Mexican+Revolution+Group+4

To what extent were the aims of Pancho Villa realized during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940)?
=Pancho Villa's Revolutionary Aims:=

Education:
Doroteo Arango, also called Francisco Villa or Pancho Villa, highly valued education. Having been raised in a working family on a hacienda, he was almost completely illiterate himself. One of his major goals for the revolution was to improve the education system in Mexico. In Chihuahua City alone, Villa helped to establish 50 schools (Haynes; Keen, 288). Graph comparing literacy rates in Mexico and the US in Villa's time (1910): [|Literacy+Rates+chart.bmp]



Land Reform:
Villa also valued the power of the state in managing affairs of the people. In late 1913 Villa expropriated without compensation the holdings of the pro-Huerta oligarchy in Chihuahua. Confiscated estates were also held and managed by the state instead of immediately redistributed to the peasant class. The revenues from these confiscated estates would help to finance the revolutionary war efforts, especially benefitting widows and orphans who were the most affected by the revolution. (Haynes; Keen, 288)

Plan de Ayala:
In the Plan de Ayala, many of Villa’s goals for Mexico were declared. Created by Villa’s revolutionary comrade, Emiliano Zapata, the Plan de Ayala called for all “fields, timber, and land” seized by Mexican elite to be returned to the rightful owners. Also one-third of all of the hacendados and resources that were monopolized by the Mexican upper class would be taken to recreate ejidos, pueblos, and other agricultural uses for the lower class. Similarly to Villa’s practices in Chihuahua City, Zapata declared the remaining two-thirds of the hacendados to be used to benefit the widows, orphans, and victims of the revolution (Womack).

Plan of San Luis Potosí:
On November 20, 1910 Francisco Madero penned his Plan of San Luis Potosí. Though he never followed through with the plan, Pancho Villa supported the concepts, and fought to have true democracy established. Madero adamantly condemned the corruption of Profirio Díaz’s administration, specifically the dishonesty in elections. “In Mexico, as a democratic Republic, the public power can have no other origin nor other basis than the will of the people” Madero declared, and promised Mexicans to heed their voice in his presidency. (Hasall)

Social Policies:
Villa strived for a democratic ruling government for Mexico. He believed in workers' rights, and wanted to help ease the problem of the many starving Mexican families, victims of the hacienda system, or just those less fortunate (Haynes; Keen, 290).

Economic Policies:
Villa sold the cattle that had been the economic basis of the region at the time to the United States in order to help finance his war efforts. He used the profits to provide meat to orphanages and children's homes, and eventually to pay off the debts of hacendados (Haynes; Keith, 288). In order to encourage a revolutionary spirit, he made sure his army was well cared for, and received the greatest amount of economic benefits and land. Villa wished to ease the economic burden Mexico was facing, and thought that the best way would be to institute a state bank, print more money and lower the costs of necessary goods. (Howell)



=Outcomes of the Revolution:=

Constitution of 1917:
The Constitution of 1917 was the most liberal document of the time period. It was a product of the Carranza presidency and became a much more radical document than the conservative Carranza was hoping. There were four articles in particular that reflected the democratic principles and social reform that Mexico was searching for:
 * Article 3 : Secular Education
 * This article states that everyone is entitled to an elementary education, that there would be free public education and the church would have no influence in the education of Mexico.
 * Article 27 : Land Reform
 * This article made the nation the owner of all the lands of Mexico which included the water and subsoil. It also stipulated that the Mexican government could expropriate lands (foreign or otherwise) without compensation. It also nullified the law giving land to ejidos.
 * Article 123 : Labor Reform
 * This article called for an 8 hour workday, no child labor, maternity benefits and equal pay for equal work. It demanded that wages be paid in legal tender and not company script. This article also protected the right of labor to bargain, organize and strike.
 * Article 130 : Church Restrictions
 * This article said that there would be no law establishing religion and that ministers of churches would only be people that were born in Mexico. It also stated that marriage was a civil contract. (Vano)

Aguascalientes Convention:
The goal of this convention was to unify the factions the newly dictator-free Mexico. In July of 1914, Huerta's forces fled Mexico City and General Obregón, along with the Carranza forces, moved in. Carranza, looking to legitimize his rule, sent Obregón to negotiate with Villa. The result was the Convention of Aguascalientes. The disagreements at the convention led to a grouping of factions: the Constitutionalists (Obregón and Carranza), and the Conventionists (Villa and Zapata). The convention named General Eulalic Gutiérrez provisional president. He immediately ordered all revolutionary armies to disband and was immediately ignored. Zapata and Villa moved their forces into the convention and Carranza was forced to move from Mexico City. Soon after, Provisional President Gutiérrez joined with Villa and Zapata against Carranza, who continued to insist on his right to the presidency. Villa usurped Gutiérrez's power, and, under pressure from Villa's revolutionary forces, he stepped down from the presidency.Carranza was already recognized by the United States as the leader of Mexico and, with the assistance of General Obregón, Carranzas forces drove Villa and Zapata out of Mexican politics and secured his own place. The Covention of Aguascaientes was meant to unify the strong men of Mexico but instead just gave them a venue to emphasize their differences (Fox).



Venistiano Carranza's Regime:
Before Carranza became president he had some very admirable revolutionary goals. He was nationalistic, capitalistic and vehemently anti United States. Carranza strove for an independant Mexico with an educated middle class. In 1913, he drafted the Plan de Guadelupe to counter Emillio Zapata's Plan de Ayala. The Plan de Guadelupe declared Carranza the leader of the revolution, declared the previous regime illegitimate, wanted to restore the Constitution, and declared that all Mexicans had the right to work (Vano).

Plan de Guadalupe:
The Plan de Guadalupe (March 26, 1913) served as the end of the Díaz supporting presidents and his regimes. After Madero's brief presidency, Victoriano Huerta came into power and brought back the Díaz policies. Villa's policies on education, land reforms, and economics contrasted drastically with the Díaz regime's ideas of how Mexico should be run. With the fall of Huerta, the true revolution was free to begin, even though Villa did not support Carranza as president (de la Cova).

Although Carranza did not impliment all the articles of the radical Constitution of 1917, he did declare the land reform article retroactive. This alientated the United States, but took great steps to the nationalization of Mexican resources. Carranza ignored the article restricting the church's involvement in education. He also did nothing in the way of redistributing wealth to the the agrarian farmers, giving all the land back to the haciendados, high ranking officials, and his generals. (Vano)

Álvaro Obregón's Regime:
Obregón was one of the most successful leaders of Mexico at the time. In reality, he did little to reform the insitutions that were already established, but by using convincing and strong political rhetoric he was able to pacify the unsatisfied masses. Following Carranza, Obregón brought peace and democracy to Mexico.

Obregón sought to revamp Mexican culture, remind the people of their indigenous roots, and inspire a kind of nationalistic fervor. He commissioned artists to create educational revolutionary murals to remind the people of their history.

Obregón also believed deeply in the importance of labor in Mexico. Along with Luis Morones in 1918, Obregón helped to form the labor union CROM (Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana) to protect Mexico's workers from both foreign and national exploitation.

Overall, Obregón's regime was a success. The haciendas fought against the redistribution of their arable farming land, but Obregón still mangaged to give some parcels of land to the farming families that truly needed it. There also arose at this time a new middle class. The creation of easy banking and currency gave many the possibility of prosperity.

Villa did not live to see the end of this regime. He was assassinated in 1923 (Vano).

José Vasconcelos:


José Vasconcelos was the secretary of education under Obregón. He believed that "to educate was to redeem", and worked towards the creation of a national unity through new educational policies (Haynes; Keith, 296). He began a program focused on indigenous villages and education for lower class citizens. He founded trade-specific schools, such as agricultural schools, and teacher-training colleges. Professor Elena Torres, an adamant feminist and one of the founders of the Mexican National Council of Women, headed up the training of over 4,000 rural teachers, most of whom were female. One of her goals was to promote sanitation and literacy in remote pueblos. According to historian Mary Kay Vaughan, "rural literacy crusades 'injected new notions of women's work and personhood'" thus empowering women and campesinas in their communities, instead of promoting capitalism and "building a patriarchal solidarity with peasants otherwise hostile to this goal" (Haynes; Keen, 297).

Plutarco Elias Calles's Regime:
Plutarco Elias Calles used many of the same political strategies as Obregón did in his regime, but with more of an emphasis on following the articles laid out in the constitution. Calles created many public works projects that benefited Mexico's economy and along with it many lower class Mexicans. The National Road Commission and National Electricity Works were created under Calles as well as the Mexican National Bank which allowed for the purchase of parcels of land based on credit. Although this was well intentioned, in most cases the haciendas had more credibility and therefore benefited the most. However, land distribution was twice what it was under Obregón, even though 75% of the land was unproductive and Calles eventually scrapped the land reform and distribution programs. Calles enforced Article 27 of the consitution (Mexico owns the land and subsoil) but compromised the extent to which it was enforced to benefit capitalistic intentions.

Calles believed strongly in capitalism, and labor suffered because of it. The now corrupt CROM often exploited its labor poo,l but the labor in Mexico had no where to turn because the corrupt leaders of this union answered to the president, and the president wanted to keep the labor cheap enough for a welcoming foreign investment atmosphere. The labor soon broke away from CROM and became largely a women's movement for labor reform.

The church also became a bone of contention in education during Calles regime. Calles wanted to close all religious schools and the constitution stipulated that religion was to be excluded from education. But soon the church began excommunicating all educators and Constitutionalists. Calles clung to the constitutional article and it soon snowballed into the violent Cristero movement in which ministers would encourage their congregation to fight back against teachers. Many people were killed in rural areas (Vano).

Lázaro Cárdenas's Regime:
Cárdenas was meant to be a puppet president for Calles, but once he gained the presidency, he soon proved that he would be independent from the Calles regime. He was unafraid to make publicly known his "Six Year Plan", which included education, aiding ejidos, workers' rights, land distribution, and improvement of living conditions for the common Mexican. Under Cárdenas, fifty percent of the budget went to educational funding, which allowed the number of schools in Mexico to double. (Vano).

When distributing land, Cárdenas paid attention to the quality and type of land that was being distributed, unlike presidents of the past who were only concerned with the amount of land given out. Both ejidos and ranchos were distributed, as well as some profit sharing ejidos. Cárdenas' regime allotted 45 thousand acres of land to close to 12,000 Mexican villages (Haynes; Keen, 301).

CROM, which had been steadily declining in popularity, was replaced by the CTM (Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos), which cooperated with Cárdenas's regime. The party Cárdenas ran under, the PRM (Party of the Mexican Revolution), relied on the support of laborers, the peasant classes, and the army (Haynes; Keen, 302).

He created a national bank and granted Mexico economic independence when he expropriated the properties of oil companies, benefiting the public (Haynes; Keen, 302).

Summation:
The question we are attempting to answer with all this background is to what extent were the aims of Pancho Villa realized during the Mexican Revolution? Villa believed in education, land reform, labor reform and social potential for all Mexicans. To some extent, all of these goals were accomplished by the various presidents and documents that were drafted between 1910 and 1940. Even the presidents who assumed power after Villa's death in 1923 continued to assert the articles that he himself helped draft. In this way, Pancho Villa had a rippling influence in Mexican politics beyond the date of his assassination.

Citations:
de la Cova, Dr. Antonio Rafael. Assistant Latino Studies Professor Indiana University. 

Fox, Clifton. Professor of History, Tomball College. Presented to the Raleigh Tavern Philosophical Society, Tomball, TX. November 7, 2002.< http://www.raleightavern.org/mexicanrevolution.htm>

Hasall, Paul. From United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, //Revolutions in Mexico//, 62nd Congress, 2nd Session. Washington, D.C. Government Printing Office 1913. 

Haynes, Keith; Keen, Benjamin. __A History of Latin America__. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.

Howell, Jeff. 2008. Donald J. Mabry / The Historical Text Archive. September 14, 2008. 

Vano, David. IB Americas Mexican Revolution Powerpoint / Lecture. Hour 1. West High School, Anchorage, AK.

Womack, John. __Zapata and the Mexican Revolution.__ New York: Vintage Books, 1968. 