;
an indication of the continued
legitimacy
of the
Church,
as com?
pared
to the
caciques
and
generals
of the
Porfiriato,
and of the
inefficacy
of
revolutionary
anti-clericalism.
As old
political
landmarks were
erased,
new structures were
erected,
often
piecemeal
and
unplanned. Despite
their indifference to the
principle
of 'No
Re-election' the Sonorans
presided
over a
polity
in which the circulation of
elites was
appreciably
faster than in the
past.84 Arguably,
this brisker turnover
was less the result of conscious
policy
than the inevitable
consequence
of the
Hobbesian character of
post-revolutionary politics. Now,
in a context of mass
mobilisation and recurrent
military
revolt?a *war of all
against
all'?and in the
absence,
as
yet,
of a
controlling
Leviathan
state,
the tenure of office was often
nasty,
brutish and short. Assassination claimed
Zapata, Carranza, Villa, Obregon,
Carrillo
Puerto,
Field
Jurado, maybe
Flores and
Hill,
as well as
many
lesser
leaders;
the
attempted
national revolutions of
1923,
'27 and '29 were com-
plemented by
endemic
local, political
violence.85 A
contributory
factor to
political instability
was the
genuine degree
of mass
mobilisation,
evident in
the
embryonic parties,
the
unions,
the
peasant leagues.
This was no
decorous,
democratic
pluralism.
Catholics
fought
with
anti-clericals, agraristas
with white
guards;
'it is no
exaggeration',
one historian
asserts,
'to talk of an
open,
con-
tinuous?albeit
generally
local and
disorganised?class
war which covered
great
areas ofthe Mexican
countryside (between
1920 and
1940)'
.S6 Charrismo
infected the unions and even
dogged
reformers?like Carrillo Puerto?were
obliged
to work
through inappropriate caciquista systems
in
trying
to
implement
their reforms.87 But this was not a throwback to the
caciquismo
ofthe Porfiriato.
Patron-client links
(which
are the hallmarks of
any caciquista
or caudillista
16 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
system) are,
to some
extent,
politicalry
neutral; they may
serve different
ends,
institutions and individuals.
Now,
unlike in the
days
of
Diaz, they
linked
seg-
ments of the
population
to mass
associations,
ckiming
national status: the
PNA,
Partido
Cooperativista, CROM,
as well as their
rivals,
the Catholic
unions,
the
LNDR,
the ACJM.88 Undemocratic
though
these
were,
as
regards
both internal
organisation
and external
functioning, they
nevertheless transcended the narrow
camarillas of the
Porfiriato,
and were unmistakeable
legacies
of the mass revolu?
tion
(as
a
comparative glance at, say,
Brazil will
confirm).89
And
they gave
post-revolutionary
Mexico the character of?in Cordova's term?a sociedad
de masas.
Linked to this
development
was the
populist
rhetoric of the
regime. By
'populist'
I do not refer to a
specific complex
of class alliances
(a complex
whose character is much debated and
may
even be
illusory).90
More
simply,
I mean the
demotic,
sometimes
rabble-rousing
rhetoric of the new
revolutionary
leaders,
who
presented
themselves,
as
Obregon quintessentially
did,
as men of
the
people,
for the
people;
frank, open,
honest,
sympathetic,
even
plebeian.
Hence
Obregon's campaign speeches
and
glad-handing;
or Carrillo Puerto's deft
use of
popular symbols
in Yucatan.91
Ultimately,
official
indigenismo
would
carry
a similar
message
of
populist empathy
and national
integration
to the
most
marginal
of Mexico's
population.
Of
course,
much of this was
empty
rhetoric. But even
empty
rhetoric has
significance:
the
popular
discourse ofthe
revolution contrasted with the
overtly
elitist and racist rhetoric of the mature
Porfiriato.92 This rhetorical shift can in turn be related to the
change
in
popular
mood ushered in
by
the 1910 revolution.
Then, quite suddenly,
the
despised
pelados
of the Porfiriato had been transmuted into
revolutionary guerrilleros
('we
are no
longer rag-dolls',
as the
insurgent campesinos
of
Papantla
had
pro-
claimed, according
to the
ballad);
the
plebeians
of
Guadalajara
invaded the
Sunday evening paseo, turning
it into some kind of Mexican
charivari;
those of
Torreon travelled in the trams without
paying
and
swaggered
in the
streets,
forcing respectable
citizens off the
pavement
into the mud ofthe
gutter.
It
was,
as one observer
put it,
rather like the
Magnificat:
'the
poor
have been showered
with
goods
and the rich have been left with
nothing'.93
Like it or
not,
this
factious
plebs
could no
longer
be
ignored;
it had to be reckoned
with,
con-
ciliated,
tamed. In
defeat,
Federico Gonzalez Garza mused on the
history
of
the French
Revolution,
and the Villistas' failure to bind the masses to their
cause
by appropriate legislation;
Salvador Alvarado set out to do
precisely
this
with the Indians of Yucatan.94
Furthermore,
however
empty
or
cynical
it
became,
the
populist
rhetoric
which mass mobilisation had stimulated could in turn stimulate further mass
mobilisation.
For, given
a constant reiteration of
populist
values and revolu?
tionary objectives,
the
gulf
between rhetoric and
practice
was
strongly
illumin-
ated,
and offered a
standing
invitation to those who would match
practice
to
rhetoric. The Anti-Reelectionists of the 1920s
attempted
such a match in the
field of electoral
politics,
but without success. With the onset of the
depression
and the renewed social conflict of the
Maximato, however, attempts
to
bring
reality
into line with the reiterated social
promises
of
revolutionary populism
proved
more efficacious. Cardenismo was not a
revolutionary
clone;
but it
carried the
genes
of the
popular
revolution within it and?as another
brief,
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 17
comparative glance
at the rest of Latin America
suggests?would
have been
unimaginable
without the
preceding political
mobilisation of 1910-34.
Cardenismo,
as Hamilton
rightly argues,
was a different
species
of
'populism'
from
Vargismo
or Peronismo.95
Indeed,
one can
go
further: in
many respects
(ideological, emotional, generational)
Cardenismo was the last kick of the old
revolutionary
cause before a new
leadership, espousing
a new
project,
took
control ofthe
country during
the 1940s.
The
short-term, political consequences
of the
revolution, therefore,
were
profound:
old institutions were
shattered,
mass
organisations
were
born;
elites
circulated,
rhetoric
changed.
All
contributed,
in the short-term
(that is,
until
the
thirties,
if not the
forties),
to a
weakening,
not a
strengthening,
ofthe
state,
as
compared
with its Porfirian
predecessor.
The
Sonorans, presiding
over a
heterogeneous, patchwork polity,
were beholden to
caciques, generals
and
Washington
D.C.
(Cardenas, too,
confronted dissident
governors,
from Sonora
to
Chiapas;
he was
acutely
aware of American
pressure;
his successor was elected
amid
dissent,
violence and official
corruption).96
If the
revolutionary
state out-
stripped
its Porfirian
predecessor
in
potential strength,
its actual
authority
was
circumscribed and at times
precarious (not
least
because, during
the
risky,
transitional
period
of
state-building,
that
very process
incurred
antagonism
and
resistance).
The
point
at which
potential
was
realised,
the transition
completed,
and the risk
surmounted,
is
open
to
debate;
but I would
put
it in the
1940s,
rather than the
1930s,
still less the 1920s. The
image
of a
Bonapartist state,
kneading
the
dough
of civil
society,
is
inappropriate
for
pre-1940
Mexico.
These
political changes
were
profound,
but were
they,
as sometimes
sug?
gested,
the
only significant changes
to
emerge
from the Revolution?97 Was it
indeed the case that economic structures?the relations of
production?
survived intact from Porfirian times?
That,
from the
perspective
of
agrarian
reform,
for
example,
'the Revolution had been
practically
useless'
(prior
to
Cardenas)?98
And that
only
in the
exceptional
case of Morelos 'could it be said
that the old structure of rural
property
had been
palpably
transformed'; hence,
'in the rest of the Mexican
countryside
the hacienda?that colonial hacienda
which had consolidated itself in the nineteenth
century?continued
to be the
dominant
productive
unit'?99
Structurally,
as I have
conceded,
the hacienda remained
powerful.
Official
agrarian
reform had far from
destroyed
it. Yet even official
agrarian
reform had
made
significant inroads,
not
just
in Morelos
(and,
I shall
argue,
even
ostensibly
modest inroads could undermine the rationale of hacienda
production:
that
is,
the hacienda did not have to be eliminated as a territorial unit before its basic
viability
was
eroded).
It is also worth
stressing
that the trend was towards
hacienda dissolution. However
gradual,
this
represented
a 180?
change
in direc?
tion after the sustained
period
of hacienda consolidation
during
the Porfiriato.100
Now,
after
1910,
the hacienda was cast as a main
target;101
even if it survived
territorially,
for the
moment,
it was 'under
siege';
in much of Tlaxcala
(where,
during
the
revolution,
'the hacienda
system
had
temporarily
ceased to
exist'),
landlords returned to face a new
environment?'they
had lost
prestige
. . .
failed to
regain
the
formerly
secure
backing
of a state and federal
government
and
experienced great
difficulties in
regaining
their lands from the hands of more
conscious and
experienced peasant-leaders'.102
In distant
Chiapas,
too,
where the
18
BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
pro-landlord mapache
administration took
power
in
1920,
it faced a novel
situation,
in which 'the vast
majority
of the
population, previously
excluded
from
political participation,
had been
politicised'; hence, 'politics
in
Chiapas
in
the 1920s was
vastly
different from what it had been
prior
to the
revolution';
and,
I would
argue,
this
ostensibly political development
carried
important
consequences
for the hacienda
system, granted
its economic rationale and
character.103 Nor were these
examples
rare or
exceptional:
the
experience
of
Rosalie
Evans, engaged
in her
ultimately
fatal
struggle
with local
agraristas
in
Puebla,
was
replicated throughout
the
country during
the 1920s and
'30s,
as
regions
of
agrarian disaffection,
even if
temporarily quietened,
renewed their
acquaintance
with the old conflicts ofthe revolution.104
The revolution thus reversed the Porfirian trend towards land concentra?
tion
and,
no less
important,
set in motion a
long process
of
agrarian
mobilisa?
tion. The
power
and
legitimacy
of the landlord class?which had
underpinned
Porfirian rule?never recovered.
Terrazas?blaming
'Communist'
agitators?
had not dared arm his
peons
for self-defence in 1910-11
(and
his successors
rebuilt the
family empire along
different
lines,
conforming
to the new
post-
revolutionary mores; so, too,
did the
Figueroas
of
Guerrero;
the survival of
families did not
necessarily imply continuity
of social
structure).105
In
Morelos,
planters
blamed the
decay
of
religion
for the
belligerence
of the
campesinos;
Rosalie Evans
deplored
the decline of deference
(evident, too,
in communities
where
agrarismo
was
largely absent)
and the
consequent uppishness
of once
docile
peons.106
The radical and
egalitarian
sentiments
produced?or
revealed
?by
the 1910 revolution made landlord rule ofthe old kind
impossible.
The
world turned
upside down,
even if
partly righted
after
1915,
was never the
same
again.
The
principal
loss of the landlord class was
political
rather than economic.
Landlord
oligarchs
no
longer
ruled the state of the
Federation;
at best
they
collaborated with
coopted revolutionary generals
and strove to contain the
challenge
of
newly
mobilised
groups.
Carranza's wholesale devolution of con-
fiscated estates
permitted
a territorial
recovery?at
least on
paper.
But landed
wealth divorced from
political power
was
severely impaired.107 Similarly,
even
modest
infringements
of landlords' territorial
monopoly (and by
1934 a fifth
of
private
land had been alienated under the 'modest' reform of the
Sonorans)
could have a
disproportionate impact.108
For the Porfirian landed class had
depended
on a
growing monopoly
of land
(and water),
bolstered
by political
power; infringe
this
monopoly,
curtail this
power,
and the landed interest was
seriously threatened, compelled
to choose between extinction and
rapid adapta-
tion to the
changed
environment. Where Porfirian landlords
survived, therefore,
they
did so
by
virtue of
change,
not conservatism
(the
classic case is William
Jenkins of
Atencingo).109
Individual or familial survival should not blind us to
collective
change,
induced
by
the revolution.
Porfirian landlords had relied
upon
a combination of direct
(or
'extra-
economic') coercion, notably
in the
debt-peon regions
of the
south;
and of
territorial
monopoly,
which in turn
depended
on
legal,
financial and
political
power.
Both were
sigmficantlyaffectedby
the revolution. Luis
Felipe Dominguez
Hberated the
peons
of the notorious monterias of
Chiapas;
Salvador Alvarado
boasted of
freeing 100,000 peons
in Yucatan.110 American
planters,
accustomed
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
19
to recruit
debt-peons,
found the
system breaking
down in the midst of revolu?
tion.111 Of
course,
not all those
changes
were
permanent,
and the revolution did
not eliminate
debt-peonage?of
the
servile,
southern kind?at a stroke. It was
left to Carrillo Puerto to remove el ultimo reducto de esclavitud in Yucatan
(the
notorious
plantation
of
Catmis),
and to
press
on with efforts to
organise
the Yucatecan field hand and transform him into a unionised
agricultural
worker';
efforts which culminated?albeit
imperfectly?in
the Cardenista
reforms ofthe 1930s.112
In central
Mexico,
the elimination of the landlord interest went furthest
and fastest in
Morelos,
where the
planters
lost over half their land and now
even faced commercial
competition
from a reconstituted
peasantry.
A Junker
road to
agrarian capitalism,
which had
appeared
to
open during
the
Porfiriato,
was closed
off,
in favour of a farmer road
(the development
of
capitalism
on
the basis of
peasant farming
and
kulakization).113 Or, indeed,
in favour of no
road at
all,
for it is not clear that the reconstituted
peasantry
of Morelos
pro?
vided an
appropriate
vehicle for the advance of
capitalism.114
Since
1940,
it is
true,
such a reconstituted
peasantry?the recipient
of land
grants
since the
revolution?has served the interests of
capital
accumulation and industrialisa-
tion;
previously,
however,
the
place
of the
peasantry
within such a
capitalist
project
was uncertain or anomalous.
Agrarian reform,
in other
words,
could
mean different
things
at different
times,
and it is a further
teleological
error
to assume that all
agrarian reform?including
that ofthe 1920s and 1930s?
was
equally
functional to the
development
of
capitalism.115
If,
from the
point
of view of
capitalism,
the revolution's reconstitution of
the
peasantry
was
ambivalent,
its
impact
on the hacienda
system
itself was more
clear-cut,
and
arguably
crucial.
Furthermore,
this
impact
was not confined to
regions
of
exceptional agrarismo (like Morelos). Throughout
much of the
country,
the hacienda faced both the
challenge
of the 'external'
peasantry,
covetous of hacienda land
(a challenge
whose
intensity
varied from
place
to
place)
and also more
insidious, indirect,
and
pervasive
threats
which, emanating
from the
revolution,
struck at the
very
rationale of hacienda
production.
To
appreciate this,
we must return to the Porfiriato. The
dynamic growth
in
demand and investment which affected rural Mexico in the later nineteenth
century
occurred in a
society already possessing existing, reasonably
well-
defined territorial units.116
Large
estates were well established
(though
this is
not to
say
that all estates were
large,
or that estates were not
bought, sold,
inherited, parcelled
and
consolidated); they
had benefited from the
desamortizacion
policies begun by
the liberals of the
1850s,
as well as from
the 'colonization' laws of the Diaz
period.
It is
entirely
clear
(and
no
longer
worth
labouring
the
point)
that haciendas
operated
within a market and
sought
profits?this
was true of
pre-Porfirian
as well as Porfirian hacendados.117
What is more contentious and
interesting
is the rationale which
underlay
hacienda
production, especially
as market demand
grew
in the last
quarter
of
the nineteenth
century.
Commentators like Molina
Enriquez,
who denounced
the
sprawling
acres and 'feudal'
mentality
of Porfirian
hacendados,
were mis-
taken,
but not
entirely
mistaken
(indeed,
it would be odd if so
many
com?
mentators,
Mexican and
foreign, contemporary
and
later,
were so
consistently
in
error).118
The scale and
apparent
autarkic
strivings
of Porfirian haciendas
20 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
denoted not some
feudal/seigneurial mentality,
but rather an
economically
rational
response
to
circumstances;
circumstances of
rising demand,
limited
capital, initially cheap
land
(which grew
more
costly
with
time), initially
dear
labour
(which grew cheaper
with
time,
population growth,
and
peasant
dis-
possession) and,
above
all,
a
highly congenial politico-legal
climate.
The
expansion
of
holdings
thus not
only augmented
resources
(land
and?
sometimes more
crucial?water),
but also
generated
a
growing
labour
supply;
so
successfully
that
by
the late nineteenth
century
the
objective necessity
of debt
peonage
was
waning
in
many parts
of Mexico.119 In
Morelos,
the land-
lord's
strongest
sanction was not coercion but eviction from the estate.120 In
addition,
the
dispossession
of
villagers
and smallholders eliminated
competition
in the
production
of
staple crops,
while a favourable tariff
kept
out
foreign
grain. Large landholdings (and 'largeness',
in this
context,
was relative to local
conditions)
thus
guaranteed cheap labour, high prices
and
good profits.
But?
a familiar economic dilemma?these individual
advantages
had collective draw-
backs,
above all for the continued
capitalist development
which the Porfirians
(including
most
landlords)
favoured. Such
development required
the
growth
of a
vigorous
kulak class
and/or
the
proletarianisation
of the
peasantry (in fact,
historically
and
theoretically,
the two trends seem to
conspire).121
For
many,
these trends are
definitionally required,
since
capitalism
is
theoretically
con?
stituted
by
relations of
production involving
free
wage
labour:
production
for
the
market,
the old Frankian
axiom,
cannot alone denote
capitalism.122 (It
should be added
that,
since
agriculture
is not
entirely analogous
to
industry,
it
may
not
experience
the same
degree ofthorough proletarianisation: peasants,
in other
words, may
survive within
demonstrably capitalist
societies, possibly
as
'disguised proletarians'.123
The existence of
peasants
in modern Mexico no
more makes Mexico
'feudal',
or
'pre-capitalist',
than the existence of
proletarians
in
Habsburg
Mexico made it
'capitalist'.) But,
definitions
aside,
there is a
prac-
tical
point,
which should
impress
even those who have no time for definitional
polemics.
In the absence of a
significant
kulakization
and/or proletarianisation,
the
scope
of the market would remain much
reduced,
since the bulk of the
population
would
depend
on subsistence
agriculture
and
payment
in
kind,
with
major
market transactions
being
confined to cities and international trade:
the circumstances which
prevailed
in Mexico or Chile ca. 1850.124
Though
these circumstances would admit of
significant foreign
trade
(as
medieval eco?
nomies
did), they
would form no basis for
capitalist development,
even
along
the lines of desarrollo hacia
afuera. Capitalist development required
kulakization
and/or proletarianisation
not
just
on definitional
grounds,
but also as a
practical
prerequisite
of the creation of a domestic
market,
of
capital
accumulation and
of industrialisation. Desarrollo hacia
afuera
Vorked'
precisely
in those areas?
like
Argentina
and southern Brazil?where
export earnings
facilitated an
expan?
sion of the domestic market
(itself premised
on
European immigration
and
therefore
higher
cash
wages);
not?as in coastal Peru or Central America?
where the demand for labour could be met
by
subsistence
wages
and forms of
contract labour.125
Porfirian Mexico
approximated
to the second
examples.
The south?'bar-
barous
Mexico'?developed
forms of
debt-peonage,
some of which
closely
resembled
slavery.126
On the traditional haciendas of central
Mexico, meanwhile,
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 21
the transition to free
wage
labour
(or kulakisation)
was blocked
by
the
impera?
tives of hacienda
production. Here,
the more
'progressive'
landlords
favoured,
and sometimes
stimulated,
a switch from 'traditional' forms of remuneration
(labour rent, whereby peons
received
plots
of land in return for work on the
demesne; payments
in
kind, including
notional cash
payments
which were
offset
by
the
'purchase'
of subsistence
goods)
to cash
wages.
This was
entirely
logical, given
that the labour
supply
was
growing,
at least in central
Mexico,
while the
opportunity
costs of certain 'traditional' forms of remuneration?
e.g.
land and
staple
foods?were
rising.
But while
converting
to
wage payments,
landlords were reluctant to
adjust wages
in line with
prices: wages
were
'up-
wardly sticky'. Hence, despite price inflation, wage
rates rose
only haltingly
and
modestly (the
same
appears
to have been true of the mines
during
the
revolution).127
In
consequence,
rural workers faced a severe
squeeze
on
living
standards,
to which
they responded by reverting
to traditional
perquisites:
payments
in
kind,
cash advances
against
the
purchase
of foodstuffs. Hacendados
found themselves
allowing
debts to run
up despite
themselves.128 At San Antonio
Tochatlaco,
a market-oriented hacienda run
by
a
progressive management,
the
attempt
to eliminate debts and
payments
in kind
proved abortive; by
the 1900s
both had to be restored.129 As a
result,
the hacienda's
healthy profits during
the 1900s
depended
not
only
on Mexico
City's growing
thirst for
pulque,
but
also on its
capacity
to cut
monetary
costs
by increasing non-monetary payments
to its
hard-pressed
work force. While a concentration on the hacienda balance
sheet
(monetary outgoings
and
income),
ofthe kind which hacienda case studies
frequently present,
would in this case
suggest
a
highly successful, 'capitalist'
enterprise,
the inclusion of the labour force
(the
relations of
production)
in the
calculation reveals a
significant
and
growing dependence
on
non-capitalist
(feudal?)
forms of remuneration.130 This would
help explain
the
prevalence
of
debts on other haciendas in the
region, notwithstanding
the
relatively
abundant
labour
supply
and the hacendados'
antipathy
towards endebted labour.131
In that hacienda studies often concentrate on the
enterprise's
external rela?
tions
(its
role in the
market,
its formal balance
sheet)
and do not
penetrate
the
internal relations of
production,
it is difficult to
say
how far this
example
is
typical. Obviously,
as cases
ranging
from Eastern
Europe
to the Caribbean
and Mexico
indicate, profits
can rise on the basis of relations of
production
which are
patently non-capitalist,
i.e. in which free
wage
labour is
absent,
very limited, or,
where it
appears
to
exist, purely
formal.132 This
may
be
prob-
lematic for the individual
enterprise (such
as San Antonio
Tochatlaco)
but the
problem
can be lived with: while
profits accrue,
the
enterprise
will
prosper
and the 'contradictions' will not
prove
terminal. But the
consequences
for
the
economy
as a whole are serious. Under such
conditions,
which are not
those of a free
market,
individual
profit
will not redound to collective
develop?
ment. Problems?or
'contradictions'?may
be discerned in three areas.
First,
landlord
monopoly
of resources and the associated survival?even
reinforcement?of
pre-capitalist
relations of
production
inhibited the ration-
alisation of
agricultural production. Again,
this is not a
question
of 'feudal' or
'seigneurial' mentality,
Porfirian landlords innovated and invested
(some lavishly
and
boastfully)133
where it seemed
profitable
to do so. But investment
usually
flowed into
transport, processing
and
irrigation.
So
long
as labour could be
22 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
secured
cheaply (even,
in a
sense,
gratuitously, given
the low
opportunity
cost of
payment
in
land)
there was little incentive to mechanise.
Compared
with their North American
counterparts,
Mexican
grain producers enjoyed
higher profits
on the basis of lower
productivity.134
Hence
Raigosa's critique
of Porfirian
agriculture:
'a salario
bajo, agricultura pobre y producto
caro'.135
Second,
low
productivity
and low
wages (or wages
in
kind)
constrained the
growth
of the national
market,
a crucial
prerequisite
for industrialisation.
On the one
hand,
the
great peon mass, pushed
to the
margin
of
subsistence,
displayed
what a German
entrepreneur (writing
after the
revolution,
but
expressing
sentiments even more
applicable
to
pre-1910)
called 'verdammte
bediirfnislosigkeit' ('damned wantlessness').136
Hence the textile
industry
faced
a crisis of
over-production,
which in turn
compounded
the 'social
question'
of the
1900s;
individual factories failed for want of a mass market.137
And,
while low
wages prevented
the rural sector from
providing
a market for indus?
trial
goods,
low
productivity
combined with
imperfect competition
to force
up
the
price
of
staple
foods
(certainly by
the 1900s if not
before),
thus
squeez-
ing wages
and
disposable
incomes.138
Finally,
the structure of
agricultural production
inhibited
capitalist develop?
ment
by diverting
resources into the
inefficient, monopolistic agrarian
sector.
The landlords'
monopoly
ensured
profits,
whether as direct
producers (the
planters
of Morelos and
points south)
or rentiers
(the
hacendados of Guerrero
or the
Bajio).139
It was
economically
rational
(not atavistically 'feudal')
to
buy
into land rather than
industry
or commerce
(which
were
heavily?though
not
exclusively?dependent
on
foreign capital). Why
invest in
railways
at
6%,
a
deputy
asked in
1878,
when 12% was
readily
available
elsewhere;
or
when,
it
might
be
added,
Mexican corn
producers might
count on over 50% in the
1900s?140 The
very profitability
of hacienda
production,
often cited as evidence
of its
'capitalist' character,
exercised a macro-economic effect detrimental to
capitalist development.
In neo-classical
terms,
the returns to one factor of
pro?
duction
(land)
distorted the market to the detriment of
consumers, wage-
earners,
and industrialists.
Alternatively,
the landlords' extraction of 'absolute
ground
rent' inhibited
capital
accumulation and the transition to
capitalist
relations of
production.141
In similar
fashion,
the
political arrangements
which
underlay
this
pattern
of
development (above all, by guaranteeing
the landlords'
monopolistic position)
have been
variously
described: in terms of
Barrington
Moore's 'revolution from
above', whereby pre-industrial
elites and 'labour-
repressive' agriculture
were
preserved by
a
project
of 'conservative modernisa-
tion';
or in terms of the different alliances sketched
by Amin,
characterised
by
'high prices
for subsistence
goods,
thus dearer
wages,
lower
profits (and
the
liberation)
. . . ofthe beneficiaries of this landed
monopoly
from the
permanent
obligation
to
improve techniques
of
production,
under the
spur
of
competition
which no industrialist can
escape'.142
These constraints or 'contradictions' were not terminal. There is no evidence
that the Porfirian 'revolution from above' was
inherently
doomed,
ca. 1910.143
It
required
a
political crisis?arguably
a
gratuitously
self-induced
political
crisis?to
topple
the
regime
and allow social conflicts to come to the fore. In
the absence of such a
crisis,
the 'revolution from above' would no doubt have
soldiered
on,
contradictions and
all,
as others have for
generations.
But
equally,
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 23
there is no evidence that the Porfirian
regime
could have overcome these contra?
dictions
by pre-emptive
reform: the landlord interest was too
entrenched,
too
powerful,
to
permit
the radical
changes
which a
policy
of
genuine
reform would
have entailed. In the absence of
revolution,
in other
words,
the landlord class
would have
survived,
as it did elsewhere in Latin
America,
until cumulative
political,
economic and
demographic changes
ensured that reform would come
officially,
almost
consensually.144
As a
challenge
to vested
interests,
as a con-
frontation of class and
class,
and as a break with the
past,
the
agrarian
reforms
of, say,
Bolivia in the 1950s or Peru in the
1960s,
cannot
compare
with those of
Mexico between 1910 and 1940.
As
regards
the
agrarian
constraints and contradictions of the
Porfiriato,
the
revolution had a
decisive,
if not immediate
impact.
Chief
among
its effects
was the
debilitation, ultimately
the
destruction,
of the hacienda
system.
This
is not to
say
that the
revolutionary leadership
was
ardently agrarista,
or that the
peasantry emerged
as an
unquaUfied beneficiary
of the revolution. On the
contrary,
much of the debilitation and destruction was
unplanned (and
even
lamented
by
the
leadership),
and not until the mid-1930s did official
policy
espouse thoroughly agrarista objectives.
Nor did the hacienda's demise
uniformly
benefit the
campesinos,
some of whom lost the relative
security
of acasillado
status,
some of
whom,
acquiring inadequate ejidal plots, exchanged
the domina?
tion of hacendado for that of
ejidal cacique.145 Hence,
in some
districts,
the
agrarian
reform was
imposed
on a recalcitrant
peasantry.146
But it is
quite wrong
therefore to
deny
the
agrarian changes
set in motion
by
the revolution. Revolu?
tions,
in their 'functional'
sense,
are reckoned to affect class relations in some
significant way; they
are not
(in
Mao's
phrase)
'dinner
parties
. . . or
doing
embroidery';
nor are
they
neat exercises in the redistribution of the social
product,
Social-Democratic
style.147
It is not clear that the French
peasantry
was better off in the
generation
after the Revolution than it had been in the
generation before,
but that did not mean that little had
changed
or that the
Revolution was no revolution. As in Mexico a
century later,
French
peasants
exchanged
one master
(the seigneur)
for another
(the usurer);
in
parts
of
southern France 'there was little
peasant sympathy
for a revolution tht was
viewed as
urban,
anticlerical and "northern" \148 The
unpopularity
of the
(Mexican) revolution,
now stressed
(and possibly exaggerated) by
revisionist
historians,
may
best be seen not as a
consequence of'revolutionary' conservatism,
hence of the absence of social
change,
but rather as a
grass-roots repudiation
of
change
that was
dramatic,
but unwelcome. And much of this
change
was un?
planned
and
impersonal,
the
work,
so it
seemed,
of remote deities who
played
with human destinies as
callously
in Azuela's stories as in Homer's.
Landlords,
often
losing
their
political clout,
also faced threats to their eco?
nomic survival. The
physical
destruction
wrought by
the Revolution
(and
affecting agriculture
more than
industry)
should not be underestimated. 'The
ruins of
formerly prosperous
estates could be seen all
along
our route' from
Mexico
City
north towards
Queretaro,
a traveller noted in the
1920s;
he
recorded similar
sights
down on the Isthmus and north of the
Bajio.149
More
important,
the old rationale of hacienda
farming
no
longer applied:
erstwhile
monopolies
of land were eroded
(even
a modest
agrarian
reform could achieve
that);
labour had become more
costly
and more
fractious;
the state now
24 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
intervened
by way
of land distribution
(however patchy),
labour
legislation
(however cosmetic),
and taxation. In
many states,
the
physical
and economic
insecurity
of the hacienda was
perpetuated by running
battles with local
agraristas.150 Thus,
even in the absence of the
sweeping
reform which character-
ised
Morelos,151
a series of more insidious
pressures
was at work. Both the
deference and the abundance of labour were
compromised by
the revolution.
'Essentially', Gruening observed,
'the hacendados'
objection
was not so much
to
parting
with a few acres of their vast
estates,
but to
losing
their serfs. That
was what the restoration of the communal lands
inevitably spelled'.152
The
hinterland of San
Felipe
del
Progreso (northern
Mexico
state) spent
the revolu?
tion in 'an
uneasy tranquility', occasionally punctuated by agrarian
violence;
by
the 1920s the local haciendas faced
organised agrarismo,
the first official
reforms,
and straitened economic
circumstances; one, Tepetitlan,
went bust
and
passed
into the hands of its bank in 1929. 'Now
you
could
say
the hacienda
was in
decadence',
its
manager lamented,
'because the
agrarian
movement was
on
top
of
us;
the hacienda wasn't
functioning
as in the old
days'.153
Similar
complaints
emanated from states like
Chiapas
and Guerrero
(neither
states of
known
agrarista reputation)
where Governors Vidal and
Castrejon respectively
were blamed for
accelerating
land
reform, inciting agrarista organisation,
and
raising
hacendados' tax bills. 'On real estate
particularly,
in the states of
Chiapas
and
Oaxaca',
it was
reported,
'there has been a
heavy increase,
not
only
in the
rate but
(also)
in the assessed
(fiscal)
valuations on both urban and rural
pro?
perties'.154
At San Antonio
Tochatlaco,
taxes and
wages
both rose with the
revolution, leaving
the
enterprise scarcely
viable.155
Thus,
well before Cardenas took the offensive
against
the
great
commercial
haciendas of
Yucatan,
the
Laguna
and the
Yaqui valley, and,
in
doing
so,
pushed
the
figures
of formal reform to
unprecedented levels,
haciendas
through?
out the
country
had been
exposed
to inexorable
pressures.
Some landlords
fled
during
the
revolution,
never to
return;
some
migrated (from
Morelos to
Jalisco,
for
example);
some were driven
by peasant pressure
or market forces
to sell
up, wholly
or
partly?in
the
Bajio,
where
parcellisation
was accelerated
by
the
revolution,
or in the Sierra Alta of
Hidalgo,
where the
pre-emptive
sales of
declining
hacendados
helped encourage
the formation of a new class
of middle
peasants.156
A
good many
landlords,
driven to the
city
and
deprived
of their
patrimony,
set
up
in business and founded new fortunes.157
Meanwhile,
those
many
who remained
(and
sometimes
prospered),
did so less on the basis
of territorial
monopoly
and
political back-up (which, notwithstanding
the
co-option
of
revolutionary generals,
was never so
great
as in the
days
of
Diaz),
than
by
means of economic rationalisation and innovation. The
way
forward
was blazed
by entrepreneurial
landlords like William
Jenkins,
who
subtly
countered
agrarista agitation,
struck new alliances with
revolutionary politicos,
and
progressively
shed his
sprawling acres,
while
retaining
control of the
crucial,
central,
industrial
complex
of
Atencingo.158
Jenkins,
in other
words, exchanged
a local land for a local industrial
monopoly (the
trade-off which
foreign
interests,
also in the
sugar
market,
achieved in Cuba
during
the same
period).159
Or,
in
another
terminology,
he switched from the extraction of absolute to the extrac?
tion of relative
surplus
value;
that
is,
he became a
fully-fledged agrarian capitalist.
In
Mexico,
as elsewhere in Latin
America, therefore,
the
biggest,
clearest,
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 25
economic
consequence
of
agrarian
reform was the rationalisation of estate
agriculture;
the forced conversion of traditional'
(that is, 'feudal', 'semi-feudaF,
or
'pre-capitalist')
hacendados into
'modern', capitalist entrepreneurs,
It was
a conversion which the
revolutionary
leaders
favoured,
if not in so
many
words.
Cardenas
protected
Jenkins; Calles,
no mean
exponent
of commercial
agriculture
himself, urged
that the latifundistas will
gain by conceding
lands to the
villages
of the
Republic,
so that
they (the latifundistas), exploiting
that
part
ofthe land
which remains to
them,
shall become real
agriculturalists
. . . and
they
will
cease to be
exploiters
of men'.161 That is to
say: exploitation
would
proceed
through
the
anonymity
of the
market,
rather than
through palpable monopoly
and coercion.
Though Calles,
Cardenas and others worked to hasten this
transition,
they
did not set it in
motion,
nor were their official efforts
necessarily
the most
efficacious. The dissolution of the
great estate, begun
amid the chaos of the
revolution and
unprecedented
in Latin America at the
time,
formed
part (the
most
important part)
of a
general
socio-economic
convulsion,
characterised
by
armed
rebellion,
popular
mobilisation,
and economic
upheaval (rampant
infla?
tion as well as
physical destruction).
The declasse landlords of Morelos or the
Bajio (like
the
parents
of the
Sinarquista
leader, Abascal)
had their 'middle
class'
counterparts,
such as Lombardo Toledano and Gomez
Morfn,
who had
been cut loose from secure economic
moorings by
the
revolutionary upheaval.162
And there were
peasant communities, too,
which
acquired
a new
fluidity,
a new
spatial mobility (as refugees
fled Morelos for
Guerrero,
left the mountains for
the lakes of
Michoacan,
or
sought
shelter and work in the United
States);
which
experienced
the decline of old
mores?religious, sexual,
familial?and which
experimented
with new economic
activities,
like
Tepoztlan's orgy
of charcoal-
burning.163
The economic innovation forced
upon
the landlords ofthe Porfiriato
was
similarly
thrust
upon
the
peasantry.
Thus,
more than most
revolutionary
sloganising,
the ethic of work and reconstruction
tirelessly preached by
the
Sonorans and their minions accorded with
reality and,
perhaps,
entered
receptive
ears.
'Forget
the
Revolution',
the new
municipal president
of Azteca told the
people,
'What's done is done! Whoever is dead is dead. Those that are left are
left!
So, go on, get
to work. Make charcoal and
go
and sell it'. And the
people
did: 'we believed in
Montoya
and went to work to
improve things'.164
Out of the maelstrom of
revolution, therefore, emerged
a
society which,
compared
with
pre-1910,
was more
open,
fluid, mobile, innovative,
and market-
oriented. If this sounds a Friedmanite
idyll,
it was not. For deracine
peasants
and hacendados
alike, change
was
brusque, violent,
far from
idyllic.
But
Friedmanite,
in a
sense,
it
was,
since the revolution fostered conditions
appro?
priate
to
capitalism,
which
'continuously
. . . transforms the division of labour
within
society, incessantly shifting
masses of
capital
and masses of labour
from one branch of
production
to another . . .
(and) gives
rise to
changes
in
work,
to a flux of
functions,
to a
many-sided mobility
of the worker'.165 The
creation of these
conditions,
I
repeat,
was less the result of conscious
efforts,
than of collective
struggles
whose outcome was unforeseen and
unplanned;
Skocpol's de-emphasis
ofthe
purposive
elements of revolution
is,
in the Mexican
case,
largely
warranted.166
Thus, just
as the
'seigneuriaF mentality
of the
Porfiriato
(and before)
reflected
prevailing
material conditions and social
26
BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
relations, so, too,
the ruthless
entrepreneurialism
of the
1920s, captured by
Blasco
Ibanez,
was a true mirror of the
age.167
The
revolution,
we are often
told,
had much that was neo-Porfirian about
it. At a
very general level,
this
may
be true. The broad aims of the Porfirian
regime?state-building
and
capitalist development?were
continued. But
they
were continued
by
other
means,
in
radically changed circumstances,
and
thus much more
efficaciously.
An excessive concentration on
formal changes
(laws, decrees,
official
reforms),
and a
corresponding neglect
of
informal
changes, easily
leads to
misapprehension:
to an
ultra-Tocquevillean
conclusion
that the revolution
changed
little or
that,
at
least,
the more
things changed
the
more
they stayed
the same. But to continue the Porfirian
pattern
of
develop?
ment
grosso
modo?to build the
capitalist
Leviathan?the revolution had to
wreak
major changes;
had to
place government
on a
surer,
institutional founda?
tion;
and
had,
above
all,
to resolve the
stultifying
contradictions of Porfirian
agriculture. Though
some
far-sighted
revolutionaries willed both the ends and
the means
(Alvarado
with his attack on
debt-peonage;
Calles with his advice
to the
latifundista),
most did
not,
and
change
came
willy-nilly, especially
in
the earlier
years.
Above
all,
it was the force of
popular
mobilisation and revolt
which cracked the shell of the old
regime,
and
obliged governors,
landlords
and
employers
to reckon with new circumstances.
In that these new circumstances involved enhanced market
production,
labour
mobility,
and
capital accumulation,
it is
entirely
valid to
regard
the
Mexican revolution
as,
in some
sense,
a
bourgeois
revolution. Not because
it was the conscious work of the
bourgeoisie (still
less the national
bourgeoisie);
nor because it
instantly
transmuted the base metal of feudalism into the
pure
gold
of
capitalism (for,
it has
already
been
suggested, bourgeois
revolutions are
by
their
very
nature cumulative
phenomena);
but rather because it
gave
a
decisive
impulse
to the
development
of Mexican
capitalism
and of the Mexican
bourgeoisie,
an
impulse
which the
preceding regime
had been unable to
give.
This
impulse,
the most
powerful
in a series
going
back to 1854
(or
even
1810?),
resulted in a
bourgeoisie ultimately
more
capable
of
carrying through
its
political
and economic
'project':
'the difference between the Mexican
bourgeoisie
and
that of other Latin American countries is that the former lost its
revolutionary
faculties after
making ample
use of
them,
while the others have never led and
will never lead a
bourgeois
revolution. Here lies the secret of the
stability
of
Mexico's
bourgeois regime,
and the
explanation?not
of its
exceptionality?
but of its differences as
compared
with countries like
Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
etc.'.168
The idea that a
popular, agrarian revolution, leading
on to a
widespread
agrarian reform,
should be
categorised
as
'bourgeois'
is
historically quite logical.
But it
requires
a
brief,
final comment. Peasant
participation
in
'bourgeois'
revolutions has been the
subject
of
repeated
comment and
analysis:
'the Re?
forma tion . . . is the No.l
bourgeois revolution', Engels puts it,
with
disarming
simplicity,
'the
peasant
war
being
its critical
episode'.169
Dobb traced the
origins
of
English capitalism
to differentiation
among
the late medieval
peasantry
and
the
growth
of 'a sort of kulak
class',
which he
compared
to its nineteenth-
century
Russian
equivalent.170 Lenin, too,
came round to the view that
capitalism
would
develop
more
swiftly
and
surely
on the basis of
peasant farming
than on
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 27
the basis of the
great
estates: the 'Junker road'
was,
perhaps,
a dead
end,
in
Tsarist Russia as in Porfirian Mexico.171 Hence the tiationalisation' of land?
notionally
achieved after 1917?would constitute a 'radical democratic-
bourgeois' programme,
to the
advantage
of
industry.172
A similar rationale
lay
behind the
agrarian
reform of
twentieth-century
Latin
America,
at least as
regards
some of their
protagonists
and most of their
objective
effects. De
Janvry
makes
the
point,
if too
sweepingly:
'all
twentieth-century
land reforms in Latin
America
except
the Cuban and
possibly
the
Nicaraguan
ones have had the
ultimate
purpose
of
fomenting
the
development
of
capitalism
in
agriculture'.173
In the
particular
case of
Mexico,
the
agrarian
reform
ultimately
benefited
industry by deepening
the domestic market
(this
was
certainly
true
by
the
1930s,
if not
before), by shaking
out
capital
from land into
industry,
as
already
mentioned,
and
by rendering agriculture
more
efficient,
thus
capable
of
pro-
ducing cheap food, exports,
and a net transfer of resources from
countryside
to
city.174
More
generally,
it
may
be
argued,
the revolution also
provided
the
political
structures within which these
processes
could
develop
without serious
upheaval.
The
agrarian revolution,
in
short,
laid the basis for the
rapid capitalist
growth
of the last
generation.
These
developments, however,
were not evident until after the 1940s. And
it would constitute a form of
gross teleology,
of the kind I have
criticised,
to
see the
post-1940s pattern
of
development
as
flowing ineluctably
from the
1910 revolution.
Rather,
as Hamilton
puts it,
the revolution
opened up
various
'structural
options'; subsequent events, subsequent
conflicts,
would determine
the
options
taken,
the
options
discarded. The
post-1940s 'project'?the 'pre-
ferred revolution'?was
ultimately
chosen,
partly,
but not
entirely, by
con-
scious decision. Alternative
options
were scouted.
Cardenismo,
I would
argue,
was a case in
point. Maybe,
as Hamilton has also
suggested,
Cardenismo collided
with the 'limits of state
autonomy';
nevertheless,
even within these
confines,
Cardenismo
diverged
from the
'project'
of Aleman and his
successors;
like
Goldwater
thirty years later,
Cardenas offered a choice not an echo.175
Or,
in
Semo's cautious
terms,
the Cardenas reforms
'display
tendencies towards over-
coming bourgeois
limits'.176 This would be
especially
true in the matter of
agrarian reform,
where Cardenista
policies
went
beyond
the destruction of the
traditional' hacienda
(thus, by implication, beyond
the reforms later under-
taken
by
the Bolivian
revolution)
and attacked
capitalist enterprises,
like the
Laguna plantations
or Nueva Lombardia.
Though
the Cardenista
reforms,
agrarian
and
other,
were later
integrated
into a
project
of
capital
accumulation,
industrialisation,
and 'modernised
authoritarianism',
this was neither their
subjective intention,
nor their
objective consequences, during
the Cardenista
period.
And, given
that this radical alternative
was,
in terms of
ideology,
leader?
ship,
and
inspiration,
a child of the
revolution,
it must be conceded that the
revolution contained within it the
genetic potential
for a
variety
of
offspring.
The
post-1940s project?the project,
let us
say,
of Aleman?was
perhaps
the
grandson
of the
revolution,
but it was also the son of World War and Cold War.
like
Stalinism,
Alemanismo was a
revolutionary possibility,
but not a revolu?
tionary certainty.
Unilinearity
and
teleology
should be
rejected
because
they
distort our under?
standing
of historical
periods?of
the
revolution,
of Cardenismo?but also
28
BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
because
they mayblinker
our
perceptionof
the
present.
If the
past
is so
massively
'over-determined',
so
(it may
be
presumed)
is the here-and-now.
Yet,
strangely
enough,
those who stress the
unalloyed
domination of state and
capital
since
ca. 1920 are often those most
eager
to find
contemporary
cracks in the status
quo, through
which radical currents
might
filter.
They
would do better to
recognise
that the domination of state and
capital
has never been
monolithic,
that the
post-revolutionary history
of Mexico has been one of dialectical con-
flict and
change?not
unilinear
progress?and
that that
history
has left its
stamp
on
contemporary society.
The
peasants (especially
the
ejidatarios) may
be
surrogate proletarians,
but the revolution's reconstitution of the
peasantry
has
left an
organisational
and
ideological legacy
which cannot be
ignored; according
to
some,
Amin's formulation
('objectively proletarianised,
the
peasant remains,
at the level of class
consciousness,
a small
producer')
is
applicable
to
Mexico,
and has
political implications.177
It
links,
for
example,
to the continued
agrarista
rhetoric and?in the case of Echeverria?the
agrarista practice
of the
regime.178
The
long-term consequences
of the revolution
may
be a Leviathan state and
a
dynamic capitalism,
but these are themselves the historical
products
of a
distinct national
experience,
moulded not
only
from
above,
but also from
below, by
the
popular upheavals
of
1810,
1854 and 1910. Neither
repression
nor
cooption
can eliminate this
past.
It would therefore be rash to assert that
all the 'structural
options'
created
by
the revolution have been
exhausted,
that
the revolution's
legacy
has been
spent,
that the outcome is now
clear, fixed,
immutable and unilinear. The
agrarian
reform was declared terminated
(by
Calles)
in
1930;
the revolution has been
pronounced
dead on
many
occasions
since. We
may legitimately
comment on the revolution's short-term con?
sequences,
but we summarise its
long-term, epochal significance
at our
peril.
As Mao
replied,
when asked what he
thought
was the outcome of the French
Revolution: It is too
early
to
say'.
NOTES
1.
Cobb,
Richard
(1972).
The Police and the
People:
French
Popular
Protest,
1789-
1820
(Oxford), pp.
xvii-xix.
2.
Ruiz,
Ramon Eduardo
(1980).
The Great Rebellion
Mexico,
1905-1924
(New York),
pp.
3-4.
3.
Ibid.,p.S.
4.
7Z>tf.,pp. 4, 7,409-410.
5.
Skocpol,
Theda
(1980).
States and Social Revolutions A
Comparative Analysis of
France,
Russia and China
(Cambridge), p. 23;
which is echoed
by Goldfrank,
Walter
L.
(1979).
'Theories of Revolution and Revolution without
Theory', Theory
and
Societyl:
135-165.
6.
Cockcroft,
James D.
(1976).
Intellectual Precursors
of
the Mexican
Revolution,
1900-1913
(Austin
and
London), pp. xiv-v, 6,14, 29-30,
34.
7.
Ibid., p. 29;
cf.
Kula,
Witold
(1976).
An Economic
Theory of
the Feudal
System:
towards a Model
of
the Poash
Economy,
1500-1800
(London); Banaji,
J.
(1977).
'Modes of Production in a Materialist
Conception
of
History', Capital
and Class 3:
1-44, especially
18-27.
8. Co
ckcroft,
Intellectual
Precursors, pp.
29-30.
9.
Ibid., p.
xvi.
10.
Ibid., pp. xvi-xvii; Gilly,
Adolfo
(1971).
La revolucion
interrumpida.
Mexico 1910-
1920: una
guerra campesina por
la tierra
y
el
poder (Mexico);
and
Hodges,
Donald
and
Gandy,
Ross
(1983).
Mexico 1910-1982:
Reform
or Revolution
(London),
p.
83 for a
sympathetic gloss
on
Gilly.
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 29
11.
Gilly, p.
386.
12.
Ibid., pp. 43,226-227; Hodges
and
Gandy, pp. 180-181; Barta,
Armando
(1983).
'La
revolucion mexicana de 1910 en la
perspectiva
del
magonismo',
in Adolfo
Gilly
et
al.,
Interpretaciones
de la Revolucion Mexicana
(Mexico), pp.
91-108.
13.
Gilly, pp.
387-388.
14.
Skocpol, pp.
4-5.
15.
Hampson,
Norman
(1976).
A Social
History ofthe
French Revolution
(London), pp.
251, 254; Price, Roger (1981).
An Economic
History ofModern France,
1730-1914
(London), pp. 68, 83-84,
which
argues
that the decisive
changes
in French socio-
economic
development
came in the later nineteenth
century,
with the
development
of
railways.
16. Some?the
'large kulaks'?were;
most
probably
were not. See
Magraw, Roger
(1983).
France 1815-1914: The
Bourgeois Century (London), pp.
106-113.
17. de
Tocqueville,
Alexis
(1964).
L'Ancien
Regime (Oxford), pp.
4-5.
18.
Semo, Enrique (1978).
Historia Mexicana: economia
y
lucha de clases
(Mexico),
p.299.
19.
/&/<*., pp. 284,300.
20.
Foster-Carter,
Aidan
(1978).
The Modes of Production
Controversy',
New
Left
Review 107:44-77.
21.
Mora,
Manuel
Aguilar,
'Estado
y
revolucion en el
proceso mexicano',
in
Gilly
et
al,
Interpretaciones
de la Revolucion
Mexicana, p.
110.
22.
Leal,
Juan
Felipe (1973-74).
'El estado
y
el
bloque
en
poder
en Mexico: 1867-
1914',
Historia Mexicana 23: 700-721.
23. Cf.
Perry,
Laurens Ballard
(1978).
Judrez and Di'az: Machine Politics in Mexico
(DeKalb).
24.
Holloway,
John and
Picciotto,
Sol
(eds.) (1978).
State and
Capital:
A Marxist Debate
(London), p.
9.
25.
Knight,
Alan
(1980).
'Peasant and Caudillo in the Mexican
Revolution',
in D. A.
Brading (ed.),
Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution
(Cambridge), pp.
39-58.
26.
Poulantzas,
Nicos
(1973).
Poder
politico y
clases sociales en el estado
capitalista
(Madrid), pp.
336-341.
27.
Semo,
Historia
Mexicana, pp. 240, 298;
Hodges
and
Gandy, pp. 82-89, 125-129,
167, 200-225; Shulgovski,
Anatol
(1977).
Mexico en la
encrucijada
de su historia
(Mexico), pp.
42-43 and
passim; Sanderson,
Steven E.
(1981). Agrarian Populism
and the Mexican State: The
Struggle for
Land in Sonora
(Berkeley), e.g., p.
209.
28.
Marx,
Karl
(1977).
The
Eighteenth
Brumaire
of
Louis
Bonaparte (Moscow), pp. 52,
103,105.
29.
Ibid.,p.
105.
30.
Ibid., p.
63.
31.
Ibid.,pp.
110-111.
32.
Ibid.,p.
112.
33.
Poulantzas, pp. 336-341;
and the same author's Fascism and
Dictatorship:
The
Third International and the Problem
of
Fascism
(London, 1974).
Note Marx's
comment on 'Caesarism':
Eighteenth Brumaire, p.
6.
34.
Roxborough,
Ian
(1984). 'Unity
and
Diversity
in Latin American
History',
Journal
of
Latin American Studies 16: 1-26.
35.
Marx, pp. 104,110.
36.
Cordova,
Arnaldo
(1977).
La
ideologia
de la Revolucion Mexicana: La
formacion
del nuevo
regimen (Mexico),
sees 'the
struggle against
the
(Porfirian)
dictatorship'
as
involving
'from the
beginning,
and in the most coherent
fashion,
a
struggle against
foreign domination'; yet,
he
admits,
the revolution
ultimately
neither
changed?
nor even
attempted
to
change?Mexico's
'economic
dependency':
see
pp. 248,
260. Cf.
Meyer,
Lorenzo
(1977).
'Historical roots of the authoritarian state in
Mexico',
in Jose Luis
Reyna
and Richard S. Weinert
(eds.),
Authoritarianism in
Mexico
(Philadelphia), p. 17; Camin,
Hector
Aguilar,
'The Relevant Tradition:
Sonoran Leaders in the
Revolution',
in
Brading (ed.),
Caudillo and
Peasant,
pp.
122-123,
which laments the decline of a once
vigorous
national
bourgeoisie
and
30 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
cites, by way
of
corroboration,
the Communist El Machete
(then, Aug. 1927,
wedded
to Stalin's 'united
front', Shanghai notwithstanding).
37. Louis XVI: 'C'est une
revolte?';
the Duke:
'Non, Sire,
c'est une revolution'
(on
hear-
ing
of the fall of the
Bastille).
38.
Meyer,
Michael C.
(1972).
Huerta: A Political Portrait
(Lincoln), p.
157.
39.
Hampson, p.
256.
Medin,
Tzvi
(1972). Ideologia y praxis politica
de Ldzaro Cdrdenas
(Mexico), p. 5,
makes a similar
point
about the Mexican Revolution.
40.
Brinton,
Crane
(1965).
The
Anatomy of
Revolution
(New York) (first published
1938)
stressed the
specificity
of
'great revolutions',
which
emphasis
has been
pre-
served in numerous
subsequent
studies:
e.g., Skocpol, pp. xi,
3-5.
41.
Trotsky,
Leon
(1967).
The
History of
the Russian
Revolution,
3 Vols
(London),
Vol.I,p.
15.
42.
Waterbury, R., 'Non-Revolutionary
Peasants: Oaxaca
Compared
to Morelos in the
Mexican
Revolution',
Comparative
Studies in
Society
and
History
17: 410-442.
43.
Thompson,
E. P.
(1972).
The
Making ofthe English Working
Class
(Harmondsworth),
p.
15.
44.
Tilly, Charles, Tilly,
Louise and
Tilly,
Richard
(1975).
The Rebellious
Century,
1830-1930
(Cambridge), pp. 51-52,249.
45.
Stone,
Lawrence
(1970).
'The
English Revolution',
in Robert Foster and Jack P.
Greene
(eds.),
Preconditions
of
Revolution in
Early
Modern
Europe (Baltimore),
pp. 59-60; Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 10-11,
whence the
quotation.
46.
Huntington,
Samuel P.
(1971).
Political Order in
Changing
Societies
(Yale), p.
264.
47. See
Cockcroft, especially chaps 6-8,
and
pp. 143-144,177-183.
48.
Womack, John,
Jr
(1969). Zapata
and the Mexican Revolution
(New York), pp. 87,
393-404
;Cordova,pp.
154-155.
49. Cedillo is the
subject
of two excellent new
monographs: Falcon,
Romana
(1984).
Revolucion
y caciquismo.
San Luis
Potosi,
1910-1938
(Mexico)
and
Dudley
Ankerson
(DeKalb, forthcoming: precise
title
unknown).
Ankerson
depicts
Cedillo
as a
genuine agrarian populist,
in contrast to Falcon's more Machiavelhan machine
politician;
neither view
seriously
conflicts with
my argument, though
Ankerson's
fits the better.
50.
Cordova, p.
154.
51. For
example: Friedrich,
Paul
(1970). Agrarian
Revolt in a Mexican
Village (Engle-
wood
Cliffs),
on the case of
Naranja.
Another
(major)
case would be the
Laguna;
and
(a
minor
case) Ometepec
(see
no.
104,
where other
examples
are
mentioned).
52.
Meyer,
Lorenzo
(1973-74).
'El estado mexicano
contemporaneo',
Historia Mexicana
23:723.
53.
Skocpol, pp.
10-11.
54.
Knight,
'Peasant and Caudillo'.
55. Recent revisionist studies
(whose scholarly
merits I
fully recognise,
even if I dissent
from some of their
conclusions)
would include:
Meyer,
Jean
(1973).
La Revolution
Mexicaine
(Paris); Tobler,
Hans Werner
(1982).
'Conclusion: Peasant Mobilisation
and the
Revolution',
in
Brading,
Caudillo and
Peasant, pp. 245-255; Jacobs,
Ian
(1982).
Ranchero Revolt The Mexican Revolution in Guerrero
(Austin); Falcon,
Romana
(1979).
'Los
origenes populares
de la revolucion de 1910? El case de San
Luis
Potosi',
Historica Mexicana 29:
197-240,
and the same author's Revolucion
y caciquismo, e.g., pp.
271-273.
56.
Cordova, p. 262,
sees the 'virtual conclusion' of the Revolution in 1917 and Cock?
croft, p. 5,
inclines to
agree;
I conclude
my forthcoming study
of the
(armed)
Revolution with the conventional date of
1920;
Ruiz
presses
on to 1923. As
regards
the
development
of
'revolutionary'
economic nationalism see Alan
Knight,
'The
political economy
of
revolutionary Mexico, 1900-1940',
in
Abel, Christopher
and
Lewis,
Colin M.
(1985).
Latin
America,
Economic
Imperialism
and the State
(London), pp.
288-317
(though
beware: this article suffered editorial
butchery).
57.
E.g. Quirk,
Robert E.
(1970).
The Mexican
Revolution,
1914-15: The Convention
of Aguascalientes (New York), pp.
292-293.
58.
Anguiano,
Arturo
(1975).
El estado
y
la
politica
obrera del Cardenismo
(Mexico);
Ianni,
Octavio
(1977).
El estado
capitalista
en la
epoca
de Cdrdenas
(Mexico).
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 31
59.
.Hamilton,
Nora
(1982).
The Limits
of
State
Autonomy: Post-revolutionary
Mexico
(Princeton), pp. 4-15;
cf.
Holloway
and
Picciotto, p.
3.
60.
Examples
of
statolatry: Cordova, pp. 228-230, 262, 290,
322
(theory
of the
'super-
powerfuF state;
the state as
regulator
of the
economy;
the 'almost absolute
depen-
dence' of
organised
social
groups
on the
state,
and the latter's 'total
independence'
of these
groups). Hodges
and
Gandy's concept
of the Revolution as
political
and
bureaucratic,
marked
by
'the
perpetuation
in
political power
of a new
ruling
class?
the
bureaucracy' (p.
122
ff.),
is similar.
Grand, comparative statolatry
is evident in
Skocpol: e.g., pp. 35, 285, 287; however, Skocpol's adjectival preferences, tending
to the
subjective ('striking'
is her favourite
qualification
of
revolutionary
con-
sequences),
make it difficult to evaluate
just
how far the
statolatry goes.
Is it
(as
I take it to
be)
a bold new
cult,
or
merely
an
agnostic critique
of the
old,
discredited
gods
of economic reductionism?
61.
Jacobs, p.
167.
62. de la
Pena,
Guillermo
(1982).
A
Legacy ofPromises: Agriculture,
Politics and Ritual
in the Morelos
Highlands of
Mexico
(Manchester), pp. 8, 12,
253-254. And?an
example among many
in the field of Mexican labour
history?Delarbe,
Raul
Trejo
(1976).
'The Mexican Labour
Movement, 1917-1975',
Latin American Research
Review 8:
133,
talks of the
working
class moulded
by
'the needs of the
state',
which
successfully
seeks the 'demobilisation' of
'powerless' workers,
with the official
institutions of the 1930s
'perfecting'
this hierarchical
relationship.
63.
Wilkie,
James W.
(1970).
The Mexican Revolution: Federal
Expenditure
and Social
Change
since 1910
(Berkeley), pp. 37,62-65.
64.
Semo,
Historia
Mexicana, pp.
157-159.
65.
Hamilton, p. 271, juxtaposes
'structural
options
and
constraints'; though
the latter
figure
more
prominently
in her
analysis.
66.
Brandenburg,
Frank R.
(1965).
The
Making of
Modern Mexico
(Englewood Cliffs),
pp.55-56.
67.
Perry, pp.
349-350; Cordova, pp.
268-275.
68.
Womack, pp.
54-55.
69.
Beals,
Carleton
(1931).
Mexican Maze
(Philadelphia), pp. 205-213,
offers a
classic,
if
overdrawn, portrait
of the
typical revolutionary cacique,
Don Melchor.
70.
Meyer,
Lorenzo
(1978).
Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana. Periodo 1928-34:
El
conflicto
social
y
los
gobiernos
del maximato
(Mexico), p.
188.
71.
Ibid., pp.
174-175. The
figures
here
(pp.
190-193) suggest
that
prior
to 1934
private
agricultural properties
lost about one-fifth of their cultivated area in accordance
with the reform
programme;
inasmuch as
rough comparisons
can be
made,
this
indicates a turnover similar to that
brought
about
by
the French Revolution. See
Hampson, pp. 251-255, 261,
and
Magraw, pp. 17,
24.
72.
Chevalier,
Frangois (1967).
'The
Ejido
and Political
Stability
in
Mexico',
in Claudio
Veliz
(ed.),
The Politics
ofConformity
in Latin America
(Oxford), pp.
159-161.
73.
Cumberland,
Charles C.
(1972).
Mexican Revolution. The Constitutionalist Years
(Austin), pp. 349-351; Niemeyer,
E.
V.,
Jr
(1974).
Revolution at
Queretaro:
The
Mexican Constitutional Convention
of
1916-17
(Austin), pp. 60-100; Meyer,
Jean
(1973-74).
La
Cristiada,
3 Vols
(Mexico), especially
Vol.
II,
pp.
355-363 on the
revival of anti-clericalism after 1931.
74.
Meyer, Cristiada, II, p.
381.
75.
Skirius,
John
(1978).
Jose Vasconcelos
y
la cruzeda de 1929
(Mexico).
76.
Joseph,
C. M.
(1982).
Revolution
from
without
Yucatdn,
Mexico and the United
States,
1880-1924
(Cambridge), pp. 204-205,
illustrates Carrillo Puerto's
policy
of
proscription:
a
particularly thorough,
but not
wholly exceptional, example
of revolu?
tionary house-cleaning.
77. I discuss this more
fully
in
my forthcoming
The Mexican
Revolution,
1908-20
(Cambridge,
2
Vols, 1986):
see Vol.
II,
chap. 2, parts i,
ii.
78.
Craig,
Ann L.
(1983).
The First
Agraristas
An Oral
History of
a Mexican
Agrarian
Reform
Movement
(Berkeley), pp. 37-38, 40-41, 46-50,
shows that
'relatively
little
changed'
in the Los Altos
regions
before the
1930s,
and that 'the
pre-Revolutionary
land-tenure
system
had survived two decades of civil
strife';
even
here, however,
32 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
holders or local
power
and
property
were
facing new, mounting pressures.
The
picture
is
broadly
corroborated
by
Tomas Martinez Saldaiia and Leticia Gandara
Mendoza,
Politica
y
sociedad en Mexico: el caso de los Altos de Jalisco
(Mexico,
1976), pp.
63-88. On
Chiapas,
see
Benjamin,
Thomas Louis
(1981). 'Passages
to
Leviathan:
Chiapas
and the Mexican
State,
1891-1947'
(Michigan
State
University
Ph.D.),pp. 143-168,173-174.
79. Mark
Wasserman,
'Persistent
oligarchs: vestiges
of the Porfirian elite in
revolutionary
Chihuahua, Mexico, 1920-35', paper given
to the VI
Congress
of Mexican and U.S.
Historians, Chicago, Sept. 1981;
and see
Ruiz, pp.
336-369.
80.
Hodges
and
Gandy, pp. 93-97, query
the use of 'elitist models'
which, they argue,
lack 'an economic dimension'.
They may
be
right.
In this
case, however,
I shall
argue
that the ouster of the Porfirian
political
elite
(sic:
not 'the Porflrian
ruling
class')
had direct and
important repercussions
in the 'economic'
sphere.
81.
And,
since
many
of the Federals-turned-revolutionaries were Villistas
(such
as
Felipe
Angeles
and Juan
Medina), they
were eliminated in the final bout of factional con-
flict after 1914.
82.
Tobler,
Hans Werner
(1971).
'Las
paradojas
del
ejercito
revolucionario: su
papel
en la
reformaagraria, 1920-35',
HistoriaMexicana 21:
38-79; Womack, pp. 365-369,
374;
Ankerson
(forthcoming); Joseph, pp. 263-273; Friedrich, pp. 100-110;
Salamini,
Heather Fowler
(1978). Agrarian
Radicalism in
Veracruz,
1920-38
(Lincoln), pp.
35-45.
83. The
presidential
election of 1940 was the last in which
genuine
fears of
military
intervention were
aroused; thereafter,
war-time collaboration with the U.S.
speeded
the
process
of
professionalisation,
and the institutional consolidation of the 'revolu?
tionary' regime
deterred
military
adventurism.
84.
Smith,
Peter H.
(1979). Labyrinths of
Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-
Century
Mexico
(Princeton), pp.
172-176.
85. Good
examples
are
given by
Ernest
Gruening,
Mexico and its
Heritage (London,
1928), pp. 319-331,
393 ff.
86.
Raby,
David L.
(1974).
Educacion
y
revolucion social en Mexico
(Mexico), p.
127.
87.
Joseph, pp. 208-213, 271-272,
303.
88.
Meyer,
Jean
(1976).
The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican
People
Between Church
and
State,
1926-29
(Cambridge), pp. 21-24, 36,
75-82.
89.
Skidmore,
Thomas E.
(1979).
'Workers and Soldiers: Urban Labor Movements and
Elite
Responses
in
Twentieth-Century
Latin
America',
in E. Bradford Burns and
Thomas E. Skidmore
(eds.), Elites, Masses,
and Modernization in Latin
America,
1850-1930
(Austin), pp.
99-103.
90.
Roxborough, pp.
6-12.
91.
Hall,
Linda B.
(1981).
Alvaro
Obregon:
Power and Revolution in
Mexico,
1911-
1920
(Texas
A&M
University Press), pp. 210-232; Joseph, pp. 188-227, especially
p.221.
92. Recent work
by Stabb,
Powell and Raat
qualifies
the
leyenda negra
of Porfirian
racism,
and
points
to an
emerging indigenismo.
The
latter, however,
was
hardly
estab-
lished
orthodoxy by 1910; furthermore,
these studies concentrate on
major spokes-
men,
rather than broad
opinion:
on
which,
see
my
Mexican
Revolution,
Vol.
I, chap.
1.
93.
Mendoza,
Vicente T.
(1964).
Lirica narrativa de Mexico: El corrido
(Mexico), p.
75
(Papantla);
Brondo
Whitt,
E.
(1940).
La Division del Norte
por
un
testigo presencial
(Mexico), p.
11
(Magnificat);
for additional
examples: Knight,
Mexican Revolution
(forthcoming),
Vol.
I, chap. 4, part
viii;
Vol.
II, chap. 2, part
i.
94.
Katz,
Friedrich
(1981).
The Secret War in Mexico:
Europe,
The United States and
the Mexican Revolution
(Chicago), pp. 286-287;
Alvarado to
Carranza,
25
January
1916,
in Isidro
Fabela,
Documentos Historicos de la Revolucion
Mexicana,
Revolucion
y Regimen
Constitucionalista
(Mexico,
5
Vols, 1958), V, pp.
22-23.
95.
Hamilton,pp.
137-139.
96.
Sanderson, pp. 110-113; Benjamin, pp.
225-230; Contreras,
Ariel Jose
(1977).
Mexico 1940: industrializacion
y
crisis
politica (Mexico).
97.
Aguilar Mora, pp. 120-121; Cockcroft, p. xvi; Cordova, pp.
32-33.
Katz, pp.
569,
576, 578,
comes close to this
position,
at least for the
period up
to 1920.
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 33
98.
Cordova,
Arnaldo
(1974).
La
politica
de masa del Cardenismo
(Mexico), p.
14.
99.
Meyer,
Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana. .. El
conflicto social, pp.
174-175.
100. The
tendency
towards land concentration
during
the Porfiriato was
general,
but not
uniform;
in some
regions (parts
of
Michoacan;
the
Hidalgo sierra)
haciendas were
parcelled
into
smallholdings.
Parcellisation of
ownership
of this kind should
not,
however,
be confused with
parcellisation
of cultivation
(by leasing
or
sharecropping
agreements) which, though
common
enough (in
the
Bajio,
for
example), represented
an
augmentation
of
landlord/rentier profits,
not an abdication of landlord control.
101.
Bazant,
Jan
(1975).
dnco haciendas mexicanas: tres
siglos
de vida rural en San
Luis Potosi
(Mexico), pp.
182-183.
102.
Miller, Simon,
'An
agrarian economy
under
siege:
the Porfirian hacienda in the
Mexican
Revolution', paper given
to the Mexican
workshop
of the
Society
for
Latin American Studies
Conference, Cambridge, April 1984; Buve, Raymond
Th. J.
(1975).
'Peasant
Movements,
Caudillos and Land Reform
During
the Revolution
(1910-17)
in
Tlaxcala, Mexico',
Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericanos
y
del Caribe
18: 148-149.
103.
Benjamin, pp. 167,179.
104.
Evans,
Rosalie
(1926)
in D. C. Pettus
(ed.),
The Rosalie Evans Letters
from
Mexico
(Indianapolis). Asgar
Simonsen has
pointed
out to me that
Ometepec,
scene of an
agrarian jacquerie
in
1911,
became a centre of
agrarista protest
after the
revolution;
Friedrich's
study
of
Naranja
and Buve's of Tlaxcala reveal similar continuities.
And,
as
Craig,
The First
Agraristas, illustrates, significant agrarian protest
also
developed
in
regions
which had been
relatively quiescent during
the armed revolution.
105.
Mares,
Jose Fuentes
(1954).
Y Mixico se
refugio
en el desierto
(Mexico), pp. 241,
244-245; Wasserman,
'Persistent
oligarchs';
Ian
Jacobs,
'Rancheros of Guerrero:
the
Figueroa
brothers and the
revolution',
in
Brading,
Caudillo and
Peasant, pp.
89-91,
concludes his
analysis
of a
(revolutionary) family
with a neat
example
of how
'new structures ... do not
always
entail the recruitment of new men'.
106.
Womack, pp. 41-42;
and cf. Anita
Brenner,
Idols Behind Altars
(New York, 1929),
pp.
225-226.
Evans, pp. 71, 78,
154 and Luis Gonzalez
y Gonzalez,
Pueblo en vilo:
Microhistoria de San Jose de Gracia
(Mexico, 1972), pp. 133, 137-138,
on the
decline of deference.
107.
Katz, pp. 256-257; Meyer,
Historia de la Revolucion Mexicana . . . El
conflicto
social, p. 187, rightly
notes that 'at the
beginning
of the 1930s the chief feature of
the Mexican rural scene was the contradiction between the landlords' dominant
economic
position,
and their lack of
political legitimacy'.
108.
Ibid., p. 193;
and see note 71 above.
109.
Ronfeldt,
David
(1973). Atencingo:
The Politics
of Agrarian Struggle
in a Mexican
E/ido (Stanford). Stripped
of their
sprawling acres,
Anita Brenner
noted,
some land?
lords
'profited greatly
. . . as it left them in an industrial
position
and relieved them
of the worst labor
problem.
Others
resigned
themselves to
farming intensively
what
was
left, shifting
at the same time into commerce and
manufacturing';
The Wind
That
Swept
Mexico: The
History of
the Mexican Revolution 1910-42
(Austin,
1984;
first
published 1943), p.
91.
110.
Benjamin, p. 132; Joseph, p. 104; Gruening, p. 139,
notes the end of
peonage
in
notorious Valle National of Oaxaca.
111. See the
report
of the American
planter
J.
Harvey
of
Tezonapa, Veracruz,
2
August
1912,
State
Department archive,
RG
59,812.00/4779,
on his
inability
to recruit
peons
from the
village
of
Oluta,
as he had
formerly
done at fiesta
time,
now that the
local 'source of terror'?the
military garrison?had
been removed.
112.
Joseph, pp. 103-105, 213-214,
298. The American consul at
Progreso
was therefore
premature
rather than
wholly
mistaken
when,
in
1917,
he
reported
that 'labor
unions exercise
strong political
and industrial influence and
peonage appears
to have
been
effectively
abolished': A.
Gaylord
Marsh to State
Department,
31
May 1917,
State
Department archives,
RG
59,812.00/20993.
113. Did the Porfirian model of
development
involve a 'Junker road' to
agrarian capital-
ism? The fact of
rapid
land concentration
suggests yes;
but
(as
I shall
discuss)
the
internal structure of Porfirian haciendas inhibited
progress
towards free
wage
labour
34
BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
?in
some, perhaps many,
cases. Hence the ambivalence of
analysts
like
Roger
Bartra, who,
in his
interesting
article 'Peasants and Political Power in Mexico: A
Theoretical
Approach',
Latin American
Perspectives
5
(1975): 127,129,
first
argues
that 'Mexican
agriculture
at the turn of the
century
was
developing along
a road
that could be called a Porfirian version of the "via
Junker"',
then observes that
'the latifundios utilized
super-exploitation
of the labor force
(even using
feudal
forms).
In this
way they
closed the door to the
possibility
of a
"Junker"-type
development
in
agriculture'.
This second
position
is
unequivocally argued by
Marco
Bellingeri
and
Enrique Montalvo,
'Lenin en Mexico: la via
junker y
las contra-
dicciones del
porfiriato',
Historias 1
(1982):
15-29. Like so
many
historical
ques-
tions,
this one
hinges
on what is
typical
or
atypical; and,
at
present,
our level of
empirical knowledge
does not
permit
a confident answer.
Bellingeri
and Montalvo
have
certainly pointed
out the barriers which
lay
in the
path
of a smooth 'Junker'
transition,
and
which,
it is
argued here,
the Revolution
helped
demolish.
114. I take Morelos as the best case of
thorough, post-revolutionary agrarian
reform: the
consequences
are
suggested
in
Womack, pp. 372-375; though
cf. Arturo
Warman,
. . . Y venimos a contradecir: Los
campesinos
de Morelos
y
el estado nacional
(Mexico, 1976), pp. 165-168,
178-183.
Barta,
'Peasants and
political power',
takes
the classic Marxist view that the
agrarian reform, by blocking 'de-peasantisation',
created 'an obstacle to
capitalist development
in
agriculture':
see
pp.
127-128.
Magraw, pp. 15, 56-57, suggests
a French
parallel.
115. See the resume in David Goodman and Michael
Redclift,
From Peasant to Proletar-
ian:
Capitalist Development
and
Agrarian
Transitions
(Oxford, 1981), pp.
185-213.
116. The relative absence of free
land, coupled
with
growing
landlord
monopoly
of
resources,
ruled out
any general application
of the
Chayanov principle: peasant
farmers were
rarely
in a
position
to
compete successfully against
hacienda
production
(as they had,
for
example,
in the colonial
period).
117. Rather than cite the extensive
corpus
of work
by Enrique Semo,
Jan
Bazant,
David
Brading,
Charles
Harris, Harry Cross,
Marco
Bellingeri,
John
Tutino,
Simon Miller
and
others,
I would recall John Coatsworth's comment: 'not one estate owner has
been found who
might qualify
as the sort of
aristocratic, prestige-oriented,
economic
nincompoop
once
thought by many
to be
typical
of
Spanish
American hacendados"':
'Obstacles to Economic Growth in
Nineteenth-Century Mexico',
American Historical
Review 83
(1978):
87.
118.
Ennquez,
Andres Molina
(1909).
Los
grandes problemas
nacionales
(Mexico), pp.
81-103;
Boorstein
Couturier,
Edith
(1968).
'Modernizacion
y
tradicion en una
hacienda: San Juan
Hueyapan,
1902-11',
HistoriaMexicana 18: 35-55.
119.
Katz,
Friedrich
(1980).
La servidumbre
agraria
en Mexico en la
epoca porfiriana
(Mexico),
pp.
37-38; Warman, p.
89.
120.
Warman, pp. 70,
72.
121. Goodman and
Redclift,
pp.
100-105;
de
Janvry,
Alain
(1981).
The
Agrarian Ques-
tion and
Reformism
in Latin America
(Baltimore), pp.
106-109.
122. 'The mere
appearance
of the circulation of commodities and the
currency
of
money
does not sullice to
supply
the historical conditions for the existence of
capital';
'capitalist cooperation
. . .
presupposes
the existence of the free
wage
worker who
sells his labour
power
to
capital';
'the
process
which clears the
way
for the
capitalist
system
. . . transforms the actual
producers
into
wage workers';
and so on.
Marx,
Karl
(1957). Capital,
2
Vols,
J. M. Dent & Sons
(London), I, pp. 156-157, 351;
II, pp.
791-792.
123.
Pare,
Luisa
(1977).
El
proletariado agricola
en Mexico:
campesinos
sin tierra o
proletarios agricolas? (Mexico) adopts
this
position
in
regard
to
Mexico; Amin,
S.
and
Vergopoulos,
K.
(1977).
La
question paysanne
et le
capitalisme
(Paris)
do so
globally:
see
especially pp.
182-204 for a
cogent analysis
of the modern
'peasant'
as a de
facto piece-worker.
Of
course,
this
departure
from the letter of Marx is
contentious: Goodman and
Redclift, pp.
96-98.
124.
Bauer,
Arnold
(1975).
Chilean Rural
Society (Cambridge)
has stressed the constric-
tions of the market in
early nineteenth-century Chile,
even at times of
supposed
export 'boom'; though
I know of no
equivalent, comprehensive study
of the Mexican
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION
35
economy
in this
period,
the available evidence
points
in the same direction. Coats-
worth,
'Obstacles to economic
growth', p. 82,
notes a
50%
drop
in real
per capita
income in Mexico between 1800 and
1860,
while his El
impacto
economico de los
ferrocarriles
en el
porflriato
(2 Vols, Mexico, 1976)
illustrates the dramatic market
expansion
made
possible
after the 1870s.
125.
Glade, William, (1969).
The Latin American Economies: A
Study of
their Institu-
tional Evolution
(New York), pp.
306-310,
319-321.
126. Alan
Knight, 'Peonage
and Unfree labour in
Nineteenth-Century Mexico',
paper
given
to the
History Workshop
Conference on
Slavery
and Unfree
Labour, Oxford,
April
1985.
127.
Katz,
Servidumbre
agraria, pp. 13,
34.
During
the
revolutionary inflation, mining
companies preferred
to
dispense charity
than to raise
wages, e.g.,
U.S. Naval
report,
Manzanillo,
9 November
1915,
State
Department
archives,
RG
59,812.00/16843.
128.
Katz,
Servidumbre
agraria, pp. 83-103, gives
Galindo's 1905
report
on
peonage
in
the Puebla-Tlaxcala
region, indicating
this
phenomenon.
129.
Ibid., pp. 40, 100-101, reports
the
attempt;
for the full
story, acutely analysed,
see
Bellingeri,
Marco
(1976).
'L'economia del latifondo in Messico: l'hacienda San
Antonio Tochatlaco dal 1880 al
1920',
Annali della Fondazione
Luigi
Einaudi
10: 287-428.
130.
Bellingeri, pp. 370-380,409-413.
131.
Katz,
Servidumbre
agraria, pp. 38-39, 87, 89,
98-99.
132.
'Purely
formal' in that the cash
wage may
consist of credit
recycled through
the
hacienda
itself,
and cash advances
may?according
to the classic form of
oppressive
debt-peonage?serve
to maintain a
quasi-servile
labour force.
Thus,
not
only
serfs
and
slaves,
but even some ostensible
'proletarians', may
in fact fall short of the
definitional
requirements
of 'free
wage
labour'
(which
'must be
doubly
free: free
from access to land and free from the control of a
particular employer')?notwith-
standing
that their
employers may
be
realising healthy profits
in the
marketplace.
The
quotation
is from Tom
Brass,
'Coffee and rural
proletarianization:
a comment
on
Bergad',
Journal
of
Latin American Studies 16
(1984):
144.
133.
Womack, p.
49; Warman, pp.
62-63; Joseph, pp. 29, 34; Margolies,
Barbara Luise
(1975).
Princes
of
the Earth: Subcultural
Diversity
in a Mexican
Municipality (Wash-
ington),pp.
19-22.
134. Gonzalez
Roa,
Fernando
(1919).
El
aspecto agrario
de la revolucion mexicana
(Mexico), p.
200.
135. Gonzalez
Navarro,
Moises
(1970).
Historia moderna de Mexico. El
Porfiriato:
La
vida social
(Mexico), p.
218.
136.
Chase,
Stuart
(1931).
Mexico A
Study of
Two Americas
(New York), p.
313.
137.
Anderson, Rodney (1976).
Outcasts in their own Land: Mexican Industrial
Workers,
1906-1911
(Dekalb), pp. 29-31, 251;
Consul
Bonney,
San
Luis,
to State
Depart?
ment,
2 November
1912,
State
Department archive,
RG 59
812.00/5446.
138.
Katz,
Servidumbre
agraria, pp. 34-35;
John H.
Coatsworth,
'Anotaciones sobre la
production
de alimentos durante el
Porfiriato',
Historia Mexicana 26
(1976):
167-
187;
Gonzalez
Roa, p. 97; Margolies, p.
28.
139. The economic form and social context of hacienda
production
differed from
region
to
region (as suggested here);
and these differences were
important
determinants of
the
'ecology
of revolution' after 1910. For
other?e.g. macro-economic?analytical
purposes,
however,
it is the common characteristics of hacienda
production
which
deserve
emphasis.
140.
Cumberland,
Charles C.
(1968).
Mexico: The
Struggle for Modernity (Oxford),
p.212.
141.
Marx,
Karl
(1966), Capital (Moscow),
book
III, chap. xlv, especially pp.
760-762.
142.
Moore, Barrington,
Jr
(1969).
Social
Origins of Dictatorship
and
Democracy:
Lord
and Peasant in the
Making of
the Modern World
(Harmondsworth),
pp.
433-436;
Amin and
Vergopoulos, p.
33.
143.
Ruiz, pp. 12, 24-25, Cockcroft,
pp.
xv-xvi, 53-54, among
other
analyses,
seem to
exaggerate
the structural
inevitability
of the Revolution.
144. The Bolivian and Peruvian
agrarian reforms,
for
example,
involved less the
36 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
dismemberment of
profitable, productive
haciendas
(like
those of
Morelos)
in favour
of a militant 'external'
peasantry,
than the
emancipation
of an 'internal'
peasantry
from 'feudal'
ties;
equally, they
came at a time when their landlord
victims,
far from
constituting
a
'hegemonic'
class
(as
Porfirian landlords
arguably had),
were under
attack from
powerful
urban
interests, political
and economic.
(I
am
referring
to the
agrarian
reform in the Peruvian
sierra,
not the
coast.)
145.
Warman, pp. 68-69, 124-126,
204 on the
plight
of the Morelos realenos
('trusty'
peons);
and
ibid., pp. 158-161, 182, 192,
and
Benjamin, p. 249,
for
examples
of
the
new, ejidal caciquismo.
146.
E.g., Craig,pp.
125-126.
147. Mao
Tse-Tung (1967). 'Report
on an
Investigation
of the Peasant Movement in
Hunan',
in Selected Works
ofMao Tse-Tung,
3 Vols
(Peking),
Vol.
I, p.
28.
148.
Magraw,pp.28,111.
149.
Tschiffely,
A. F.
(1952). Tschiffely's
Ride
(London), pp. 232, 259,
263-264.
150. Evans and Friedrich offer
good examples.
Rural
property,
an observer noted in the
early 1930s,
was 'now
very
much a
wasting asset';
the haciendas had 'fallen
upon
evil
days'; and,
even where hacendados
clung
to their
patrimony,
it involved them an
'endless, heart-breaking game'; Marett,
R. H. K.
(1939).
An
Eye-witness of
Mexico
(London), pp. 14, 16,
96.
Perhaps
Marett
protested
too
much;
but
so, too,
do those
who
argue
for the
preservation
of the rural status
quo
until the mid-1930s.
151.
By
the end of 1933
(that is,
still
prior
to the Cardenista
reforms) ejidos
embraced
nearly
half the total area of Morelos
(47%)
and at least four-fifths of the state's
crop
land:
Simpson, Eyler
N.
(1937).
The
Ejido:
Mexico's
Way
Out
(Chapel Hill),
pp 622-623; though
cf. also
pp.
573-574.
152.
Gruening, p.
145.
153.
Margolies, pp.
35,
39.
154.
Benjamin, pp.
188-195
(including
the
quotation
from the American consul at Salina
Cruz, p. 191); Jacobs, pp.
145-157.
155.
Bellingeri, pp.
382-387.
156. I refer to
parcellisation
of
ownership,
not
merely
cultivation. See
Brading,
D. A.
(1978).
Haciendas andRanchos in the Mexican
Bajio,
Leon 1700-1860
(Cambridge),
pp.
208-216; Schryer,
Frans J.
(1980).
The Rancheros
of Pisaflores:
The
History of
a Peasant
Bourgeoisie
in
Twentieth-Century
Mexico
(Toronto), pp.
37, 42, 51,
64-65,78,80-82,93.
157. Several
examples
of elite survival and diversification can be found in Flavia
Derossi,
The Mexican
Entrepreneur (Paris, 1971);
see
pp. 22-23,157,
259.
158. See
Ronfeldt, Atencingo, passim.
159.
Alier,
Juan Martinez
(1977). Haciendas,
Plantations and Collective Farms:
Agrarian
Class Societies
(London), pp.
100-101.
160. De
Janvry, chap. 6, especially pp.
211-218. De
Janvry's
stress on the causal link
between
agrarian
reform and
capitalist development (not
least in the 'nonreform
sector')
is
appropriate;
that is not to
say
that his
typology
of reforms
(p. 206)
is
right
or that his inference of motive from outcome
(note 173, below)
is valid. Both stand
in need of
qualification.
161.
Ronfeldt, Atencingo, pp.
19-29; Cordova, p.
317.
162.
Meyer,
Jean
(1979).El Sinarquismo:
Un
fascismo
mexicano?
(Mexico), p. 55; Krauze,
Enrique (1976).
Caudillos culturales en la revolucion mexicana
(Mexico), pp. 37-39,
43-44,61-63.
163.
Lewis,
Oscar
(1969).
Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and his
Family (London),
pp. 150, 156,174-175; Beals,
Mexican
Maze, pp. 206-208; Gonzalez,
Pueblo en
vilo,
pp.133,137-138.
164.
Lewis,
Pedro
Martinez, p.
174.
165.
Marx, Capital,
Vol.
I,p.
526.
166.
Skocpol, pp.
14-18. It should be added that
Skocpol's
attribution of
'purposive'
and 'voluntarist'
explanations
to other
theorists/historians
of revolution is consider-
ably exaggerated;
and her
de-emphasis
of such
explanations
leads
straight
to the
statolatrous
position
criticised earlier in this
paper (crudely: popular
discontent
does not count for
much,
so
long
as the state
apparatus
remains immune to
THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 37
externally-generated crisis).
This
position
does not follow
logically, however,
from
a
critique
of
purposiveness. And,
we
may note, Skocpol's key
case
(South Africa)
now looks rather less
supportive
of her thesis than it did at the time of
writing;
with
luck,
it
may
end
up refuting
it.
167.
Ibanez,
V. Blasco
(1920).
Mexico in Revolution
(New York), p.
8.
168.
Semo,
Historia
Mexicana, p.
3 05.
169.
Engels,
Frederick
(1977).
The Peasant War in
Germany (Moscow), p.
188.
170.
Dobb,
Maurice
(1972).
Studies in the
Development of Capitalism (London), pp.
60-61.
171. Amin and
Vergopoulos, pp.
105 -115.
172.
Ibid., p. 112; Bellingeri
and
Montalvo, pp.
17-18.
173. De
Janvry, p.
202.
174.
Knight,
'Political
Economy
of
Revolutionary Mexico', pp. 306-307,
where relevant
sources are cited.
175.
Hamilton, pp. 280-286,
is a sensitive discussion.
176.
Semo,
Historia
Mexicana, p.
303.
177. Amin and
Vergopoulos, p.
58. Cf.
Bartra,
'Peasants and Political
Power', pp.
140-
144,
and
Pare, pp.
162-171
who, similarly,
derive
political
conclusions from the
survival of
'peasant' attitudes/rhetoric/institutions/policy (which
Bartra locates in
the 'structure of
mediation'), despite
the
incorporation
of
peasants (evan
as
defacto
proletarians)
into a
system
of
agrarian capitalism. Hodges
and
Gandy, pp. 210-211,
allude to this
problem
and take the extreme
position
that the
regime's
constant
recreation of the
peasantry (qua peasants,
not
proletarians)
defies the
logic
of
capital
and
represents
the
bureaucracy's 'political
need for a
peasant base';
hence the
primary
division within Mexican
society
is not the classic one between workers and
capitalists,
but rather that between
'capitalists
and bureaucrats'
(pp. 219, 225).
I cannot
agree.
178.
Sanderson, chap.
7.