I read Knight's The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction back in January. This is a much more in-depth tome, as over the course of 500 pages, Knight covers the years before Porifiro Diaz was ousted up to when Francisco Madero and his vice president Pino Suarez were gunned down by Huerta's soldiers in a way to make it look like they were killed by Maderista rebels attempting a rescue.
Knight discusses the changes the decades-long reign of Porifiro Diaz brought to Mexico, good and bad, and how these changes created the pressure that created the revolution that ultimately ended his time as president. What's interesting is there seem to broadly be two sides at work, with goals that ultimately didn't mesh.
For Madero and the middle-class liberals or intelligentsia, the issue was that Mexico was supposed to be a democracy, but its democracy was a farce. Diaz kept getting to run basically unopposed for president. The people appointed to power within the states, whether governors, constables, or jefe politicos, were essentially decided before the election ever began. The people with power simply handed the titles back-and-forth as deemed necessary, and either bought votes or used intimidation to stifle dissenting voices. What the "Maderistsas" (and the Reyistas before them) wanted were real elections and to follow the Constitution created by Benito Juarez. Once the people truly had a say in the matter, all the problems of the nation could be solved.
Problem was, most of the people who were similarly motivated to Madero were lousy at actually making anything happen. They were disinclined or unable to take action and force the issue. So it fell to the rural peasants and peons, or further north, the horse-riding serranos, to do the actual fighting. For those people, the primary issue was the need for land reform. As time went on, more and more land that had once belonged to villages, and was used by all, was being swallowed up by large haciendas or corporations, to the benefit of just a few. This was done either by force, or with money and influence. People (Emiliano Zapata for example) grew tired of that and when Madero made his call for an end to corrupt elections, they took up arms, thinking that there was going to be a redressing of the corrupt land-grabbing that had been going on.
Knight points the conflict here, in that Madero wants to continuing moving things forward, but the people fighting for agrarian reform are really trying to wind things back to how they used to be. So they joined their cause to the wrong bandwagon, and when Madero failed to measure up, it lead to dissatisfaction. And once you've overthrown one government because it was fucking you over, what's the problem with doing it again?
Madero doesn't help himself, either. He does really believe in free elections. When conservative Catholic candidates win a lot of seats and support in parts of the nation, Madero applauds them for winning good campaigns. While he might want everyone to be able to vote, only certain people "deserve" to sit in the actual seats of power. Very rarely are those seats occupied by the people who helped him achieve his position, because they aren't intelligent or cultured enough. On the other hand, plenty of cabinet posts available for holdovers from Porifiro's government!
It's sad, because Madero keeps trying to buddy up to these people who hate his guts, while ignoring or scorning the people who were his allies, and it's just never going to work. It is also maddeningly reminiscent to me of how the elder - and I emphasize the word "elder" - leadership in the Democratic Party behave. Madero praises the Army for their good work, but all that does is give jackals like Huerta an inflated sense of their importance. Which is when the Army starts wondering why one of them shouldn't simply run the country instead of this little businessman?
It's a highly detailed book, as Knight will start with a particular topic - agrarian revolts, or the formation of unions - and work through the major examples one at a time, contrasting how the government responded, or what traits different parts of the country demonstrated. It's effective at showing which areas embraced the revolution and at which times, or how the Madero government succeeded in their goals in some places and times, but failed to gain traction in others.
That said, the book could use a few maps or pictures. Not just to break up the 500 pages of solid text, although that would have been welcome. But the few maps he provides are at the very beginning of the book, which is not terribly convenient. The maps aren't detailed enough, either. Knight makes at least two dozen references to the Bajio, which is labeled exactly nowhere on any of the maps. It seems as though, if it's that important of a region to mention, it might pay to actually outline it. It makes it difficult keeping track of the larger trends he's illustrating. About where certain activities or modes of thought were more common.
'It should be stressed that the Reyista movement of 1911 was different from that of 1909. The latter had mobilized the urban middle class in a progressive, anti-Diaz, protest party; in 1911 Reyes appealed to ex-Diaz office-holders and well-to-do conservatives. Middle-class support was also forthcoming; but from a worried middle class which, far from demanding political rights from an entrenched dictatorship, now sough to recreate that dictatorship, or, at least, a comparable tough regime which would re-establish order and end violence, demagogy and uncertainty.'
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