Historical Relevance of Latin American Revolutions
Andrew Barnhart
Hist 1583 Dr. Herr
April 20, 2019
Within Latin America there has been many events in their history that has lead them on the path that they are on today. Some events more than others include the Mexican revolution and the Cuban revolution. Along with these revolutions there are theories that theorists have put in place that describe the many revolutions throughout history. Looking at these theories we can try to apply them to these revolutions to see if they apply to either of them.
Mexico:
The Mexican revolution was one of three large revolutions in the early 20th century, Alongside Russia (1917) and China (1911). Both China and Russia were Marxist/socialist revolutions, whereas the Mexican revolution was not. That is what made the Mexican revolution such an enormous event in history. The reason that the Mexican revolution not being a socialist revolution was the fact that later on between 1950 and 1980, both Cuba and Nicaragua had socialist/Marxist revolutions. Moving into theoretical practices, one that fits the best is by a theorist by the name of Samuel Huntington. Within the writings of Goldstone he gives a brief summary of Huntington’s piece. Goldstone states “Huntington argues a key aspect of modernization is the demand for increased participation in politics. Where certain groups do not have access to political power, their demands to change and broaden government may lead to revolution.” (“Revolutions theoretical, Comparative and Historical studies” 2003) Though the fact of Mexican people wanting to have more political power was somewhat correct, the people that really needed to be represented and heard were the poor farmers, workers, miners, etc. The reason being is that they were not being represented at all in their current government. They began to have their land stripped from them and then continue to work on that land but with no real profit. So in general Huntington’s piece is somewhat correct, but in reality it was the middle class, exiled elites, and others that used the poor workers as their reasoning behind the revolution. We see this with both Carranza and Obregon, they both became president after Diaz was removed from office, and after Madero was assassinated. Carranza made the Constitution of 1917 for Mexico, it included land reform and other policies that looked promising to the lower class. The only issue with this was that it really wasn’t instituted into the society. Which later lead into another civil war between Carranza along with Obregon and Francisco “Pancho” Villa along with Emiliano Zapata. This is the key point, Zapata and Villa were from the lower class regions of Mexico, and Carranza and Obregon were more middle class citizens. Obviously Carranza and Obregon both were president consecutively, and at the time, were not really worried about the lower class citizens and pushed Villa and Zapata to the side even though they all worked together...
