Mexico: the revolution from above

Scan page 5

In the second article of his Bas Hardy traces the path revolution from below to the 'revolution from above' in the The winner of a copy of Trotsky's 'Resolution Betrayed' our 'Brezhnev's Last Words' competition was Geoff Lu: dutionary peasant Leaders like Pancho Villa were unch: ley of Paddington: "You don't mean I'll spend etern IN socialist history 1917 is associated with the triumph of the working class revolution in Russia. It was also the year of the constitution which enshrined the social and democratic gains of the Mexican peasant revolt: Today, the Soviet Bureaucracy 'celebrates' the 65th anniversary of October 1917, although the conservative Kremlin oligarchy have drowned the socialism of Lenin and Trotsky in blood. The state bureaucracy in Mexico have a similar record of repression against their revolutionary movement.

During • the Mexican revolution one million people lost their lives to secure democratic rights and land reform. The Liberal President Francisco ambat the middle class politicians 6713 'ers like Pancho politicians Madero was one of the first to be assassinated, as he tried to play off the interests of the poor peasantry against the old landowners, church and regular army.

His death began a new phase in the Mexican revolution. The right wing forces, led by Generai Vitoriano Huerta, set out to exterminate the popular rebellion. This campaign was tantamount to orchestrated genocide against the Indian population.

Within a year, however, Huerta was defeated by the revolutionary generals with their superior mobile forces and guerilla tactics. Huerta was forced to flee the country and Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata entered Mexico city at the head of a vast revolutionary army in December 1917.

Although the majority of the revolutionary masses in both Russia and Mexico in 1917 were peasants, one major difference between the two countries lay in the role of the industrial working class.

In Russia the small working class was highly concentrated and organised into a socialist political party. Its presence meant that the. Russian middle class would not drastically break with the old order. The power of the working class in Russia transformed the democratic halfrevolution of February 1917 into the Socialist October.

In Mexico, however, the working class was not concentrated into vast factories but instead organised into small workplaces. It also lacked a strong socialist leadership, and came under the sway of the middle class politicians.

In 1915 General Obregon managed to establish 'Red Battalions' of workers to fight against the revolutionary peasants. By granting labour reforms he was able to get the trade union leaders to recruit for him - though left-wingers, such as the Electricians' Union, remained in opposition.

The Mexican capitalists had less to fear from the workers and were in a better position to live up to their claims as revolutionary democrats' The triumphal procession of Villa and Zapata into Mexico City was the high point of the popular revolution in Mexico. From that time on the peasant armies essentially revealed their political weakness.

The leaders had support in the local states and could not build a national organisation. Their followers began to drift back to the land once victory celebrations were , over. The mass peasant armies disintegrated.

There is a colourful story that Zapata once held a Winchester rifle to President Carranza's head and said 'Change this law or else.' But the day to day running of the state was left to middle class politicians who built up a national professional army to crush the local movements.

This was done through a combination of the stick and carrot. Land was redistributed to the villages, neutralising the peasants and Zapata was tricked into an ambush and shot in 1919.

Villa was given an amnesty by the central government following his invasion of the United States. Although he hung up his guns he was shot as he drove through the streets of a northern town in 1923.

From the twenties onward the runlution was controlled by the state, first of all through an army successively remoulded to eliminate the power within it of the old hierarchy (Mexican presidents - Obregon, Calles and Cardenas were Generals), and later by the civilian Party the PRI (Party of the Institutionalised Revolution).

Limited but very important revolutionary changes continued. The state was anti-clerical (see Graham Greene's 'The Power and the Glory) and sought to break up the power of the church. President Obregon was shot by a religious fanatic but this did not stop the secular state from being very firmly established.

President Lazaro Cardenas was the last of the SOLSTLE WORD GOFORTA TUAT THE TORCH HAS BEEN listening to Mikhail Suslov?" Mexican Presidents who sought •genuine mass involvement in revolutionary change. He massively extended the land reform; he nationalised the Mexican oil industry; and he built up workers' militias to defend the country against possible military attack from Britain in reprisal for the expropriation on BP's Mexican holdings.

This was a real advance for the Mexican people in an area of the world where phony 'anti-imperialism' was common coin for the nationalist demagogues of last week's coup.

Yet even this mobilisation was orchestrated by the state. It was similar to the way Vargas and Peron used the politically and socially immature working class to build up nationalist state capitalism in Brazil and Argentina.

After the Second World War, when the USA became the dominant imperialist power in Latin America, all of these new capitalist regimes moved into a position of accommodation. In Mexico this did not involve a change in the political system.

The Mexican state has had remarkable stability over the last 60 years. That. stability appears now to be breaking down under the twin pressures of International finance and popular discontent.

ev' THEPORCH HAS BEEN GASSED? conscripts booed and insulted General Juan Carlos Trimarco, the head of the country's key First Army Corps, forcing one senior officer to draw his pistol and to threaten some of the protestors' Last week police in Cordoba staged a sit-in class to be able to take advantage of that discredit is another. But one hopeful sign, if only a negative one, is that despite the rise of discontent the traditional populist parties, the Radicals and the Peronists, are reported to be having trouble with recruitment.

----- pull-quotes -----

breznnev's 'last words' last word

PASSED TO US. THE BOLD NEW GENERATION