The Mexican Revolution and Revolutionary Reformers essays

The Mexican Revolution and Revolutionary Reformers essays Reformers such as Zapata, Carranza, and Madero contrived laws or revisions to the constitution that would reform Mexico socially and economically. Reformers often fought to have these revisions enforced, but more often rallied the support of revolutionaries to carry out the revolts. Revolutionaries such as Pancho Villa also sought social and economic reform for Mexico, but they did not devise any plans or ideas; they instigated revolts in order for the reforms of others to be enforced. The Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century was not one, but two revolutions, the first against Diaz and the second against Huerta. Zapata and Madero were revolutionary reformers who were against the dictatorship of Diaz. They each had plans for agrarian and economic reform such as the Plan de Luis Potosi, which declared the election of 1910 null and void and called for agrarian reform, and the Plan de Ayala, which called for the land to be redistributed among the peasant and Indians. "Madero criticized Diaz's social policies-his genocidal Indian wars and violent repression of strikes...he proposed a policy of modest concessions to peasants and workers[.]"(Keen, p.270) "Diaz's regime was marked my brutal tyranny. Under Diaz, foreign investors drained a great part of the country's wealth, much of the ancient communal lands (ejidos) of the Native Americans was concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of landowners, and poverty and illiteracy were widespread. DÃ ­az suppressed Manifestations of the resulting social discontent with an iron hand until the Mexican Revolution of 1910." Madero, Zapata, a nd the revolutionist Pancho Villa, among others, led a revolt against Diaz, which forced him to resign the presidency on May 25, 1911. This concludes the first part of the revolution. The second part of the Mexican Revolution begins shortly after the assassination of Madero by Huerta. "Huerta's seizure of power, which was greeted by rejoic...