THE OUTCOME

The 1910 Revolution occurred because a political crisis-associated with the Porfirian regime's failure to institutionalise itself and the mounting opposition of (loosely) middle class reformism-opened the door to popular protest, especially peasant protest.

Alan Knight, 1992101

The Constitutionalists won because they planned on a national level and used populist tactics to broaden their support. Their control of Tampico, Veracruz, and Yucatan, all of which generated substantial export revenue, allowed the purchase of arms from abroad. The Plan of Ayala did not address the needs of the more heterogeneous population, including artisans, laborers, itinerant merchants, and others with an urban orientation, outside the state of Morelos. Finally, along with the rest of the Western world of the period, the Constitutionalists adopted mass war as a means to power. By 1917, Carranza’s army alone totaled 147,000, seven times the number who served in the army at the end of the Porfiriato.102

The fact that the Revolution had been initiated by a section of the elite with little interest in social reform limited revolutionary potential. It was further limited by its being led in Coahuila by Carranza, a conservative hacendado. In Chihuahua, the Revolution was largely directed against one family, the Terrazas. In Sonora, it was led by upwardly mobile members of the middle class who would become the next generation’s elite. In tiny Morelos, with its broad revolutionary base, the goal was an idealized past of communally held village land. As historian John Womack noted, the Zapatistas were “peasants who did not want to change and thus made a revolution.”103

Many opposing the Constitutionalists were willing to fight for a better Mexico, but these opponents lacked leadership, ideology, and the sophistication to play national and international politics. Many rebel leaders operated independently and were more interested in power than reform. Felix Diaz, who led a second revolt in Oaxaca in 1916, is a prime example. No ideological bridge linked the interests of peasants and city dwellers.

The Zapatistas failed to achieve victory largely because they were unable to attract support from non-peasants or unify the peasantry on a national basis. Peasants were overwhelmingly illiterate and were often poorly informed politically. Many peasants had more allegiance to a local general, fighting for his own interests, than to their logical allies, Villa and Zapata, fighting in some distant state.104

Despite their willingness to fight, peasants often lacked clarity concerning just what they were fighting for, as this incident from the biography of Juan Perez Jolote, a Chiapas Indian, illustrates:

We returned to Pachuca again and went out to another village, where the Villistas attacked us. . . They asked us why we’d become Carrancistas, and I said: “The Huertistas made us go with them, and when Carranza started winning we had to change sides. . .” An old man with a big moustache said, “Well, what do you want to do now?” I said, “I just want to be on your side . . .” They signed us up and gave us weapons and five pesos each, and that made us Villistas.105

Switching of allegiance, based on personal decisions of leaders or on the perception of who would finally win, occurred frequently.106

The very concept of “Mexican Revolution” only developed after the fact. There were various revolutions and movements. Some lost, some won. Before 1920, people spoke of the Madero Revolution, the Constitutionalist Revolution, and Zapata’s Southern Revolution. Only after 1920 did the term “Mexican Revolution” gain acceptance.107

The Revolution dramatically increased the power of the state. This is ironic, since one of the principal causes of the rebellion, especially in the north, was the desire for more local autonomy. Post-revolutionary governments accepted responsibility for some of the social costs of development, such as education and health care, and assumed new roles, such as implementing land reform and arbitrating labor disputes. The Revolution also laid the ground for the creation of mass organizations, especially for workers and peasants, that the state would control.108

The Revolution produced a change in political style. Gone was the old elitist, often racist rhetoric, such as this statement by Joaquin Garcia Pimentel of an elite family in Morelos. In 1916, he declared, “The Indian. . . has many defects as a laborer, being as he is, lazy, sottish, and thieving.” Politicians adopted a new style, portraying themselves as frank, open, honest, and even plebeian.109

The soldadera forms the most enduring image of women in the Mexican Revolution. As in the nineteenth century, the revolutionary armies generally did not have troops assigned to tend the wounded and secure and prepare food. These tasks fell on female auxiliaries who accompanied the forces, usually linked to a husband or lover. Soldaderas not only provided essential services but also induced men to fight. A Villista major once commented, “We had to have soldaderas if we want to have soldiers.”110

Soldaderas served for a variety of reasons. Often service provided a way to keep a family intact or to avoid being left alone and unprotected in perilous times. Some became soldaderas to earn a

Figure 15.4 Tortilla maker with army

Source: El Paso Public Library, Aultman Collection, photo #A 3214

Living, given the prevailing economic hardship of the time. When a soldadera served, she and her children simply accompanied her man. In his classic account of Villa’s forces, Insurgent Mexico, John Reed asked a soldadera why she fought. She responded by pointing to a nearby figure and replying, “Because he is.”111

In addition to serving as soldaderas, women were active in a variety of revolutionary activities. Some served full-time as combatants, while others smuggled arms and ammunition across the U. S.—Mexico border. In Mexico City, women denounced merchants for hoarding food and occupied markets and bakeries to press their demands for just food prices. They seized government buildings to pressure the government into providing food and services. Upper-class women often volunteered to serve in organizations such as the Red Cross. Still others served as couriers, spies, and political organizers, building support for the revolutionary leaders they supported.112

On January 15, 1915, Carranza issued his one significant decree affecting women. For the first time in Mexico, it allowed divorce, in the modern sense of the word. Carranza explained the measure as one that would increase marriage, since, he claimed, those legally married to others could divorce and marry those with whom they were actually living. Carranza also claimed the poor would marry more often if they know they could dissolve a bad relationship. This decree reflected not grassroots pressure but the anti-clerical sentiments of the revolutionary elite. It was not popular with the mass of Mexican women.113

The lack of other action concerning women’s rights was not due to women remaining passive. In Mexico, just as in the United States and Great Britain, women’s suffrage became an issue. Women petitioned President de la Barra for the right to vote in upcoming elections. Neither De la Barra nor Madero acted on the petition.114

Yucatan provides a glaring exception to inaction on women’s issues. Change in Yucatan was driven from above by the presence of Salvador Alvarado, who was sent by the Constitutionalists to serve as a virtual proconsul from 1915 to 1918. Only a few of the revolutionary leaders, such as Alvarado, considered women’s emancipation to be an integral part of the elevation of Mexico’s oppressed peoples. He opened positions in the state government—such as office worker, clerk, cashier, and accountant—to women for the first time and urged women to apply for these jobs. He greatly expanded women’s access to education and urged women to study medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy. Minimum wages and maximum hours were established for domestics. Alvarado required hacendados to pay the salary of teachers as well as the cost of school equipment. During Alvarado’s administration, 1,000 rural schools were created, which led to the hiring of so many teachers that their number rivaled that of soldiers.115

In 1916, Alvarado called two feminist Congresses, which he instructed to consider: the best means of freeing women from the yoke of tradition; the role women should play in public life; and the role of primary education in elevating the position of women. Even though those attending were predominantly urban, educated women, Alvarado encountered strong resistance among women themselves to changing their role. Some delegates lamented that more women were going beyond primary school and felt that so much education would prove to be an impediment to marriage. Others favored only gradual change, claiming that women needed to be better prepared before exercising political rights. At the second Congress, attended mainly by middle-class schoolteachers, delegates passed a resolution favoring women’s suffrage at the municipal level by a vote of 147 to eighty-three, but rejected the right of women to seek municipal office by a vote of sixty to thirty. Despite the reluctance of even educated women to accelerate the rate of change, the Congresses did put women’s issues before the public and thus represented an enormous step forward for the advancement of Mexican women.116

As historian Alan Knight noted, “Out of the maelstrom of revolution. . . emerged a society which, compared with pre-1910, was more open, fluid, mobile, innovative and market-oriented.” Society opened more fully to mestizos, who jettisoned their alliances with the pre-Revolutionary dominant classes and looked for new allegiances. Those with battlefield experience and a working-class background assumed leadership positions that previously had been reserved for those with a college education and civilian institutional experience.117

Between 1910 and 1921, Mexico’s population declined from 15.1 million to 14.3 million, thus providing a measure of the Revolution’s impact. This population decline only in part resulted from battlefield fatalities, the execution of prisoners, and wounds that often proved fatal due to poor medical care. This decline also resulted from a lowered birth rate, increased emigration, and a lower living standard, which made people more susceptible to diseases such as typhus and the 1918 “Spanish flu” epidemic, which killed as many as 400,000. The 1920 U. S. census enumerated 486,418 U. S. residents born in Mexico, compared to 221,915 in 1910. Living conditions in Mexico cannot be measured with precision, but a decline in nutrition is indicated by corn production plummeting from an average of 3.22 million metric tons between 1906 and 1910 to 1.96 million in 1914."8

As a result of the Revolution, Mexico became a haven for refugees whose politics were too radical for them to safely remain in their home country. In the 1920s alone, Peruvian Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, Nicaraguan Cesar Augusto Sandino, and Cuban Julio Antonio Mella found refuge in Mexico. In subsequent decades, Mexico continued to accept refugees.119

These changes resulted not from the poor dominating the outcome of the Revolution but from their holding on long enough to force the elite to make concessions. This contrasted sharply with Mexico’s War for Independence, in which the poor were defeated, leaving the elite to shape independent Mexico’s first government to suit its own interests.120

During the period of the armed struggle, 1910—1917, the goals of the Revolution lacked clarity since there was no overall coordination of combatants, some of whom fought for opposing goals. In the aftermath of the Revolution, a consensus emerged concerning what the Revolution stood for. These goals, some of which were only inserted into the revolutionary portfolio well after the last battle, included: 1) replacing the Diaz dictatorship with democracy; 2) supplying land to the tiller; 3) the creation of a new government with a strong executive; 4) nationalism; 5) uplifting labor; 6) a coherent state-led development strategy; 7) mass education; and 8) support for Mexico’s indigenous population.121