Mexican Revolution Research Paper

Introduction:

The Mexican revolution of 1910 was not the first revolution but it was, in the long run, efficient in achieving its goals. The year 1876 met Porfirio Diaz as the president of Mexico after his heroic defeat of the oppressive French. His ruling lasted 34 years known as the period of el Porfiriato, a period masked by inequality and unrest. Diaz, in his quest to build Mexico into a capitalist country with political stability, managed to reduce the standard of living for many farmers while increasing the pockets of foreign investors. Due to poor domestic treatment, the middle and lower working class started to resent him and his ways. Francisco Madero, was the main starter of the revolution; he saw the resentment and used it to build

Consequently, those people with connections ended up avoiding taxes and they were usually the wealthy class, while the poor and middle classes had to pay more taxes, driving them further into an economic repression. Diaz’s focus on foreign investment made matters worse during the 20th century when repressions were frequent, Diaz made conditions favourable towards the foreign investors to keep their business while disregarding that of his people.

There was a famine in 1908-1909 that destroyed the agriculture economy as well as the mining industry, as a matter of fact, everything that boomed earlier went down in the drains due to the famine. Railroad industry suffered due to lack of resources to transport especially because of U.S imposed tariffs on the sugar industry.

Political unrest as a cause of the revolution: Although Diaz’s long rule created political stability that the rich landowners of Mexico felt grateful for, there still was mass corruption and agitation that contributed to the revolt.

Some people had political privilege, meaning, they only had an influence on government because they had personal connections in government or

From 1934-1950 the hacienda system was reduced to nothing with the government giving back land in the form of ‘ejidos’. All labor unions were integrated into a state party. A middle class was able to form under business and manufacturing. Mexico turned into a mixed economy with part state and part nationally owned land. There was a command and market economy mixed together under business. In the long run the Mexican government turned conservative in Cold War years and followed an anti-communist witch hunt. The revolution was unlike any other revolution, usually countries would fight against an outside force or each other and settle down but with Mexico ideals kept clashing. It seemed as though all the people wanted were land and economic reform but any government that came into power during the revolution would either have politics and lack land reform or have land reform but lack ample support from the people. Hence why we saw all the different plans set up. They all had things in common and that was the type of reform they wanted, the methods of getting there however was what caused all the