Documents On The Mexican Revolution 1 3

During the Mexican Revolution a remarkable alliance of peasants, working and middle classes, and elites banded together to end General Porfirio Diaz’s thirty-five year rule as dictator-president and created a radical new constitution that demanded education for all children, redistributed land and water resources, and established progressive labor laws. In this collection, Mark Wasserman examines the causes, conduct, and consequences of the revolution and carefully untangles the shifting alliances of the participants. In his introduction Wasserman outlines the context for the revolution, rebels’ differing goals for land redistribution, and the resulting battles between rebel leaders and their generals. He also examines daily life and the conduct of the revolution, as well as its national and international legacy. The accompanying selected sources include political documents along with dozens of accounts from politicians and generals to male and female soldiers, civilians, and journalists. Collectively they offer insight into the reasons for fighting, the politics behind the war, and the revolution’s international legacy. Document headnotes, a chronology, selected bibliography, and questions for consideration provide pedagogical support.

The Mexican Revolution was a 'great' revolution, decisive for Mexico, important within Latin America, and comparable to the other major revolutions of modern history. Alan Knight offers a succinct account of the period, from the initial uprising against Porfirio Diaz and the ensuing decade of civil war, to the enduring legacy of the Revolution.

"Henderson and Buchenau have done an excellent and thoughtful job of collecting a wide range of voices for students to learn about the Mexican Revolution and its causes, both from ‘above’ and from ‘below’. I’m particularly appreciative of the authors’ inclusion of women’s voices and women’s issues of the era, including the point of view of the first woman elected to public office in Mexico. They deserve praise for including documents that complicate widely accepted, heroic revolutionary narratives of the period for students—such as the experience of soldaderas and the massacre of Chinese people in Torreón. It is also worth mentioning that the editors have done an admirable job in choosing documents from across Mexico’s many diverse and heterogenous regions. The general Introduction is excellent; it is both accurate and highly readable for students. It is no easy feat to succinctly describe both the events and the significance of this period in Mexican history as the authors have done here." —Sarah Osten, The University of Vermont