Soldiers and Soldaderas During the Mexican Revolution

The documents that our group was assigned with was reading and learning from the perspective of the soldiers and the soldaderas, Chapter 3 of Mark Wasserman's The Mexican Revolution A Brief History with Documents. Throughout all the documents there is a general theme that emerges from them; the soldiers didn’t want to be there and without the soldaderas they wouldn’t have any will left in them to fight. It was very evident that after reading these documents the soldiers were miserable. It seemed like the soldiers themselves didn’t even want to be soldiers during the Revolution. The soldiers’ lives were very harsh. They didn’t have proper clothing, they didn’t have enough food or supplies, they were short on ammo supplies, and didn’t have proper shelter. Troops were also unreliable and very undisciplined, desertion was always a problem (pg. 69).  For the soldiers, the women played a very important role as the men needed the women both domestically and emotionally. The women did what they were told to do by the men because that was what they were expected to do.

The Mexican Revolution: At War

Austin Bittner
Mike Cortez

The Mexican Revolution lasted from 1911 to 1915, with guerrilla warfare - led by Pancho Villa - lasting up to 1920. In chapter two of Wasserman’s The Mexican Revolution: A Brief History with Documents, the phases of the Revolution are explained and the brutal forms of warfare are expounded.

The Mexican Revolution is divided into four stages, the vast majority of which consisted of primarily non traditional guerrilla warfare. The first stage of the war began in Chihuahua in Northern Mexico in 1911 and ended with the capitulation of Ciudad Juarez in May of that year. This was followed by a period of continued guerrilla warfare across the country, leading up to 1913 and the third phase of the war. 1913-1915 was marked by large scale battles and more conventional European style warfare. This phase lasted until Alvaro Obregon destroyed Villa’s army at Celaya. The final phase was marked by continued armed resistance and guerrilla tactics lasting until 1920 (Wasserman, 50).

A famous quote thrown around in the gaming community goes: "War. War never changes." History bursts at the seam with figures in revolutionary or militaristic movements that have the uncanny ability to not only lead men in battle, but have the skills as a general to achieve victory. Pancho Villa was among the many who stood out in the revolutionary period of Mexico during the 1910's. He was certainly a charismatic leader that used unconventional tactics to launch a series of campaigns.

Pacificos: Accounts from the everyday citizen

Los Pacificos

Emily Blackford and Stephanie Smith

            Most often when reading stories of the Mexican Revolution, one would find the documents from the perspective of soldiers, political leaders, or third party outsiders. Often overlooked are the citizens of Mexico, the ones who were the most heavily affected by this violent revolution. Pacificos refers to the people who were not involved in the revolution but paid dearly for it. The following documents are accounts, both fictional and nonfictional, of the everyday trials experienced throughout the revolution. In López Y Fuentes’ El Indio, is a fictional account of the Mexican Indians’ experience armed intruder. Batalla’s My Village during the Revolution, is a nonfictional document accounting three separate Mexicans’ experiences during the revolution including violence, robbery, and mass paranoia. Henry’s the Death of Frank Henry, which talks about violences between the Zapatistas and Carrancistas and how the Zapatistas looted the village. Gaván’s Escaping the Revolution, tells a tale of a family escaping Mexico and the revolution and making their way to freedom in America.

Though a work of fiction, El Indio is a powerful narrative on the situation before, during and after the Mexican Revolution. The village chronicled in the novel faces a band of armed men who overthrow the current authorities and kill the military leaders. The Indians seemed indifferent to these people, guided by a personal liking or by fear of consequences. The Indians were required to give these soldiers fodder and tortillas as a sort of tax levied against the village. Though surely frightening, their experience details far less violence than many other faced.

In the case of several native Mexicans, the violence inflicted upon them by the Revolutionaries amounted to a far greater scale. In My Village during the Revolution, three different Mexican natives recount their experiences during the Revolution. Manuel Massieu discusses the violence that appeared and left suddenly and without warning. Often, hunger was linked to these arrivals and departures. With hunger widespread throughout the community, many members became suspicious of those who seemed to be more prosperous than them, often rioting against them and attacking them violently. Antonio Casas describes the Constitutionalists who would come and ransack their village. In return, the soldiers would give them shining paper money that was useless. Nefi Acosta and María Martínez described the anxiety amongst the people, living daily in fear of being tortured or killed by one of the factions.

This next narrative recounts the death of Frank Henry from the view of one of his family members. This sad tale tells of Frank Henry of San Miguel, a place Frank had always hoped to leave. The Zapatistas made this impossible, they took all the animals that were able to carry a human. The camp did however find a slight liberation from the Carrancistas, who ran the Zapatistas out of the camp. These Carrancistas told grand stories about the successes of their armed forces, bringing a small hope to the camp’s residents. Not long after, a Spaniard warned the residents that the Carrancistas were saddling up to leave the camp, much to everyone’s dismay. After the Carrancistas had left, a small band of Zapatistas invaded the camp and started looting houses. As the drunk and gun-heavy Zapatistas approached Frank’s house, he stood outside to meet them in a valiant effort to save his home. Frank was shot and killed immediately. His house was then looted and left, leaving Frank Henry’s family with an empty home and his dead body at the front.

In this final narrative Escaping the Revolution, Gaván tells the tale of a family hoping not to be another victim of the revolution; their only way to achieve this is to leave Mexico behind them. This penniless and poverty-stricken family was forced to rent out one of their rooms just to make ends meet. After living like this for so long, the family decided they could not bare it a single moment longer and decided to flee from revolutionary Mexico. They made their way to a federal train taking citizen passengers to Juaréz. Along the way the train was machine-gunned and stopped frequently to fight off revolutionary forces. At every stop, the train lost two to three freight cars, sometimes bearing passengers. Even worse, the train had exhausted all provisions and along the way, vital bridges had been burnt forcing passengers to help build makeshift bridges in order to pass. Through all the struggles of the journey, the family managed to make it to Juarez before making their way to the American station of Santa Fe and their eventual freedom.

Marissa Kimmel-Kendrick and Karmen Buchanan- for our post we had chapter 7 on international ramifications. We decided to do our narratives as if it had been written by a reporter in Mexico, who had spent years observing the Mexican government during the revolution. The narrative is written as if the reporter was doing a story that reflected the past several years of the revolution and the countries' relations with foreign powers.

 

The revolution within Mexico’s borders was meant to be a conflict that was to be resolved among the people of Mexico, but the division and unrest within our countries borders has caused unrest and problems with the neighboring nation, the United States. The U.S. being the great industrious nation that it is, has been in a state of tug of war, wanting to become involved in Mexican affairs. Nonetheless in spite of the debate over whether or not to officially interfere with the disarray in Mexico, Americans have nonetheless found ways to get involved in the concerns and issues going on in Mexico.

The Revolution

In October 1910, Madero would issue is Plan of San Luis Potosi from American soil in Texas. His plan declared the Mexican people had been offered peace, but a shameful one to him that was based on force and not law. He believed the goal of Mexico’s leaders was for the enrichment of a small group of the population and not the betterment nor prosperity of the homeland. Madero’s Plan called for a revolt against the Diaz regime on November 20, 1910 (pg. 296, Russell). He wanted free elections, and a legal review of the previous land thefts.

Revolutionary Politics

Chapter five in The Mexican Revolution: A Brief History with Documents portrays the many different sides of the Mexican Revolution between 1912 and 1928. The documents in this chapter are written by members of varying factions within the time period. Below are the different viewpoints of the men and women involved in the Mexican Revolution.

In 1912 a prominent family resisted Zapata’s forces in Morelos. Luis Garcia Pimentel documented his reasoning’s regarding the anarchy in the state of Morelos to the Secretary of Development, Colonization and Industry. His two main principles focused on the criminals freed by rebels in the beginning of the Maderista revolution. He believed that the cause of disturbances and anarchy stemmed from their unwillingness to return to prison and fulfill their pending terms. The Zapatistas believed in agrarian socialism which would divide up the land making it available for the use of their people. Pimentel claimed that some land was already divided and they did already own some small properties and he believed that the residents of Morelos had shown they did not know how to properly conserve the land. This made the haciendas owners feel that redistribution of the land was unjust and that their mass ownership of the land was legitimate.

Eduardo Iturbide, a wealthy landowner from Michoacan was a Governor of the Federal District appointed by Huerta in 1914. Iturbide’s document illustrates the corruption within Huerta’s government and the bullying tactics Huerta attempted and many times got away with during his political reign. Iturbide portrays himself in this document as an honorable law abiding Governor who did not give into the normal corruption and bribery that came along with holding a governmental post during the Mexican Revolution.

A primary document in Chapter 5 written by Venustiano Carranza addresses The Agrarian Law and how he intended to carry out and enforce the law in everyday Mexican society. The document was supposed to prove Carranza’s promise of giving back land to the rural population. However we now know even though he mapped out his plan in this document he didn’t end up carrying out the plan as promised. He basically used the document to gain support in the civil war against Villa and Zapata. He promised to create national, local and executive committees to “enforce” the Agrarian Laws.

During the Mexican civil war Carranza had to counter the widespread support for Villa and Zapata in the countryside by wooing urban workers in his favor. He did this by teaming up with the Casa del Obrero Mundial which was the leading union federation in Mexico. The document shown in this excerpt of Chapter 5 shows the reader the document used by Carranza to gain support and prove his loyalty to the union workers. In the document he offered the workers semiofficial status, allowed them to organize themselves and sided with their union over foreign employers. The men who signed the document became known as members of the Red Battalions. An interesting factor of the Red Battalions was that the men were not divided up into any formal group such as companies, regiments, brigades or divisions. The men were all designated as one unified group known as “reds”.

The document on page 117 is actually a speech given by Francisca Garcia Ortiz. Women from all over Mexico were invited to the convention who supported or wanted to hear more about the women’s rights movement. The speech address the women at the convention to “no longer think with nineteenth-century minds”, Ortiz says to change the status quo they needed to educate those who form society. For her men form society and by educating men it would then allow the women of society to be educated as well. It was the mother’s job in the home to mold the young man’s thought process and raise him with a more open mind to women’s rights to education and work outside of the home. 

Martin Luis Guzman was a part of Carranza’s inner circle and shows the reader a uniquely “cynical view of the maneuvering within the Constitutionalist ranks to enrich and empower their leaders.” The document illustrates a scene in which Carranza is addressing his political and governmental advisors. As he finishes his speech Angeles, his Minister of War makes a statement saying he believes that the art of warfare is something that can be learned and taught and better exercised the more an individual has studied it. Carranza counter’s his statement saying the only thing that is necessary or useful is goodwill in leading and governing men. The interesting part of this document is the thought process of Guzman as he sits around a table of Carranza’s men and no one is willing to speak out against the outspoken leader. Until Guzman speaks up it seems as though all the men do disagree with Carranza but refuse to speak out against him in fear of punishment or falling out of favor of the political leader. Guzman goes on to speak about his lack of interest in becoming a Mexican general in Carranza’s military and disrespect for Carranza as a political leader. He describes Carranza as an old stubborn man who would never change and continue to respond to flattery from his followers and servitude rather than actual ability by the men he put in governmental and military power. 

Paulino Gomez

Max Smith

Great online sources for the Mexican Revolution

Check this site out; there's some interesting stuff here!
(Some great resources here for teachers and future teachers also)

edsitement.neh.gov/feature/mexican-revolution-november-20th-1910

For this week Dr. Gannon allowed us to teach the class and to dissect the different areas of the Porfirian government. We divided up and covered economy, relations with the United States and other foreign powers, politics under Diaz, and Mexico’s indigenous peoples during the Porfiriato.

Porfirian Society in the early 20th Century

I think part of the more interesting part of our reading this week (the last portion of Chapter 12) was the outlining of the different aspects of society, especially during the Porfirian era. This era lasted from 1876 until 1911 when Porfirio Diaz took the presidency. The main part I’ll be focusing on is his decent from 1901 until 1911. During this time, the gap between the upper elite and the rest of the population, which included the Middle Class and the Working Class, was gallingly apparent. Only about 1% of the population formed the upper class elites while the middle class formed only about 8%, leaving 92% of the population in the poor, underpaid or unemployed range (Russell, 239). The mass poverty that took place amongst the working class was attributed to many things, but mostly the natural development of the country was to blame. Those who were already wealthy became even more so along with this trend. America went through much the same thing during the Industrial Revolution.