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Society for Latin American Studies

The Mexican Revolution: Bourgeois? Nationalist? Or Just a 'Great Rebellion'?Author(s): Alan KnightSource: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1985), pp. 1-37Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for Latin American StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3338313 .

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8/10/2019 The Mexican Revolution_ Bourgeo - Alan Knight

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Bull

Latin

Am

Res.,

Vol.

4,

No.

2,

pp.

1-37,

1985.

0261-3050/85

$3.00

+

00

Printed

in Great

Britain.

Pergamon

Press

Ltd.

Society

for

Latin

American

Studies

The Mexican Revolution:

Bourgeois?

Nationalist?

Or

just

a

'Great Rebellion'?

ALAN

KNIGHT

University

ofEssex

What kind of

revolution was

the

Mexican Revolution?

The

nature

of

the

ques?

tion

is

such

that

any answer?especially

a

brief

answer like this?must

be

tentative:

for

it

involves

not

only

consideration

of

a

broad

and

complex

historical

process

(on

which

there

may

be

major

empirical

disagreements)

but

also

the

application

of

appropriate

theories

or

organising

concepts

(on

which

a

priori

assumptions may

radically

differ).

Historical

arguments,

of

course,

are never

entirely empirical,

and

always

depend

on

the

application

of

some

exogenous

theories/concepts/'laws':

overt

theoretical

constructs

(Marxism,

modernization

or

dependency

theory),

Hempelian 'covering

laws',

or?covering

laws

decked

out in

fustian?the

maxims

of

'common

sense'.

As

regards

some

historical

questions,

exogenous

'theory'

is at

a

discount: 'the

facts

speak

for

themselves'. But these are rarer than often thought. Many questions, especially

questions

of

moment,

demand

some

theoretical,

conceptual,

comparative

import.

Historians?and

others?who

reject

any

such

approach (either

tacitly

or,

in

the

case of Richard

Cobb,

with a

certain

aggressive

panache)1

do

them?

selves a

double

disservice:

(a)

they

rule out a

wide

and

legitimate

range

of

historical

inquiry

and

(b)

they

fool

themselves,

in

that

the

vaunted

absence

of

'imposed',

'alien'

theories/concepts/comparisons

opens

the

door to

obscurity,

arbitrariness

and

camouflaged

'common-sense'

usages.

Some historians of

the

Mexican

Revolution

go

this

way.

Others,

to

their

credit,

introduce

general

theories and

concepts;

but too

often

they

do

so in

dubious fashion. A

common,

sad

spectacle

is that of the narrative historian

who,

striking

out

from

the shallows of

empirical history (usually

in

a

brief

preface

or

conclusion)

clutches

instinctively

at

a

Marxist

life-belt

which,

entirely

inadequate

for

the

purpose,

promptly

deflates,

leaving

the

victim

to

flounder.

In

his

recent

The

Great

Rebellion,

which

appears?with

no

apologies

to

Clarendon?in

yet

another 'Revolutions in

the Modern World'

series,

Ramon

Ruiz

asserts

that

Mexico

did not

experience

a

revolution but

a

'great

rebellion'.

This

striking argument (what

did

the

series editor

make

of

it?)

derives

from

Ruiz's

model

of a

twentieth-century

revolution,

which?as

in

Russia,

China

or

Cuba?must

achieve 'a

transformation of

the

basic

structure

of

society',

radically changing

'class

structures

as

well as

the

patterns

of

wealth

and

income

distribution',

and

further

'modify(ing)

the

nature

ofa

nation's

economic

depen?

dency

on

the

outside

world'.2 1917 thus

provides

the

yardstick

and,

compared

with

the

Bolsheviks,

Mexico's

'revolutionaries' are a

poor

lot?mere 'rebels':

'measured

by

the standards of

Lenin and his

disciples...

(Zapata)

fails

woefully

short

of

being

a

revolutionary'.3

We should

note,

for

future

reference,

that

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2 BULLETIN

OF LATIN

AMERICAN RESEARCH

Ruiz

readily

accords the French

Revolution

'revolutionary'

status;

and he

recognises

some

vague kinship

between the French

and

Mexican Revolutions?

in that

the latter 'harks back' to

the former.

But

whereas

in

France the Revolu?

tion

'upended

the Ancient

Regime

and

replaced

it with

a

capitalist

state run

by

the

bourgeoisie',

Mexico

experienced

no

such dramatic

transformation;

at

best

it was a

rebellion,

or

a form

of

'bourgeois

protest',

which could

only

'stream-

line and

update'

a

pre-existing

capitalism.4

By

1910

the

only

proper

revolution

?deserving

of

the

name?was

a

socialist revolution. The

agenda

of

history?

the

passage

of Vorld

time',

to

use

a

fashionable

term?made

this

inevitable.5

Ruiz's life-belt thus

deflates,

taking

him to

the bottom.

Others

hang

on

tight

and

can

be

seen

threshing

in

the water

for

some time. James

Cockcroft,

for

example,

is

convinced

of

the

capitalist

nature

of

Porfirian

society,

and is

thus warmly receptive of Frank's general theorisation of the pervasiveness of

capitalism

in Latin

America

since the

Conquest.6

Cockcroft's definition

of

capitalism,

like

Frank's,

stresses relations

of

exchange

rather than

production;

conversely,

he views

feudalism

as a

form

of

*closed

economy',

in

a

manner

radically

different

from Kula or

Banaji.7

But,

if

the market

and

money

economy

are

paramount,

Cockcroft also

notes that their

growth

is

accompanied by

a

'corresponding

development

of

wage

labor',

which

he

asserts

as

an

empirical

fact

of

Porfirian

society:

80%

ofthe

labour forces

were

agricultural

proletarians.8

Thus,

the

Mexican

economy

was

undeniably capitalist

before,

during,

and after

the

Revolution.

What, therefore,

did

the Revolution

achieve?

It did

'little

more than overthrow Porfirio Diaz and change part of the ideology of social

change'.9

There were

no

'radical

changes

in the

class structure

and

in the

power

relationships

between

classes'.

Nevertheless,

the Revolution

was the

product

of

class

conflict?of

'explosive

confrontation between

proletarians

and

capital-

ists'.

It

was,

in

effect,

a

failed

proletarian/socialist

revolution,

which

challenged,

but

could

not

defeat,

an established

bourgeois

order,

and

which

has

left

a

legacy

of

'intense class

conflict'. The

task

of

the

(radical)

historian is

therefore

to

stress the

role

of

the Precursor Movement

(especially

the

P.L.M.)

and

to

assimilate

them

to

an

unbroken

tradition

of

revolutionary

protest

stretching

from Flores

Magon through

Zapata

and

the

1930s

Sindicato de

Petroleros

down

to

Lucio

Cabanas.

Adolfo

Gilly's

thesis

of

the revolucion

interrumpida

is

sub-

stantially

similar.10

Although

this

interpretation

has the

merit

of

stressing

the

central role of

popular

forces?and

of

seeing

them act

in

autonomous

fashion,

not

as

the 'inert

material moulded

by

the will of

a

few leaders'?it

is

rarely

critical

and

too

often

romantic

in its

depiction

of

these forces.11

Major

differ?

ences

and

antagonisms

are

blurred,

as

groups

are

lumped

together

under the

revolutionary

rubric;

the roles

of

historical

actors,

like the

P.L.M.,

and

historical

forces,

like

'anti-imperialism',

are

grossly exaggerated;

hence

it

is

possible

to

read

off a

reconstituted historical

script

in

order

to

make

contemporary points.12

Above all, this interpretation has

to

stress the failed?or 'interrupted'?

character

of

the

revolution. The revolution

is

important

not

for

what

it

did,

but

for

what

it did not do

(it

did

not establish

socialism);

or,

for

what,

at

some

future

time,

after

a

long

'interruption',

it

might yet

do.

Ruiz,

Cockcroft

and

Gilly

all

reject

the notion

of

1910 as

a

bourgeois

revolu?

tion

(Gilly

emphatically repudiates

this as

a

'petty

bourgeois,

centrist-socialist'

heresy).13

Ruiz

and

Cockcroft

do

so

(a)

because

they

conceive ofthe old

regime

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THE

MEXICAN

REVOLUTION 3

as

capitalist anyway;

and

(b)

because

they

adhere

to

a

demanding,

simplistic,

but common

notion

of

'revolution'.

For

them,

as for

Theda

Skocpol

in her

recent,

rather

over-rated

comparative

study,

revolutions are

'rapid,

basic

trans-

formations of a society's state and class structures, accompanied and in part

carried out

by

class-based revolt

from

below';

to

qualify

for this

select

group

(for,

as

Skocpol

acknowledges,

these are

'relatively

rare occurrences

in

modern

world

history'),

a

would-be revolution must involve

'successful

socio-political

transformation?actual

change

of

state and class structures'

(her italics).14

Ruiz and Cockcroft

are,

indeed,

even more

demanding

(for

this

reason,

Skocpol

is

prepared

to

concede the Mexican Revolution

revolutionary

status;

we shall

see

why

in a

moment).

For

them,

there can

only

be

'bourgeois'

and 'socialist'

revolutions,

and

the former

is

ruled out

on both

empirical

and theoretical

grounds.

Implicit

in

their

'theory'

is a

mistaken

notion of what a

'bourgeois'

revolution looks

like.

Ruiz,

we

have

noted,

accepts

1789

as a

bourgeois

revolu?

tion. But historians no

longer

believe that

1789

(that

is,

the

process

of

change

initiated in

1789

and

continued

to,

say,

1815) destroyed

'feudalism'

and in?

stalled

'capitalism'.

In

respect

of

social and

property

relations,

the

French

Revolution

neither

expropriated

entire

classes,

nor

subverted the

pattern

of

pre-1789 landownership;

'the transfer

of

property

brought

about

by

the

Revolu?

tion

was

...

far

less radical than that

effected

by

social

upheavals

ofthe

present

century'.15

Nor

does

it

appear

that

nineteenth-century

French

peasants?the

supposed

beneficiaries

of

revolutionary

change?were

dramatically

better

off than their fathers and grandfathers.16 The parallel with Mexico, evident

in

these

conclusions,

is

reinforced

if

political changes

are

included,

and

Tocque-

ville's acute

analysis

is

borne

in

mind:

'the Revolution had

. .

. two

distinct

phases:

one

in

which the

sole

aim

.

.

.

seemed

to

be

to

make

a

clean

sweep

of

the

past;

and

a

second in

which

attempts

were

made

to

salvage

fragments

from

the

wreckage

of

the

old

order';

as

a

result

of

which

there

emerged

'a

govern?

ment

both

stronger

and far more

autocratic than

the one

which the Revolution

had

overthrown'.17

Ruiz

is

hardly

consistent,

therefore,

in

according

the

French Revolution

the

'revolutionary'

status

which

he denies the

Mexican. More

generally,

it

is

unhistorical and theoretically stultifying to expect the Mexican?or any other

revolution,

especially

a

Tocquevillean',

bourgeois

revolution?to

accomplish

sweeping

changes

in social

relations

(or,

more

specifically,

the

relations

of

pro?

duction)

in a

relatively

short

time,

by

violent,

political

measures.

Even

Leninist,

socialist revolutions are

processes

rather than

discrete events

(that

is,

they

are

processes

initiated and

punctuated by

salient

events;

the

Chinese

Revolution

is,

in this

respect,

an

even

better

example

than

the

Russian).

And

bourgeois

revolu?

tions

are,

in

comparison,

dilatory

affairs. Thus

Enrique

Semo's

image

of

succes-

sive waves of

bourgeois

revolution?1810,

1854,

1910?is

more

convincing,

realistic and

historically

faithful.18

Here,

the

revolution in

the relations

of

pro?

duction is

a

matter

for

the

longue duree,

but

it

is

punctuated

and

decisively

accelerated

by

political

events

and

social conflicts. The

parallel

with France?

1789,

1830,1848?is

apparent.19

Historians should

not

be

looking

for

the

single,

knock-out,

revolutionary

punch,

but

for

the

accumulated blows

which

dispatch

the old social

order;

they

should evaluate

their individual

percussive

effect,

and

their

sequential relationship.

This,

in

the

space permitted,

I

shall

try

to

do.

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4

BULLETIN OF

LATIN

AMERICAN RESEARCH

Any

such

exercise,

however,

runs

a

risk

which a

good many

recent

Marxist/

marxisant

analyses?not

just

those of

the

Mexican

Revolution?have

incurred;

a

descent into

some sort of

Marxist

functionalism.20

Aware of the

complexities

of the historical

record,

and

rightly

dismissive of a

crude,

instantaneous

transi?

tion

from

'feudal' to

'bourgeois',

some writers

have

ingeniously multiplied

their

explanatory

concepts,

producing

grotesque

hybrids

like Manuel

Aguilar

Mora's

feudocapitalista

Porfiriato.21

Juan

Felipe

Leal

has

constructed

an

entire func-

tionalist

chronology

of

the

ancien

regime:

creation

of a

capitalist

state

(ca.

1854);

hegemony

of

the

liberal-landlord

fraction,

under

a

parliamentary

form

(1867-76);

hegemonic

crisis

(1876-80);

1880,

recomposition

of

the

power

bloc,

hegemony

ofthe

imperialist

fraction ofthe

bourgeoisie,

executive

dictator?

ship;

1890,

irruption

ofthe

Mexican

industrial

bourgeoisie,

'transformation

and

diversification

of

the

landlords',

and

'new

components

of the

power bloc';

1908,

'expulsion

of a

sector

of

landlords from

the

power

bloc'.22

Not

only

is

much

of this

open

to

empirical question?above

all,

on

the

grounds

of

seeing

rupture

where

there

is

continuity,

and

of

making quite misleading political

attributions,

e.g.

the

supposed

'parliamentary'

form of

1867-76;23

it is also

theoretically

dubious,

in

that

it

appropriates

conventional?often

very

con-

ventional?'bourgeois'

political

history

and

then

invests

it with

supposed

class

content

and

significance.

Administrations

are

mechanically

reduced

to

classes or

class

fractions;

shifts in

the

-superstructure

are attributed

to

profound

seismic motions

below.

Though

there

may

be

precedents

for

such

analysis among

the classics of Marxism, e.g. Marx's The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850,

these are not

the

weightiest

of

theoretical

authorities.

Nevertheless,

this

approach?whereby

class

attributions are read

off from

conventional

political

narrative?is

all too

common;

as,

for

example,

the work

and

influence

of

Nicos Poulantzas

suggest.

'In

place

of

theories based

on the

analysis

of accumula?

tion and

class

struggle',

it has

been

pointed

out,

exponents

of

this

approach

'utilize the

political

concepts

of

Poulantzas?'power

bloc',

'hegemony',

'govern?

ing

class',

etc.?like

pigeon-holes

which can

be filled

with

the relevant

concepts

from

a

political

analysis

of

the class

structure

of

any

given

state'.24 Similar

analyses

of

the

Revolution,

in

which

political

factions,

like

Villismo and

Carrancismo,

are reduced to classes or class

fractions,

usually

on the basis of

ideological

obiter dicta

and/or

a narrow

prosopography,

are

also

familiar;

I

have

offered criticisms

of

this

approach

elsewhere.25

Two

particular

variants

of

this 'class

fraction'

interpretation

of

the

Revolu?

tion

deserve closer attention.

First,

there is the fashion

for

Bonapartist explana-

tions

(which,

again,

display

the influence

of

Poulantzas

and

his

school).26

According

to

this

analysis,

the

Revolution established

a

Bonapartist

regime

in

which

a

stalemate

of

class forces enabled the

revolutionary

leadership?

the

'revolutionary

caudillismo' of the Sonorans?to

assume

political

control,

relatively

autonomous

of class

forces

(though, ultimately,

in the interests of

the

bourgeoisie).27 Again,

there

are

major problems,

theoretical and

empirical.

Marx's

original

formulation

of

Bonapartism

is itself

confusing.

The

bourgeoisie,

ruling

'absolutely'

one

moment,

then surrender

power

to

Louis

Napoleon,

and

'all

classes,

equally

impotent

and

equally

mute,

fail

on their knees before

the rifle

butt';

the

state

is

not

just 'relatively

autonomous'

but,

it

seems 'com?

pletely

independent'.28

Yet,

at

the

same

time,

'the state

power

is

not

suspended

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THE

MEXICAN

REVOLUTION

5

in midair.

Bonaparte

represents

a

class

...

the

small-holding

peasants'.29

Pre?

viously,

we

should

note,

it

is

the

lumpenproletariat?the

'scum,

offal

(and)

refuse

of

all classes'?which

constitute

the

only

class

upon

which he can

base himself

unconditionally'.30

And, in

power, Bonaparte

'is forced to create

an

artificial

caste', viz.,

the

bureaucracy,

which,

standing

'alongside

the

actual

classes

of

society',

underpins

his

regime.31

Finally?as

proponents

of the

theory

stress?Bonapartism

ultimately

sustains

bourgeois capitalism;

Bonaparte

'feels

it

to

be

his

mission

tosafeguard

"bourgeois

order"

\32 Rumbustious

and

polemical,

replete

with

paradox

and

epigram,

Marx's

Eighteenth

Brumaire

is

hardly

a

piece

of

rigorous

theorising.

Yet

it

has

formed the basis

for an entire

landscape

of

theoretical constructs:

Bonapartism,

Caesarism,

the

'exceptionaF

and

'relatively

autonomous'

capitalist

state,

interpretations

of

fascism

in

Europe

and

populism

in Latin America

(for some, populism

and

Bonapartism

are almost

interchange-

able).33

It is not

surprising,

granted

the

shaky

theoretical

foundations,

that these

constructs are

wobbly.

And,

compounding

the

irresponsibility

of

their

architects,

they

open

their

doors

to

all and

sundry.

So

many regimes

are

admitted

to

the

Caesarist/Bonapartist

salon

that their

very 'exceptionality'

(which

constitutes

their

theoretical

raison

d'etre) begins

to look dubious:

relatively

autonomous

states are

ten-a-penny.

Admission

is

easy,

because

criteria

for

membership

are

loose.

Populism,

it has been

convincingly

argued,

offers

a

poor

organising concept

for

understanding

Latin American

historical

development.34

And,

in

the

specific

case of Mexico, Bonapartism exercises an appeal by virtue of its very ideological

flaccidity.

Yet

there are

strong empirical

objections:

no

'enormous

bureaucacy,

well-gallooned

and well-fed'

governed

Mexico

in

the

1920s; nor,

I

shall

argue,

was

the

Sonoran state the 'enormous bureaucratic and

military

organisation'

which

(according

to

theory)

maintained

Bonapartist

rule

in

France,

and con-

ferred

on

the

state its decisive relative

autonomy.35

Putting

it

simply,

the

Mexican

state

of

the

1920s

was

too

weak

to rise above

classes

in

Bonapartist

fashion;

and the

fact

that it was not the

agent

of a

single, hegemonic

class

indicated

less

its relative

autonomy

than

its role as the

object

and

victim

of

class conflict.

Ergo,

classes were

not

'impotent

.

.

.

and mute

before

the rifle

butt',

but, rather,

active and vocal in

trying

to

get

the rifle butt on their sides.

Maybe

this

was

an

'exceptionaF

situation,

but

it

endured,

I would

suggest,

until

the late

1940s,

when

the

battle

for state

power

was

won and

lost,

and the

state assumed

its 'normal'

role,

in

which

'relative

autonomy'

was

(to

degrees

that

might

be

debated)

weak

or

non-existent.

Linked to this

interpretation

is the

common

notion of

a

major

shift?

accomplished

by

the

Revolution?from the

hegemony

of the

comprador

to

that of the

national

bourgeoisie.

The Revolution

might

not

have

dismounted

feudalism,

but it

wrenched

power

from

one class

fraction

and bestowed it

on

another,

whose

'project' radically

differed in

respect

of

economic

policy

and

attitudes to

foreign

trade and investment.

However,

as

eminent

proponents

of

this

interpretation

have

to

admit,

the

newly

ensconced national

bourgeoisie

displayed

a

strange

ambivalence

and

hardly

delivered

the

goods: during

the

1920s

foreign

trade

and

investment

grew, dependence

on the U.S.

increased.36

What

for

them is

a

puzzle

and/or

a

betrayal

is,

in

fact,

quite

unproblematic

and

consistent

if

(a)

the

project

ofthe

revolutionary regime

is

seen

as

essentially

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BULLETIN

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moderate,

pragmatic,

and

evolutionary

and

(b)

its

pedigree

is

traced back

to

the

Porfiriato,

rather

than to

some

mythical genesis

in

the

heat of

the

popular

revolution.

The

revolutionaries

failed?indeed,

hardly

attempted?to

break

Mexican

'dependence'

because

they

never

had

any

intention of

doing

so.

Like

their

Cientifico

predecessors

(I

refer

to the

Cientificos

of

the

1900s)

they

sought

only

to

renegotiate

Mexico's relations

with

foreign

capital,

consonant

with

the

changes

wrought

by

a

generation

of Porfirian

growth.

Given their

statements

and

policies

during

1910-20,

and

the

relative absence

of

any

deep,

popular

xenophobia

(directed

against

foreign

capitalism;

Spanish

and

Chinese

immigrants

were a

different

matter),

this outcome was

entirely

predictable.

The

Revolution was

not,

in

this

sense,

a

nationalist

revolution,

nor even a

nationalist

revolution

betrayed.

So far, the argument has been negative: the demotion of the Revolution to

a

mere?however

'great'?rebellion

is

theoretically

stultifying;

the

promiscuous

fathering

of class

fractions

warrants

a

snip

from

Occam's razor. Neither

Bonapartism

nor

the

revolution of

the

national

bourgeoisie

are

convincing

hypotheses.

What

positive alternative(s)

may

be

offered

by

way

of a

general

conceptualization

of

the

Revolution,

its

character

and

results?

Amidlhe numer?

ous

studies of

'revolution' now

available

(most

of

which

I

shall

pass over)

two

different

kinds

of

definition seem to hold

sway:

what

I

shall call the

descriptive

and

the

functional.

Furthermore,

arguments

about what

constitutes

a

'real'

revolution

sometimes

hinge

upon (unacknowledged)

allegiance

to

these

defini-

tions. A descriptive definition says what a revolution looks like: it usually

embraces

major

violence,

political?maybe

class?conflict of

a

serious

kind,

and attendant

social

upheaval.

Revolution is

here

distinguished

from

minor

rebellion

or

cuartelazo?a

useful,

conventional and

old

distinction,

epitomised

by

Louix XVPs

famous

exchange

with

the Due de

la

Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.37

In

the

same

vein,

historians of

the Mexican

Revolution have

carefully

and

rightly distinguished

between

the

Revolution

and

revolutions,

i.e. individual

coups

and minor

revolts.38

But

a

'revolutionary'

mountain

may

strain to

bring

forth a

post-revolutionary

mouse:

historical outcomes do not

stand

in

direct

proportion

to

the

violence and

casualties

which

make them

possible.

In

the

case of

France,

for

example,

'there

is.

.. some

apparent

justification

for

regard-

ing

the Revolution as

a

largely ephemeral

phenomenon

whose

relative

violence,

in

an

age

accustomed

to

greater

stability

than

our

own,

led

to its

being

credited

with

more

lasting significance

than was

actually

the case'.39

By

the

same

token,

there are 'failed'

revolutions,

like

Taiping

or

1905;

descriptively

revolutionary,

functionally

ineffective,

except

inasmuch

as

they (perhaps)

laid the

groundwork

for

later,

successful

revolutions.

To

go

further:

a

valid

descriptive

definition

should,

I

would

argue,

contain

three

key

elements which

inter-relate;

which

distinguish

revolution

(failed

or

successful)

from

coup

or

rebellion

(again,

failed or successful);

and which thus

preserves the specificity of 'great revolu?

tions'.40

These

elements are:

(i)

genuine

mass

participation,

(ii)

the

struggle

of

rival

visions/ideologies

(which

may

or

may

not

be

class-based:

I

would

not

wish

to

exclude

multi-class movements

of,

say,

nationalist

or

religious per-

suasion:

English

Puritanism,

the

Risorgimento,

anti-colonial

nationalist

move?

ments),

and

(iii)

a

consequent,

serious

battle

over

political authority.

These

three

elements

go

together.

A

revolution

involves

genuine

mass

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8

BULLETIN

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AMERICAN

RESEARCH

and

politics'.46

Historians of the

Mexican

Revolution,

like

Ruiz,

advance func?

tional criteria so

demanding

that the Revolution

becomes

a

rebellion

(a

demo-

tion

which other

'great' revolutions?certainly

those

of

'bourgeois'

character

?would suffer if

similarly inspected)

and a

whole

host of

revolutionary

partici-

pants

are,

in

effect,

denied

'revolutionary'

status. Meanwhile other

historians

?like

Cockcroft?accord

'revolutonary'

status

by

virtue

of

assimilating

partici-

pants

to a

preferred

norm,

that of

the

militant,

proletarian, anti-capitalist

P.L.M.47

Yet

pre-eminent

rebel

movements,

like

Zapatismo,

cannot be so assimi-

lated:

they

were neither

proletarian

nor

socialist;

and,

especially

in their

early

years, they

entertained no

grand

project

for

the

future

transformation

of

Mexico.48

No

more?to

take

another

example?did

the Cedillos set out

to

build Jerusalem

in

the

green

and

pleasant

Valle

del

Maiz. Talk

of

'communism'

notwithstanding, the Cedillos envisaged?and Saturnino Cedillo later imple-

mented?a

local,

rural,

personalist

and

restorative

solution to their

grievances.49

Zapata

and

the Cedillos

(and

many

like

them)

were,

in a

sense,

reformists

who

could

only

implement

their

desire

reforms

by

revolutionary

guerrilla

war;

and

the

vision which

impelled

them

(for

visions,

myths

and moral

imperatives

were

crucial)

was drawn from

the

past, perhaps suitably

gilded.

Arnaldo

Cordova,

who

understands this well

enough,

is

logical

and consistent

in

setting

it

against

his own

(functional)

definition

of

revolution:50

can

we

legitimately

speak

of

a

revolution in the

case

of the

Zapatista

movement? Much of what we now know about Zapata and Zapatismo ...

suggests

no.

That

return

to

the

past

on which the

movement's

localism

was

founded,

the lack

of

both

a

national

project

of

development

and

a

conception

of

the

State,

are

elements

which

prevent

our

conceiving

it

as a

revolution.

A

revolution,

social

or

political,

is never

local,

never

looks

to restore the

past;

a revolution

is national and

for

that

very

reason the

seizure

of

political

power

figures

as its

prime

objective.

Following

Stone

and

Marx,

I

would

dissent.

And

I

would

do

so,

first,

on the

common-sense,

semantic

grounds

that to

deny

the

'revolutionary'

character

of

Zapatismo

and most

popular

movements

of the

Mexican

Revolution

(sic)

is

pedantic

and

misleading;

and

second,

because

it

involves

the

a

priori

segregation

of

rebel/revolutionary

movements

on the basis ofa

single,

imposed

and

exagger-

ated

criterion:

that of

ideological position.

It

therefore

exalts

ideology?on

which the fundamental

progressive/backward-looking,

'proactive/reactive'

distinction

is

based.

By

the same

token,

it

neglects

active

commitment

and

efficacy,

not least

in terms

of

class

struggle.

The

Zapatistas

may

have lacked

the

ideological sophistication

of

the

Flores

Magon;

but

they

did

vastly

more

to

rend the

old order and

attempt

the creation

of

something radically

different.

And

that

radically

different

something, though

it

was not

socialism,

did

present

a stark contrast to the Porfirian status quo ante. Zapatismo, and many lesser

movements

of similar

type,

fought

for the

implementation

of

an alternative

vision,

which

could elicit

fierce

popular

allegiance

(so,

too,

did

certain

serrano

groups).

If

the vision was

nostalgic,

the action was

revolutionary?often

class-

consciously revolutionary.

And

it

is

not unknown

for

nostalgic,

'traditional'

visions

to

be

transmuted?especially

in

the heat

of

revolution?into

more

forward-looking,

radical

ideologies:

thus

the

millenial

traditions

of the

Russian

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9

and Chinese

peasantries

(evidenced

in the

raskolniki

and

Taiping

rebels)

fed

into

the

revolutionary

movements

of the

twentieth

century;

while

in

Mexico

the

inarticulate,

localised rebellions

of

1910-15

often

paved

the

way

to

better

organised,

more

sophisticated

protest

later,

especially

in the 1930s.51 This

brings

me

to the

third, final,

and

briefest element

in

my

descriptive

definition?

which

is

also raised

by

the

poncluding

sentence

of

Cordova,

quoted

above.

It

may

be

true that

popular

movements,

like

Zapatismo,

were reluctant

to

seize

state

power?and

that this

proved

a

fatal

weakness.

But

their

mobilisation

of the rural masses behind a

genuinely

popular programme

involved a

major

confrontation with

the

state,

and

significantly helped

in

the

dissolution of

the

state

(which,

as

Lorenzo

Meyer points

out,

had

effectively

ceased

to

exist

by

1914).52

They

thus

contributed

to the

creation?if

not

the

resolution?of

a

situation which has

been seen

(by proponents

of what

Skocpol

calls the

'political-conflict'

approach)

as

distinctively revolutionary:

that

is,

the com?

petition

for

political power

between

rival

forces,

leading

to

'multiple sovereignty'

?i.e. the

breakdown

ofthe

state.53

Of this

Mexico

was

a classic

example.

I

would

therefore,

justify

the

use of

'revolutionary'

to

describe

broadly-

based

popular

movements,

possessed

of

powerful,

rival

visions,

locked

in a

sustained

struggle

(political,

military,

ideological),

in a situation of

multiple

sovereignty.

Irrespective

of

outcome

and

function,

the

Mexican Revolution

clearly

fits these

descriptive

criteria;

common

usage

is

therefore valid.

But

before

moving

on to

the

second,

more

contentious

question

of

function,

it

will

be necessary to flesh out the skeletal description already presented. I have

elsewhere

suggested

that the

Mexican

Revolution

may

be best

analysed

in

terms

not

of

two

contenders

(old

regime

and

revolution)

but

four:

old

regime

(Porfirismo

and

Huertismo);

reformist

liberals

(chiefly, though

not

exclusively

urban

middle

class);

popular

movements

(subdivided

into

agraristas

and

serranos);

and

the ultimate

national

synthesis,

Carrancismo/Constitutionalism,

which

mutates,

without

significant genetic

innovation,

into

the

governing

coalition of

the

1920s.54

It

will

at

once

be

noted

that these

are

not

homologous

categories,

e.g. regimes,

classes,

ideologies.

They

are, rather,

historical

actors,

representing

clusters of

interests,

in

which

class is

crucial,

but other

allegiances

?ideological, regional,

clientelist?also

compete;

they

are useful at this

very

general

level of

analysis

but,

of

course,

must

be

broken down for

many

other

analytical

purposes.

Class

may

be

seen as central

to

some of these

basic

divisions,

e.g. nationally,

between

the

old

regime

and

the

popular

movement,

locally

in

specific

cases such as

Morelos,

the

Laguna,

the

Yaqui

Valley,

the

Huasteca.

Other

divisions,

such as that between Villismo

(a

hypertrophied

section

of the

popular

movement)

and

Carrancismo

(a

category

in its

own

right),

cannot

be

reduced

to

class

interests,

not

even

'in the last

analysis'.

No

more

can

the

Cristiada

ofthe

1920s.

The denial of

a

neat

congruence

between

political

factions

and class

interests

does

not,

according

to

my

definition,

detract from

the

revolutionary

character

of

the

process

initiated in

1910.

Here,

it

is the

strength

and

autonomy

of

popular

movements which count.

Recent,

revisionist

accounts,

which

deny

this

feature

of

the

revolution, are,

I

believe,

basically

mistaken

and

sometimes at

odds with

the evidence

they

themselves

produce.

Some

deny

or

seriously

qualify

the

importance

of

peasant

rebellion,

stressing

instead

peasant passivity;

some

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BULLETIN

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emphasise

instead the

revolutionary

role

of

the middle

classes,

the

well-to-do,

or

the now

popular

rancheros

(rancheros

and

peasants

being neatly,

but rather

misleadingly,

segregated,

not least

by

the shibboleth

of

'communalism').55

There is

often, too,

an

underlying

implication

that to

qualify

as a

'revolutionary'

class the

peasantry

must

display

a level of

revolutionary

commitment?in

terms of

sustained,

majority activity,

broad

geographical support,

class

con?

sciousness

and

political sophistication?which

few classes

(bourgeois, pro?

letarian

or

peasant)

have ever

attained.

Of

course,

if

the fences

are built

too

high,

the

peasant nag

will fail

at

the

first.

In

this

respect,

the

old,

'populist'

historians

(such

as

Tannenbaum),

and?for all

their

faults?the new Marxists

(Cockcroft,

Gilly, Semo)

at

least

grasp

that the

revolution

was,

as its

participants

knew well

enough,

a

mass,

popular

movement,

pitting

against

each other hostile

groups,

classes and

ideologies,

and

revealing,

in dramatic

fashion,

the

bankruptcy

ofthe old

regime.

The

character

of the

revolution?popular,

ideological, profound?had

obvious

implications

for its

outcome;

definition

and function therefore

overlap.

A dismissal

or

de-emphasis

of the

revolution's

profound, popular

character

is

likely

to

encourage

a

view

of its

outcome

which stresses

continuity

over

change.

But discussion

of

the

revolution's outcome

is

notoriously

difficult,

and

any

attempt

must

be

prefaced

by

some

preliminary

clarification.

We

may

try

to

stop

the

clock and ask 'what has

changed?';

but

we

must be careful

to

relate

change

to

the

revolution,

i.e.

not to fail

into

the

old

error of

post

hoc

ergo

propter hoc, whereby all post-revolutionary developments are attributed to

the

revolution,

even those

which were

immanent in

pre-1910

Mexico;

and

we

must

decide

at which

point

to

stop

the

clock?1917,1920, 1923, 1929,1934,

1940,

1985?

The later the

date,

the

greater

the

risk of

smuggling

in

'revolu?

tionary' changes

which are

not

primarily

of

revolutionary origin

(for

example,

the economic

nationalism

of

the

1930s,

which must be seen

in a

global

as

well

as

post-revolutionary,

national

context).56

Yet,

if

Semo's

approach

is

right

(and

I

believe

it

is)

it would

be

wrong

to

stop

in,

say, 1920?important

though

that

conjuncture

was

in the

crystallisation

of the

post-revolutionary

regime.

By

the

same

token,

it

would

be

wrong

to

close

a

general analysis

of

the

French

Revolution with

Thermidor,

or

even

the Restoration

(note

the last sentence

of

this

essay).

We

face,

therefore,

a familiar

problem:

how to slice

up

the seam-

less

garment

of

history.

But

the

problem

is

especially

acute

when?like

Joseph's

coat

of

many

colours?the

garment

is

rich,

variegated,

and

the

object

of

bitter

contention.

1920,

for

example,

may

afford a

good vantage

point

to

judge

certain

conjunctural

political

changes;

but

even

1985

may

be

too

early

to

reach

firm

conclusions

about

the

revolution's

epochal

significance.

The

optimal

solution,

I

shall

suggest,

is

a combination

of

long

and short

term

perspectives:

the

latter

focussing

on the 1920s

(the

immediate

outcome),

the

former

on

general consequences

down to the

present day.

But

analysis

of

general consequences

is

fraught

with

a

particular

difficulty

which

must

be

tackled

at

the outset.

Discussion

of

post-revolutionary

Mexican

history

is often

confined

within

a

teleological straightjacket.

The revolution

puts

Mexico

on

fixed

lines

of

development,

hence

all

subsequent

progress

(I

use the

term

neutrally)

can

be

traced

back

to

the

revolution,

to

the orientation

and

impulse

it conferred. Three

principal

teleologies

are influential.

First,

there

is

the

old

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11

revolutionary

orthodoxy,

which sees the revolution

as a

unique

national

experi?

ence: Gesta Dei

per

Mexicanos. Thanks

to

the

revolution,

Mexico

has

proceeded

?and still

proceeds?towards

social

justice,

economic

development

and

national

integration.

It

is

the stock-in-trade of

PRI

candidates

on

the

stump.

The

historical

implication

is that all

participants

in

the

revolution

(including

those

who

fought

and

killed each

other)

made

a

contribution

to

this

happy

outcome. Powerful in

the rhetoric of

the

regime,

this

teleology

is

less

evident

in

serious

historiography?though

elements

can

be found.57

Two

alternative

teleologies

represent

radical

critiques

of

this

interpretation.

One

gives priority

to

the

onward

march of

capitalism?to

which the

revolution

and all

'revolutionary'

regimes

have

contributed,

official discourse notwithstand-

ing.

The revolution

itself was

a

bourgeois

revolution

(at

least

in

the weak sense

that it was not socialist, and maybe involved the bourgeois defeat of peasant

and

proletarian

forces;

sometimes,

too,

in

the

strong

sense that

it

also over-

threw a

feudal,

or at

least

pre-capitalist,

ancien

regime',

and/or

that

it

repre?

sented

the conscious

project

of

the

national

bourgeoisie).

And

subsequent

regimes,

Cardenas'

included,

have

in

their

different

ways

furthered

this

capitalist

development,58 According

to

this?what

might

be called the

'logic

of

capital'

school?the state

has

served

as an

agent

of

capitalism,

national

and/or

inter?

national;

it

is,

in

the

jargon

of

one

debate,

an

'instrumental' state.59

A

third,

influential,

rival

teleology

also

derives

its

key concept

(the

'relatively

auto?

nomous'

state)

from

grand

theory.

Here,

the

state?prior

to

and

hence

relatively

autonomous of capital?becomes the chief motor of Mexican development,

and

the rise

of

the state

dominates

Mexican

history

(at

least since the Revolu?

tion)

much

as

the

ascendant

middle

class

dominated

the

Whig

interpretation

of

British

history.

When

framed

within a

Marxist

discourse,

this

view

necessarily

stresses the

relativity

of

the state's

autonomy,

and

thus

often blends with

the

Bonapartist

theory

mentioned

above.

Non-Marxists,

on

the

other

hand,

for whom

the state's

autonomy

causes

no

theoretical

discomfort,

veer towards

a kind

of

statolatry,

which now

pervades

a

good

deal of

recent historical

studies.60

*When

all is

said and

done',

a

recent,

excellent

monography

con-

cludes,

'all

the

complexities

of

the

Mexican

revolution can be

reduced

to

this

one

dimension: the

state'.61 Guillermo

de

la

Pena,

in

his

anthropological

study

of

the Morelos

highlands,

takes

a

wider

perspective:

'the theme

of

the

State',

he announces at

the

outset,

'runs

throughout

the

whole

book',

and,

further-

more,

stretches back

far

into

the colonial

period;

the

state?or,

rather,

its

'power

domain'?constitutes

'the external

power

which has

defined

com?

munal

goals;

from

colonial

tributes and labour

control,

to

land

distribution

and

contemporary

tax

collection';

the

'historical

force

of

the State' can

be

seen

'pervading

economics and

politics,

religion

and

kinship,

ethnicity

and

class'.62

No-one, of course, doubts the importance of the state?any more than the

importance

of

class. like

so

many

historical

questions

this

is

one

of

degree,

though degree

which cannot

easily

be

quantified.

Putting

the

question simply,

it

may

be asked: should

the

rise

of

the

post-revolutionary

state

be seen

as

the

crucial,

formative

development

in

modern

Mexican

history?

Is

the

state,

in

other

words,

the

key

organising

concept

for the

understanding

of that

history?

It

is

my

contention that

those

who

have

veered

towards

statolatry

have

gone

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BULLETIN

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RESEARCH

too

far,

and that to

exchange

class

reductionism for

statolatry

is no

gain;

indeed,

it

is

probably

a

loss. There

are

three

main

objections

to

this,

the

most

fashion-

able

of

the

three

teleologies.

First,

it

imparts

a kind of

Whiggish unilinearity

to modern Mexican

history,

in that all

major

developments,

in all

periods,

are

hooked

up

to

this

basic

engine

of

change.

And

the

engine

keeps going,

in

pretty

much

the

same direction: that

is,

towards

centralisation,

corporatism

and

bureaucracy.

Secondly,

this

view

empirically

exaggerates

the

power

and role

of

the

state,

especially

for

the

earlier

period (roughly,

pre-1940).

Its

proponents

read

back the

modern

Mexican

state?with its

developed

bureaucracy

and

corporate

structures,

massive

budget, pervasive

economic

presence

and

sheer

longevity?into

an

age

when

it

did not

exist;

when

today's

Leviathan was

yesterday's

minnow.

Nor

was

the

generation

of

Leviathan

necessarily

foreseen.

We

should not

overlook?as

Maitland

reminded

us?that

things

now

securely

lodged

in

the

past

were once

part

of

an unknown

future.

The Sonoran

state

of

the 1920s

was

precarious,

its

authority

challenged

by

caudillo and

Catholic

Church,

its

survival

predicated

on

Washington's

favour,

its

character,

according

to

James

Wilkie,

still

basically 'passive'.63

Even

the

Cardenas

presidency?rightly

seen

as a

key period

in

the

development

of the

modern

state?began

with a

major

schism within

the state

apparatus

and

ended with

the

traumatic election

of

1940,

when the

outgoing

President,

opting

for a

irriddle-of-the-road,

safety-first

successor,

had

to

reckon

with a

strenuous

opposition,

a

majority

vote

against

the official

candidate,

and

a

legacy

of

political bitterness and disquiet. 1940 revealed the limitations, as well as the

strengths,

of

the

maturing revolutionary

state

(and,

indeed,

had

Cardenas

opted

for

Mugica

rather

than Avila

Camacho,

i.e.

for

his

preferred

candidate rather

than for

the

safe

candidate,

these limitations

might

have

been more

drastically

revealed).

Third,

following

from

this,

statolatry

conceives

of

the

state

in

anthropo-

morphic

terms:

it is

a

discrete

entity,

like

an

individual which acts

upon

others

(more

than

it is

acted

upon),

which

possesses

aims,

interests,

and

fast

burgeoning

powers.

This

is

not

the

liberal,

pluralist

state

(the

neutral

arena where

interests

clash

and are

resolved);

nor

is

it

the

classic,

Marxist,

'instrumental'

state,

serving

class interests?for these interests are

rarely

specified;

rather

it is an

indepen?

dent,

i.e.

very

relatively

or

even

absolutely

autonomous,

actor,

a

historical

prime

mover which cannot

be

disaggregated,

behind which

nothing

or

no-one

can be

discerned. The

interest

groups

of

pluralist theory,

Marxist

social

classes,

do not

impinge;

or,

if

they

do,

it is as

supplicants

and

recipients

ofthe

state's

favour,

or

as

victims of its

wrath.

In

extreme

versions this

anthropomorphic

state

indeed assumes human

form andit

is

supposed

that

the

destiny

of

Mexico

is

done and undone in

Los

Pinos and

in

the

government

departments

and

that

the

people

are

no

more

than the raw material with

which

the ruler?wise

or

not?shapes

the

history

ofthe

nation'.64

Statolaters

misconceive the role

of

the Mexican state.

Prior

to

1940

(to

take

a

rough dividing

line)

the state was

weaker,

often

much

weaker

than

they

suppose;

after

1940

it was much

less autonomous.

Indeed,

it

would

be difficult

to

find

a

state

in Latin

America

which,

over

the

past

forty

years,

has so con?

sistently

and

successfully

framed

policies

favourable

to

capital

accumulation,

and the

socio-political

foundations

which

underpin

it

(this

is

a

point

I

will

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THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

13

return to

in

conclusion).

All three

teleologies,

therefore,

must

be

rejected.

There are

no

grounds

for

homogenizing

the

entire

post-revolutionary period.

The

revolution

did

not set the

country

on

a

fixed

and immutable

course.

Rather,

in

the

short

term

(taking

a

vantage

point

in

the

1920s),

the revolution effected

certain

important changes,

some

of

which could

not

be undone.

Furthermore,

in

the

longer

term,

the revolution

made

possible

certain later

developments,

while

closing

off

others.

It

created,

in

other

words,

windows

of

opportunity;

though

whether

these

opportunities

would

be

seized

would

depend

on

later

events,

themselves the

product

of

social and

political

conflicts.

The first

task,

therefore,

is to

specify

what

had

changed,

irrevocably

and

significantly, by

the

1920s;

then

to

consider

how

subsequent

options?in

the fields

of

agrarian

reform,

state-building,

economic

nationalism?were

proffered,

taken,

or

refused.65

As

of

the

1920s,

two kinds of

change

were evident.

At

the

formal level?

the level

of

laws,

decrees,

official

policies

and

constitutional

provisions?the

degree

of

real

change

can

easily

be

exaggerated.

True,

the

new Constitution

promised

fine

things,

'predating

the Soviet

.

. .

constitution';

and

the

new

regime

was

suffused

with

populist

rhetoric.66

But,

as

so

often

in

the

past,

rhetoric

and

reality

diverged.

As in

the

1860s and

70s,

the victorious revolu-

tionaries

inherited

a

prostrate country

and a

chaotic

government;

they

there?

fore

placed

strong government

and

economic reconstruction

(a

recurrent

phrase

in

the

post-1917

period,

as

it

had

been

exactly fifty years

before)

above

con-

situtional fidelity and promised reforms.67 The Maderista promise of Sufragio

Efectivo,

No

Re-eleccion

was

hardly

honoured?still

less

if

Womack's

transla?

tion,

'A Real Vote and

No

Boss

Rule',

is

preferred.68

Elections

were still

fixed,

bosses?like

'Don

Melchor'

of

Paracho?still

ruled,

and

the

Sonoran

version

of

re-eleccion was

only

averted

by

Toral's

bullets.69

No

more

did

the realities

of

labour

politics?typified

by

Morones

and

the

CROM?faithfully

reflect

Article

123.

In

the

agrarian

sector,

reform came: between

1915

and

1928

5.3m hectares were distributed

to

over half

a million

recipients

in

some

1500

communities.70

Though,

by

1930,

ejidal property

constituted

only

6.3%

of

national

agricultural

property (by

area)

or

9.4%

(by

value),

there

were

states

where

the

respective

percentages

were

much

higher

(Morelos:

59

and

62;

Yucatan:

30

and

15;

the Federal

District: 25 and

13;

Tlaxcala: 19

and

21).

Particularly

in

the states

of

the central

plateau,

therefore,

the

agrarian

reform

had

substantially

modified

Porfirian

property-owning

and

power

relations

even

before the

sweeping

Cardenista reforms.

Forthright

assertions

of

agrarian

continuismo need

to

be

qualified.71

However,

the

practical

consequences

of

this limited

but

significant

formal

reform

depended

a

good

deal on

the

informal

context within which

it

was

enacted,

and to

which

I

shall turn in a

moment.

Taken

on

their

own,

the

figures

of

formal

reform

(whose

accuracy may

be

questioned)72 tell only part of the story.

Of

the

remaining

'revolutionary' policies,

the role

of

economic

nationalism,

I

have

already

suggested,

is

easily

exaggerated.

Apart

from

recurrent

squabbles

with the oil

companies

(in

the

1920s,

as in

the

1930s,

oil

was

something

of

a

special

case)

the

Sonorans

showed

no

disposition

to

squeeze

foreign

invest?

ment,

or

radically

to

change

Mexico's economic relations with

the

capitalist

'core'.

Rather,

for

much

ofthe

1920s,

the

greatest governmental

commitment

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BULLETIN

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to

reform?in rhetorical

and

practical

terms?was

to

be

found in its anti-

clericalism,

and its

related

espousal

of

state education. These

twin

issues bulked

large (much

larger

than

other 'socio-economic'

issues)

at

the Constitutional

Congress

of

1916-17;

they

dominated the

politics

of the

subsequent

decade,

especially

after

1926;

they

were still

dominant

as

the maximato

drew

to

a

close.73

In

the

short

term

(in,

say,

the

twenty

years

following

the fail of

Huerta)

the

chief

legacy

of

the revolution in

the realm of formal

governmental

policy

was

therefore

a

virulent

anti-clericalism,

linked

to

an

ideology

of

aggressive

state-building.

This

substantiates,

rather than

contradicts,

my

earlier

point:

Sonoran

etalisme derived

precisely

from

an

awareness

of

the weakness of the

state,

its

lack of institutional and

ideological

support

(of, perhaps, ideological

hegemony).

Policies

of

state-building

are themselves

poor

evidence

of the

strength

of

the

state.

Furthermore,

it

is

arguable

that

the Sonoran

response?

anti-clericalism?compounded

the

problem

as much

as

it

solved

it.

Thus

we

are asked to believe that

Leviathan

governed

in a

country

where

'poverty,

anarchy

and

violence

reigned'

and

which,

from

1928

to

1935,

'lived

in a state

of

permanent

political

crisis'.74

Formal

policies,

then,

displayed

an

indifference

to

'Maderista' concerns

for

representative government

(hence

Vasconcelos' 1929

'crusade');75

and

a

greater

commitment

to an

unpopular

Jacobinism than

to

labour

or

agrarian

reform

But

formal

policies

were

not

the

whole

picture.

Indeed,

my

argument

for

a

(relatively)

weak

state,

acted

upon

more than

it

acts,

requires

that other

factors be given due prominence: that is, informal (unofficial) forces and trends

which occurred

without

governmental

fiat;

often,

in

fact,

without

anyone's

(conscious)

fiat.

The

revolution?in

other,

paradoxical,

words?had

a 'Burkean'

as

well

as a

Jacobin face. These

informal,

unofficial,

'Burkean'

changes

may

for

analytical

purposes

be

divided

into

political

and

economic

(though,

in

practice,

they constantly

intertwined,

as we shall

note).

Politically,

the revolu?

tion

destroyed

much

of the old

order.

After

1914-15,

it is

true,

this

obeyed

conscious

policy,

as the

Constitutionalists?and successors

like Carrillo

Puerto

in

Yucatan?systematically purged

their enemies.76

But

these

official

purges

followed

years

of

unscripted,

popular

retribution.

During

1910-15

the national

cacique,

Diaz,

and his Cientifico camarilla had been

ousted;

Porfirian

governors

had

tumbled,

along

with

many

(not all)

local

caciques, especially

north of the

Isthmus;

and

with

them went

many

of their well-to-do

supporters.

Huerta's

counter-revolution

(for

that

was what

it

was)

stimulated

a

brief

revival

of

these

interests,

which

only

made

their

subsequent

downfall

more

certain.77

Some

Porfirian

families

and officials

survived,

especially

in

regions,

like

los

Altos de

Jalisco,

which were

relatively quiet,

or

like

Chiapas,

where the

mapache

rebels

had the

strength

to

defy

revolutionary

incursions.78 But

even

survival

required

the

acquisition

of new

political

techniques,

sometimes

the

deliberate colonisa-

tion

of

the revolution

(1920

was the annus

mirabilis

of

entryism),

and often

the abandonment

of

political

aspirations.

The

Terrazas

family

were

allowed

back

to

Mexico,

but as

businessmen,

not

politicos.19

The

Chiapas

landlords

clung

to

power,

political

and

economic,

but

(we

shall

note)

in a

radically

changed

environment.

In

short,

the

Porfirian

political

elite

was

eliminated

as

a

distinct,

coherent

entity.80

It

either

disappeared,

or

adopted

new,

'revolutionary'

political

mores,

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THE

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15

or

swapped politics

for business.

As for

the Federal

army,

it

disappeared

entirely:

a rare event

in

Latin American

military history.

Those few Federals

who sur?

vived

in

uniform did

so

by

virtue

of

an

early,

unusual commitment

to

the

revolution.81 As an institution, the old Porfirian

army

vanished. Instead, a new,

conglomerate army

of

revolutionary provenance

now

held

sway:

one

which,

though

it soon

acquired

many

of the

military

faults

of its

predecessor

(these

were

at once evident

in

the

campaigns

against

Villa,

Zapata

and

others after

1915),

nevertheless

performed

a different

political

role.

Unlike

Diaz's,

the

army

of

the revolution

was

highly political

and

fractious,

and

remained

so

until

the 1930s

(again,

therefore,

we note a

major

constraint

on

the

power

and

independence

of

the national

government).

Furthermore,

though

the

military

often reached a modus

vivendi

with local

vested

interests?defending

land?

lords

against

agraristas,

for

example?it

also contained

pockets

of

abiding

populism:

in

Morelos,

where

ex-Zapatistas

ruled;

in San

Luis,

where

Cedillo's

veterans

underwrote

his

local

power;

with the armed

agraristas

who

fought

for

Obregon

in

1923;

with

Tejeda's

armed

peasant

league.82

A

relatively

docile,

professional

army?Diaz's?gave

way

to a

rumbustious,

heterogeneous,

politicised

host,

which

would

only

gradually

be tamed

and

slimmed down.

And,

though

Amaro

began

the

job,

it

was

not

until

the 1940s that

profession-

alisation

finally

triumphed

and

military

force

was confined

to its

notional role

as

an ultima

ratio.83

Indeed,

in

reviewing

the

revolution's

demolition

of

the

institutions

of

the

old

regime,

it

is

ironic

to

note that

it

was

the one

which

faced the most systematic attack (the Catholic Church) which survived with

most

vigour;

an indication of the

continued

legitimacy

of

the

Church,

as

com?

pared

to

the

caciques

and

generals

of

the

Porfiriato,

and of

the

inefficacy

of

revolutionary

anti-clericalism.

As

old

political

landmarks were

erased,

new

structures were

erected,

often

piecemeal

and

unplanned.

Despite

their indifference

to

the

principle

of

'No

Re-election'

the Sonorans

presided

over

a

polity

in which

the circulation of

elites was

appreciably

faster

than in

the

past.84

Arguably,

this

brisker turnover

was less the result

of conscious

policy

than the inevitable

consequence

of

the

Hobbesian

character

of

post-revolutionary politics.

Now,

in a

context of mass

mobilisation and recurrent

military

revolt?a *war of all

against

all'?and in the

absence,

as

yet,

of

a

controlling

Leviathan

state,

the tenure

of

office

was often

nasty,

brutish and

short.

Assassination claimed

Zapata,

Carranza,

Villa,

Obregon,

Carrillo

Puerto,

Field

Jurado,

maybe

Flores

and

Hill,

as

well

as

many

lesser

leaders;

the

attempted

national revolutions of

1923,

'27 and

'29 were

com-

plemented

by

endemic

local,

political

violence.85

A

contributory

factor

to

political instability

was

the

genuine degree

of mass

mobilisation,

evident

in

the

embryonic parties,

the

unions,

the

peasant leagues.

This was no

decorous,

democratic

pluralism.

Catholics

fought

with

anti-clericals,

agraristas

with

white

guards;

'it

is

no

exaggeration',

one

historian

asserts,

'to

talk of

an

open,

con-

tinuous?albeit

generally

local and

disorganised?class

war

which covered

great

areas ofthe

Mexican

countryside

(between

1920

and

1940)'

.S6

Charrismo

infected the

unions

and even

dogged

reformers?like

Carrillo

Puerto?were

obliged

to work

through inappropriate

caciquista

systems

in

trying

to

implement

their

reforms.87

But

this

was

not a throwback to

the

caciquismo

ofthe Porfiriato.

Patron-client

links

(which

are the hallmarks

of

any

caciquista

or caudillista

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AMERICAN

RESEARCH

system)

are,

to

some

extent,

politicalry

neutral;

they

may

serve

different

ends,

institutions and

individuals.

Now,

unlike

in

the

days

of

Diaz,

they

linked

seg-

ments of

the

population

to

mass

associations,

ckiming

national

status:

the

PNA,

Partido

Cooperativista,

CROM,

as

well as their

rivals,

the Catholic

unions,

the

LNDR,

the

ACJM.88 Undemocratic

though

these

were,

as

regards

both internal

organisation

and

external

functioning,

they

nevertheless

transcended the

narrow

camarillas

of

the

Porfiriato,

and

were

unmistakeable

legacies

of

the mass revolu?

tion

(as

a

comparative glance

at,

say,

Brazil will

confirm).89

And

they gave

post-revolutionary

Mexico the character

of?in Cordova's term?a

sociedad

de

masas.

Linked

to

this

development

was the

populist

rhetoric

of

the

regime. By

'populist'

I

do not

refer

to

a

specific complex

of

class

alliances

(a

complex

whose character is much debated and may even be illusory).90 More simply,

I

mean

the

demotic,

sometimes

rabble-rousing

rhetoric

of

the new

revolutionary

leaders,

who

presented

themselves,

as

Obregon

quintessentially

did,

as

men of

the

people,

for

the

people;

frank,

open,

honest,

sympathetic,

even

plebeian.

Hence

Obregon's

campaign

speeches

and

glad-handing;

or

Carrillo Puerto's

deft

use

of

popular

symbols

in

Yucatan.91

Ultimately,

official

indigenismo

would

carry

a similar

message

of

populist empathy

and

national

integration

to

the

most

marginal

of

Mexico's

population.

Of

course,

much of this was

empty

rhetoric.

But even

empty

rhetoric has

significance:

the

popular

discourse

ofthe

revolution

contrasted with the

overtly

elitist

and racist rhetoric of

the

mature

Porfiriato.92 This rhetorical shift can in turn be related to the change in popular

mood

ushered

in

by

the 1910 revolution.

Then,

quite

suddenly,

the

despised

pelados

of

the Porfiriato had

been transmuted

into

revolutionary guerrilleros

('we

are

no

longer rag-dolls',

as the

insurgent campesinos

of

Papantla

had

pro-

claimed,

according

to

the

ballad);

the

plebeians

of

Guadalajara

invaded

the

Sunday

evening

paseo,

turning

it into

some

kind

of

Mexican

charivari;

those of

Torreon travelled

in the trams

without

paying

and

swaggered

in

the

streets,

forcing respectable

citizens

off the

pavement

into the

mud

ofthe

gutter.

It

was,

as

one observer

put

it,

rather like

the

Magnificat:

'the

poor

have been showered

with

goods

and

the

rich have been left with

nothing'.93

Like

it or

not,

this

factious

plebs

could

no

longer

be

ignored;

it

had to

be reckoned

with,

con-

ciliated,

tamed.

In

defeat,

Federico Gonzalez

Garza

mused

on the

history

of

the French

Revolution,

and the Villistas'

failure

to bind

the

masses

to

their

cause

by appropriate

legislation;

Salvador

Alvarado set

out to

do

precisely

this

with the

Indians of Yucatan.94

Furthermore,

however

empty

or

cynical

it

became,

the

populist

rhetoric

which

mass mobilisation

had stimulated

could

in

turn

stimulate

further

mass

mobilisation.

For,

given

a

constant reiteration

of

populist

values

and revolu?

tionary

objectives,

the

gulf

between rhetoric

and

practice

was

strongly

illumin-

ated, and offered a standing invitation to those who would match practice to

rhetoric.

The

Anti-Reelectionists

of the

1920s

attempted

such

a match in the

field

of

electoral

politics,

but

without

success.

With

the

onset

of the

depression

and the renewed

social conflict

of

the

Maximato,

however,

attempts

to

bring

reality

into

line with

the

reiterated social

promises

of

revolutionary

populism

proved

more

efficacious.

Cardenismo

was

not a

revolutionary

clone;

but it

carried the

genes

of

the

popular

revolution

within it

and?as another

brief,

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17

comparative

glance

at the

rest

of

Latin America

suggests?would

have been

unimaginable

without the

preceding

political

mobilisation

of

1910-34.

Cardenismo,

as

Hamilton

rightly argues,

was

a different

species

of

'populism'

from

Vargismo

or Peronismo.95

Indeed,

one

can

go

further: in

many respects

(ideological,

emotional,

generational)

Cardenismo

was the

last

kick

of the

old

revolutionary

cause before

a

new

leadership,

espousing

a new

project,

took

control

ofthe

country during

the 1940s.

The

short-term,

political consequences

of

the

revolution,

therefore,

were

profound:

old

institutions

were

shattered,

mass

organisations

were

born;

elites

circulated,

rhetoric

changed.

All

contributed,

in the short-term

(that

is,

until

the

thirties,

if not

the

forties),

to

a

weakening,

not a

strengthening,

ofthe

state,

as

compared

with

its Porfirian

predecessor.

The

Sonorans,

presiding

over a

heterogeneous, patchwork polity, were beholden

to

caciques, generals

and

Washington

D.C.

(Cardenas,

too,

confronted

dissident

governors,

from Sonora

to

Chiapas;

he

was

acutely

aware

of

American

pressure;

his successor was elected

amid

dissent,

violence

and

official

corruption).96

If

the

revolutionary

state out-

stripped

its

Porfirian

predecessor

in

potential strength,

its

actual

authority

was

circumscribed and at

times

precarious

(not

least

because,

during

the

risky,

transitional

period

of

state-building,

that

very

process

incurred

antagonism

and

resistance).

The

point

at which

potential

was

realised,

the transition

completed,

and

the

risk

surmounted,

is

open

to

debate;

but I

would

put

it in

the

1940s,

rather than the

1930s,

still

less the

1920s.

The

image

of

a

Bonapartist

state,

kneading the dough of civil society, is inappropriate for pre-1940 Mexico.

These

political

changes

were

profound,

but

were

they,

as

sometimes

sug?

gested,

the

only

significant

changes

to

emerge

from the

Revolution?97

Was it

indeed the

case that economic structures?the relations

of

production?

survived

intact from Porfirian

times?

That,

from

the

perspective

of

agrarian

reform,

for

example,

'the

Revolution

had been

practically

useless'

(prior

to

Cardenas)?98

And that

only

in

the

exceptional

case

of

Morelos 'could

it

be

said

that the

old

structure

of

rural

property

had

been

palpably

transformed';

hence,

'in

the rest

of the

Mexican

countryside

the

hacienda?that colonial hacienda

which

had

consolidated itself

in

the

nineteenth

century?continued

to

be the

dominant

productive

unit'?99

Structurally,

as I

have

conceded,

the

hacienda remained

powerful.

Official

agrarian

reform

had far from

destroyed

it. Yet

even

official

agrarian

reform had

made

significant

inroads,

not

just

in

Morelos

(and,

I

shall

argue,

even

ostensibly

modest inroads could undermine the rationale

of

hacienda

production:

that

is,

the

hacienda did

not

have

to

be eliminated

as a

territorial

unit

before

its

basic

viability

was

eroded).

It

is also worth

stressing

that

the trend

was

towards

hacienda

dissolution.

However

gradual,

this

represented

a 180?

change

in

direc?

tion

after the

sustained

period

of

hacienda consolidation

during

the

Porfiriato.100

Now, after 1910, the hacienda was cast as a main target;101 even if it survived

territorially,

for

the

moment,

it was 'under

siege';

in

much

of

Tlaxcala

(where,

during

the

revolution,

'the hacienda

system

had

temporarily

ceased

to

exist'),

landlords

returned

to

face

a

new

environment?'they

had

lost

prestige

.

. .

failed

to

regain

the

formerly

secure

backing

of a

state and

federal

government

and

experienced

great

difficulties

in

regaining

their lands from

the

hands of

more

conscious and

experienced peasant-leaders'.102

In

distant

Chiapas,

too,

where the

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19

to

recruit

debt-peons,

found the

system

breaking

down in

the midst

of

revolu?

tion.111

Of

course,

not all

those

changes

were

permanent,

and

the revolution did

not

eliminate

debt-peonage?of

the

servile,

southern kind?at a

stroke. It

was

left to Carrillo Puerto to

remove

el

ultimo

reducto de

esclavitud in

Yucatan

(the

notorious

plantation

of

Catmis),

and

to

press

on

with

efforts

to

organise

the

Yucatecan

field

hand and

transform him

into a

unionised

agricultural

worker';

efforts which

culminated?albeit

imperfectly?in

the Cardenista

reforms

ofthe

1930s.112

In

central

Mexico,

the

elimination of

the landlord

interest went

furthest

and

fastest

in

Morelos,

where the

planters

lost

over half

their land and

now

even faced

commercial

competition

from a

reconstituted

peasantry.

A

Junker

road

to

agrarian

capitalism,

which

had

appeared

to

open during

the

Porfiriato,

was

closed off,

in

favour of a farmer road (the development of capitalism on

the

basis

of

peasant farming

and

kulakization).113

Or,

indeed,

in favour

of

no

road

at

all,

for it

is not

clear

that

the reconstituted

peasantry

of

Morelos

pro?

vided

an

appropriate

vehicle

for

the advance

of

capitalism.114

Since

1940,

it

is

true,

such

a

reconstituted

peasantry?the recipient

of

land

grants

since the

revolution?has

served the interests

of

capital

accumulation and

industrialisa-

tion;

previously,

however,

the

place

of

the

peasantry

within

such

a

capitalist

project

was

uncertain

or

anomalous.

Agrarian

reform,

in

other

words,

could

mean

different

things

at

different

times,

and

it

is a

further

teleological

error

to

assume

that all

agrarian

reform?including

that

ofthe

1920s

and

1930s?

was equally functional to the development of capitalism.115

If,

from

the

point

of

view

of

capitalism,

the

revolution's

reconstitution

of

the

peasantry

was

ambivalent,

its

impact

on

the

hacienda

system

itself was

more

clear-cut,

and

arguably

crucial.

Furthermore,

this

impact

was

not

confined

to

regions

of

exceptional

agrarismo

(like Morelos).

Throughout

much of

the

country,

the hacienda faced both

the

challenge

of

the

'external'

peasantry,

covetous

of

hacienda land

(a

challenge

whose

intensity

varied from

place

to

place)

and

also

more

insidious, indirect,

and

pervasive

threats

which,

emanating

from

the

revolution,

struck

at

the

very

rationale

of

hacienda

production.

To

appreciate

this,

we

must

return to

the

Porfiriato. The

dynamic growth

in

demand and

investment which

affected rural

Mexico

in

the

later nineteenth

century

occurred

in a

society

already possessing existing,

reasonably

well-

defined territorial

units.116

Large

estates were

well established

(though

this is

not

to

say

that all

estates were

large,

or

that

estates

were

not

bought,

sold,

inherited,

parcelled

and

consolidated);

they

had

benefited from the

desamortizacion

policies begun

by

the liberals

of

the

1850s,

as

well

as

from

the

'colonization'

laws

of

the Diaz

period.

It is

entirely

clear

(and

no

longer

worth

labouring

the

point)

that

haciendas

operated

within

a

market and

sought

profits?this

was

true

of

pre-Porfirian

as

well as Porfirian

hacendados.117

What is more contentious and interesting is the rationale which underlay

hacienda

production,

especially

as

market

demand

grew

in

the

last

quarter

of

the

nineteenth

century.

Commentators like Molina

Enriquez,

who

denounced

the

sprawling

acres and

'feudal'

mentality

of

Porfirian

hacendados,

were

mis-

taken,

but

not

entirely

mistaken

(indeed,

it

would be odd

if

so

many

com?

mentators,

Mexican

and

foreign,

contemporary

and

later,

were

so

consistently

in

error).118

The

scale and

apparent

autarkic

strivings

of

Porfirian

haciendas

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20

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH

denoted

not some

feudal/seigneurial mentality,

but rather

an

economically

rational

response

to

circumstances;

circumstances

of

rising

demand,

limited

capital,

initially cheap

land

(which

grew

more

costly

with

time),

initially

dear

labour

(which

grew

cheaper

with

time,

population

growth,

and

peasant

dis-

possession)

and,

above

all,

a

highly

congenial politico-legal

climate.

The

expansion

of

holdings

thus not

only augmented

resources

(land

and?

sometimes more

crucial?water),

but also

generated

a

growing

labour

supply;

so

successfully

that

by

the late

nineteenth

century

the

objective

necessity

of

debt

peonage

was

waning

in

many

parts

of

Mexico.119

In

Morelos,

the

land-

lord's

strongest

sanction

was

not

coercion

but

eviction

from

the estate.120

In

addition,

the

dispossession

of

villagers

and smallholders eliminated

competition

in

the

production

of

staple crops,

while

a

favourable

tariff

kept

out

foreign

grain. Large landholdings (and 'largeness',

in this

context,

was

relative

to

local

conditions)

thus

guaranteed

cheap

labour,

high prices

and

good

profits.

But?

a

familiar

economic dilemma?these

individual

advantages

had collective draw-

backs,

above

all for

the

continued

capitalist development

which

the

Porfirians

(including

most

landlords)

favoured. Such

development

required

the

growth

of a

vigorous

kulak class

and/or

the

proletarianisation

of

the

peasantry

(in

fact,

historically

and

theoretically,

the

two trends seem

to

conspire).121

For

many,

these trends

are

definitionally required,

since

capitalism

is

theoretically

con?

stituted

by

relations

of

production

involving

free

wage

labour:

production

for

the

market,

the

old Frankian

axiom,

cannot alone denote

capitalism.122

(It

should be added that, since agriculture is not entirely analogous to industry,

it

may

not

experience

the same

degree ofthorough

proletarianisation: peasants,

in

other

words,

may

survive within

demonstrably capitalist

societies,

possibly

as

'disguised

proletarians'.123

The existence

of

peasants

in

modern Mexico

no

more

makes

Mexico

'feudal',

or

'pre-capitalist',

than

the existence

of

proletarians

in

Habsburg

Mexico made

it

'capitalist'.)

But,

definitions

aside,

there

is

a

prac-

tical

point,

which should

impress

even

those

who

have

no time

for

definitional

polemics.

In

the absence

of a

significant

kulakization

and/or

proletarianisation,

the

scope

of

the

market

would

remain

much

reduced,

since

the bulk

of

the

population

would

depend

on subsistence

agriculture

and

payment

in

kind,

with

major

market

transactions

being

confined

to cities and international trade:

the

circumstances

which

prevailed

in

Mexico

or

Chile ca.

1850.124

Though

these

circumstances

would admit

of

significant

foreign

trade

(as

medieval

eco?

nomies

did), they

would

form

no

basis

for

capitalist

development,

even

along

the lines

of

desarrollo

hacia

afuera.

Capitalist

development

required

kulakization

and/or

proletarianisation

not

just

on definitional

grounds,

but also

as

a

practical

prerequisite

of

the creation

of

a

domestic

market,

of

capital

accumulation

and

of

industrialisation.

Desarrollo hacia

afuera

Vorked'

precisely

in those

areas?

like

Argentina

and

southern

Brazil?where

export

earnings

facilitated

an

expan?

sion of

the

domestic

market

(itself premised

on

European immigration

and

therefore

higher

cash

wages);

not?as

in

coastal Peru

or

Central

America?

where

the demand

for

labour

could be

met

by

subsistence

wages

and

forms

of

contract labour.125

Porfirian

Mexico

approximated

to

the second

examples.

The

south?'bar-

barous

Mexico'?developed

forms of

debt-peonage,

some

of which

closely

resembled

slavery.126

On the traditional

haciendas

of

central

Mexico,

meanwhile,

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THE MEXICAN

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21

the

transition to

free

wage

labour

(or

kulakisation)

was

blocked

by

the

impera?

tives of

hacienda

production.

Here,

the more

'progressive'

landlords

favoured,

and

sometimes

stimulated,

a

switch from

'traditional'

forms of remuneration

(labour rent, whereby peons received plots of land in return for work on the

demesne;

payments

in

kind,

including

notional

cash

payments

which were

offset

by

the

'purchase'

of

subsistence

goods)

to

cash

wages.

This was

entirely

logical, given

that

the

labour

supply

was

growing,

at

least

in

central

Mexico,

while the

opportunity

costs of certain 'traditional'

forms of remuneration?

e.g.

land and

staple

foods?were

rising.

But

while

converting

to

wage

payments,

landlords were reluctant

to

adjust

wages

in

line

with

prices:

wages

were

'up-

wardly sticky'.

Hence,

despite price

inflation,

wage

rates rose

only

haltingly

and

modestly

(the

same

appears

to

have been true

of

the mines

during

the

revolution).127

In

consequence,

rural workers faced

a

severe

squeeze

on

living

standards,

to

which

they responded by reverting

to

traditional

perquisites:

payments

in

kind,

cash

advances

against

the

purchase

of foodstuffs. Hacendados

found

themselves

allowing

debts

to

run

up despite

themselves.128

At

San

Antonio

Tochatlaco,

a

market-oriented hacienda run

by

a

progressive management,

the

attempt

to

eliminate debts

and

payments

in

kind

proved

abortive;

by

the 1900s

both had

to

be restored.129

As a

result,

the hacienda's

healthy profits

during

the 1900s

depended

not

only

on

Mexico

City's

growing

thirst for

pulque,

but

also

on

its

capacity

to

cut

monetary

costs

by increasing non-monetary

payments

to its

hard-pressed

work

force.

While

a

concentration

on

the hacienda balance

sheet (monetary outgoings and income), ofthe kind which hacienda case studies

frequently

present,

would

in

this

case

suggest

a

highly

successful,

'capitalist'

enterprise,

the inclusion

of

the

labour

force

(the

relations

of

production)

in the

calculation

reveals

a

significant

and

growing

dependence

on

non-capitalist

(feudal?)

forms of

remuneration.130

This

would

help

explain

the

prevalence

of

debts

on

other haciendas

in

the

region,

notwithstanding

the

relatively

abundant

labour

supply

and

the hacendados'

antipathy

towards

endebted

labour.131

In

that

hacienda

studies often

concentrate

on

the

enterprise's

external rela?

tions

(its

role

in

the

market,

its formal

balance

sheet)

and do

not

penetrate

the

internal

relations of

production,

it is

difficult

to

say

how far

this

example

is

typical. Obviously, as cases ranging from Eastern

Europe

to the Caribbean

and

Mexico

indicate,

profits

can rise

on

the

basis

of

relations

of

production

which

are

patently non-capitalist,

i.e.

in

which

free

wage

labour

is

absent,

very

limited,

or,

where it

appears

to

exist,

purely

formal.132

This

may

be

prob-

lematic

for

the

individual

enterprise

(such

as

San Antonio

Tochatlaco)

but

the

problem

can be lived with:

while

profits

accrue,

the

enterprise

will

prosper

and

the 'contradictions' will

not

prove

terminal.

But

the

consequences

for

the

economy

as

a

whole are serious.

Under such

conditions,

which are

not

those of a

free

market,

individual

profit

will not

redound to

collective

develop?

ment.

Problems?or

'contradictions'?may

be

discerned

in

three areas.

First,

landlord

monopoly

of

resources and the

associated survival?even

reinforcement?of

pre-capitalist

relations

of

production

inhibited the

ration-

alisation of

agricultural production.

Again,

this is

not a

question

of

'feudal' or

'seigneurial'

mentality,

Porfirian landlords

innovated

and

invested

(some

lavishly

and

boastfully)133

where it

seemed

profitable

to

do

so.

But

investment

usually

flowed into

transport,

processing

and

irrigation.

So

long

as labour

could be

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BULLETIN OF

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RESEARCH

secured

cheaply

(even,

in

a

sense,

gratuitously,

given

the low

opportunity

cost of

payment

in

land)

there was

little

incentive to

mechanise.

Compared

with

their North

American

counterparts,

Mexican

grain

producers

enjoyed

higher profits on the basis of lower productivity.134 Hence Raigosa's critique

of

Porfirian

agriculture:

'a salario

bajo, agricultura

pobre y

producto

caro'.135

Second,

low

productivity

and low

wages

(or

wages

in

kind)

constrained the

growth

of

the

national

market,

a

crucial

prerequisite

for

industrialisation.

On

the one

hand,

the

great

peon

mass,

pushed

to

the

margin

of

subsistence,

displayed

what a

German

entrepreneur

(writing

after the

revolution,

but

expressing

sentiments even more

applicable

to

pre-1910)

called

'verdammte

bediirfnislosigkeit'

('damned

wantlessness').136

Hence

the textile

industry

faced

a

crisis

of

over-production,

which

in

turn

compounded

the 'social

question'

of

the

1900s;

individual

factories

failed

for

want of a

mass

market.137

And,

while

low

wages

prevented

the rural

sector from

providing

a

market

for indus?

trial

goods,

low

productivity

combined with

imperfect

competition

to

force

up

the

price

of

staple

foods

(certainly by

the

1900s if not

before),

thus

squeez-

ing wages

and

disposable

incomes.138

Finally,

the structure

of

agricultural

production

inhibited

capitalist

develop?

ment

by

diverting

resources

into

the

inefficient,

monopolistic

agrarian

sector.

The

landlords'

monopoly

ensured

profits,

whether as direct

producers

(the

planters

of

Morelos and

points south)

or

rentiers

(the

hacendados

of

Guerrero

or

the

Bajio).139

It

was

economically

rational

(not

atavistically 'feudal')

to

buy

into land rather than industry or commerce (which were heavily?though not

exclusively?dependent

on

foreign

capital). Why

invest

in

railways

at

6%,

a

deputy

asked in

1878,

when

12%

was

readily

available

elsewhere;

or

when,

it

might

be

added,

Mexican

corn

producers might

count

on

over

50%

in

the

1900s?140 The

very

profitability

of

hacienda

production,

often

cited

as

evidence

of

its

'capitalist'

character,

exercised

a

macro-economic

effect detrimental

to

capitalist

development.

In

neo-classical

terms,

the returns

to

one

factor

of

pro?

duction

(land)

distorted the market to the

detriment

of

consumers,

wage-

earners,

and

industrialists.

Alternatively,

the

landlords'

extraction

of 'absolute

ground

rent'

inhibited

capital

accumulation and

the transition to

capitalist

relations of

production.141

In similar fashion, the

political

arrangements

which

underlay

this

pattern

of

development

(above

all,

by

guaranteeing

the landlords'

monopolistic

position)

have

been

variously

described:

in

terms

of

Barrington

Moore's

'revolution

from

above',

whereby

pre-industrial

elites and 'labour-

repressive' agriculture

were

preserved by

a

project

of

'conservative modernisa-

tion';

or

in terms of

the different

alliances

sketched

by

Amin,

characterised

by

'high

prices

for

subsistence

goods,

thus

dearer

wages,

lower

profits

(and

the

liberation)

.

. . ofthe

beneficiaries

of this

landed

monopoly

from

the

permanent

obligation

to

improve

techniques

of

production,

under

the

spur

of

competition

which

no

industrialist

can

escape'.142

These constraints

or

'contradictions' were

not

terminal. There

is no

evidence

that the

Porfirian

'revolution from above'

was

inherently

doomed,

ca. 1910.143

It

required

a

political

crisis?arguably

a

gratuitously

self-induced

political

crisis?to

topple

the

regime

and allow

social conflicts

to

come

to the fore.

In

the absence of

such

a

crisis,

the 'revolution from above'

would no

doubt

have

soldiered

on,

contradictions

and

all,

as others

have

for

generations.

But

equally,

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THE MEXICAN

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23

there is no

evidence

that

the

Porfirian

regime

could

have

overcome these

contra?

dictions

by

pre-emptive

reform:

the landlord

interest

was

too

entrenched,

too

powerful,

to

permit

the radical

changes

which a

policy

of

genuine

reform

would

have

entailed.

In

the

absence

of

revolution,

in

other

words,

the

landlord

class

would

have

survived,

as

it did

elsewhere

in

Latin

America,

until cumulative

political,

economic

and

demographic changes

ensured that

reform would come

officially,

almost

consensually.144

As

a

challenge

to

vested

interests,

as a con-

frontation of

class

and

class,

and as a

break

with

the

past,

the

agrarian

reforms

of,

say,

Bolivia

in

the

1950s

or

Peru

in

the

1960s,

cannot

compare

with those

of

Mexico

between

1910

and

1940.

As

regards

the

agrarian

constraints and

contradictions

of

the

Porfiriato,

the

revolution had

a

decisive,

if

not

immediate

impact.

Chief

among

its

effects

was

the

debilitation, ultimately the destruction, of the hacienda system. This

is

not to

say

that

the

revolutionary

leadership

was

ardently

agrarista,

or

that

the

peasantry

emerged

as

an

unquaUfied beneficiary

of

the

revolution.

On

the

contrary,

much

of

the debilitation and

destruction was

unplanned

(and

even

lamented

by

the

leadership),

and not

until

the

mid-1930s

did

official

policy

espouse

thoroughly agrarista

objectives.

Nor did

the

hacienda's

demise

uniformly

benefit

the

campesinos,

some of whom

lost

the

relative

security

of

acasillado

status,

some

of

whom,

acquiring

inadequate ejidal

plots, exchanged

the domina?

tion of

hacendado for that of

ejidal

cacique.145

Hence,

in

some

districts,

the

agrarian

reform was

imposed

on

a

recalcitrant

peasantry.146

But it is

quite wrong

therefore to deny the agrarian changes set in motion by the revolution. Revolu?

tions,

in

their 'functional'

sense,

are

reckoned

to

affect class

relations in

some

significant

way;

they

are

not

(in

Mao's

phrase)

'dinner

parties

. .

.

or

doing

embroidery';

nor

are

they

neat

exercises in

the

redistribution of

the social

product,

Social-Democratic

style.147

It is

not

clear

that

the

French

peasantry

was

better off in

the

generation

after

the

Revolution than it

had

been

in

the

generation

before,

but

that did not

mean that

little had

changed

or that

the

Revolution

was no

revolution. As

in

Mexico

a

century

later,

French

peasants

exchanged

one

master

(the

seigneur)

for

another

(the

usurer);

in

parts

of

southern

France

'there was

little

peasant

sympathy

for a

revolution

tht

was

viewed

as

urban,

anticlerical

and

"northern"

\148

The

unpopularity

of

the

(Mexican)

revolution,

now

stressed

(and

possibly

exaggerated) by

revisionist

historians,

may

best be

seen

not as

a

consequence

of'revolutionary'

conservatism,

hence of

the

absence of

social

change,

but

rather

as a

grass-roots

repudiation

of

change

that

was

dramatic,

but

unwelcome.

And

much

of

this

change

was

un?

planned

and

impersonal,

the

work,

so it

seemed,

of

remote

deities who

played

with

human

destinies

as

callously

in

Azuela's

stories

as

in

Homer's.

Landlords,

often

losing

their

political

clout,

also

faced

threats

to

their

eco?

nomic survival.

The

physical

destruction

wrought

by

the Revolution

(and

affecting agriculture more than industry) should not be underestimated. 'The

ruins

of

formerly

prosperous

estates could

be

seen

all

along

our

route' from

Mexico

City

north towards

Queretaro,

a

traveller

noted in

the

1920s;

he

recorded

similar

sights

down on

the

Isthmus and

north of

the

Bajio.149

More

important,

the old

rationale of

hacienda

farming

no

longer

applied:

erstwhile

monopolies

of

land

were eroded

(even

a

modest

agrarian

reform

could

achieve

that);

labour

had

become

more

costly

and

more

fractious;

the

state

now

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BULLETIN OF LATIN

AMERICAN RESEARCH

intervened

by way

of land

distribution

(however

patchy),

labour

legislation

(however cosmetic),

and

taxation.

In

many

states,

the

physical

and

economic

insecurity

of

the hacienda

was

perpetuated

by running

battles

with

local

agraristas.150 Thus,

even in the

absence

of

the

sweeping

reform which

character-

ised

Morelos,151

a

series

of

more insidious

pressures

was

at

work.

Both

the

deference and

the abundance

of labour

were

compromised

by

the revolution.

'Essentially', Gruening

observed,

'the hacendados'

objection

was

not so much

to

parting

with a

few

acres

of

their

vast

estates,

but to

losing

their serfs. That

was what

the restoration

of

the communal lands

inevitably

spelled'.152

The

hinterland

of San

Felipe

del

Progreso

(northern

Mexico

state)

spent

the revolu?

tion

in

'an

uneasy

tranquility',

occasionally punctuated by agrarian

violence;

by

the

1920s

the

local

haciendas

faced

organised

agrarismo,

the

first

official

reforms, and straitened economic circumstances; one, Tepetitlan, went bust

and

passed

into

the

hands

of

its bank in

1929.

'Now

you

could

say

the

hacienda

was in

decadence',

its

manager

lamented,

'because the

agrarian

movement

was

on

top

of

us;

the hacienda

wasn't

functioning

as in

the

old

days'.153

Similar

complaints

emanated from

states like

Chiapas

and

Guerrero

(neither

states

of

known

agrarista

reputation)

where Governors

Vidal

and

Castrejon

respectively

were blamed

for

accelerating

land

reform,

inciting

agrarista

organisation,

and

raising

hacendados' tax

bills.

'On

real estate

particularly,

in the states

of

Chiapas

and

Oaxaca',

it was

reported,

'there

has been

a

heavy

increase,

not

only

in the

rate but

(also)

in

the

assessed

(fiscal)

valuations

on both urban and rural

pro?

perties'.154 At San Antonio Tochatlaco, taxes and wages both rose with the

revolution,

leaving

the

enterprise

scarcely

viable.155

Thus,

well before Cardenas

took

the offensive

against

the

great

commercial

haciendas

of

Yucatan,

the

Laguna

and the

Yaqui

valley,

and,

in

doing

so,

pushed

the

figures

of

formal reform

to

unprecedented

levels,

haciendas

through?

out

the

country

had

been

exposed

to inexorable

pressures.

Some

landlords

fled

during

the

revolution,

never

to

return;

some

migrated

(from

Morelos

to

Jalisco,

for

example);

some were driven

by peasant pressure

or

market forces

to sell

up,

wholly

or

partly?in

the

Bajio,

where

parcellisation

was accelerated

by

the

revolution,

or

in the Sierra

Alta of

Hidalgo,

where the

pre-emptive

sales

of

declining

hacendados

helped

encourage

the

formation of a new class

of

middle

peasants.156

A

good

many

landlords,

driven

to

the

city

and

deprived

of

their

patrimony,

set

up

in

business

and founded new

fortunes.157

Meanwhile,

those

many

who

remained

(and

sometimes

prospered),

did so

less

on the

basis

of

territorial

monopoly

and

political back-up

(which,

notwithstanding

the

co-option

of

revolutionary generals,

was never so

great

as in

the

days

of

Diaz),

than

by

means

of

economic

rationalisation and

innovation. The

way

forward

was blazed

by entrepreneurial

landlords like

William

Jenkins,

who

subtly

countered

agrarista

agitation,

struck new

alliances with

revolutionary

politicos,

and progressively shed his sprawling acres, while retaining control of the crucial,

central,

industrial

complex

of

Atencingo.158

Jenkins,

in

other

words,

exchanged

a

local land

for

a

local industrial

monopoly

(the

trade-off which

foreign

interests,

also

in

the

sugar

market,

achieved

in

Cuba

during

the same

period).159

Or,

in

another

terminology,

he

switched

from

the

extraction

of absolute

to

the extrac?

tion of

relative

surplus

value;

that

is,

he

became

a

fully-fledged

agrarian

capitalist.

In

Mexico,

as

elsewhere

in Latin

America,

therefore,

the

biggest,

clearest,

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THE

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25

economic

consequence

of

agrarian

reform was

the

rationalisation of

estate

agriculture;

the

forced

conversion

of traditional'

(that

is, 'feudal',

'semi-feudaF,

or

'pre-capitalist')

hacendados

into

'modern',

capitalist

entrepreneurs,

It was

a

conversion

which the

revolutionary

leaders

favoured,

if not in so

many

words.

Cardenas

protected

Jenkins; Calles,

no

mean

exponent

of

commercial

agriculture

himself,

urged

that

the

latifundistas

will

gain

by

conceding

lands

to

the

villages

of

the

Republic,

so that

they

(the latifundistas),

exploiting

that

part

ofthe land

which

remains

to

them,

shall

become real

agriculturalists

.

.

.

and

they

will

cease

to

be

exploiters

of

men'.161

That is

to

say:

exploitation

would

proceed

through

the

anonymity

of

the

market,

rather than

through

palpable monopoly

and coercion.

Though

Calles,

Cardenas and others

worked to hasten this

transition,

they

did

not set

it

in

motion,

nor

were

their

official

efforts

necessarily

the most

efficacious.

The

dissolution

of

the

great

estate,

begun

amid the chaos

of

the

revolution and

unprecedented

in

Latin America

at

the

time,

formed

part

(the

most

important

part)

of a

general

socio-economic

convulsion,

characterised

by

armed

rebellion,

popular

mobilisation,

and economic

upheaval (rampant

infla?

tion

as

well

as

physical

destruction).

The declasse

landlords

of Morelos

or

the

Bajio

(like

the

parents

of the

Sinarquista

leader,

Abascal)

had

their

'middle

class'

counterparts,

such as Lombardo

Toledano

and

Gomez

Morfn,

who had

been cut loose from

secure

economic

moorings

by

the

revolutionary

upheaval.162

And

there were

peasant

communities, too,

which

acquired

a new

fluidity,

a

new

spatial mobility (as refugees fled Morelos for Guerrero, left the mountains for

the lakes

of

Michoacan,

or

sought

shelter and work

in

the United

States);

which

experienced

the decline

of old

mores?religious,

sexual,

familial?and which

experimented

with

new economic

activities,

like

Tepoztlan's

orgy

of

charcoal-

burning.163

The

economic

innovation

forced

upon

the landlords ofthe Porfiriato

was

similarly

thrust

upon

the

peasantry.

Thus,

more

than

most

revolutionary

sloganising,

the ethic of

work and

reconstruction

tirelessly preached

by

the

Sonorans and

their minions accorded with

reality

and,

perhaps,

entered

receptive

ears.

'Forget

the

Revolution',

the

new

municipal

president

of Azteca told the

people,

'What's

done

is

done

Whoever

is dead

is

dead. Those that are

left

are

left

So,

go

on,

get

to

work.

Make charcoal

and

go

and

sell

it'.

And the

people

did:

'we

believed

in

Montoya

and went

to

work

to

improve

things'.164

Out of

the maelstrom

of

revolution,

therefore,

emerged

a

society

which,

compared

with

pre-1910,

was

more

open,

fluid,

mobile,

innovative,

and

market-

oriented.

If this

sounds a

Friedmanite

idyll,

it was

not. For

deracine

peasants

and hacendados

alike,

change

was

brusque,

violent,

far from

idyllic.

But

Friedmanite,

in

a

sense,

it

was,

since the

revolution

fostered conditions

appro?

priate

to

capitalism,

which

'continuously

.

. .

transforms

the division

of

labour

within

society,

incessantly

shifting

masses

of

capital

and

masses

of

labour

from one branch of production to another . . . (and) gives rise to changes in

work,

to a

flux of

functions,

to

a

many-sided

mobility

of

the

worker'.165 The

creation

of

these

conditions,

I

repeat,

was

less the result

of

conscious

efforts,

than of

collective

struggles

whose outcome

was

unforeseen and

unplanned;

Skocpol's

de-emphasis

ofthe

purposive

elements

of

revolution

is,

in the

Mexican

case,

largely

warranted.166

Thus,

just

as

the

'seigneuriaF

mentality

of

the

Porfiriato

(and

before)

reflected

prevailing

material

conditions and social

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relations,

so,

too,

the

ruthless

entrepreneurialism

of the

1920s,

captured

by

Blasco

Ibanez,

was a

true mirror of

the

age.167

The

revolution,

we are

often

told,

had

much

that

was

neo-Porfirian

about

it. At a

very

general

level,

this

may

be true. The broad aims of the Porfirian

regime?state-building

and

capitalist

development?were

continued. But

they

were

continued

by

other

means,

in

radically changed

circumstances,

and

thus

much

more

efficaciously.

An

excessive

concentration

on

formal

changes

(laws,

decrees,

official

reforms),

and a

corresponding neglect

of

informal

changes,

easily

leads

to

misapprehension:

to an

ultra-Tocquevillean

conclusion

that

the

revolution

changed

little

or

that,

at

least,

the more

things

changed

the

more

they

stayed

the

same.

But to

continue

the

Porfirian

pattern

of

develop?

ment

grosso

modo?to

build

the

capitalist

Leviathan?the

revolution had

to

wreak

major changes;

had

to

place government

on

a

surer,

institutional founda?

tion;

and

had,

above

all,

to

resolve the

stultifying

contradictions of

Porfirian

agriculture.

Though

some

far-sighted

revolutionaries willed

both

the

ends

and

the

means

(Alvarado

with

his

attack

on

debt-peonage;

Calles with his

advice

to

the

latifundista),

most did

not,

and

change

came

willy-nilly,

especially

in

the

earlier

years.

Above

all,

it

was

the

force

of

popular

mobilisation and

revolt

which

cracked

the shell

of

the old

regime,

and

obliged governors,

landlords

and

employers

to

reckon with

new

circumstances.

In

that

these

new

circumstances involved

enhanced market

production,

labour

mobility,

and

capital

accumulation,

it

is

entirely

valid to

regard

the

Mexican revolution as, in some sense, a bourgeois revolution. Not because

it was

the

conscious

work of

the

bourgeoisie

(still

less

the

national

bourgeoisie);

nor

because

it

instantly

transmuted the

base metal

of

feudalism

into

the

pure

gold

of

capitalism (for,

it

has

already

been

suggested, bourgeois

revolutions

are

by

their

very

nature

cumulative

phenomena);

but

rather

because

it

gave

a

decisive

impulse

to

the

development

of

Mexican

capitalism

and of

the

Mexican

bourgeoisie,

an

impulse

which

the

preceding

regime

had

been unable

to

give.

This

impulse,

the

most

powerful

in

a

series

going

back

to 1854

(or

even

1810?),

resulted

in a

bourgeoisie

ultimately

more

capable

of

carrying

through

its

political

and

economic

'project':

'the

difference between

the Mexican

bourgeoisie

and

that of other Latin American countries is that the

former

lost its

revolutionary

faculties

after

making

ample

use

of

them,

while the others have

never led

and

will

never lead

a

bourgeois

revolution. Here

lies

the secret

of

the

stability

of

Mexico's

bourgeois regime,

and the

explanation?not

of

its

exceptionality?

but of its

differences

as

compared

with

countries like

Brazil,

Argentina,

Chile,

etc.'.168

The idea

that

a

popular,

agrarian

revolution,

leading

on

to a

widespread

agrarian

reform,

should

be

categorised

as

'bourgeois'

is

historically

quite

logical.

But it

requires

a

brief,

final comment. Peasant

participation

in

'bourgeois'

revolutions has

been the

subject

of

repeated

comment

and

analysis:

'the Re?

forma tion

. . .

is

the

No.l

bourgeois

revolution',

Engels

puts

it,

with

disarming

simplicity,

'the

peasant

war

being

its

critical

episode'.169

Dobb

traced the

origins

of

English

capitalism

to

differentiation

among

the late medieval

peasantry

and

the

growth

of

'a sort of kulak

class',

which

he

compared

to

its

nineteenth-

century

Russian

equivalent.170

Lenin, too,

came

round

to

the view

that

capitalism

would

develop

more

swiftly

and

surely

on

the

basis

of

peasant

farming

than

on

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the basis

of

the

great

estates:

the

'Junker

road'

was,

perhaps,

a dead

end,

in

Tsarist

Russia

as

in Porfirian

Mexico.171

Hence the

tiationalisation'

of land?

notionally

achieved after 1917?would

constitute

a

'radical

democratic-

bourgeois' programme,

to

the

advantage

of

industry.172

A similar rationale

lay

behind the

agrarian

reform

of

twentieth-century

Latin

America,

at least

as

regards

some

of

their

protagonists

and

most

of

their

objective

effects.

De

Janvry

makes

the

point,

if

too

sweepingly:

'all

twentieth-century

land

reforms

in

Latin

America

except

the

Cuban and

possibly

the

Nicaraguan

ones have

had the

ultimate

purpose

of

fomenting

the

development

of

capitalism

in

agriculture'.173

In

the

particular

case

of

Mexico,

the

agrarian

reform

ultimately

benefited

industry by deepening

the domestic market

(this

was

certainly

true

by

the

1930s,

if not

before),

by shaking

out

capital

from

land into

industry,

as

already

mentioned, and by rendering agriculture more efficient, thus capable of pro-

ducing

cheap

food,

exports,

and

a

net

transfer

of

resources

from

countryside

to

city.174

More

generally,

it

may

be

argued,

the revolution also

provided

the

political

structures

within which

these

processes

could

develop

without

serious

upheaval.

The

agrarian

revolution,

in

short,

laid

the

basis

for

the

rapid

capitalist

growth

of

the

last

generation.

These

developments,

however,

were not evident

until

after the 1940s.

And

it would

constitute a

form

of

gross

teleology,

of the kind

I

have

criticised,

to

see

the

post-1940s pattern

of

development

as

flowing

ineluctably

from the

1910 revolution.

Rather,

as

Hamilton

puts

it,

the

revolution

opened

up

various

'structural

options'; subsequent

events,

subsequent

conflicts, would determine

the

options

taken,

the

options

discarded. The

post-1940s 'project'?the

'pre-

ferred revolution'?was

ultimately

chosen,

partly,

but not

entirely,

by

con-

scious

decision. Alternative

options

were scouted.

Cardenismo,

I

would

argue,

was a

case

in

point. Maybe,

as

Hamilton

has

also

suggested,

Cardenismo

collided

with

the

'limits

of

state

autonomy';

nevertheless,

even within these

confines,

Cardenismo

diverged

from

the

'project'

of

Aleman

and

his

successors;

like

Goldwater

thirty years

later,

Cardenas

offered

a

choice

not an

echo.175

Or,

in

Semo's

cautious

terms,

the

Cardenas reforms

'display

tendencies

towards over-

coming bourgeois

limits'.176

This would be

especially

true

in

the matter

of

agrarian

reform,

where

Cardenista

policies

went

beyond

the destruction

of

the

traditional'

hacienda

(thus, by

implication,

beyond

the

reforms

later under-

taken

by

the Bolivian

revolution)

and attacked

capitalist

enterprises,

like

the

Laguna

plantations

or

Nueva

Lombardia.

Though

the

Cardenista

reforms,

agrarian

and

other,

were later

integrated

into a

project

of

capital

accumulation,

industrialisation,

and

'modernised

authoritarianism',

this was

neither

their

subjective

intention,

nor

their

objective

consequences,

during

the

Cardenista

period.

And,

given

that this radical

alternative

was,

in

terms

of

ideology,

leader?

ship,

and

inspiration,

a

child

of

the

revolution,

it must

be conceded

that the

revolution contained within it the genetic potential for a variety of offspring.

The

post-1940s

project?the

project,

let

us

say,

of Aleman?was

perhaps

the

grandson

of

the

revolution,

but it

was

also

the

son

of World

War and Cold War.

like

Stalinism,

Alemanismo

was a

revolutionary

possibility,

but not a

revolu?

tionary certainty.

Unilinearity

and

teleology

should be

rejected

because

they

distort our

under?

standing

of

historical

periods?of

the

revolution,

of

Cardenismo?but

also

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BULLETIN OF

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RESEARCH

because

they mayblinker

our

perceptionof

the

present.

If

the

past

is so

massively

'over-determined',

so

(it may

be

presumed)

is

the

here-and-now.

Yet,

strangely

enough,

those who

stress

the

unalloyed

domination of

state

and

capital

since

ca.

1920 are often

those

most

eager

to

find

contemporary

cracks in

the status

quo, through

which

radical

currents

might

filter.

They

would do

better

to

recognise

that

the

domination

of

state and

capital

has

never

been

monolithic,

that

the

post-revolutionary

history

of

Mexico has

been one

of

dialectical

con-

flict

and

change?not

unilinear

progress?and

that that

history

has left its

stamp

on

contemporary

society.

The

peasants

(especially

the

ejidatarios)

may

be

surrogate

proletarians,

but

the revolution's

reconstitution of

the

peasantry

has

left

an

organisational

and

ideological

legacy

which

cannot

be

ignored;

according

to

some,

Amin's

formulation

('objectively proletarianised,

the

peasant

remains,

at the level of class consciousness, a small producer') is applicable to Mexico,

and has

political

implications.177

It

links,

for

example,

to

the continued

agrarista

rhetoric

and?in

the

case

of

Echeverria?the

agrarista

practice

of

the

regime.178

The

long-term

consequences

of

the

revolution

may

be

a

Leviathan

state

and

a

dynamic capitalism,

but

these are

themselves

the historical

products

of

a

distinct

national

experience,

moulded

not

only

from

above,

but

also

from

below,

by

the

popular

upheavals

of

1810,

1854 and

1910. Neither

repression

nor

cooption

can

eliminate

this

past.

It

would

therefore be rash

to

assert that

all

the 'structural

options'

created

by

the

revolution have

been

exhausted,

that

the revolution's

legacy

has

been

spent,

that

the outcome is now

clear, fixed,

immutable and unilinear. The agrarian reform was declared terminated

(by

Calles)

in

1930;

the revolution

has

been

pronounced

dead on

many

occasions

since.

We

may

legitimately

comment

on

the revolution's

short-term

con?

sequences,

but

we

summarise

its

long-term,

epochal significance

at our

peril.

As

Mao

replied,

when asked what he

thought

was

the

outcome

of

the

French

Revolution: It is too

early

to

say'.

NOTES

1.

Cobb,

Richard

(1972).

The

Police

and

the

People:

French

Popular

Protest,

1789-

1820

(Oxford),

pp.

xvii-xix.

2. Ruiz, Ramon Eduardo (1980). The Great Rebellion Mexico, 1905-1924 (New York),

pp.

3-4.

3.

Ibid.,p.S.

4.

7Z>tf.,pp.

4,

7,409-410.

5.

Skocpol,

Theda

(1980).

States

and

Social Revolutions A

Comparative

Analysis

of

France,

Russia

and

China

(Cambridge),

p.

23;

which is echoed

by Goldfrank,

Walter

L.

(1979).

'Theories

of

Revolution

and

Revolution

without

Theory',

Theory

and

Societyl:

135-165.

6.

Cockcroft,

James

D.

(1976).

Intellectual

Precursors

of

the

Mexican

Revolution,

1900-1913

(Austin

and

London),

pp.

xiv-v,

6,14,

29-30,

34.

7.

Ibid.,

p.

29;

cf.

Kula,

Witold

(1976).

An

Economic

Theory

of

the Feudal

System:

towards

a

Model

of

the

Poash

Economy,

1500-1800

(London);

Banaji,

J.

(1977).

'Modes of Production in a Materialist

Conception

of

History',

Capital

and Class 3:

1-44,

especially

18-27.

8.

Co

ckcroft,

Intellectual

Precursors,

pp.

29-30.

9.

Ibid.,

p.

xvi.

10.

Ibid.,

pp.

xvi-xvii;

Gilly,

Adolfo

(1971).

La revolucion

interrumpida.

Mexico 1910-

1920:

una

guerra

campesina por

la tierra

y

el

poder

(Mexico);

and

Hodges,

Donald

and

Gandy,

Ross

(1983).

Mexico

1910-1982:

Reform

or

Revolution

(London),

p.

83 for a

sympathetic gloss

on

Gilly.

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THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

29

11.

Gilly,

p.

386.

12.

Ibid.,

pp.

43,226-227;

Hodges

and

Gandy,

pp.

180-181; Barta,

Armando

(1983).

'La

revolucion mexicana

de 1910 en

la

perspectiva

del

magonismo',

in Adolfo

Gilly

et

al.,

Interpretaciones de la Revolucion Mexicana (Mexico), pp. 91-108.

13.

Gilly,

pp.

387-388.

14.

Skocpol,

pp.

4-5.

15.

Hampson,

Norman

(1976).

A

Social

History ofthe

French

Revolution

(London),

pp.

251, 254;

Price,

Roger

(1981).

An Economic

History

ofModern

France,

1730-1914

(London),

pp.

68,

83-84,

which

argues

that

the decisive

changes

in

French

socio-

economic

development

came

in

the

later nineteenth

century,

with

the

development

of

railways.

16. Some?the

'large

kulaks'?were;

most

probably

were

not.

See

Magraw, Roger

(1983).

France

1815-1914:

The

Bourgeois

Century

(London),

pp.

106-113.

17.

de

Tocqueville,

Alexis

(1964).

L'Ancien

Regime (Oxford),

pp.

4-5.

18.

Semo,

Enrique

(1978).

Historia Mexicana:

economia

y

lucha

de clases

(Mexico),

p.299.

19.

/&/<*.,

p.

284,300.

20.

Foster-Carter,

Aidan

(1978).

The

Modes of

Production

Controversy',

New

Left

Review 107:44-77.

21.

Mora,

Manuel

Aguilar,

'Estado

y

revolucion

en

el

proceso

mexicano',

in

Gilly

et

al,

Interpretaciones

de la Revolucion

Mexicana,

p.

110.

22.

Leal,

Juan

Felipe

(1973-74).

'El

estado

y

el

bloque

en

poder

en

Mexico:

1867-

1914',

Historia Mexicana

23: 700-721.

23.

Cf.

Perry,

Laurens Ballard

(1978).

Judrez

and Di'az: Machine Politics in Mexico

(DeKalb).

24.

Holloway,

John

and

Picciotto,

Sol

(eds.)

(1978).

State and

Capital:

A

Marxist

Debate

(London),

p.

9.

25.

Knight,

Alan

(1980).

'Peasant and Caudillo in the Mexican

Revolution',

in D. A.

Brading

(ed.),

Caudillo

and

Peasant

in

the

Mexican Revolution

(Cambridge),

pp.

39-58.

26.

Poulantzas,

Nicos

(1973).

Poder

politico y

clases sociales

en el

estado

capitalista

(Madrid),

pp.

336-341.

27.

Semo,

Historia

Mexicana,

pp.

240, 298;

Hodges

and

Gandy,

pp.

82-89,

125-129,

167,

200-225;

Shulgovski,

Anatol

(1977).

Mexico

en

la

encrucijada

de

su

historia

(Mexico),

pp.

42-43 and

passim;

Sanderson,

Steven

E.

(1981).

Agrarian

Populism

and

the

Mexican

State:

The

Struggle

for

Land

in Sonora

(Berkeley),

e.g., p.

209.

28.

Marx,

Karl

(1977).

The

Eighteenth

Brumaire

of

Louis

Bonaparte

(Moscow),

pp.

52,

103,105.

29.

Ibid.,p. 105.

30.

Ibid.,

p.

63.

31.

Ibid.,pp.

110-111.

32.

Ibid.,p.

112.

33.

Poulantzas,

pp.

336-341;

and

the

same

author's

Fascism and

Dictatorship:

The

Third

International

and

the Problem

of

Fascism

(London, 1974).

Note Marx's

comment

on

'Caesarism':

Eighteenth

Brumaire,

p.

6.

34.

Roxborough,

Ian

(1984).

'Unity

and

Diversity

in

Latin

American

History',

Journal

of

Latin

American

Studies

16:

1-26.

35.

Marx,

pp.

104,110.

36.

Cordova,

Arnaldo

(1977).

La

ideologia

de

la

Revolucion

Mexicana:

La

formacion

del nuevo

regimen (Mexico),

sees

'the

struggle

against

the

(Porfirian)

dictatorship'

as involving 'from the beginning, and in the most coherent fashion, a struggle against

foreign

domination';

yet,

he

admits,

the

revolution

ultimately

neither

changed?

nor

even

attempted

to

change?Mexico's

'economic

dependency':

see

pp.

248,

260. Cf.

Meyer,

Lorenzo

(1977).

'Historical roots

of

the

authoritarian

state in

Mexico',

in Jose Luis

Reyna

and

Richard

S. Weinert

(eds.),

Authoritarianism in

Mexico

(Philadelphia), p.

17;

Camin,

Hector

Aguilar,

'The

Relevant Tradition:

Sonoran

Leaders in the

Revolution',

in

Brading

(ed.),

Caudillo and

Peasant,

pp.

122-123,

which

laments

the decline

of

a once

vigorous

national

bourgeoisie

and

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30

BULLETIN

OF LATIN

AMERICAN

RESEARCH

cites,

by

way

of

corroboration,

the

Communist El

Machete

(then,

Aug.

1927,

wedded

to Stalin's

'united

front',

Shanghai notwithstanding).

37.

Louis XVI:

'C'est

une

revolte?';

the Duke:

'Non,

Sire,

c'est

une

revolution'

(on

hear-

ing of the fall of the Bastille).

38.

Meyer,

Michael

C.

(1972).

Huerta:

A

Political

Portrait

(Lincoln),

p.

157.

39.

Hampson, p.

256.

Medin,

Tzvi

(1972).

Ideologia

y

praxis

politica

de

Ldzaro

Cdrdenas

(Mexico),

p.

5,

makes a

similar

point

about the

Mexican

Revolution.

40.

Brinton,

Crane

(1965).

The

Anatomy

of

Revolution

(New

York)

(first

published

1938)

stressed

the

specificity

of

'great

revolutions',

which

emphasis

has

been

pre-

served in

numerous

subsequent

studies:

e.g.,

Skocpol,

pp.

xi,

3-5.

41.

Trotsky,

Leon

(1967).

The

History

of

the

Russian

Revolution,

3 Vols

(London),

Vol.I,p.

15.

42.

Waterbury,

R.,

'Non-Revolutionary

Peasants:

Oaxaca

Compared

to Morelos in the

Mexican

Revolution',

Comparative

Studies

in

Society

and

History

17: 410-442.

43.

Thompson,

E. P.

(1972).

The

Making

ofthe

English

Working

Class

(Harmondsworth),

p. 15.

44.

Tilly,

Charles,

Tilly,

Louise

and

Tilly,

Richard

(1975).

The

Rebellious

Century,

1830-1930

(Cambridge),

pp.

51-52,249.

45.

Stone,

Lawrence

(1970).

'The

English

Revolution',

in Robert

Foster and Jack P.

Greene

(eds.),

Preconditions

of

Revolution

in

Early

Modern

Europe

(Baltimore),

pp.

59-60;

Marx,

Eighteenth

Brumaire,

pp.

10-11,

whence

the

quotation.

46.

Huntington,

Samuel P.

(1971).

Political Order n

Changing

Societies

(Yale),

p.

264.

47.

See

Cockcroft,

especially chaps

6-8,

and

pp.

143-144,177-183.

48.

Womack,

John,

Jr

(1969).

Zapata

and

the

Mexican Revolution

(New

York),

pp.

87,

393-404

;Cordova,pp.

154-155.

49. Cedillo is

the

subject

of

two

excellent new

monographs:

Falcon,

Romana

(1984).

Revolucion

y

caciquismo.

San Luis

Potosi,

1910-1938

(Mexico)

and

Dudley

Ankerson (DeKalb, forthcoming: precise title unknown). Ankerson depicts Cedillo

as

a

genuine

agrarian

populist,

in contrast to

Falcon's

more Machiavelhan

machine

politician;

neither

view

seriously

conflicts

with

my

argument, though

Ankerson's

fits the better.

50.

Cordova,

p.

154.

51.

For

example:

Friedrich,

Paul

(1970).

Agrarian

Revolt in

a

Mexican

Village

(Engle-

wood

Cliffs),

on the case of

Naranja.

Another

(major)

case would

be

the

Laguna;

and

(a

minor

case)

Ometepec

(see

no.

104,

where other

examples

are

mentioned).

52.

Meyer,

Lorenzo

(1973-74).

'El estado

mexicano

contemporaneo',

Historia

Mexicana

23:723.

53.

Skocpol, pp.

10-11.

54.

Knight,

'Peasant and Caudillo'.

55. Recent revisionist studies

(whose scholarly

merits I

fully

recognise,

even if I dissent

from

some of

their

conclusions)

would

include:

Meyer,

Jean

(1973).

La

Revolution

Mexicaine

(Paris);

Tobler,

Hans

Werner

(1982).

'Conclusion: Peasant Mobilisation

and

the

Revolution',

in

Brading,

Caudillo and

Peasant,

pp.

245-255;

Jacobs,

Ian

(1982).

Ranchero Revolt The

Mexican

Revolution

in

Guerrero

(Austin);

Falcon,

Romana

(1979).

'Los

origenes

populares

de la

revolucion

de

1910? El case

de

San

Luis

Potosi',

Historica Mexicana

29:

197-240,

and

the

same author's

Revolucion

y

caciquismo,

e.g.,

pp.

271-273.

56.

Cordova,

p.

262,

sees

the 'virtual conclusion' of the

Revolution

in

1917

and

Cock?

croft,

p.

5,

inclines to

agree;

I

conclude

my

forthcoming

study

of the

(armed)

Revolution with

the conventional date

of

1920;

Ruiz

presses

on to

1923.

As

regards

the

development

of

'revolutionary'

economic

nationalism

see

Alan

Knight,

'The

political

economy

of

revolutionary

Mexico, 1900-1940',

in

Abel,

Christopher

and

Lewis,

Colin

M.

(1985).

Latin

America,

Economic

Imperialism

and

the State

(London),

pp.

288-317

(though

beware: this

article suffered editorial

butchery).

57.

E.g. Quirk,

Robert E.

(1970).

The

Mexican

Revolution,

1914-15:

The

Convention

of

Aguascalientes

(New

York),

pp.

292-293.

58.

Anguiano,

Arturo

(1975).

El

estado

y

la

politica

obrera del

Cardenismo

(Mexico);

Ianni,

Octavio

(1977).

El

estado

capitalista

en

la

epoca

de

Cdrdenas

Mexico).

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THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

31

59.

.Hamilton,

Nora

(1982).

The

Limits

of

State

Autonomy: Post-revolutionary

Mexico

(Princeton),

pp.

4-15;

cf.

Holloway

and

Picciotto,

p.

3.

60.

Examples

of

statolatry:

Cordova,

pp.

228-230,

262,

290,

322

(theory

of the

'super-

powerfuF state; the state as regulator of the economy; the 'almost absolute depen-

dence' of

organised

social

groups

on

the

state,

and

the latter's 'total

independence'

of

these

groups).

Hodges

and

Gandy's

concept

of the

Revolution

as

political

and

bureaucratic,

marked

by

'the

perpetuation

in

political

power

of

a

new

ruling

class?

the

bureaucracy'

(p.

122

ff.),

is

similar.

Grand,

comparative

statolatry

is

evident

in

Skocpol:

e.g.,

pp.

35, 285,

287; however,

Skocpol's

adjectival

preferences,

tending

to the

subjective ('striking'

is

her favourite

qualification

of

revolutionary

con-

sequences),

make it difficult to evaluate

just

how

far

the

statolatry

goes.

Is

it

(as

I

take it

to

be)

a bold

new

cult,

or

merely

an

agnostic

critique

of

the

old,

discredited

gods

of

economic

reductionism?

61.

Jacobs,

p.

167.

62.

de

la

Pena,

Guillermo

(1982).

A

Legacy

ofPromises: Agriculture,

Politics

and Ritual

in the Morelos Highlands of Mexico (Manchester), pp. 8, 12, 253-254. And?an

example among

many

in

the

field of

Mexican labour

history?Delarbe,

Raul

Trejo

(1976).

'The

Mexican

Labour

Movement, 1917-1975',

Latin American Research

Review

8:

133,

talks

of

the

working

class moulded

by

'the

needs

of

the

state',

which

successfully

seeks the

'demobilisation'

of

'powerless'

workers,

with the official

institutions

of

the 1930s

'perfecting'

this hierarchical

relationship.

63.

Wilkie,

James W.

(1970).

The

Mexican

Revolution: Federal

Expenditure

and Social

Change

since

1910

(Berkeley),

pp.

37,62-65.

64.

Semo,

Historia

Mexicana,

pp.

157-159.

65.

Hamilton,

p.

271,

juxtaposes

'structural

options

and

constraints';

though

the latter

figure

more

prominently

in

her

analysis.

66.

Brandenburg,

Frank

R.

(1965).

The

Making

of

Modern Mexico

(Englewood

Cliffs),

pp.55-56.

67.

Perry,

pp.

349-350;

Cordova,

pp.

268-275.

68.

Womack,

pp.

54-55.

69.

Beals,

Carleton

(1931).

Mexican Maze

(Philadelphia),

pp.

205-213,

offers a

classic,

if

overdrawn,

portrait

of the

typical

revolutionary

cacique,

Don Melchor.

70.

Meyer,

Lorenzo

(1978).

Historia

de

la

Revolucion

Mexicana.

Periodo 1928-34:

El

conflicto

social

y

los

gobiernos

del

maximato

(Mexico),

p.

188.

71.

Ibid.,

pp.

174-175.

The

figures

here

(pp.

190-193)

suggest

that

prior

to 1934

private

agricultural

properties

lost about one-fifth of their

cultivated area

in

accordance

with the

reform

programme;

inasmuch

as

rough comparisons

can be

made,

this

indicates

a

turnover similar

to

that

brought

about

by

the

French

Revolution.

See

Hampson, pp. 251-255, 261,

and

Magraw,pp. 17,

24.

72.

Chevalier,

Frangois

(1967).

'The

Ejido

and Political

Stability

in

Mexico',

in

Claudio

Veliz

(ed.),

The

Politics

ofConformity

in

Latin

America

(Oxford),

pp.

159-161.

73.

Cumberland,

Charles

C.

(1972).

Mexican Revolution.

The

Constitutionalist Years

(Austin),

pp.

349-351; Niemeyer,

E.

V.,

Jr

(1974).

Revolution

at

Queretaro:

The

Mexican

Constitutional

Convention

of

1916-17

(Austin),

pp.

60-100;

Meyer,

Jean

(1973-74).

La

Cristiada,

3

Vols

(Mexico),

especially

Vol.

II,

pp.

355-363

on

the

revival

of

anti-clericalism

after

1931.

74.

Meyer,

Cristiada, II,

p.

381.

75.

Skirius,

John

(1978).

Jose

Vasconcelos

y

la

cruzeda de

1929

(Mexico).

76.

Joseph,

C.

M.

(1982).

Revolution

from

without

Yucatdn,

Mexico

and the

United

States,

1880-1924

(Cambridge),

pp.

204-205,

illustrates

Carrillo Puerto's

policy

of

proscription:

a

particularly thorough,

but not

wholly exceptional, example

of revolu?

tionary

house-cleaning.

77.

I

discuss this more

fully

in

my

forthcoming

The

Mexican

Revolution,

1908-20

(Cambridge,

2

Vols, 1986):

see

Vol.

II,

chap.

2,

parts

i,

ii.

78.

Craig,

Ann L.

(1983).

The

First

Agraristas

An Oral

History

of

a

Mexican

Agrarian

Reform

Movement

(Berkeley),

pp.

37-38, 40-41, 46-50,

shows

that

'relatively

little

changed'

in the

Los Altos

regions

before the

1930s,

and that 'the

pre-Revolutionary

land-tenure

system

had

survived

two

decades

of

civil

strife';

even

here,

however,

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32

BULLETIN OF LATIN

AMERICAN RESEARCH

holders or

local

power

and

property

were

facing

new,

mounting

pressures.

The

picture

is

broadly

corroborated

by

Tomas Martinez

Saldaiia

and

Leticia Gandara

Mendoza,

Politica

y

sociedad

en

Mexico:

el

caso

de los

Altos

de

Jalisco

(Mexico,

1976), pp. 63-88. On Chiapas, see Benjamin, Thomas Louis (1981). 'Passages to

Leviathan:

Chiapas

and

the

Mexican

State,

1891-1947'

(Michigan

State

University

Ph.D.),pp.

143-168,173-174.

79. Mark

Wasserman,

'Persistent

oligarchs: vestiges

of the

Porfirian

elite

in

revolutionary

Chihuahua, Mexico,

1920-35',

paper

given

to

the VI

Congress

of

Mexican and

U.S.

Historians,

Chicago,

Sept.

1981;

and

see

Ruiz,

pp.

336-369.

80.

Hodges

and

Gandy,

pp.

93-97,

query

the use of

'elitist models'

which,

they

argue,

lack 'an

economic dimension'.

They

may

be

right.

In

this

case,

however,

I shall

argue

that the ouster

of

the

Porfirian

political

elite

(sic:

not 'the

Porflrian

ruling

class')

had direct

and

important

repercussions

in the

'economic'

sphere.

81.

And,

since

many

of the

Federals-turned-revolutionaries

were

Villistas

(such

as

Felipe

Angeles

and

Juan

Medina),

they

were

eliminated

in

the

final

bout

of

factional

con-

flict after 1914.

82.

Tobler,

Hans

Werner

(1971).

'Las

paradojas

del

ejercito

revolucionario: su

papel

en

la

reformaagraria,

1920-35',

HistoriaMexicana

21:

38-79;

Womack,

pp.

365-369,

374;

Ankerson

(forthcoming);

Joseph,

pp.

263-273; Friedrich,

pp.

100-110;

Salamini,

Heather

Fowler

(1978).

Agrarian

Radicalism

in

Veracruz,

1920-38

(Lincoln),

pp.

35-45.

83. The

presidential

election

of

1940 was the last in

which

genuine

fears

of

military

intervention were

aroused; thereafter,

war-time collaboration

with

the U.S.

speeded

the

process

of

professionalisation,

and

the

institutional consolidation

of

the 'revolu?

tionary'

regime

deterred

military

adventurism.

84.

Smith,

Peter H.

(1979).

Labyrinths of

Power: Political

Recruitment

in

Twentieth-

Century

Mexico

(Princeton),

pp.

172-176.

85. Good examples are given by Ernest Gruening, Mexico and its Heritage (London,

1928),

pp.

319-331,

393

ff.

86.

Raby,

David

L.

(1974).

Educacion

y

revolucion

social

en Mexico

(Mexico),

p.

127.

87.

Joseph,

pp.

208-213,

271-272,

303.

88.

Meyer,

Jean

(1976).

The

Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican

People

Between Church

and

State,

1926-29

(Cambridge),

pp.

21-24, 36,

75-82.

89.

Skidmore,

Thomas

E.

(1979).

'Workers

and

Soldiers: Urban

Labor Movements

and

Elite

Responses

in

Twentieth-Century

Latin

America',

in

E. Bradford

Burns

and

Thomas

E.

Skidmore

(eds.),

Elites, Masses,

and

Modernization in Latin

America,

1850-1930

(Austin),

pp.

99-103.

90.

Roxborough,

pp.

6-12.

91.

Hall,

Linda

B.

(1981).

Alvaro

Obregon:

Power and Revolution in

Mexico,

1911-

1920 (Texas A&M

University

Press),

pp.

210-232;

Joseph, pp.

188-227,

especially

p.221.

92.

Recent

work

by

Stabb,

Powell

and

Raat

qualifies

the

leyenda

negra

of

Porfirian

racism,

and

points

to

an

emerging

indigenismo.

The

latter,

however,

was

hardly

estab-

lished

orthodoxy by

1910;

furthermore,

these studies concentrate

on

major

spokes-

men,

rather

than broad

opinion:

on

which,

see

my

Mexican

Revolution,

Vol.

I,

chap.

1.

93.

Mendoza,

Vicente T.

(1964).

Lirica narrativa

de

Mexico: El

corrido

(Mexico),

p.

75

(Papantla);

Brondo

Whitt,

E.

(1940).

La

Division

del

Norte

por

un

testigo

presencial

(Mexico),

p.

11

(Magnificat);

for additional

examples:

Knight,

Mexican

Revolution

(forthcoming),

Vol.

I,

chap.

4,

part

viii;

Vol.

II,

chap.

2,

part

i.

94.

Katz,

Friedrich

(1981).

The

Secret

War n

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.

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THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

33

98.

Cordova,

Arnaldo

(1974).

La

politica

de

masa

del

Cardenismo

(Mexico),

p.

14.

99.

Meyer,

Historia

de la

Revolucion Mexicana.

.. El

conflicto

social,

pp.

174-175.

100. The

tendency

towards

land

concentration

during

the

Porfiriato was

general,

but

not

uniform; in some regions (parts of Michoacan; the Hidalgo sierra) haciendas were

parcelled

into

smallholdings.

Parcellisation

of

ownership

of this kind

should

not,

however,

be

confused with

parcellisation

of

cultivation

(by

leasing

or

sharecropping

agreements)

which,

though

common

enough

(in

the

Bajio,

for

example), represented

an

augmentation

of

landlord/rentier

profits,

not an

abdication

of landlord control.

101.

Bazant,

Jan

(1975).

dnco haciendas mexicanas: tres

siglos

de

vida

rural

en San

Luis Potosi

(Mexico),

pp.

182-183.

102.

Miller,

Simon,

'An

agrarian

economy

under

siege:

the

Porfirian

hacienda in

the

Mexican

Revolution',

paper

given

to the Mexican

workshop

of the

Society

for

Latin American Studies

Conference,

Cambridge,

April

1984;

Buve,

Raymond

Th. J.

(1975).

'Peasant

Movements,

Caudillos

and

Land Reform

During

the

Revolution

(1910-17)

in

Tlaxcala, Mexico',

Boletin de Estudios

Latinoamericanos

y

del

Caribe

18: 148-149.

103.

Benjamin,

pp.

167,179.

104.

Evans,

Rosalie

(1926)

in D.

C.

Pettus

(ed.),

The Rosalie Evans

Letters

from

Mexico

(Indianapolis).

Asgar

Simonsen

has

pointed

out to

me

that

Ometepec,

scene of an

agrarian

jacquerie

in

1911,

became

a

centre

of

agrarista

protest

after the

revolution;

Friedrich's

study

of

Naranja

and

Buve's

of

Tlaxcala reveal

similar

continuities.

And,

as

Craig,

The

First

Agraristas,

illustrates,

significant agrarian

protest

also

developed

in

regions

which

had

been

relatively

quiescent

during

the

armed revolution.

105.

Mares,

Jose Fuentes

(1954).

Y Mixico se

refugio

en el

desierto

(Mexico),

pp.

241,

244-245; Wasserman,

'Persistent

oligarchs';

Ian

Jacobs,

'Rancheros

of

Guerrero:

the

Figueroa

brothers and the

revolution',

in

Brading,

Caudillo and

Peasant,

pp.

89-91, concludes his analysis of a (revolutionary) family with a neat example of how

'new

structures

... do not

always

entail the

recruitment

of new

men'.

106.

Womack,

pp.

41-42;

and

cf. Anita

Brenner,

Idols

Behind Altars

(New

York, 1929),

pp.

225-226.

Evans,

pp.

71,

78,

154

and Luis

Gonzalez

y

Gonzalez,

Pueblo en

vilo:

Microhistoria

de

San Jose

de

Gracia

(Mexico,

1972),

pp.

133,

137-138,

on

the

decline

of deference.

107.

Katz,

pp.

256-257;

Meyer,

Historia de la Revolucion

Mexicana .

. . El

conflicto

social,

p.

187,

rightly

notes that 'at the

beginning

of

the

1930s

the chief

feature

of

the Mexican rural scene was the

contradiction between the

landlords'

dominant

economic

position,

and their lack of

political legitimacy'.

108.

Ibid.,

p.

193;

and see note 71 above.

109.

Ronfeldt,

David

(1973). Atencingo:

The

Politics

of

Agrarian

Struggle

in a

Mexican

E/ido (Stanford). Stripped of their sprawling acres, Anita Brenner noted, some land?

lords

'profited

greatly

.

. .

as it left

them

in

an industrial

position

and

relieved

them

of the worst

labor

problem.

Others

resigned

themselves to

farming intensively

what

was

left,

shifting

at the

same

time into

commerce

and

manufacturing';

The

Wind

That

Swept

Mexico:

The

History

of

the

Mexican

Revolution 1910-42

(Austin,

1984;

first

published

1943),

p.

91.

110.

Benjamin,

p.

132;

Joseph, p.

104;

Gruening,

p.

139,

notes the end

of

peonage

in

notorious Valle

National

of

Oaxaca.

111. See the

report

of

the American

planter

J.

Harvey

of

Tezonapa,

Veracruz,

2

August

1912,

State

Department

archive,

RG

59,812.00/4779,

on

his

inability

to recruit

peons

from the

village

of

Oluta,

as he

had

formerly

done at fiesta

time,

now that

the

local 'source

of

terror'?the

military

garrison?had

been

removed.

112. Joseph, pp. 103-105, 213-214, 298. The American consul at Progreso was therefore

premature

rather than

wholly

mistaken

when,

in

1917,

he

reported

that 'labor

unions

exercise

strong

political

and

industrial influence

and

peonage appears

to

have

been

effectively

abolished':

A.

Gaylord

Marsh to State

Department,

31

May

1917,

State

Department

archives,

RG

59,812.00/20993.

113.

Did the

Porfirian model of

development

involve

a

'Junker road' to

agrarian capital-

ism?

The fact of

rapid

land

concentration

suggests

yes;

but

(as

I

shall

discuss)

the

internal

structure

of

Porfirian

haciendas inhibited

progress

towards free

wage

labour

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34

BULLETIN

OF LATIN

AMERICAN

RESEARCH

?in

some,

perhaps

many,

cases.

Hence the ambivalence

of

analysts

like

Roger

Bartra,

who,

in

his

interesting

article

'Peasants

and

Political Power in

Mexico: A

Theoretical

Approach',

Latin American

Perspectives

5

(1975): 127,129,

first

argues

that 'Mexican agriculture at the turn of the century was developing along a road

that

could be called a

Porfirian version

of the "via

Junker"',

then observes that

'the

latifundios

utilized

super-exploitation

of

the

labor

force

(even

using

feudal

forms).

In this

way

they

closed the door

to the

possibility

of

a

"Junker"-type

development

in

agriculture'.

This second

position

is

unequivocally argued by

Marco

Bellingeri

and

Enrique

Montalvo,

'Lenin en

Mexico: la via

junker

y

las

contra-

dicciones del

porfiriato',

Historias

1

(1982):

15-29. Like

so

many

historical

ques-

tions,

this

one

hinges

on

what is

typical

or

atypical;

and,

at

present,

our

level

of

empirical knowledge

does not

permit

a

confident answer.

Bellingeri

and

Montalvo

have

certainly

pointed

out

the barriers which

lay

in the

path

of a

smooth

'Junker'

transition,

and

which,

it is

argued

here,

the

Revolution

helped

demolish.

114.

I

take Morelos as the

best case of

thorough,

post-revolutionary

agrarian

reform: the

consequences are suggested in Womack, pp. 372-375; though cf. Arturo Warman,

.

. . Y

venimos

a

contradecir:

Los

campesinos

de

Morelos

y

el

estado nacional

(Mexico, 1976),

pp.

165-168,

178-183.

Barta,

'Peasants

and

political power',

takes

the

classic Marxist view

that

the

agrarian

reform,

by

blocking

'de-peasantisation',

created 'an

obstacle to

capitalist

development

in

agriculture':

see

pp.

127-128.

Magraw,

pp.

15, 56-57,

suggests

a

French

parallel.

115.

See the

resume in

David

Goodman

and

Michael

Redclift,

From

Peasant

to Proletar-

ian:

Capitalist Development

and

Agrarian

Transitions

(Oxford,

1981),

pp.

185-213.

116.

The

relative absence of

free

land,

coupled

with

growing

landlord

monopoly

of

resources,

ruled out

any

general

application

of

the

Chayanov

principle:

peasant

farmers were

rarely

in

a

position

to

compete

successfully

against

hacienda

production

(as

they

had,

for

example,

in

the

colonial

period).

117. Rather than cite the extensive corpus of work by Enrique Semo, Jan Bazant, David

Brading,

Charles

Harris,

Harry

Cross,

Marco

Bellingeri,

John

Tutino,

Simon Miller

and

others,

I

would

recall

John Coatsworth's comment: 'not

one estate owner

has

been

found

who

might

qualify

as

the sort of

aristocratic,

prestige-oriented,

economic

nincompoop

once

thought

by

many

to be

typical

of

Spanish

American hacendados"':

'Obstacles

to

Economic

Growth

in

Nineteenth-Century

Mexico',

American Historical

Review 83

(1978):

87.

118.

Ennquez,

Andres

Molina

(1909).

Los

grandes

problemas

nacionales

(Mexico),

pp.

81-103;

Boorstein

Couturier,

Edith

(1968).

'Modernizacion

y

tradicion en una

hacienda: San Juan

Hueyapan,

1902-11',

HistoriaMexicana

18:

35-55.

119.

Katz,

Friedrich

(1980).

La

servidumbre

agraria

en

Mexico

en

la

epoca porfiriana

(Mexico),

pp.

37-38;

Warman,

p.

89.

120.

Warman,

pp.

70,

72.

121.

Goodman

and

Redclift,

pp.

100-105;

de

Janvry,

Alain

(1981).

The

Agrarian

Ques-

tion

and

Reformism

in

Latin America

(Baltimore),

pp.

106-109.

122.

'The mere

appearance

of

the

circulation of

commodities and the

currency

of

money

does

not sullice to

supply

the historical

conditions

for the existence of

capital';

'capitalist

cooperation

. . .

presupposes

the existence

of

the

free

wage

worker

who

sells

his labour

power

to

capital';

'the

process

which

clears the

way

for the

capitalist

system

.

.

.

transforms

the actual

producers

into

wage

workers';

and

so on.

Marx,

Karl

(1957).

Capital,

2

Vols,

J. M.

Dent

& Sons

(London),

I,

pp.

156-157,

351;

II,

pp.

791-792.

123.

Pare,

Luisa

(1977).

El

proletariado

agricola

en

Mexico:

campesinos

sin tierra

o

proletarios

agricolas?

(Mexico)

adopts

this

position

in

regard

to

Mexico; Amin,

S.

and

Vergopoulos,

K.

(1977).

La

question

paysanne

et le

capitalisme

(Paris)

do so

globally:

see

especially pp.

182-204

for

a

cogent

analysis

of

the modern

'peasant'

as a de

facto

piece-worker.

Of

course,

this

departure

from

the letter of

Marx

is

contentious:

Goodman

and

Redclift,

pp.

96-98.

124.

Bauer,

Arnold

(1975).

Chilean

Rural

Society

(Cambridge)

has

stressed

the

constric-

tions of the

market

in

early

nineteenth-century

Chile,

even at

times

of

supposed

export

'boom';

though

I

know of no

equivalent,

comprehensive

study

of the

Mexican

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THE MEXICAN

REVOLUTION

35

economy

in

this

period,

the available evidence

points

in the same

direction.

Coats-

worth,

'Obstacles

to economic

growth',

p.

82,

notes

a

50%

drop

in real

per

capita

income

in Mexico

between

1800

and

1860,

while his

El

impacto

economico

de

los

ferrocarriles en el porflriato (2 Vols, Mexico, 1976) illustrates the dramatic market

expansion

made

possible

after the

1870s.

125.

Glade,

William,

(1969).

The

Latin

American

Economies:

A

Study of

their

Institu-

tional

Evolution

(New

York),

pp.

306-310,

319-321.

126.

Alan

Knight, 'Peonage

and Unfree

labour in

Nineteenth-Century

Mexico',

paper

given

to the

History

Workshop

Conference

on

Slavery

and Unfree

Labour,

Oxford,

April

1985.

127.

Katz,

Servidumbre

agraria,

pp.

13,

34.

During

the

revolutionary

inflation,

mining

companies preferred

to

dispense

charity

than to

raise

wages, e.g.,

U.S.

Naval

report,

Manzanillo,

9 November

1915,

State

Department

archives,

RG

59,812.00/16843.

128.

Katz,

Servidumbre

agraria,

pp.

83-103,

gives

Galindo's

1905

report

on

peonage

in

the Puebla-Tlaxcala

region, indicating

this

phenomenon.

129. Ibid., pp. 40, 100-101, reports the attempt; for the full story, acutely analysed, see

Bellingeri,

Marco

(1976).

'L'economia

del latifondo in Messico:

l'hacienda San

Antonio Tochatlaco

dal

1880 al

1920',

Annali

della Fondazione

Luigi

Einaudi

10:

287-428.

130.

Bellingeri,

pp.

370-380,409-413.

131.

Katz,

Servidumbre

agraria,

pp.

38-39, 87, 89,

98-99.

132.

'Purely

formal' in that

the cash

wage

may

consist of

credit

recycled

through

the

hacienda

itself,

and cash

advances

may?according

to the

classic form

of

oppressive

debt-peonage?serve

to maintain

a

quasi-servile

labour force.

Thus,

not

only

serfs

and

slaves,

but

even

some

ostensible

'proletarians',

may

in fact

fall short of

the

definitional

requirements

of

'free

wage

labour'

(which

'must

be

doubly

free: free

from access

to land and free from

the

control

of a

particular

employer')?notwith-

standing

that their

employers

may

be

realising

healthy

profits

in the

marketplace.

The

quotation

is from Tom

Brass,

'Coffee and rural

proletarianization:

a comment

on

Bergad',

Journal

of

Latin American Studies 16

(1984):

144.

133.

Womack,

p.

49;

Warman,

pp.

62-63;

Joseph,

pp.

29,

34;

Margolies,

Barbara Luise

(1975).

Princes

of

the

Earth: Subcultural

Diversity

in

a

Mexican

Municipality

(Wash-

ington),pp.

19-22.

134. Gonzalez

Roa,

Fernando

(1919).

El

aspecto

agrario

de

la revolucion

mexicana

(Mexico),

p.

200.

135.

Gonzalez

Navarro,

Moises

(1970).

Historia

moderna

de Mexico. El

Porfiriato:

La

vida

social

(Mexico),

p.

218.

136.

Chase,

Stuart

(1931).

Mexico

A

Study

of

Two Americas

(New

York),

p.

313.

137.

Anderson, Rodney (1976).

Outcasts

in

their own

Land:

Mexican Industrial

Workers,

1906-1911

(Dekalb),

pp.

29-31, 251;

Consul

Bonney,

San

Luis,

to State

Depart?

ment,

2 November

1912,

State

Department

archive,

RG 59

812.00/5446.

138.

Katz,

Servidumbre

agraria,

pp.

34-35;

John

H.

Coatsworth,

'Anotaciones sobre la

production

de

alimentos

durante el

Porfiriato',

Historia Mexicana 26

(1976):

167-

187;

Gonzalez

Roa,

p.

97;

Margolies, p.

28.

139. The economic

form

and

social context

of

hacienda

production

differed from

region

to

region

(as

suggested

here);

and these

differences

were

important

determinants

of

the

'ecology

of

revolution' after

1910. For

other?e.g.

macro-economic?analytical

purposes,

however,

it is the

common

characteristics

of

hacienda

production

which

deserve

emphasis.

140.

Cumberland,

Charles C.

(1968).

Mexico:

The

Struggle

for Modernity

(Oxford),

p.212.

141.

Marx,

Karl

(1966),

Capital

(Moscow),

book

III,

chap.

xlv,

especially

pp.

760-762.

142.

Moore,

Barrington,

Jr

(1969).

Social

Origins

of

Dictatorship

and

Democracy:

Lord

and Peasant

in

the

Making

of

the

Modern World

(Harmondsworth),

pp.

433-436;

Amin and

Vergopoulos, p.

33.

143.

Ruiz,

pp.

12, 24-25, Cockcroft,

pp.

xv-xvi,

53-54,

among

other

analyses,

seem

to

exaggerate

the

structural

inevitability

of

the

Revolution.

144.

The

Bolivian and

Peruvian

agrarian

reforms,

for

example,

involved less the

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36

BULLETIN OF LATIN

AMERICAN RESEARCH

dismemberment of

profitable, productive

haciendas

(like

those of

Morelos)

in favour

of a

militant 'external'

peasantry,

than

the

emancipation

of an 'internal'

peasantry

from

'feudal'

ties;

equally,

they

came

at a

time

when

their landlord

victims,

far

from

constituting a 'hegemonic' class (as Porfirian landlords arguably had), were under

attack from

powerful

urban

interests,

political

and economic.

(I

am

referring

to the

agrarian

reform

in

the Peruvian

sierra,

not the

coast.)

145.

Warman,

pp.

68-69,

124-126,

204

on the

plight

of

the Morelos

realenos

('trusty'

peons);

and

ibid.,

pp.

158-161,

182,

192,

and

Benjamin,

p.

249,

for

examples

of

the

new,

ejidal

caciquismo.

146.

E.g.,

Craig,pp.

125-126.

147.

Mao

Tse-Tung

(1967).

'Report

on

an

Investigation

of

the

Peasant

Movement in

Hunan',

in Selected Works

ofMao Tse-Tung,

3

Vols

(Peking),

Vol.

I,

p.

28.

148.

Magraw,pp.28,111.

149.

Tschiffely,

A.

F.

(1952).

Tschiffely's

Ride

(London),

pp.

232,

259,

263-264.

150.

Evans

and

Friedrich offer

good

examples.

Rural

property,

an

observer

noted in

the

early 1930s, was 'now very much a wasting asset'; the haciendas had 'fallen upon evil

days';

and,

even where hacendados

clung

to

their

patrimony,

it involved them an

'endless,

heart-breaking game';

Marett,

R. H. K.

(1939).

An

Eye-witness

of

Mexico

(London),

pp.

14, 16,

96.

Perhaps

Marett

protested

too

much;

but

so, too,

do those

who

argue

for the

preservation

of the rural status

quo

until

the

mid-1930s.

151.

By

the end of

1933

(that is,

still

prior

to

the Cardenista

reforms)

ejidos

embraced

nearly

half

the total

area

of

Morelos

(47%)

and at least four-fifths of the state's

crop

land:

Simpson,

Eyler

N.

(1937).

The

Ejido:

Mexico's

Way

Out

(Chapel

Hill),

pp

622-623;

though

cf.

also

pp.

573-574.

152.

Gruening,

p.

145.

153.

Margolies,

pp.

35,

39.

154.

Benjamin,

pp.

188-195

(including

the

quotation

from the

American

consul

at

Salina

Cruz,

p.

191); Jacobs,

pp.

145-157.

155.

Bellingeri,

pp.

382-387.

156.

I

refer

to

parcellisation

of

ownership,

not

merely

cultivation.

See

Brading,

D. A.

(1978).

Haciendas andRanchos in

the Mexican

Bajio,

Leon 1700-1860

(Cambridge),

pp.

208-216;

Schryer,

Frans

J.

(1980).

The

Rancheros

of

Pisaflores:

The

History

of

a

Peasant

Bourgeoisie

in

Twentieth-Century

Mexico

(Toronto),

pp.

37,

42, 51,

64-65,78,80-82,93.

157.

Several

examples

of elite

survival and diversification

can

be found

in

Flavia

Derossi,

The

Mexican

Entrepreneur

(Paris, 1971);

see

pp.

22-23,157,

259.

158.

See

Ronfeldt,

Atencingo,

passim.

159.

Alier,

Juan Martinez

(1977).

Haciendas,

Plantations

and

Collective

Farms:

Agrarian

Class

Societies

(London),

pp.

100-101.

160. De

Janvry,

chap.

6,

especially pp.

211-218. De

Janvry's

stress on the causal

link

between

agrarian

reform and

capitalist development

(not

least

in the

'nonreform

sector')

is

appropriate;

that

is not to

say

that

his

typology

of reforms

(p.

206)

is

right

or that his

inference

of motive

from

outcome

(note

173,

below)

is valid. Both stand

in need

of

qualification.

161.

Ronfeldt,

Atencingo,

pp.

19-29;

Cordova,

p.

317.

162.

Meyer,

Jean

(1979).El

Sinarquismo:

Un

fascismo

mexicano?

(Mexico),

p.

55;

Krauze,

Enrique

(1976).

Caudillos

culturales en

la

revolucion

mexicana

(Mexico),

pp.

37-39,

43-44,61-63.

163.

Lewis,

Oscar

(1969).

Pedro Martinez:

A

Mexican Peasant

and his

Family

(London),

pp.

150, 156,174-175;

Beals,

Mexican

Maze,

pp.

206-208;

Gonzalez,

Pueblo en

vilo,

pp.133,137-138.

164.

Lewis,

Pedro

Martinez,

p.

174.

165.

Marx,

Capital,

Vol.

I,p.

526.

166.

Skocpol, pp.

14-18.

It

should

be added

that

Skocpol's

attribution of

'purposive'

and

'voluntarist'

explanations

to other

theorists/historians

of revolution

is

consider-

ably

exaggerated;

and

her

de-emphasis

of

such

explanations

leads

straight

to

the

statolatrous

position

criticised

earlier in

this

paper

(crudely:

popular

discontent

does

not count for

much,

so

long

as

the state

apparatus

remains immune to

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THE MEXICAN

REVOLUTION

37

externally-generated

crisis).

This

position

does not follow

logically,

however,

from

a

critique

of

purposiveness.

And,

we

may

note,

Skocpol's

key

case

(South Africa)

now looks

rather less

supportive

of her thesis

than it did at

the time of

writing;

with luck, it may end up refuting it.

167.

Ibanez,

V. Blasco

(1920).

Mexico

in Revolution

(New

York),

p.

8.

168.

Semo,

Historia

Mexicana,

p.

3

05.

169.

Engels,

Frederick

(1977).

The Peasant

War n

Germany

(Moscow),

p.

188.

170.

Dobb,

Maurice

(1972).

Studies

in the

Development

of

Capitalism

(London),

pp.

60-61.

171. Amin

and

Vergopoulos, pp.

105 -115.

172.

Ibid.,

p.

112;

Bellingeri

and

Montalvo,

pp.

17-18.

173. De

Janvry, p.

202.

174.

Knight,

'Political

Economy

of

Revolutionary

Mexico',

pp.

306-307,

where relevant

sources

are cited.

175.

Hamilton,

pp.

280-286,

is

a sensitive discussion.

176. Semo, Historia Mexicana, p. 303.

177. Amin

and

Vergopoulos, p.

58. Cf.

Bartra,

'Peasants and Political

Power',

pp.

140-

144,

and

Pare,

pp.

162-171

who,

similarly,

derive

political

conclusions

from the

survival

of

'peasant'

attitudes/rhetoric/institutions/policy

(which

Bartra locates

in

the 'structure of

mediation'),

despite

the

incorporation

of

peasants

(evan

as

defacto

proletarians)

into

a

system

of

agrarian

capitalism.

Hodges

and

Gandy,

pp.

210-211,

allude

to this

problem

and

take

the

extreme

position

that

the

regime's

constant

recreation of the

peasantry (qua

peasants,

not

proletarians)

defies the

logic

of

capital

and

represents

the

bureaucracy's

'political

need

for

a

peasant

base';

hence the

primary

division within Mexican

society

is not the classic one between workers

and

capitalists,

but

rather

that between

'capitalists

and

bureaucrats'

(pp.

219,

225).

I

cannot

agree.

178. Sanderson, chap. 7.