Document A: The Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910The Mexican presidential election of 1910 was stolen when Porfirio Diaz — the longtime dictator— had his opponent Madero arrested and imprisoned. Madero took refuge and fled to San Antonio, and issued the Plan of San Luis Potosi criticizing the elections and upon Mexicans to take up arms against the government. The date of its issue marks the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.

Peoples, in their constant efforts for the triumph of the ideal of liberty and justice, are forced, at precise historical moments, to make their greatest sacrifices.

Our beloved country has reached one of those moments. A force of tyranny which we Mexicans were not accustomed to suffer after we won our independence oppresses us in such a manner that it has become intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny we are offered peace, but peace full of shame for the Mexican nation, because its basis is not law, but force; because its goal is not the prosperity of the country, but to benefit a small group who, abusing their influence, have converted the public charges into fountains of exclusively personal benefit, unscrupulously exploiting the manner of lucrative concessions and contracts.

The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico; the administration of justice, instead of imparting protection to the weak, merely serves to legalize the plunderings committed by the strong; the judges instead of being the representatives of justice, are the agents of the executive, whose interests they faithfully serve; the chambers of the union have no other will than that of the dictator; the governors of the States are designated by him and they in their turn designate and impose in like manner the municipal authorities. From this it results that the whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

For many years profound discontent has been felt throughout the Republic, due to such a system of government, but General Diaz with great cunning and perseverance, has succeeded in annihilating all independent elements, so that it was not possible to organize any sort of movement to take from him the power of which he made such bad use..... In Mexico, as a democratic Republic, the public power can have no other origin nor other basis than the will of the people, and the latter can not be subordinated to formulas to be executed in a fraudulent manner. .

…The Mexican people are fit for democracy, they are thirsty for liberty, and their present rulers do not measure up to their aspirations. Besides, the attitude of the people before and during the election, as well as afterwards, shows clearly that they reject with energy the Government of General Diaz and that, if those electoral rights had been respected, I would have been elected for President of the Republic. Therefore, and in echo of the national will, I declare the late election illegal and, the Republic being accordingly without rulers; provisionally assume the Presidency of the Republic until the people designate their rulers pursuant to the law. In order to attain this end, it is necessary to eject from power the audacious usurpers whose only title of legality involves a scandalous and immoral fraud. With all honesty I declare that it would be a weakness on my part and treason to the people, who have placed their confidence in me, not to put myself at the front of my fellow citizens, who anxiously call me from all parts of the country, to compel General Diaz by force of arms, to respect the national will.

Document B: Emiliano Zapata, “Plan of Ayala,” 1911.In his call for revolution, the Plan of San Luis Potosi, Madero had emphasized political objectives, only lightly touching on the subject of land reform. But in the mountainous southern state of Morelos, where the Indian communities had long waged a losing struggle against the encroaching sugar haciendas, the revolution, led by Emiliano Zapata, began under the slogan Tierra y Libertad ("Land and Liberty"). When Zapata became convinced that Madero did not intend to carry out his promise to restore land to the villages, he revolted and issued his own program, the Plan of Ayala, for which he continued to battle until the great guerrilla fighter, was slain by treachery in 1919. Zapata's principled and tenacious struggle and the popularity of his ideas, among the landless peasantry contributed to the adoption of a bold program of agrarian reform in the Constitution of 1917. Important provisions of the Plan of Ayala follow.

THE LIBERATING PLAN of the sons of the State of Morelos, members of the insurgent army that demands the fulfillment of the Plan of Potosi, as well as other reforms that convenient and necessary for the welfare of the Mexican Nation. We, the undersigned, constituted as a Revolutionary Junta, in order to maintain and obtain the fulfillment of the promises made by the revolution of November 20, 1910, solemnly proclaim in the face of the civilized world . . ., so that it may judge us, the principles that we have formulated in order to destroy the tyranny that oppresses us. ...

1. Considering that the President of the Republic, Senior Don Francisco I. Madero, has made a bloody mockery of Effective Suffrage by . . . entering into an infamous alliance with the enemies of the Revolution that he proclaimed, in order to forge the chains of a new dictatorship more hateful and terrible than that of Porfirio Diaz. . . . we declare the said Francisco I. Madero unfit to carry out the promises of the Revolution of which he was the author. . . .

6. We demand that the fields, timber, and water, which the landlords and political bosses have held illegally, should now go to the pueblos (communal villages), or back to the citizens, who originally held the titles to these resources. The pueblo dwellers will immediately take posession of the property that their oppressors have stolen, and if necessary, the pueblos may use force. The current possessors of these resources, who consider themselves as having a legal right to them, will have a chance to present their cases before special courts after the revolution is completed.

7. Since the immense majority of Mexican towns and citizens own nothing but the ground on which they stand and endure a miserable existence, denied the opportunity to improve their social condition or to devote themselves to industry or agriculture because a few individuals monopolize the lands, woods, and waters — for these reasons the great' estates shall be expropriated [taken], … in order that the towns and citizens of Mexico may own ejidos, colonies, town sites, and arable lands. Thus the welfare of the Mexican people shall promote in all respects.

8. Those landlords and political bosses who oppose this plan will have their property taken over immediately by the government. Two-thirds of the property’s value will go for pensions for widows and orphans of those peasants who will have died in the current struggle.

Document C: Mexican Constitution of 1917Article 27The ownership of lands and waters rests with the nation, which has the right to transmit private property to private persons.

Private property shall not be taken without compensation, except for reasons of public utility, and then only by fairly compensating landowners for their property.

The nation shall have at all times the right to impose on private property such limitations as the public interest may demand as well as the right to regulate the development of natural resources in order to conserve them and to equitably distribute the public wealth. For this purpose, all necessary measures shall be taken to divide large landed estates; to develop small landed holdings; to establish new communal farms of agricultural workers with such lands and waters as may be needed by them. Private property acquired for these purposes shall be considered as taken in the public interest.

Article 123The Congress of the Union, without contravening the following basic principles, shall formulate labor laws that shall apply to: workers, day laborers, domestic servants, artisans (obreros, jornaleros, empleados doinesticos, artesanos) and in a general way to all labor contracts.

a. The maximum duration of work for one day shall be eight hours.b. The use of labor of minors under fourteen years of age is prohibited. Persons above that age and

less than sixteen shall have a maximum workday of six hours.c. For every six days of work a worker must have at least one day of rest. d. The general minimum wage must be sufficient to satisfy the normal material, social, and cultural

needs of the head of a family and to provide for the compulsory education of his children.

Document D: “The Revolution is Dead,” Daniel Cosio Villegas, 1960.

The state rightly considered at a certain moment that Mexico could not progress very much if it relied on agriculture and mining, its two traditional occupations; therefore, the country should industrialize, at least until it would be one-third agricultural, one-third mining and one-third industrial. To achieve this goal, the State took the initiative in the establishment or expansion of certain industries. But in most cases, it waited for private enterprise to carry out the undertakings. For this purpose, and in accordance with classical liberal reasoning, the State proposed to create "a favorable climate" for private enterprise, and this was to be done, naturally, by the classical [liberal] means: political arid social stability; inflexible wage rates; low taxes; easy credit and other secondary aids.

The State was not mistaken either in its initial reasoning or in the methods it used to achieve industrialization, for it is estimated that in effect 60% of industrial investment to date comes from private sources. But the State made several important errors which have finally led to the situation in which we now find ourselves. One was that it never drew up a general framework of the industrial activities which were most suitable for the country, so that private enterprise would only undertake those that fitted into that general framework. In the second place, the State has been unsuccessful in restricting inflation so that the real wages of the labor force have clearly diminished, and it is the workers who ultimately are paying for the industrial progress of Mexico. In the third place, as an inevitable consequence, economic influence has begun to be converted into political influence, so that the Slate today would have difficulty in taking a fundamental economic policy measure without consulting the country's great banking and industrial firms or, in fact, without counting on their approval beforehand. For these reasons and some others quite as important, the final outcome is that while 16% of the Mexican families get 50% of the national income, 46% of those families got only one-seventh of such income.

Document E: “Mexico’s Historical Crisis,” Jose Iturriaga, writing in the mid-1940s.

As to the important agrarian goals, we can point out that nearly two million heads of family received more than sixty million acres of land during the period of three decades from the promulgation of the Law of January 6, 1915, until 1945. If the farmers had been provided with cheap and sufficient credit, technical assistance, and modern agricultural tools, the Agrarian Reform would have been perfect. Nonetheless, the impressive delivery of land and the ending of the feudal system upon which the long reign of Porfirio Diaz was based certainly are sufficient reasons to justify fully the social movement that began in 1910.

Article 123 of the Constitution of 1917 provided the legal base for the Federal Labor Law, which protects the workers and guarantees their rights. Many countries judge it a model law. Here, then, is another major achievement of the Revolution.

In the field of education, progress can be measured by the improvement in the literacy rate. It stood at 28 percent during the last year of the Porfirio Diaz regime; by 1945, it reached 55 percent. Despite the impressive number of schools constructed by the Revolution, their number is still insufficient to meet the demands of the growing school-age population. . . .

In religious matters a new tolerance has recently appeared, similar to the kind that exists in countries where the clergy did not have the custom of intervening in politics. In my opinion, it is a healthy trend, indicating a willingness to forget the bitter experiences of the past. . . . In contrast to the practices of the Porfirian dictatorship, our Revolution respects freedom of speech and press. . .

No one can ignore the constructive force of the revolutionary governments despite some embezzlement and illicit enrichment of not a few government officials.

Document F: “The Balance Sheet of the Revolution,” Jesus Silva Herzog (Mexican economist, editor, and government official), 1945.

One criticism that can be leveled at the land reform from a revolutionary point of view is that the peasant families have received very small parcels of land or land of very poor quality, with the result that in the majority of cases there has been only a very slight advance in the standard of living—and in other cases there has been no improvement at all. Frequently land of a quantity or quality inadequate to satisfy the most elementary needs has been distributed, just to solve the political problems of the moment. It is true that one could point to numerous instances in which it was impossible to make larger grants of land in a given region; but it is equally true that in other cases larger grants could have been made. We know, of course, that the maximum amount of land that can be given to an individual family … is fixed by law; but it is precisely with this legal criterion that we disagree. We hold that land distribution is not a gift but a right.

It cannot and should not be denied that errors have been committed in carrying out the land reform. Yet we firmly believe that the advantages obtained have been enormous, that the result shows a favorable balance. Most important of all is the fact that hundreds of thousands of serfs have been transformed into men, into citizens who know how to defend their rights. Now we must neither retreat nor halt; we must march forward, continuing and perfecting the reform by correcting the mistakes of yesterday and making necessary adjustments. . . .

In 1910 there were 127 factories spinning and weaving cotton; there were 193 in 1940. The number of looms was 26,184 in the former year and 37,000 in 1945; the number of spindles was 723,963 and 900,000 respectively. The consumption of cotton rose from 35,169 tons in 1910 to 69,000 in 1944. . . .

Document G: Mexican muralismAt the end of the Revolution the government commissioned artists to create art that could educate the mostly illiterate masses about Mexican history. Celebrating the Mexican people’s potential to craft the nation’s history was a key theme in Mexican muralism, a movement led by Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco—known as Los tres grandes. Between the 1920s and 1950s, they cultivated a style that defined Mexican identity following the Revolution.

Diego Rivera, “Agrarian Leader Zapata,” 1931.

Emiliano Zapata, a champion of agrarian reform and a key protagonist in the Mexican Revolution, here leads a band of peasant rebels armed with makeshift weapons, including farming tools. With the bridle of a majestic white horse in his hand, Zapata stands triumphantly beside the dead body of a hacienda owner.

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Jose Clement Orozco, “Destruction of the Old Order,” 1926.