Having discussed the Mexican Revolution in brief, it is appropriate to turn to the first actor in the revolutionary drama: the Mexican worker. The process of rapid economic development under Porfirio Diaz beginning in the 1890s had created the country’s first significant industrial working class. Alicia Hernandez Chavez notes that railroad workers, for example, numbered in the tens of thousands by 1910, whereas they had not existed before the creation and expansion of the industry (MBH 173). The arrival of the streetcar, now found in a number of major Mexican cities, created another skilled working-class occupation that did not exist before. In the two decades before the outbreak of the revolution, a modern textile sector also emerged. It reached six hundred and six thousand workers, many concentrated in large factories producing cloth for domestic consumption (MBH 173). Mining, a boom-and-bust industry that dated from the colonial period, recovered and expanded considerably thanks to the railroads. In 1910, miners numbered almost a hundred thousand in Mexico (MBH 173). They lived in mining camps and towns found largely in the Mexican north. More generally, various mass consumer goods were increasingly shifting to small-scale factory production, including items like soap, candles, beer, furniture, soft drinks, cigarettes, meat, and baked goods. Nevertheless, conditions for workers during the Porfirio era were grim. Hernandez Chavez maintains, “What is more, working conditions in the period we are discussing, universally described as hellish, were subject to legislative supervision, leaving the workers utterly unprotected” (MBH 211). Workdays of long hours were the norm for textile workers and miners. The wages of a textile worker ... ... middle of paper ... ...nother egregious example for contemporaries was taxation. That the rich do not pay enough taxes may also seem like an unremarkable observation, common to all capitalist economies to varying degrees. However, in Porfirian Mexico the rich, including large landowners and other capitalists, enjoyed tax privileges that would make contemporary Wall Street bankers blush. Political connections and avoiding taxes went hand in hand. This meant, of course, that the burden rested on everyone else. It was said, for example, that the vegetable vendors in the city of Guanajuato paid more in taxes than all the landowners in the region. Another case was the state of Chihuahua, where property taxes were officially regressive, operating to the marked disadvantage of those with smaller landholdings. On top of this, taxes had increased eightfold in the two decades before the revolution.
Factory workers worked twelve to fifteen hours a day in hazardous condition. There were no protective rules for women and children and no insurances for job-related accidents or industrial illness. The workers were obliged to trade at company store
Sixteen are killed from the Mexican attack along the Rio Grande! In 1821, Mexico freed itself from Spain. Mexico was equal in size to the United States. Mexican government wanted to increase population, so they invited Americans to settle in Texas. These settlers did not want to abide by Mexico’s rules and laws. Texas then won independence from Mexico in 1836. In the year 1844, James K. Polk was elected as president. He was a strong believer in manifest destiny. Congress decided to annex Texas into the United States. Mexico felt that America stole Texas from them. This caused conflict between the two countries. Was it right for the United States to declare war against Mexico? America was justified in going to war with Mexico because they could
In the late nineteenth century, many European immigrants traveled to the United States in search of a better life and good fortune. The unskilled industries of the Eastern United States eagerly employed these men who were willing to work long hours for low wages just to earn their food and board. Among the most heavily recruiting industries were the railroads and the steel mills of Western Pennsylvania. Particularly in the steel mills, the working conditions for these immigrants were very dangerous. Many men lost their lives to these giant steel-making machines. The immigrants suffered the most and also worked the most hours for the least amount of money. Living conditions were also poor, and often these immigrants would barely have enough money and time to do anything but work, eat, and sleep. There was also a continuous struggle between the workers and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. The capitalists were a very small, elite group of rich men who held most of the wealth in their industries. Strikes broke out often, some ending in violence and death. Many workers had no political freedom or even a voice in the company that employed them. However, through all of these hardships, the immigrants continued their struggle for a better life.
Revolution in Mexico The Mexican independence movement was led by many people including military leader and 11-time president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. This Independence movement occurred due to the success of the Plan de Iguala in 1821. Santa Anna was a Creole born in Veracruz on February 21, 1794. He joined the Spanish military at a young age but later on decided to fight for the movement of the Mexican independence.
Factory workers of this time had very little freedom. Aside from having to work outrageous hours for 6 days of the week, there was no job security, no solid way to survive day-to-day, and if a family member were to suffer an accident, families had no financial means to carry on. In the early 1900s, there were no labor laws, including the right to organize, an eight-hour day, safety standards, or unemployment/disability pensions. M...
There was a huge revolution in the country of Mexico that started in the year 1910, led by Porfirio Diaz, the president of Mexico in 1910. In the 1860’s Diaz was important to Mexican politics and then was elected president in 1877. Diaz said that he would only be president for one year and then would resign, but after four years he was re-elected as the President of Mexico. Porfirio Diaz and the Mexican revolution had a huge impact on the country of Mexico that is still felt in some places today.
The Mexican Revolution began November 20th, 1910. It is disputable that it extended up to two decades and seized more than 900,000 lives. This revolution, however, also ended dictatorship in Mexico and restored the rights of farm workers, or peons, and its citizens. Revolutions are often started because a large group of individuals want to see a change. These beings decided to be the change that they wanted to see and risked many things, including their lives. Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata are the main revolutionaries remembered. These figures of the revolution took on the responsibility that came with the title. Their main goal was to regain the rights the people deserved. The peons believed that they deserved the land that they labored on. These workers rose up in a vehement conflict against those opposing and oppressing them. The United States was also significantly affected by this war because anybody who did not want to fight left the country and migrated north. While the end of the revolution may be considered to be in the year of 1917 with the draft of a new constitution, the fighting did not culminate until the 1930’s.
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
What if your family’s life was in your hands and a decision had to be made, and quickly? What if war was consuming the things that were revolving you? Well that was the case for the majority of the Mexican families living during the Mexican revolution. Many Mexicans fled Mexico moving to America looking for a prosperity, wealth, a better life to live because revolution had taken charge in Mexico, destroying people houses, changing family’s lives.
As mentioned previously war time creates hardships and sometimes those hardships are difficult to recover from. The outcome of the Mexican Revolution included millions of peasants being killed. Marentes describes peasants as hard-working, highly skilled agricultural labors. With the loss of so many peasants the harvest became scarce and many were lacking work. The Mexican government was unable to replenish resources and improve the way of life in Mexico causing ...
Injustice in 18th Century Mexico In the inconclusive court case on the “Scandal at the Church” of 1872 New Spain (Mexico), José de Alfaro fights in court to save his wife, Josefa Cadena, his unborn child, and his family’s honour by taking her attacker doña Theresa Bravo, her daughter, her sister, her woman deposited (her ward) and her husband to trial for their wrong doings. It was after mass at church that Mrs. Cadena brushed up against Mrs. Bravo; resulting in a violent outburst from the high class lady and her family. The six month pregnant Mrs. Cadena was brutally beaten. With the possibility of losing both his wife and child due to bleeding, Mr. de Alfaro seeks justice from those who harmed his family.
While both the Mexican and Russian revolutions had similar end goals and the process in which they conducted their uprisings which started the peasant revolutions; the major differences lie in who started the revolutions and what political systems they adopted after their revolutions were over.
The relationship between the United States and Mexico has made a remarkable impact on society throughout our history. Did you know that the Mexican-American War cost more than $75 million dollars in 1848 (Miller, 2006)? One question that gets brought up when talking about the Mexican-American War is if the war was just or an unjust war? Regardless if the war was just or not, the war between the two countries has greatly impacted the regions of land and the close ties we still have with Mexico today.
For farmers and laborers in the 1880s-1990s everyday life took a turn for the worse. They now faced numerous new issues that negatively impacted their lives, and they wanted to change that. Agrarian discontent included high taxes, tariffs that increased the cost of manufacturing, a currency shortage, expensive middlemen and decreasing cotton prices . On the political and social side the power and influence held by corporations and businesses grew at an exceptional rate, creating a huge divide between the rich and poor. The lower class saw the gap grow and needed a platform to try to change their situation and the...
The Mexican Revolution was intended to drag the common man from the poverty of lower class society in Mexico, and bestow upon them an equal portion of land and wealth in order to equilibrate the economic and social status in the nation. The ecomienda system allowed a few patrons to hold all of the wealth in a certain area and exert complete control over a city and the people that lived within it. The Revolution was intended to redistribute the land and power to the lower and middle classes, but this was not the case once the fighting ceased. The lower classes moved to urban areas in order to find work and pay while the rural towns that were under the control of one person became a ghost of what they once were. Juan Rulfo lived in Mexico while these events were taking place and wrote Pedro Paramo just after the conclusion of the Mexican Revolution. Juan Rulfo saw the shortcomings of the Revolution and, through the characters of Pedro Paramo, Susana San Juan, and Juan Preciado, critiqued the failures of the Revolution to precipitate the change that it initially promised.