The Mexican Revoluntion - Knight

Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
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: Wiley on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
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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 S
The Mexican Revolution: Bou

Nationalist? Or just a 'Great R
ALAN KNIGHT
University ofEssex
What kind of revolution was the Mexican Revolution? The nature of the q
tion is such that any answer?especially a brief answer like this?mus
tentative: for it involves not only consideration of a broad and com
historical process (on which there may be major empirical disagreements)
also the application of appropriate theories or organising concepts (on whi
a priori assumptions may radically differ). Historical arguments, of co
are never entirely empirical, and always depend on the application of s
exogenous theories/concepts/'laws': overt theoretical constructs (Marx
modernization or dependency theory), Hempelian 'covering laws', or?cover
laws decked out in fustian?the maxims of 'common sense'. As regards s
historical questions, exogenous 'theory' is at a discount: 'the facts speak
themselves'. But these are rarer than often thought. Many questions, espe
questions of moment, demand some theoretical, conceptual, compara
import. Historians?and others?who reject any such approach (either ta
or, in the case of Richard Cobb, with a certain aggressive panache)1 do the
selves a double disservice: (a) they rule out a wide and legitimate rang
historical inquiry and (b) they fool themselves, in that the vaunted ab
of 'imposed', 'alien' theories/concepts/comparisons opens the door to obscu
arbitrariness and camouflaged 'common-sense' usages.
Some historians of the Mexican Revolution go this way. Others, to t
credit, introduce general theories and concepts; but too often they do
dubious fashion. A common, sad spectacle is that of the narrative histo
who, striking out from the shallows of empirical history (usually in a bri
preface or conclusion) clutches instinctively at a Marxist life-belt which, ent
inadequate for the purpose, promptly deflates, leaving the victim to floun
In his recent The Great Rebellion, which appears?with no apologies
Clarendon?in yet another 'Revolutions in the Modern World' series, Ra
Ruiz asserts that Mexico did not experience a revolution but a 'great rebell
This striking argument (what did the series editor make of it?) derives fr
Ruiz's model of a twentieth-century revolution, which?as in Russia, China
Cuba?must achieve 'a transformation of the basic structure of socie
radically changing 'class structures as well as the patterns of wealth and inc
distribution', and further 'modify(ing) the nature ofa nation's economic dep
dency on the outside world'.2 1917 thus provides the yardstick and, compa
with the Bolsheviks, Mexico's 'revolutionaries' are a poor lot?mere 'reb
'measured by the standards of Lenin and his disciples... (Zapata) fails woefu
short of being a revolutionary'.3 We should note, for future reference, th
2 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH
Ruiz readily accords the French Revolution 're

recognises some vague kinship between the Frenc
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) bec

but common notion of 'revolu
recent, rather over-rated compa
formations of a society's state a
carried out by class-based revol
(for, as Skocpol acknowledges, t
world history'), a would-be revo
transformation?actual change
Ruiz and Cockcroft are, indeed,
is prepared to concede the Mexi
see why in a moment). For them
revolutions, and the former i
grounds. Implicit in their 'theo
revolution looks like. Ruiz, we h
tion. But historians no longer b
initiated in 1789 and continue
stalled 'capitalism'. In respect
Revolution neither expropriated
pre-1789 landownership; 'the tra
tion was ... far less radical than
century'.15 Nor does it appear
supposed beneficiaries of rev
off than their fathers and gran
in these conclusions, is reinforc
ville's acute analysis is borne
phases: one in which the sole
the past; and a second in which
the wreckage of the old order';
ment both stronger and far mo
had overthrown'.17
Ruiz is hardly consistent, th
the 'revolutionary' status which
unhistorical and theoretically s
revolution, especially a Tocqu
sweeping changes in social relat
duction) in a relatively short tim
socialist revolutions are process
processes initiated and punctuat
in this respect, an even better e
tions are, in comparison, dilato
sive waves of bourgeois revo
realistic and historically faithfu
duction is a matter for the long
accelerated by political events
1789, 1830,1848?is apparent.19 H
knock-out, revolutionary punch
the old social order; they should
their sequential relationship. Thi
Any such exercise, however, runs a risk which a g

marxisant analyses?not just those of the Mexican R
a descent into some sort of Marxist functionalism.20
of the historical record, and rightly dismissive of a
tion from 'feudal' to 'bourgeois', some writers have
explanatory concepts, producing grotesque hybrids
feudocapitalista Porfiriato.21 Juan Felipe Leal has c
tionalist chronology of the ancien regime: creation
1854); hegemony of the liberal-landlord fraction, un
(1867-76); hegemonic crisis (1876-80); 1880, rec
bloc, hegemony ofthe imperialist fraction ofthe bou
ship; 1890, irruption ofthe Mexican industrial bourg
diversification of the landlords', and 'new comp
1908, 'expulsion of a sector of landlords from the
much of this open to empirical question?above all,
rupture where there is continuity, and of making
attributions, e.g. the supposed 'parliamentary' form
theoretically dubious, in that it appropriates conve
ventional?'bourgeois' political history and then
class content and significance. Administrations are
classes or class fractions; shifts in the -superstructure
seismic motions below. Though there may be precede
the classics of Marxism, e.g. Marx's The Class Strug
these are not the weightiest of theoretical auth
approach?whereby class attributions are read off f
narrative?is all too common; as, for example, t
Nicos Poulantzas suggest. 'In place of theories based o
tion and class struggle', it has been pointed out, ex
'utilize the political concepts of Poulantzas?'power
ing class', etc.?like pigeon-holes which can be filled
from a political analysis of the class structure of a
analyses of the Revolution, in which political f
Carrancismo, are reduced to classes or class fractio
ideological obiter dicta and/or a narrow prosopograp
offered criticisms of this approach elsewhere.25
Two particular variants of this 'class fraction' inte
tion deserve closer attention. First, there is the fash
tions (which, again, display the influence of Po
According to this analysis, the Revolution establish
in which a stalemate of class forces enabled the
the 'revolutionary caudillismo' of the Sonorans?to
relatively autonomous of class forces (though, ulti
the bourgeoisie).27 Again, there are major problems
Marx's original formulation of Bonapartism is itself
ruling 'absolutely' one moment, then surrender
and 'all classes, equally impotent and equally mute,
the rifle butt'; the state is not just 'relatively auton
pletely independent'.28 Yet, at the same time, 'the s
in midair. Bonaparte represents

viously, we should note, it is
refuse of all classes'?which co
base himself unconditionally'.30
an artificial caste', viz., the bur
classes of society', underpins hi
stress?Bonapartism ultimately s
it to be his mission tosafeguard "
replete with paradox and epigram
of rigorous theorising. Yet it h
theoretical constructs: Bonapart
autonomous' capitalist state, int
in Latin America (for some, pop
able).33 It is not surprising, gran
constructs are wobbly. And, com
they open their doors to all and
Caesarist/Bonapartist salon that
their theoretical raison d'etre) b
states are ten-a-penny. Admis
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
moderate, pragmatic, and evolutionary and (b) its p

Porfiriato, rather than to some mythical genesis
revolution. The revolutionaries failed?indeed,
Mexican 'dependence' because they never had any
their Cientifico predecessors (I refer to the Cie
sought only to renegotiate Mexico's relations with
with the changes wrought by a generation of Por
statements and policies during 1910-20, and the r
popular xenophobia (directed against foreign capit
immigrants were a different matter), this outcom
The Revolution was not, in this sense, a nation
nationalist revolution betrayed.
So far, the argument has been negative: the dem
a mere?however 'great'?rebellion is theoretically s
fathering of class fractions warrants a snip fr
Bonapartism nor the revolution of the national
hypotheses. What positive alternative(s) may be o
conceptualization of the Revolution, its character a
ous studies of 'revolution' now available (most of
different kinds of definition seem to hold sway: w
and the functional. Furthermore, arguments abou
revolution sometimes hinge upon (unacknowledge
tions. A descriptive definition says what a revo
embraces major violence, political?maybe class?
and attendant social upheaval. Revolution is here d
rebellion or cuartelazo?a useful, conventional and
by Louix XVPs famous exchange with the Due de la
In the same vein, historians of the Mexican Re
rightly distinguished between the Revolution and
coups and minor revolts.38 But a 'revolutionary' m
forth a post-revolutionary mouse: historical outco
proportion to the violence and casualties which m
case of France, for example, 'there is. .. some appar
ing the Revolution as a largely ephemeral phenome
in an age accustomed to greater stability than our o
with more lasting significance than was actually th
there are 'failed' revolutions, like Taiping or 1905;
functionally ineffective, except inasmuch as they (
for later, successful revolutions. To go further: a
should, I would argue, contain three key elements
distinguish revolution (failed or successful) fro
failed or successful); and which thus preserves the
tions'.40 These elements are: (i) genuine mass part
of rival visions/ideologies (which may or may not
wish to exclude multi-class movements of, say, n
suasion: English Puritanism, the Risorgimento, an
ments), and (iii) a consequent, serious battle over po
These three elements go together. A revoluti
participation (though, necessaril

involved). Participation is 'genu
fodder; there is a significant deg
In Trotsky's celebrated formulat
of all a history of the forcible e
ship over their own destiny'.41 N
rare and usually short-lived?as
it never happened at all. While i
a set of commitments: religious,
or class-based. These popular app
?seem nai've, delusory, even in
take the case of the 'non-revo
their serrano caciques to battle a
entertained no far-reaching, i.
performed a descriptively revolut
effective fashion in the Revolutio
not acting as the dragooned victi
termed 'non-revolutionary' since
tive', hence 'non-revolutionary' o
valid. But if, displaying what Th
of posterity', we set up such a s
to segregate 'revolutionary' sheep
ing an arbitrary division which
For backward-looking, 'conser
popular movements have played
diverse as Lawrence Stone and Ka
just when (the living) seem en

things, in creating something t
periods of revolutionary crisis
the past to their service and bo
costumes, in order to present th
honoured disguise and this borr
Indeed, a strict interpretation of

and a host of lesser popular mov
status quo and revolutionised the
looking, prescriptive norms and s
This raises the second criterio
invoked to the detriment of tr
tions are?rightly?judged on w
like. Here, 1905 and 1917 stand p
of what a revolution must achiev
many are variations on the same
a functional requirement (a 'rapi
class structure') with a descripti
by class-based revolt from below
fundamental, and violent change
in its political insitutions, social
and politics'.46 Historians of the Mexican Revolution

tional criteria so demanding that the Revolution b
tion which other 'great' revolutions?certainly thos
?would suffer if similarly inspected) and a whole ho
pants are, in effect, denied 'revolutionary' status.
?like Cockcroft?accord 'revolutonary' status by vir
pants to a preferred norm, that of the militant, p
P.L.M.47 Yet pre-eminent rebel movements, like Zap
lated: they were neither proletarian nor socialist; an
years, they entertained no grand project for the f
Mexico.48 No more?to take another example?d
build Jerusalem in the green and pleasant Valle del
notwithstanding, the Cedillos envisaged?and Sat
mented?a local, rural, personalist and restorative so
Zapata and the Cedillos (and many like them) were,
could only implement their desire reforms by revo
the vision which impelled them (for visions, myth
were crucial) was drawn from the past, perhap
Cordova, who understands this well enough, is logic
it against his own (functional) definition of revolution
can we legitimately speak of a revolution in the

movement? Much of what we now know about Z
suggests no. That return to the past on which th
was founded, the lack of both a national proje
a conception of the State, are elements which pr
as a revolution. A revolution, social or political, is
to restore the past; a revolution is national and fo
seizure of political power figures as its prime object
Following Stone and Marx, I would dissent. And I w

common-sense, semantic grounds that to deny the
Zapatismo and most popular movements of the
pedantic and misleading; and second, because it invol
of rebel/revolutionary movements on the basis ofa
ated criterion: that of ideological position. It th
which the fundamental progressive/backward-look
distinction is based. By the same token, it neglect
efficacy, not least in terms of class struggle. The
the ideological sophistication of the Flores Magon;
to rend the old order and attempt the creation of so
And that radically different something, though it w
a stark contrast to the Porfirian status quo ante. Z
movements of similar type, fought for the imple
vision, which could elicit fierce popular allegiance (
groups). If the vision was nostalgic, the action was
consciously revolutionary. And it is not unknown
visions to be transmuted?especially in the heat
forward-looking, radical ideologies: thus the millen
and Chinese peasantries (eviden

into the revolutionary movemen
the inarticulate, localised rebellio
organised, more sophisticated
brings me to the third, final, and
which is also raised by the poncl
may be true that popular movem
state power?and that this prov
of the rural gen masses behind a
confrontation with the state, a
the state (which, as Lorenzo Mey
by 1914).52 They thus contribu
a situation which has been seen
'political-conflict' approach) as d
petition for political power betwe
?i.e. the breakdown ofthe state.5
I would therefore, justify the
based popular movements, poss
sustained struggle (political, mil
sovereignty. Irrespective of ou
clearly fits these descriptive c
before moving on to the second,
be necessary to flesh out the s
elsewhere suggested that the M
terms not of two contenders (ol
(Porfirismo and Huertismo); refo
urban middle class); popular m
serranos); and the ultimate natio
which mutates, without signif
coalition of the 1920s.54 It will a
categories, e.g. regimes, classes,
representing clusters of interests
?ideological, regional, clientelis
general level of analysis but, of
analytical purposes. Class may be
e.g. nationally, between the old
specific cases such as Morelos,
Other divisions, such as that bet
popular movement) and Carranci
reduced to class interests, not
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
emphasise instead the revolutionary role of the mid

or the now popular rancheros (rancheros and peasant
misleadingly, segregated, not least by the shibbolet
There is often, too, an underlying implication that to
class the peasantry must display a level of revol
terms of sustained, majority activity, broad geogra
sciousness and political sophistication?which few
letarian or peasant) have ever attained. Of course, i
high, the peasant nag will fail at the first. In this
historians (such as Tannenbaum), and?for all their
(Cockcroft, Gilly, Semo) at least grasp that the revolu
knew well enough, a mass, popular movement, pittin
groups, classes and ideologies, and revealing, in drama
ofthe old regime.
The character of the revolution?popular, ideo
obvious implications for its outcome; definition and
A dismissal or de-emphasis of the revolution's prof
likely to encourage a view of its outcome which stre
But discussion of the revolution's outcome is notor
attempt must be prefaced by some preliminary cla
stop the clock and ask 'what has changed?'; but we
change to the revolution, i.e. not to fail into the ol
propter hoc, whereby all post-revolutionary develo
the revolution, even those which were immanent in
must decide at which point to stop the clock?19
1940, 1985? The later the date, the greater the risk
tionary' changes which are not primarily of revolut
the economic nationalism of the 1930s, which must
as post-revolutionary, national context).56 Yet, if S
(and I believe it is) it would be wrong to stop in, sa
that conjuncture was in the crystallisation of the pos
the same token, it would be wrong to close a gener
Revolution with Thermidor, or even the Restoratio
of this essay). We face, therefore, a familiar problem
less garment of history. But the problem is especial
coat of many colours?the garment is rich, variegate
contention. 1920, for example, may afford a goo
certain conjunctural political changes; but even
reach firm conclusions about the revolution's epochal
The optimal solution, I shall suggest, is a combina
term perspectives: the latter focussing on the 1920s
the former on general consequences down to the pr
general consequences is fraught with a particular d
tackled at the outset. Discussion of post-revolutionar
confined within a teleological straightjacket. The r
fixed lines of development, hence all subsequent
neutrally) can be traced back to the revolution, to t
it conferred. Three principal teleologies are influen
revolutionary orthodoxy, which se

ence: Gesta Dei per Mexicanos. Tha
?and still proceeds?towards s
national integration. It is the stoc
The historical implication is that
those who fought and killed eac
outcome. Powerful in the rhetori
in serious historiography?though
Two alternative teleologies repre
One gives priority to the onward
and all 'revolutionary' regimes hav
ing. The revolution itself was a bo
that it was not socialist, and may
and proletarian forces; sometimes
threw a feudal, or at least pre-cap
sented the conscious project of
regimes, Cardenas' included, have in
development,58 According to this
school?the state has served as an
national;it is, in the jargon of on
influential, rival teleology also d
nomous' state) from grand theory
autonomous of capital?becomes
and the rise of the state dominate
tion) much as the ascendant midd
of British history. When framed w
stresses the relativity of the st
the Bonapartist theory mention
for whom the state's autonomy c
a kind of statolatry, which now
studies.60 *When all is said and
cludes, 'all the complexities of the
one dimension: the state'.61 Guille
of the Morelos highlands, takes a
he announces at the outset, 'runs
more, stretches back far into t
'power domain'?constitutes 'the
munal goals; from colonial tribu
and contemporary tax collection
seen 'pervading economics and p
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
too far, and that to exchange class reductionism for stato

it is probably a loss. There are three main objections to
able of the three teleologies. First, it imparts a kind of
to modern Mexican history, in that all major developm
hooked up to this basic engine of change. And the engin
much the same direction: that is, towards centralis
bureaucracy. Secondly, this view empirically exaggera
of the state, especially for the earlier period (roughly, p
read back the modern Mexican state?with its devel
corporate structures, massive budget, pervasive econo
longevity?into an age when it did not exist; when
yesterday's minnow. Nor was the generation of Leviath
We should not overlook?as Maitland reminded us?that
lodged in the past were once part of an unknown future.
The Sonoran state of the 1920s was precarious, its au
caudillo and Catholic Church, its survival predicated o
its character, according to James Wilkie, still basically
Cardenas presidency?rightly seen as a key period in th
modern state?began with a major schism within th
ended with the traumatic election of 1940, when the ou
for a irriddle-of-the-road, safety-first successor, had to r
opposition, a majority vote against the official can
political bitterness and disquiet. 1940 revealed the lim
strengths, of the maturing revolutionary state (and, ind
for Mugica rather than Avila Camacho, i.e. for his pref
than for the safe candidate, these limitations might hav
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
return to in conclusion). All thr

There are no grounds for homoge
The revolution did not set the cou
in the short term (taking a vantag
certain important changes, some
in the longer term, the revolutio
while closing off others. It create
though whether these opportun
events, themselves the product of
therefore, is to specify what had
1920s; then to consider how sub
reform, state-building, econom
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
to reform?in rhetorical and practical terms?was

clericalism, and its related espousal of state education
large (much larger than other 'socio-economic' issue
Congress of 1916-17; they dominated the politics of
especially after 1926; they were still dominant as
close.73 In the short term (in, say, the twenty years fo
the chief legacy of the revolution in the realm of fo
was therefore a virulent anti-clericalism, linked to
state-building. This substantiates, rather than contr
Sonoran etalisme derived precisely from an awarene
state, its lack of institutional and ideological suppor
hegemony). Policies of state-building are themsel
strength of the state. Furthermore, it is arguable t
anti-clericalism?compounded the problem as much
are asked to believe that Leviathan governed in a
anarchy and violence reigned' and which, from 1928
of permanent political crisis'.74
Formal policies, then, displayed an indifference
for representative government (hence Vasconcel
a greater commitment to an unpopular Jacobinism
reform But formal policies were not the whole pictu
for a (relatively) weak state, acted upon more than it
factors be given due prominence: that is, informal (un
which occurred without governmental fiat; often, i
(conscious) fiat. The revolution?in other, paradoxica
as well as a Jacobin face. These informal, unofficial
for analytical purposes be divided into political a
practice, they constantly intertwined, as we shall no
tion destroyed much of the old order. After 1914-1
conscious policy, as the Constitutionalists?and succe
in Yucatan?systematically purged their enemies.76 B
followed years of unscripted, popular retribution. Du
cacique, Diaz, and his Cientifico camarilla had been ou
had tumbled, along with many (not all) local cacique
Isthmus; and with them went many of their well-t
counter-revolution (for that was what it was) stimulat
interests, which only made their subsequent downf
Porfirian families and officials survived, especially in
Jalisco, which were relatively quiet, or like Chiapas,
had the strength to defy revolutionary incursions.78
the acquisition of new political techniques, sometim
tion of the revolution (1920 was the annus mirabilis
the abandonment of political aspirations. The Terraz
back to Mexico, but as businessmen, not politicos
clung to power, political and economic, but (we
changed environment.
In short, the Porfirian political elite was eliminate
entity.80 It either disappeared, or adopted new, 'revo
or swapped politics for business. As

a rare event in Latin American mi
vived in uniform did so by virtu
revolution.81 As an institution, the
conglomerate army of revolution
though it soon acquired many of t
were at once evident in the camp
1915), nevertheless performed a
army of the revolution was high
until the 1930s (again, therefore, w
independence of the national gover
often reached a modus vivendi w
lords against agraristas, for exa
populism: in Morelos, where ex-Z
veterans underwrote his local pow
for Obregon in 1923; with Tejeda's
professional army?Diaz's?gave
politicised host, which would on
And, though Amaro began the job
alisation finally triumphed and m
as an ultima ratio.83 Indeed, in rev
institutions of the old regime, it
faced the most systematic attack (
most vigour; an indication of the
pared to the caciques and generals
revolutionary anti-clericalism.
As old political landmarks were e
piecemeal and unplanned. Despite
Re-election' the Sonorans preside
elites was appreciably faster than i
was less the result of conscious po
Hobbesian character of post-revolu
mobilisation and recurrent militar
absence, as yet, of a controlling Le
nasty, brutish and short. Assassina
Carrillo Puerto, Field Jurado, m
leaders; the attempted national r
plemented by endemic local, pol
political instability was the genu
the embryonic parties, the unions
democratic pluralism. Catholics fou
guards; 'it is no exaggeration', one
tinuous?albeit generally local an
great areas ofthe Mexican country
infected the unions and even do
obliged to work through inappropri
their reforms.87 But this was not a
Patron-client links (which are th
system) are, to some extent, politicalry neutral; they

institutions and individuals. Now, unlike in the day
ments of the population to mass associations, ckimin
Partido Cooperativista, CROM, as well as their rival
LNDR, the ACJM.88 Undemocratic though these wer
organisation and external functioning, they neverthe
camarillas of the Porfiriato, and were unmistakeable
tion (as a comparative glance at, say, Brazil will con
post-revolutionary Mexico the character of?in C
de masas.
Linked to this development was the populist rhet
'populist' I do not refer to a specific complex of
whose character is much debated and may even be
I mean the demotic, sometimes rabble-rousing rhetor
leaders, who presented themselves, as Obregon quin
the people, for the people; frank, open, honest, sy
Hence Obregon's campaign speeches and glad-handing
use of popular symbols in Yucatan.91 Ultimately, o
carry a similar message of populist empathy and n
most marginal of Mexico's population. Of course
rhetoric. But even empty rhetoric has significance:
revolution contrasted with the overtly elitist and ra
Porfiriato.92 This rhetorical shift can in turn be relate
mood ushered in by the 1910 revolution. Then, qui
pelados of the Porfiriato had been transmuted into
('we are no longer rag-dolls', as the insurgent campe
claimed, according to the ballad); the plebeians o
Sunday evening paseo, turning it into some kind of
Torreon travelled in the trams without paying and
forcing respectable citizens off the pavement into th
as one observer put it, rather like the Magnificat: 'th
with goods and the rich have been left with nothin
factious plebs could no longer be ignored; it had to
ciliated, tamed. In defeat, Federico Gonzalez Garza
the French Revolution, and the Villistas' failure to
cause by appropriate legislation; Salvador Alvarado
with the Indians of Yucatan.94
Furthermore, however empty or cynical it becam
which mass mobilisation had stimulated could in tur
mobilisation. For, given a constant reiteration of p
tionary objectives, the gulf between rhetoric and pr
ated, and offered a standing invitation to those wh
rhetoric. The Anti-Reelectionists of the 1920s attem
field of electoral politics, but without success. With
and the renewed social conflict of the Maximato, h
reality into line with the reiterated social promises
proved more efficacious. Cardenismo was not a r
carried the genes of the popular revolution within
comparative glance at the rest of

unimaginable without the prec
Cardenismo, as Hamilton rightly ar
from Vargismo or Peronismo.95 Ind
(ideological, emotional, generational
revolutionary cause before a new
control ofthe country during the 19
The short-term, political conseque
profound: old institutions were sha
circulated, rhetoric changed. All co
the thirties, if not the forties), to a
as compared with its Porfirian pr
heterogeneous, patchwork polity
Washington D.C. (Cardenas, too, con
to Chiapas; he was acutely aware of A
amid dissent, violence and official co
stripped its Porfirian predecessor in
circumscribed and at times precar
transitional period of state-building
resistance). The point at which pote
and the risk surmounted, is open
rather than the 1930s, still less th
kneading the dough of civil society,
These political changes were prof
gested, the only significant change
indeed the case that economic s
survived intact from Porfirian tim
reform, for example, 'the Revolu
Cardenas)?98 And that only in the e
that the old structure of rural prop
'in the rest of the Mexican count
which had consolidated itself in the
dominant productive unit'?99
Structurally, as I have conceded, t
agrarian reform had far from destro
made significant inroads, not just in
modest inroads could undermine th
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
pro-landlord mapache administration took power in

situation, in which 'the vast majority of the population
from political participation, had been politicised'; hence,
the 1920s was vastly different from what it had been pr
and, I would argue, this ostensibly political developmen
consequences for the hacienda system, granted its ec
character.103 Nor were these examples rare or exception
Rosalie Evans, engaged in her ultimately fatal struggle w
Puebla, was replicated throughout the country durin
as regions of agrarian disaffection, even if temporarily qu
acquaintance with the old conflicts ofthe revolution.104
The revolution thus reversed the Porfirian trend towar
tion and, no less important, set in motion a long process
tion. The power and legitimacy of the landlord class?wh
Porfirian rule?never recovered. Terrazas?blaming 'C
had not dared arm his peons for self-defence in 1910-1
rebuilt the family empire along different lines, conform
revolutionary mores; so, too, did the Figueroas of Guer
families did not necessarily imply continuity of social str
planters blamed the decay of religion for the belligeren
Rosalie Evans deplored the decline of deference (evident
where agrarismo was largely absent) and the consequent
docile peons.106 The radical and egalitarian sentiments p
?by the 1910 revolution made landlord rule ofthe old k
world turned upside down, even if partly righted after
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
to recruit debt-peons, found the syst

tion.111 Of course, not all those chang
not eliminate debt-peonage?of the
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
denoted not some feudal/seigneurial mentality, bu

rational response to circumstances; circumstances
capital, initially cheap land (which grew more costly
labour (which grew cheaper with time, population
possession) and, above all, a highly congenial politico
The expansion of holdings thus not only augmen
sometimes more crucial?water), but also generated
so successfully that by the late nineteenth century
of debt peonage was waning in many parts of Mexi
lord's strongest sanction was not coercion but evic
addition, the dispossession of villagers and smallhol
in the production of staple crops, while a favourab
grain. Large landholdings (and 'largeness', in this co
conditions) thus guaranteed cheap labour, high pri
a familiar economic dilemma?these individual adva
backs, above all for the continued capitalist develop
(including most landlords) favoured. Such developm
of a vigorous kulak class and/or the proletarianisatio
historically and theoretically, the two trends seem
these trends are definitionally required, since capi
stituted by relations of production involving free w
the market, the old Frankian axiom, cannot alon
should be added that, since agriculture is not entir
it may not experience the same degree ofthorough
in other words, may survive within demonstrably
as 'disguised proletarians'.123 The existence of peas
more makes Mexico 'feudal', or 'pre-capitalist', than
in Habsburg Mexico made it 'capitalist'.) But, definit
tical point, which should impress even those who h
polemics. In the absence of a significant kulakizatio
the scope of the market would remain much reduc
population would depend on subsistence agriculture
major market transactions being confined to cities
the circumstances which prevailed in Mexico or
these circumstances would admit of significant for
nomies did), they would form no basis for capitali
the lines of desarrollo hacia afuera. Capitalist develo
and/or proletarianisation not just on definitional gr
prerequisite of the creation of a domestic market,
of industrialisation. Desarrollo hacia afuera Vorked
like Argentina and southern Brazil?where export ea
sion of the domestic market (itself premised on E
therefore higher cash wages); not?as in coastal
where the demand for labour could be met by subs
contract labour.125
Porfirian Mexico approximated to the second e
barous Mexico'?developed forms of debt-peonag
resembled slavery.126 On the traditional haciendas o
the transition to free wage labour

tives of hacienda production. Here
and sometimes stimulated, a switc
(labour rent, whereby peons recei
demesne; payments in kind, inc
offset by the 'purchase' of subsist
logical, given that the labour supp
while the opportunity costs of c
e.g. land and staple foods?were ris
landlords were reluctant to adjust
wardly sticky'. Hence, despite pri
and modestly (the same appears
revolution).127 In consequence, ru
standards, to which they respon
payments in kind, cash advances a
found themselves allowing debts to
Tochatlaco, a market-oriented hac
attempt to eliminate debts and pa
both had to be restored.129 As a r
the 1900s depended not only on M
also on its capacity to cut monetar
to its hard-pressed work force. W
sheet (monetary outgoings and in
frequently present, would in this
enterprise, the inclusion of the lab
calculation reveals a significant
(feudal?) forms of remuneration.1
debts on other haciendas in the re
labour supply and the hacendados'
In that hacienda studies often co
tions (its role in the market, its f
internal relations of production,
typical. Obviously, as cases rang
and Mexico indicate, profits can
which are patently non-capitalis
very limited, or, where it appears
lematic for the individual enterpr
problem can be lived with: whil
and the 'contradictions' will not
the economy as a whole are ser
those of a free market, individual
ment. Problems?or 'contradictio
First, landlord monopoly of re
reinforcement?of pre-capitalist r
alisation of agricultural productio
'seigneurial' mentality, Porfirian l
and boastfully)133 where it seeme
flowed into transport, processin
secured cheaply (even, in a sense, gratuitously, give

cost of payment in land) there was little incentive to
with their North American counterparts, Mexican gra
higher profits on the basis of lower productivity.134
of Porfirian agriculture: 'a salario bajo, agricultura pob
Second, low productivity and low wages (or wages in k
growth of the national market, a crucial prerequisite
On the one hand, the great peon mass, pushed to the m
displayed what a German entrepreneur (writing aft
expressing sentiments even more applicable to pre-191
bediirfnislosigkeit' ('damned wantlessness').136 Hence th
a crisis of over-production, which in turn compounde
of the 1900s; individual factories failed for want of a
while low wages prevented the rural sector from provid
trial goods, low productivity combined with imperfec
up the price of staple foods (certainly by the 1900s if n
ing wages and disposable incomes.138
Finally, the structure of agricultural production inhib
ment by diverting resources into the inefficient, mono
The landlords' monopoly ensured profits, whether as d
planters of Morelos and points south) or rentiers (the h
or the Bajio).139 It was economically rational (not atav
into land rather than industry or commerce (which w
exclusively?dependent on foreign capital). Why inv
a deputy asked in 1878, when 12% was readily available
it might be added, Mexican corn producers might coun
1900s?140 The very profitability of hacienda production
of its 'capitalist' character, exercised a macro-economic
capitalist development. In neo-classical terms, the retur
duction (land) distorted the market to the detrimen
earners, and industrialists. Alternatively, the landlords'
ground rent' inhibited capital accumulation and the tr
relations of production.141 In similar fashion, the politi
underlay this pattern of development (above all, by gua
monopolistic position) have been variously described: i
Moore's 'revolution from above', whereby pre-industri
repressive' agriculture were preserved by a project of 'c
tion'; or in terms of the different alliances sketched by
'high prices for subsistence goods, thus dearer wages,
liberation) . . . ofthe beneficiaries of this landed monopo
obligation to improve techniques of production, under t
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,
there is no evidence that the Porfi

dictions by pre-emptive reform: t
powerful, to permit the radical ch
have entailed. In the absence of re
would have survived, as it did el
political, economic and demograph
officially, almost consensually.144
frontation of class and class, and a
of, say, Bolivia in the 1950s or Per
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
intervened by way of land distribution (however patc

(however cosmetic), and taxation. In many states, the
insecurity of the hacienda was perpetuated by run
agraristas.150 Thus, even in the absence of the sweeping r
ised Morelos,151 a series of more insidious pressures w
deference and the abundance of labour were comprom
'Essentially', Gruening observed, 'the hacendados' obje
to parting with a few acres of their vast estates, but to
was what the restoration of the communal lands inev
hinterland of San Felipe del Progreso (northern Mexico
tion in 'an uneasy tranquility', occasionally punctuate
by the 1920s the local haciendas faced organised agrar
reforms, and straitened economic circumstances; one,
and passed into the hands of its bank in 1929. 'Now yo
was in decadence', its manager lamented, 'because the
on top of us; the hacienda wasn't functioning as in th
complaints emanated from states like Chiapas and Gu
known agrarista reputation) where Governors Vidal an
were blamed for accelerating land reform, inciting agr
raising hacendados' tax bills. 'On real estate particularly
and Oaxaca', it was reported, 'there has been a heavy
rate but (also) in the assessed (fiscal) valuations on bot
perties'.154 At San Antonio Tochatlaco, taxes and wag
revolution, leaving the enterprise scarcely viable.155
Thus, well before Cardenas took the offensive agains
haciendas of Yucatan, the Laguna and the Yaqui va
pushed the figures of formal reform to unprecedented le
out the country had been exposed to inexorable pr
fled during the revolution, never to return; some mi
Jalisco, for example); some were driven by peasant pr
to sell up, wholly or partly?in the Bajio, where parce
by the revolution, or in the Sierra Alta of Hidalgo, w
sales of declining hacendados helped encourage the fo
of middle peasants.156 A good many landlords, driven
of their patrimony, set up in business and founded new
those many who remained (and sometimes prospered)
of territorial monopoly and political back-up (whic
co-option of revolutionary generals, was never so grea
than by means of economic rationalisation and innova
was blazed by entrepreneurial landlords like Willia
countered agrarista agitation, struck new alliances with
and progressively shed his sprawling acres, while retainin
central, industrial complex of Atencingo.158 Jenkins, i
a local land for a local industrial monopoly (the trade-off
also in the sugar market, achieved in Cuba during the
another terminology, he switched from the extraction
tion of relative surplus value; that is, he became a fully-f
In Mexico, as elsewhere in Latin America, therefor
economic consequence of agraria

agriculture; the forced conversion o
or 'pre-capitalist') hacendados int
a conversion which the revolutionar
Cardenas protected Jenkins; Calles,
himself, urged that the latifundist
of the Republic, so that they (the l
which remains to them, shall bec
cease to be exploiters of men'.161
through the anonymity of the mar
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
relations, so, too, the ruthless entrepreneurialism of the

Blasco Ibanez, was a true mirror of the age.167
The revolution, we are often told, had much that was n
it. At a very general level, this may be true. The broad ai
regime?state-building and capitalist development?wer
they were continued by other means, in radically changed
thus much more efficaciously. An excessive concentration
(laws, decrees, official reforms), and a corresponding n
changes, easily leads to misapprehension: to an ultra-Tocqu
that the revolution changed little or that, at least, the more
more they stayed the same. But to continue the Porfirian p
ment grosso modo?to build the capitalist Leviathan?the
wreak major changes; had to place government on a surer,
tion; and had, above all, to resolve the stultifying contrad
agriculture. Though some far-sighted revolutionaries willed
the means (Alvarado with his attack on debt-peonage; Call
to the latifundista), most did not, and change came willy-
the earlier years. Above all, it was the force of popular mo
which cracked the shell of the old regime, and obliged go
and employers to reckon with new circumstances.
In that these new circumstances involved enhanced m
labour mobility, and capital accumulation, it is entirely va
Mexican revolution as, in some sense, a bourgeois revol
it was the conscious work of the bourgeoisie (still less the n
nor because it instantly transmuted the base metal of feud
gold of capitalism (for, it has already been suggested, bourg
by their very nature cumulative phenomena); but rathe
decisive impulse to the development of Mexican capitalism a
bourgeoisie, an impulse which the preceding regime had b
This impulse, the most powerful in a series going back to 1
resulted in a bourgeoisie ultimately more capable of carrying t
and economic 'project': 'the difference between the Mexica
that of other Latin American countries is that the former l
faculties after making ample use of them, while the others
will never lead a bourgeois revolution. Here lies the secret
Mexico's bourgeois regime, and the explanation?not of
but of its differences as compared with countries like Braz
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 basis of the great estates: the

Tsarist Russia as in Porfirian Me
notionally achieved after 1917
bourgeois' programme, to the adva
behind the agrarian reform of twent
some of their protagonists and mos
the point, if too sweepingly: 'all
America except the Cuban and p
ultimate purpose of fomenting the
In the particular case of Mexico,
industry by deepening the dome
1930s, if not before), by shaking ou
mentioned, and by rendering agric
ducing cheap food, exports, and a
to city.174 More generally, it may
political structures within which t
upheaval. The agrarian revolution, i
growth of the last generation.
These developments, however, we
it would constitute a form of gros
see the post-1940s pattern of dev
1910 revolution. Rather, as Hamilt
'structural options'; subsequent eve
the options taken, the options d
ferred revolution'?was ultimately
scious decision. Alternative options
was a case in point. Maybe, as Ham
with the 'limits of state autonomy
Cardenismo diverged from the '
Goldwater thirty years later, Card
Semo's cautious terms, the Cardena
coming bourgeois limits'.176 This
agrarian reform, where Cardenista
traditional' hacienda (thus, by imp
taken by the Bolivian revolution) a
Laguna plantations or Nueva Lom
agrarian and other, were later integ
industrialisation, and 'modernise
subjective intention, nor their obj
period. And, given that this radical
ship, and inspiration, a child of th
revolution contained within it the
The post-1940s project?the proje
grandson of the revolution, but it
like Stalinism, Alemanismo was a r
tionary certainty.
Unilinearity and teleology should
standing of historical periods?o
because they mayblinker our perceptionof the present. If t

'over-determined', so (it may be presumed) is the here-an
enough, those who stress the unalloyed domination of s
ca. 1920 are often those most eager to find contemporar
quo, through which radical currents might filter. They
recognise that the domination of state and capital has n
that the post-revolutionary history of Mexico has been o
flict and change?not unilinear progress?and that tha
stamp on contemporary society. The peasants (especially
surrogate proletarians, but the revolution's reconstitutio
left an organisational and ideological legacy which cannot
to some, Amin's formulation ('objectively proletarianised
at the level of class consciousness, a small producer') is
and has political implications.177 It links, for example, to
rhetoric and?in the case of Echeverria?the agrarista prac
The long-term consequences of the revolution may be a
a dynamic capitalism, but these are themselves the hist
distinct national experience, moulded not only from
below, by the popular upheavals of 1810, 1854 and 1910.
nor cooption can eliminate this past. It would therefore
all the 'structural options' created by the revolution have
the revolution's legacy has been spent, that the outcom
immutable and unilinear. The agrarian reform was decla
Calles) in 1930; the revolution has been pronounced dead
since. We may legitimately comment on the revoluti
sequences, but we summarise its long-term, epochal sig
As Mao replied, when asked what he thought was the ou
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.
11. Gilly, p. 386.

12. Ibid., pp. 43,226-227; Hodges and G
revolucion mexicana de 1910 en la pers
Interpretaciones de la Revolucion Mex
13. Gilly, pp. 387-388.
14. Skocpol, pp. 4-5.
15. Hampson, Norman (1976). A Social H
251, 254; Price, Roger (1981). An Econ
(London), pp. 68, 83-84, which argues
economic development came in the late
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 e
Interpretaciones de la Revolucion Mexicana, p. 110.
22. Leal, Juan Felipe (1973-74). 'El estado y el bloque en poder en Mexico: 18
1914', Historia Mexicana 23: 700-721.
23. Cf. Perry, Laurens Ballard (1978). Judrez and Di'az: Machine Politics in Mexic
(DeKalb).
24. Holloway, John and Picciotto, Sol (eds.) (1978). State and Capital: A Marxist De
(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
cites, by way of corroboration, the Communist El Machete (th

to Stalin's 'united front', Shanghai notwithstanding).
37. Louis XVI: 'C'est une revolte?'; the Duke: 'Non, Sire, c'est un
ing of the fall of the Bastille).
38. Meyer, Michael C. (1972). Huerta: A Political Portrait (Linco
39. Hampson, p. 256. Medin, Tzvi (1972). Ideologia y praxis polit
(Mexico), p. 5, makes a similar point about the Mexican Revol
40. Brinton, Crane (1965). The Anatomy of Revolution (New
1938) stressed the specificity of 'great revolutions', which e
served in numerous subsequent studies: e.g., Skocpol, pp. xi, 3
41. Trotsky, Leon (1967). The History of the Russian Revolu
Vol.I,p. 15.
42. Waterbury, R., 'Non-Revolutionary Peasants: Oaxaca Com
Mexican Revolution', Comparative Studies in Society and Hist
43. Thompson, E. P. (1972). The Making ofthe English Working
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
from some of their conclusions) would include: Meyer, Jean (1973). La Revo
Mexicaine (Paris); Tobler, Hans Werner (1982). 'Conclusion: Peasant Mobilisati
and the Revolution', in Brading, Caudillo and Peasant, pp. 245-255; Jacob
(1982). Ranchero Revolt The Mexican Revolution in Guerrero (Austin); Fal
Romana (1979). 'Los origenes populares de la revolucion de 1910? El case d
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).
59. .Hamilton, Nora (1982). The Limits

(Princeton), pp. 4-15; cf. Holloway an
60. Examples of statolatry: Cordova, p
powerfuF state; the state as regulato
dence' of organised social groups on t
of these groups). Hodges and Gandy
bureaucratic, marked by 'the perpetu
the bureaucracy' (p. 122 ff.), is simil
Skocpol: e.g., pp. 35, 285, 287; howe
to the subjective ('striking' is her f
sequences), make it difficult to eval
I take it to be) a bold new cult, or me
gods of economic reductionism?
61. Jacobs, p. 167.
62. de la Pena, Guillermo
(1982). A Leg
in the Morelos Highlands of Mexi
example among many in the field o
(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,
holders or local power and property were facing new, m

picture is broadly corroborated by Tomas Martinez Sald
Mendoza, Politica y sociedad en Mexico: el caso de los A
1976), pp. 63-88. On Chiapas, see Benjamin, Thomas L
Leviathan: Chiapas and the Mexican State, 1891-1947' (M
Ph.D.),pp. 143-168,173-174.
79. Mark Wasserman, 'Persistent oligarchs: vestiges of the Porf
Chihuahua, Mexico, 1920-35', paper given to the VI Congr
Historians, Chicago, Sept. 1981; and see Ruiz, pp. 336-369.
80. Hodges and Gandy, pp. 93-97, query the use of 'elitist m
lack 'an economic dimension'. They may be right. In th
argue that the ouster of the Porfirian political elite (sic: n
class') had direct and important repercussions in the 'econom
81. And, since many of the Federals-turned-revolutionaries w
Angeles and Juan Medina), they were eliminated in the fi
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.
98. Cordova, Arnaldo (1974). La politica

99. Meyer, Historia de la Revolucion M
100. The tendency towards land concentr
uniform; in some regions (parts of M
parcelled into smallholdings. Parcellis
however, be confused with parcellisati
agreements) which, though common en
an augmentation of landlord/rentier pro
101. Bazant, Jan (1975). dnco haciendas
Luis Potosi (Mexico), pp. 182-183.
102. Miller, Simon, 'An agrarian econom
Mexican Revolution', paper given to
Latin American Studies Conference, C
(1975). 'Peasant Movements, Caudillos
(1910-17) in Tlaxcala, Mexico', Boletin
18: 148-149.
103. Benjamin, pp. 167,179.
104. Evans, Rosalie (1926) in D. C. Pettus (ed.), The Rosalie Evans Letters from M
(Indianapolis). Asgar Simonsen has pointed out to me that Ometepec, scene o
agrarian jacquerie in 1911, became a centre of agrarista protest after the revolu
Friedrich's study of Naranja and Buve's of Tlaxcala reveal similar continuities.
as Craig, The First Agraristas, illustrates, significant agrarian protest also deve
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.
244-245; Wasserman, 'Persistent oligarchs'; Ian Jacobs, 'Rancheros of Guerr
the Figueroa brothers and the revolution', in Brading, Caudillo and Peasant
89-91, concludes his analysis of a (revolutionary) family with a neat example of
'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, 1
pp. 225-226. Evans, pp. 71, 78, 154 and Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, Pueblo en
Microhistoria de San Jose de Gracia (Mexico, 1972), pp. 133, 137-138, on
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
?in some, perhaps many, cases. Hence the ambivalence of an

Bartra, who, in his interesting article 'Peasants and Political Po
Theoretical Approach', Latin American Perspectives 5 (1975): 12
that 'Mexican agriculture at the turn of the century was deve
that could be called a Porfirian version of the "via Junker"', t
'the latifundios utilized super-exploitation of the labor force
forms). In this way they closed the door to the possibility o
development in agriculture'. This second position is unequivocal
Bellingeri and Enrique Montalvo, 'Lenin en Mexico: la via ju
dicciones del porfiriato', Historias 1 (1982): 15-29. Like so ma
tions, this one hinges on what is typical or atypical; and, at pr
empirical knowledge does not permit a confident answer. Belli
have certainly pointed out the barriers which lay in the path of
transition, and which, it is argued here, the Revolution helped dem
114. I take Morelos as the best case of thorough, post-revolutionary
consequences are suggested in Womack, pp. 372-375; though cf
. . . Y venimos a contradecir: Los campesinos de Morelos y
(Mexico, 1976), pp. 165-168, 178-183. Barta, 'Peasants and pol
the classic Marxist view that the agrarian reform, by blocking
created 'an obstacle to capitalist development in agriculture
Magraw, pp. 15, 56-57, suggests a French parallel.
115. See the resume in David Goodman and Michael Redclift, From
ian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transitions (Oxford, 1
116. The relative absence of free land, coupled with growing la
resources, ruled out any general application of the Chayanov
farmers were rarely in a position to compete successfully against
(as they had, for example, in the colonial period).
117. Rather than cite the extensive corpus of work by Enrique Sem
Brading, Charles Harris, Harry Cross, Marco Bellingeri, John Tu
and others, I would recall John Coatsworth's comment: 'not one
been found who might qualify as the sort of aristocratic, prestige
nincompoop once thought by many to be typical of Spanish Am
'Obstacles to Economic Growth in Nineteenth-Century Mexico',
Review 83 (1978): 87.
118. Ennquez, Andres Molina (1909). Los grandes problemas naci
81-103; Boorstein Couturier, Edith (1968). 'Modernizacion y t
hacienda: San Juan Hueyapan, 1902-11', HistoriaMexicana 18:
119. Katz, Friedrich (1980). La servidumbre agraria en Mexico en
(Mexico), pp. 37-38; Warman, p. 89.
120. Warman, pp. 70, 72.
121. Goodman and Redclift, pp. 100-105; de Janvry, Alain (1981)
tion and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore), pp. 106-109.
122. 'The mere appearance of the circulation of commodities and th
does not sullice to supply the historical conditions for the ex
'capitalist cooperation . . . presupposes the existence of the free
sells his labour power to capital'; 'the process which clears the way
system . . . transforms the actual producers into wage worker
Karl (1957). Capital, 2 Vols, J. M. Dent & Sons (London), I, p
II, pp. 791-792.
123. Pare, Luisa (1977). El proletariado agricola en Mexico: campe
proletarios agricolas? (Mexico) adopts this position in regard to
and Vergopoulos, K. (1977). La question paysanne et le capita
globally: see especially pp. 182-204 for a cogent analysis of the
as a de facto piece-worker. Of course, this departure from the
contentious: Goodman and Redclift, pp. 96-98.
124. Bauer, Arnold (1975). Chilean Rural Society (Cambridge) has st
tions of the market in early nineteenth-century Chile, even at
export 'boom'; though I know of no equivalent, comprehensive stu
economy in this period, the available ev

worth, 'Obstacles to economic growth'
income in Mexico between 1800 and 1
ferrocarriles en el porflriato (2 Vols, M
expansion made possible after the 1870s.
125. Glade, William, (1969). The Latin Am
tional Evolution (New York), pp. 306-3
126. Alan Knight, 'Peonage and Unfree l
given to the History Workshop Confere
April 1985.
127. Katz, Servidumbre agraria, pp. 13, 3
companies preferred to dispense charity
Manzanillo, 9 November 1915, State Dep
128. Katz, Servidumbre agraria, pp. 83-1
the Puebla-Tlaxcala region, indicating th
129. Ibid., pp. 40, 100-101, reports the atte
Bellingeri, Marco (1976). 'L'economia
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 th
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 serf
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: fre
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
dismemberment of profitable, productive haciendas (like tho

of a militant 'external' peasantry, than the emancipation o
from 'feudal' ties; equally, they came at a time when their la
constituting a 'hegemonic' class (as Porfirian landlords arg
attack from powerful urban interests, political and economic
agrarian reform in the Peruvian sierra, not the coast.)
145. Warman, pp. 68-69, 124-126, 204 on the plight of the
peons); and ibid., pp. 158-161, 182, 192, and Benjamin,
the new, ejidal caciquismo.
146. E.g., Craig,pp. 125-126.
147. Mao Tse-Tung (1967). 'Report on an Investigation of th
Hunan', in Selected Works ofMao Tse-Tung, 3 Vols (Peking
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
externally-generated crisis). This posit

a critique of purposiveness. And, we
now looks rather less supportive of h
with luck, it may end up refuting it.
167. Ibanez, V. Blasco (1920). Mexico in
168. Semo, Historia Mexicana, p. 3 05.
169. Engels, Frederick (1977). The Peasan
170. Dobb, Maurice (1972). Studies in
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.

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

The Mexican Revolution: Bou

Ruiz readily accords the French Revolution 're

as capitalist anyway; and (b) bec

Any such exercise, however, runs a risk which a g

in midair. Bonaparte represents

moderate, pragmatic, and evolutionary and (b) its p

participation (though, necessaril

just when (the living) seem en

Indeed, a strict interpretation of

and politics'.46 Historians of the Mexican Revolution

can we legitimately speak of a revolution in the

Following Stone and Marx, I would dissent. And I w

and Chinese peasantries (eviden

emphasise instead the revolutionary role of the mid

revolutionary orthodoxy, which se

too far, and that to exchange class reductionism for stato

return to in conclusion). All thr

to reform?in rhetorical and practical terms?was

or swapped politics for business. As

system) are, to some extent, politicalry neutral; they

comparative glance at the rest of

pro-landlord mapache administration took power in

to recruit debt-peons, found the syst

denoted not some feudal/seigneurial mentality, bu

the transition to free wage labour

secured cheaply (even, in a sense, gratuitously, give

there is no evidence that the Porfi

intervened by way of land distribution (however patc

economic consequence of agraria

relations, so, too, the ruthless entrepreneurialism of the

the basis of the great estates: the

because they mayblinker our perceptionof the present. If t

11. Gilly, p. 386.

cites, by way of corroboration, the Communist El Machete (th

59. .Hamilton, Nora (1982). The Limits

holders or local power and property were facing new, m

98. Cordova, Arnaldo (1974). La politica

?in some, perhaps many, cases. Hence the ambivalence of an

economy in this period, the available ev

dismemberment of profitable, productive haciendas (like tho

externally-generated crisis). This posit

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