The revolutionary struggles

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As mass strikes and demonstrations erupt anew in a Mexico that is deep in debt to the imperialist bankers, BAS HARDY reviews ADOLFO GILLY's RECENT media attention has focussed on Mexico because of its immense foreign debt. Socialists should also be concerned to study the country's history for the relevance this has to present struggles in Central America. Adolfo Gilly's The Mexican Revolution' just published in English is a fascinating account of the revolutionary struggles which shaped modern Mexico.

The Mexican revolution of 1910 was the first great revolution of the 20th century.

Gilly's book first charts the capitalist development which occured in Mexico under the "Ancien Regime" of Porfirio Diaz. At the turn of the century countries as far apart as Mexico, Russia and India were undergoing considerable economic expansion because of the influx of foreign imperialist capital. Here the railways played a key role in developing internal markets and creating national economies.

Peasantry

This economic expansion was of course achieved on the backs of the peasantry.

Social change inevitably brings in its wake the need for political change. Mexico had undergone a long period of political instability since independence in 1821, suffering republican, imperial (French, 1861-5) and military rule, and foreign, colonial intervention.

Then under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz there had been political stability for three decades, but government excluChile Solidarity Campaign:

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The movement for democratic reform was led by Francisco Madero, a northern landowner. His attempts to achieve change loyally came to nothing because of Diaz's deftness at ballot rigging. Madero had to resort to arms, raising the banner of political liberalism against the old order.

For Madero's movement to be successful however, it had to rely on a wider social base than the modern bourgeois classes: on the peasantry of Mexico, tne overwhelming mass of the population. For the peasants urban parliamentary democracy was a distant urban abstraction.

Their desire was for a return to village democracy and all the rights and property which had been taken from the peasant communities over the centuries.

The Mexican peasantry therefore transformed a political revolution into a social one. It was the strength of the peasant masses which gave to the revolutionary period its length and depth and it was their social and political impotence which gave it its conclusion.

The key centre of the Mexican revolution was the state of Morelos. Here the peasantry under the leadership of Zapata turned the struggle against the Diaz regime into a movement of land occupation. Out of the struggle to regain their lost land the Morelos masses established an armed force - the Southern Liberation Army - to defend their social gains.

Roll back

Immediately Madero gained Presidential power he tried to roll back the social revolution in Morelos and its neighbouring states. Land redistribution could only be decided by the courts. Peasants had to prove their rights to the land before they could repossess it.

Here, indeed, was several years of lucrative work for the country's lawyers. The peasants would not have this. For them, it was the landowners who had to prove. their rights. Zapata's peasant army refused to lay down their weapons.

At this point the old Mexican state army was more or less intact and falsely claimed to be loyal to the Madero government. Madero set this army against the peasant revolution but the action only served to create a much stronger peasant movement than hitherto.

The Mexican bourgeoisie wanted a continuity of political regime and a smooth transfer of governmental power. They did not want a massive social upheaval challenging property rights.

Coup

The most reactionary elements in the state, led by General Huerta launched a coup against Madero and murdered him.

The situation was now clear for a short all-out war between the army of the old state led by Huerta and supported by the church and landed oligarchy against the revolutionary opposition.

This struggle was to witness the final crushing of the old Mexican state.

Ranged against Huerta's troops were three distinct military/political forces.

First, as we have already mentioned, was Zapata's Southern Liberation Army, fighting to defend its local peasant revolution.

The second force, headed by the landowning politician Venustiano Carranza, a supporter of Madero who now assumed the leadership of the constitutionalist movement. Carranza held the North Western state of Sonora, a relatively rich region of Mexico which was not subject to mass popular upheaval. Carranza was cast in Madero's mould and wanted to keep the revolutionary change strictly within the confines of bourgeois legality.

The third and most decisive military grouping to fight Huerta was the Northern Division, a peasant army led by Francisco 'Pancho' Villa. Although this army did not develop a political programme, its military role was of crucial importance. The cattle-raising peasantry of Chihuahua provided Villa with a cavalry which cut ribbons through the Federalist troops in many engagements, especially the battle of Zacatecas in June 1914.

Not independen:

The political circumstances surrounding this battle are quite instructive.

Unlike Zapata, Villa's forces were not politically independent of the Carranza leadership. Yet the bourgeois Carranzist leaders feared a junction between Villa and Zapata as the military campaign progressed. They were irked by the fact that Villa's peasant forces were winning substantial victories whilst the more 'regular' troops on the revolutionary side were making slow and unspectacular progress.

Between April and June 1914 Carranza did everything in his power to stop Villa capturing Zacatecas and advancing on Mexico City. The prospect of two peasant armies - Zapata's and Villa's - entering Mexico City filled the bourgeoisie with horror.

Villa eventually disobeyed Carranza and attacked the enemy, destroying a 12,000strong force and breaking the back of the old state regime. From now on the two peasant armies were to develop in opposition to Carranza and the new bourgeoisie.

The Mexican revolution was, above all else, a peasant war.

The high point of this war was the entry of the Northern and Southern peasant armies into Mexico City in December 1914. From this historical moment things began to fall apart from the point of view of the masses. Why the revolutionary peasantry were unable to establish a national state to safeguard their social and economic gains is a key question, especially in the light of the revived debate among the left about the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants.

Conversation

Adolfo Gilly sheds considerable light on the inability. of the peasant forces on their own to achieve hegemony over Mexican society. This is best shown by the amazing conversation between Villa and Zapata as they wander through the vacant rooms of the Presidential Palace in Mexico City.

'Villa: I don't want public posts, because I don't know how to deal with them. We'll see what these people are doing. We'll just appoint the ones who aren't going to make trouble.

Zapata: I'll advise all our friends to be very careful -otherwise, they'll just get the coilia: It's very clear to me that we ignorant men make the war and the cultured people have to make use of it. Just so long as they don't give us any trouble.

Zapata: The men who've worked the most have the least chance to enjoy those banquets. Itell you: when I go to a banquet I'm on the point of giving in.

Villa: This place is too big for us; it's better out there. As soon as this business is sorted out, I'll be off north to the country. I've got a lot to do up there. And the people will fight hard."

Seeds of defeat

Gilly aptly comments that this dialogue "contains the seede of both political and military defeat.

"Unable to keep power in their hands, the two leaders are prepared to hand it over. They therefore give up the idea of a centralised army, which would require a centralised state power, and decide to foresake the centre which is already in their hands: each wil return to fight in his owi region, whose horizon they have not been able to transcend in a vision of the nation."

Militarily the forces of Villa and Zapata were in a position to finish off their erstwhile Carranzist allies in December 1914. Carranza was boxed in around the port of Veracruz and the rest of his supporters were isolated in peripheral areas of the

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that shaped modern How the painter Sequeiros looked back on the revolutionaries Revolutionary fighters hitch a lift

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4298), book "The Mexican Revolution'.

National. Sept 11