Critics say Mexican Revolution's goals are elusive

[cory777]

Source: Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – As Mexico prepares to mark 100 years since a revolution fought to install democracy and improve the lot of the country's landless peasants, many are focusing on how short it fell from its mark.

Mexico's democracy is anemic and the plight of the poor remains largely unchanged, critics say.

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Mexico City's independence monument Friday, blocking one of the city's main boulevards, to denounce what organizers called the failures of the bloody, seven-year conflict that began Nov. 20, 1910, and saw peasant armies led by mustachioed heroes Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa topple the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Rather than democracy, it set the stage for 71 years of paternalistic political domination by the Revolutionary Institutional Party that only ended a decade ago.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101119/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_disappointing_revolution

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[a la izquierda]

1. wow

color me stunned.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. "the plight of the poor remains largely unchanged"...

seems their democracy is a lot like ours.

[David__77]

3. At least secularism has been maintained.

It is one of the enduring victories of the revolution. Republicans in this country seem to think that Mexican migrants to the US want religious interference in the political realm, but don't even understand the secularism of almost all of Mexican society.

It is a shame that the PRI has deviated from the revolutionary principles. PRD, unfortunately, is infected with the "New Left" virus and obsession with decentralization, which is exactly what Mexico doesn't need.

[MisterP]

4. there were, like, half a dozen revolutions:

Madero's rather elitist move, representing rising bourgeois interests
Zapata's peasant movement, against any exploitation
the Magón brothers' polished anarchism
Villa's openly boorish populism
19th-century liberals like Carranza, Elias Calles, and Tomás Garrido Canabal who were wildly anticlerical and would be described as outright fascist beginning in the 30s
Cardenas, who brought New-Deal-style social liberalism, land redistribution, and PEMEX
the PRI would swing between liberal and reactionary 1940-82, when it became firmly neoliberal

[AlphaCentauri]

5. That was Henry Lane Wilson revolution not Zapatas.

Feb.12 > Governor Colquitt of Texas demands that the US intervene in Mexico

Tragic Ten Days Revolt.
==Feb.12 > US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson leads other ministers in protests to both sides in the revolt; without authorization, he threatens Madero with US intervention
==Feb.14. > Upon learning that Huerta is plotting with rebels, Ambassador Wilson begins to align with Huerta
==Feb.15 > US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson induces the British, German, and Spanish ministers to join him in a call for Madero’s resignation with a virtual threat of US intervention ; Madero angrily refuses, and sends a vigorous protest to President Taft - conservative Senators call on Madero to resign; the request is denounced by Maderista Senators on Feb 16

http://cnparm.home.texas.net/Nat/Mx/Mx05.htm