The Porfiriato

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The Porfiriato

• Diaz consolidated power in Mexico redistributed
  it from the provinces to the central government.
• With the stability he brought by ruling Mexico
  with a stiff hand came foreign investment
  primarily from the US
• Railroads were constructed, the oil industry was
  developed, even Hollywood invested in Mexico
• However, wealth was not shared by the masses and
  much discontent existed.

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The Porfiriato

• Diaz was a captain of the revolutionary forces in
  the War of Reform in which Mexican forces
  overthrew the government of Emperor Maximilian.
• Diaz went on to become a mayor of the small
  provincial capital city of Oaxaca before being
  appointed President of Mexico before being
  elected in 1877.
• The death of Benito Juarez in 1872 prompted his
  ambition.

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The Porfiriato

• Diaz leadership of Mexico was characterized by
• Using a state police unit known as the Rurales to
  intimidate voters and scare Mexicans into
  submission.
• Diaz lived by the motto Order followed by
  Progress
• Diaz helped a few members of the criollo class
  consolidate their power and actually took land
  from peasants and redistributed to the wealthy by
  demanding that all landowners demonstrate their
  legal title to the land.

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2. The Porfirato

• Diaz was supported by school of thought in Mexico
  known as the cientificos. They generally called
  for order and progress.
• Regionally the philosophy came to be known as
  Positivism and usually could be characterized by
  the following qualities
• Ensured order above rule of law
• Saw progress through a Western and European
  perspective- that meant industrialization,
  urbanization and free-market capitalism
• Generally emphasized the exportation of a single
  crop or raw material product

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The Porfiriato and Positivism

• Positivist leaders viewed the world through what
  we would consider to be racist ideas
• Large Indigenous and African-Latino populations
  were seen as barbarous
• As a result they often encouraged European
  immigration and miscegenation (mixing of the
  races).

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Porfirato and Positivism

• Often was based on other dubious sciences like
  Social-Darwinism and Eugenics
• Sierra Justo, education minister under Porfirio
  Diaz- We still need to revitalize the earth by
  way of irrigation. We need to attract immigrants
  from Europe so as to obtain cross with indigenous
  race, for only European blood can keep the level
  of civilization that has produced our nationality
  from sinking, which would mean regression, not
  evolution.

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Porfirato and Positivism

• Positivism had much in common with the theories
  of Manifest Destiny
• Positivism offered the social hierarchies a new
  justification. Inequalities were now explained,
  not by race or inheritance or religion, but by
  science. - Octavio Paz, a Nobel prize winning
  Mexican author.
• Before 1810, two distinct, rival, and
  incompatible forms of society, two differing
  kinds of civilization existed in the Argentine
  Republic one being Spanish, European and
  cultivated, the other barbarous, American, and
  almost wholly of native growth the Revolution of
  1810 gave cause for a contest between them, to
  be ended, after lasting many years, by the
  absorption of one into the other. Domingo F.
  Sarmiento Civilization and Barbarism- a liberal
  opponent of Juan Manuel de Rosas- Argentine
  Caudillo

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6. Back to Mexico

• While the Mexican aristocracy mimicked European
  ways and open Mexico to foreign investment most
  Mexicans lived with alarming poverty.
• In 1900 29 of male children died within one
  year and 25 of the population was literate.
• Some estimate that the average purchasing power
  of Mexicans in 1910 was quarter that of what it
  had been in 1810.

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Sparks of the Mexican Revolution

• Diaz decide that Mexico was ready to return to
  democracy and called for elections in 1910.
• Francisco Madero, the owner of a large estancia
  and a US educated aristocrat who openly supported
  a new constitution and democratic change
  challenged Diaz.
• Diaz had Madero imprisoned in Monterrey for the
  election

10
Plan de San Luis Potosi

• After being released from prison Madero went into
  exile in the United States where he wrote the
  Plan de San Luis
• The Plan basically claimed that Diaz was not the
  legitimate leader of Mexico and that the election
  had been a fraud.
• Upon returning to Mexico Madero claimed he was
  the President Pro-Temp until new elections could
  be held.
• As President Pro-Temp Madero claimed that he
  would return all confiscated land to peasants and
  ensure universal male suffrage.

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The Revolution Begins

• Madero enlisted Pancho Villa and Pascual Orzoco
  to join the revolution.
• Soon all hell broke loose and different groups
  throughout Mexico joined the revolution by
  overthrowing local leaders
• One prominent revolutionary leader, Emiliano
  Zapata, led peasants in Morelos with the promise
  to return to them land and water rights.
• Within 6 month the Diaz regime fell and Diaz
  exiled himself to France

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Maderos Mistakes

• Upon assuming the Presidency of Mexico Madero
  allowed Diazs military forces to remain in the
  military with the assumption that they had
  learned their lesson.
• He told Emiliano Zapata that lands taken from
  Indian villages by hacendados could not be
  returned by force.
• Madero did increase funding on education, openly
  supported a plan to return lands to Indians and
  supported trade unionism
• Large oil companies (American owned), large land
  owners and others in the economic elite waged a
  war of words against Madero in the Mexican press
  which inspired rebellion
• One former general under Diaz tried to over throw
  Diaz, another cattle rancher upset with a law
  that limited land possession to 20 square miles,
  Pascual Orozco also tried to overthrow him bu was
  defeated by Pancho Villas forces who remained
  loyal to Madero

13
Zapata and the Plan de Ayala

• Disillusioned with the slow pace of change under
  Maderos leadership, Zapata continued the
  revolution by advancing his own plan, the Plad de
  Ayala.
• In the Plan de Ayala Zapata writes that Madero
  had no intentions other than to satisfy his
  personal ambitions, boundless instincts as a
  tyrant, and his profound disrespect for the
  constitution of 1857.
• Zapata went onto promise small largely indigenous
  land holders that they would be returned their
  properties taken by their oppressors.
• It should be noted that Madero was the owner of
  an enormous estancia and had appointed many
  members of his family to his government

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General Huerta Succeeds Madero

• In 1913 General Victoriano Huerta overthrew the
  Madero government by assassinating him.
• Huerta, a general under Madero in the Mexican
  army, rose to power with Maderos death and with
  the hope of restoring the Porfirato.
• Huerta rise to power initiated the truly
  revolutionary phase of the Mexican revolution.

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Villa in the North and Zapata in the South

• Villa organized small landholders, cowboys and
  the unemployed in the north join the revolution
  and Zapata organized the small largely indigenous
  landholders of the south as the government was
  forced to deal with a two fronted revolution for
  radical social change that called for widespread
  land redistribution.

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15. Venustiano Carranza joins the Revolution

• Carranza, a wealthy landholder like Madero
  organized a third army, mostly of Mexicos elite
  to contest Huertas presidency. In his Plan de
  Guadalupe (March 1913) Carranza declared himself
  the First Chief of the Constitutional Army, but
  said nothing about socio-economic conditions that
  propelled Villa and especially Zapata.

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Alvaro Obregon Joins Carranza

• Huerta resigned as President in 1914 after the US
  refused to recognized him as a President and sent
  troops to Veracruz.
• Obregon joined Carranza as a military strategist.
  Together they defeated Villas forces in the
  North and ultimately assassinated Zapata in the
  South.

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The Mexican Constitution on 1917
institutionalizes the revolution

• The Mexican constitution of 1917 empowered the
  government to redistribute land, recognized
  labors right to organize, subjected the church to
  new restrictions.
• Carranza assumed to the presidency in 1917, but
  resigned after trying to rig the first election
  under the new constitution.
• Obregon succeeded Carranza and organized the
  Partido Nacional Revolucionario now known as the
  Partido Revolucionario Institucional

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17. The Mexican Revolution Accomplished the
Following

• Nationalization of the oil industry
• Transfer of more than 45 million acres of land to
  the power
• The near monopoly of political power by the PRI
• A socialist orientation by the politicians that
  followed