The Underdogs By Marians Azuela Summary

In The Underdogs, Mariano Azuela alludes to the immediate motivations and long-term causes of the Mexican Revolution. Introducing readers to a motley crew of rebels, the novel characterizes the protracted struggle as a fight between “the poor” and the avaricious Mexican elites who transformed the “blood, sweat and tears” of the masses into “gold.” While Azuela intended to provide a mere subjective account, his description here is largely corroborated among the greater historical literature. The precipitous growth of the Mexican Revolution began once President Porfirio Diaz declared his victory at the polls, despite previously promising not to seek reelection. However, while Diaz’s decision was the catalyst for the revolution, Mexicans seized

the opportunity to voice their mounting disaffection with elite control over the country’s wealth, as well as their desire for a more cohesive Mexican identity. Although undoubtedly a bloody affair, the ensuing radical phase of the Mexican Revolution birthed a constructive phase that attempted to achieve economic equality and national identity, to mixed success.
The growing disaffection toward Porforio Diaz was, in part, the result of his support for the hacienda system that kept millions of Mexicans in perpetual poverty. Ignoring pleas from mid-century reformers for an “equitable distribution of public wealth,” Diaz left the elite’s massive estates intact, ensuring abysmal conditions for rural laborers. In The Underdogs, Azuela paints a disturbing image of one such laborer. Making only “sixteen cents” a day shelling corn from dawn until dusk, the unnamed worker wears nothing but rags for a shirt and scraps for pants. This man’s condition, was not only common, but the direct consequence of the immense inequality of land distribution in pre-revolutionary Mexico. Despite the fact that a majority of Mexicans worked in agriculture, a staggering “ninety-five percent of the rural population” had no land to their name. In contrast, the De la Garza family amassed over 11 million acres, much of which went uncultivated. This egregious inequality, meant that most agrarian workers could not provide for themselves and were feudally tied to haciendas via a system of debt peonage. This system, established an inescapable cycle of dependency between worker and landowner. A peon was paid by the hacienda in “scrip,” this scrip was only redeemable at the hacienda store, and the hacienda store “charged exorbitant prices.” As if the hacienda system could be any more unjust, the debt accumulated by workers would be passed down to their children, ensuring intergenerational indebtedness. In short, under Diaz, agrarian workers remained indebted, even in death.
Although agrarian workers undoubtedly suffered the most under Diaz, severe inequality plagued industry as well, resulting in mounting discontent among urban laborers toward the status quo.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Mexicans at the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company were paid far less than their American counterparts who disproportionately occupied managerial roles. Meanwhile, textile workers in Orizaba, many of them children, were “poorly paid” and put through exhausting twelve-hour shifts. Similar to their agrarian countrymen, these industrial workers often received credit for food at the company store. Effectively, this system allowed the company owners, who were often foreigners, to steal back a portion of the crummy wages they had already paid the Mexican laborers. Naturally, these inequitable economic relations culminated in a series of uprisings. Deploying rurales who indiscriminately shot and killed protesting workers, Diaz proved himself unwilling to address the pervasive issues throughout the country. Diaz’s refusal to address the foreign ownership of domestic industry and the abysmal labor conditions, would result in a mounting desire for a new national

identity.
As foreigners occupied a privileged position within Mexican society, the country faced a growing identity crisis in the waning years of the Diaz regime.

Not only did Mexican workers receive “silver pesos” as American laborers received “gold dollars,” but their government welcomed the foreign investment in Mexican industry that exacerbated this problem. Effectively surrendering national autonomy, Diaz allowed foreign countries to represent “97% of investment in mining, 98% in rubber, and 90% in oil.” The regime’s policy, resulted in a mounting desire for a reassertion of Mexican identity and sovereignty. Revolutionaries like Jose Vasconcelos wrote impassioned, nationalistic rebukes of liberalism, using language vaguely reminiscent of the language employed by Jose Morelos a century earlier. Arguing that new Mexican institutions should be based on “our blood, our language, and our people,” Vasconcelos argued for the same form of “sovereignty” as Morelos, one that “emanate[d] directly from the People.” According to Octavio Paz, Vasconcelos believed that post-Diaz Mexico should render all painters, writers, teachers, and architects part of a singular nation. Moreover, while intellectuals like Vasconcelos envisioned a strong Mexican identity, Francisco Madero sought to remove the chains of foreign investment which hindered the autonomy of the nation. As the son of a wealthy northern rancher, Madero argued that Diaz’s concessions to foreign companies “translated into direct losses

for Mexican businesses.” By granting the Guggenheims’ American Smelting and Refining Company access to operate in Mexico, Diaz effectively shut down all competing Mexican firms leaving only Madero’s in tact. As Diaz privileged foreign investment, exacerbated wealth inequality, and maintained abysmal working conditions, he had also managed to call Mexican autonomy into question. Declaring his victory at the polls despite his previous promise not to run, Diaz had primed both the masses and the elites for revolution. Exiled in the United States after opposing the regime, Madero prepared to launch a revolution in response to Diaz’s election victory, but would need the radicalism of two local leaders to usher the revolution.
Although Madero initially received a tepid response from the country at large, local leaders in the North successfully consolidated and radicalized uprisings across the region. Pascual Orozco, a member of the new middle class, had led convoys of precious metals through the mountains, boosting his regional name and making him a natural leader for the revolution. Pancho Villa, a descendent of a lineage of hacienda peons, was known for his honesty and reliability, drawing hundreds of men to serve under him and the revolution. Recruited by Abraham Gonzales, head of the state’s Anti-reelection Party who responded to Madero’s call for an uprising, the two local leaders expanded and won successive victories under the guidance of Modero. Orozco and Villa each headed a column of 500 riders, while Madero led another 1,500. Existentially threatening the Diaz regime, Villa and Orozco’s local knowledge had cultivated a massive movement, resulting in negotiations between Madero and Diaz. When Madero displayed a willingness to capitulate to both Diaz and the United States, which threatened to send in troops, both Orozco and Villa disregarded Madero’s leadership and fired on the federales. Ensuring at least a nominal victory for the revolutionaries, these radical leaders effectively ousted Diaz. Ultimately, it was the revolutionary fervor of the local leaders, which radicalized the movement in the early years.
Following this radical phase, a series of revolutionary governments attempted social and economic reforms with mixed success. Making modest attempts at land reform, Alvaro Obregon redistributed roughly “three million acres of land” throughout his tenure as president. While the Obregon administration was marginally successful, it was President Lazaro Cardenas who achieved the most substantial land reform of the revolutionary period. Attempting to rebuild the traditional ejido, Cardenas successfully distributed 16 times more land then Obregon did, which ensured the destruction of the old hacendado class. Moreover, Cardenas not only addressed the immense wealth inequality in the country, but reasserted Mexican sovereignty on the world stage. In 1936, when Mexican oil workers went on strike demanding higher wages and better working conditions, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in favor of the workers. When the foreign-owned oil corporations refused to comply, Cardenas expropriated the companies. Refusing to comply with “imperialist capital,” Cardenas’ assertion of Mexican autonomy was widely popular in Mexico despite the American boycott of Mexican goods that followed.
While endemic poverty still plagued much of Mexico post-revolution, Cardenas’ massive redistribution of land and refusal to allow foreign ownership of Mexican industry, marked an undoubtedly revolutionary shift from the policy under Diaz.
Over the course of the thirty year revolution, Mexicans voiced their growing frustration with elite control over the country’s wealth, as well as their desire for a strong Mexican identity. Although the revolution claimed over a million lives, these desires eventually materialized. Where Diaz deployed the Guardia Rural to ensure the inequitable distribution of land and foreign ownership of Mexican industry, Cardenas moved radically to redistribute land and to assert Mexican sovereignty. While endemic poverty remained and still remains an issue in cities like Chiapas, the Mexican Revolution was clearly revolutionary.