Francisco Madero: Uneasy Revolutionary
Francisco I. Madero (1873–1913) was not a social revolutionary. He did not want to enact sweeping social or economic changes. Rather, he wanted relatively moderate reforms. At his core, he seems to have been a reformer, not a revolutionary. The scion of an elite family, he represented upper- and middle-class interests.
The Porfirio Díaz “presidency” had been sustained for decades because of those interests. Mexico’s elites feared political instability; the country had witnessed just that after independence from Spain. Authoritarian rule was considered a worthwhile price for stability. Over time, though, Díaz had run afoul of allies. He was concerned with lessening political threats to his rule. In doing so, some of the elites grew disenchanted. So, too, did other groups.
Particularly disenchanted with contemporary conditions were Mexico’s poor. The Díaz regime had appropriated land from peasants and given it to hacendados who were growing cash crops. The export of those crops brought foreign currency to Mexico and aided Mexico’s economy. However, it also meant that there was less land for growing food crops. Food had to be imported; despite imports, food shortages became endemic and hunger and even starvation spread among the lower classes. Farmers who had been forced off their land in some cases went to work in mines, and, in others, moved and tried to eke out a subsistence existence with less arable soils. In addition to alienating farmers (in both the sense of land alienation and political alienation), the regime, eager for foreign investment to boost the economy, gave major concessions to foreign firms. Among other indignities, these concessions allowed firms to pay Mexican workers half of what foreign workers got. As a result, Mexico’s poor had multiple grievances against the government.
Madero, initially, had a broad base of support. There were grievances against the Díaz government throughout Mexico. However, the middle- and upper-classes tended to focus more on political issues: Díaz’s clinging to power, his installation of cronies in key positions around the country, continued assaults on local governance. In some cases, the poor were also concerned by Díaz’s centralizing tendencies, but those issues paled in comparison to the desire for land reform.
The poor were upset that land had been appropriated by the government. They were upset that vast swaths of land were being held by hacendados. Madero was cautious on land reform. He did not want land redistribution as such. He believed that land taken illegally from peasants should be returned. However, he was unwilling to decree such a return by executive fiat. Rather, he wanted the courts to adjudicate land disputes. Furthermore, as essentially desiring stability, Madero chose to retain many elements of the Porifiriate when he took office as president in October 1911. Furthermore, when he did appoint has own supporters, they tended to be conservatives. Madero was clearly not interested in revolutionary change.
For the increasingly desperate lower classes, such a slow path of change was untenable. Madero’s refusal to act unilaterally along with his association with the old regime due to the conservative elements remaining in his government caused him to lose their support. As a result, popular revolts spread across the country led by men eager to show their support to Mexico’s poor.
The early period of Mexican revolution and counterrevolution showed that the diverse groups in Mexico largely had one thing in common: they wanted Díaz gone. Once that occurred, the uneasy coalition broke apart, because their main commonality was their common enemy. What resulted was the sort of political, social, and economic chaos that was exactly what supporters of Díaz, particularly in the nineteenth century, had feared. Violence erupted throughout the country with no truly unifying figures emerging. As such, this early period set up the on-going crisis that would engulf Mexico.
Bibliography
Gonzales, Michael J. The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
