The Mexican Revolution

The late 1800’s was a grand time for Mexico. After the death of Benito Juráez, Porfirio Díaz took power (after overthrowing Sebastián Lerdo). He would rule Mexico for the next thirty-five years which is called the Porfirio period. Juráez’s reforms were continued by Díaz, many of which were not taken lightly by the poor and praised by the rich. He believed that stability and economic growth would only be achieved through order and progress.

Díaz’s main focus was in stabilizing Mexico to attract more foreign investors and improve the country’s overall image. Money the country received was largely used to create textile and steel industries and to modernize in technology for uses in agriculture and mining. The country was doing swell for a while and the economy was dramatically increasing. The main problem though was that the economic growth benefited the rich drastically and hurt the poor. The great division was because speculators and wealthy businessmen bought large sums of land forcing peasants off their land. By 1900, almost 90% of Mexican industry and a fourth of Mexico’s land was owned by foreigners.

The end of the Porfiriato period sparked a violent revolution. There were great divisions among various opposition groups and violent rebellions broke out across the country. Emiliano Zapata was one of the most renowned leaders of the revolution. He organized an army to fight opposing groups and was named the Zapatista army. As the Zapatistas conquered many haciendas, new reforms were implemented and thus the constitution was changed in 1917 to meet these requirements.

In the end the Revolution created a strong sense of nationalism. The main focus on the reforms was education and thousands of new schools were built. Economic changes also gave the government more power to decide foreign affairs and retake the foreign dominated industries that would help the economy. Also land was redistributed and ended a more than 400 year program of concentrated landholding.