The Mexican Revolution: Conflict and Consolidation, 1910-1940

9. The Mexican Revolution: One Century of Reflections, 1910–2010

ChaPTeR 9 The Mexican Revolution One Century of Reflections, 1910–2010 Thomas Benjamin introduction Few countries cultivate history with such enthusiasm as Mexico. luis gonz·lez y gonz·lez As the opening epigraph to this chapter suggests,1 the Mexican Revolution was one of the titanic revolutions of modern history. It was a jumbled combination of several popular uprisings that destroyed a prolonged dictatorship and gave rise to significant political, social, and economic reforms. It was complicated, inspirational, and terrible. Many hundreds of thousands of Mexicans took up arms in their country between 1910 and 1920, and more than one million lives were lost to violence, famine, and epidemics. The human and physical destruction that took place in Mexico was appalling. There was a profound need from the beginning to make all of this meaningful and redemptive, and Mexicans have been doing this for one hundred years. Approximately one hundred years later, Mexicans and others are celebrating the revolution and its heroes.2 We need to recognize, however, that the remembered and historicized Mexican Revolution has always been in a state of flux.3 The events that began in 1910 and 1911 were immediately defined as la Revolución. The Mexican Revolution has been reported and chronicled, filmed and photographed, novelized and illustrated, researched and analyzed almost without end. It has been remembered and commemorated, glorified and contested, politicized and mythologized. For one century Mexicans and quite a few aficionados of Mexico have given great significance and diverse meanings to the Mexican Revolution. The first bibliography of the revolution, which appeared in 1918, listed one century of reflections • 213 some eight hundred books, pamphlets, manifestos, and documents. A second bibliography in 1931 more than tripled the relevant number of publications.4 In the mid-1960s the US historian Stanley R. Ross warned that the number of books and articles about the Mexican Revolution was threatening to reach “truly torrential levels.”5 Dirk Raat’s annotative bibliography in 1982 listed studies written not only in Spanish and English but also French, German, Italian , Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese.6 In the following decades not only were there more and more histories of the revolution, but more of them were also better and better. Given the quantity and quality of such literature, we are compelled to ask, why has there been such enduring interest in the Mexican Revolution? There is, in fact, no fully satisfactory answer to this question. We human beings seem to have a compulsion to give meaning to the past and, as a result, the past gives meaning to our individual lives and collective identities. “The past has been a living past,” noted J. H. Plumb, “something which has been used day after day, life after life, never-endingly.”7 All peoples and societies have done this, and we moderns have surely overdone it. Consider the enormous attention given to the French Revolution for more than two centuries.8 Mexican historians and intellectuals have long noted that their culture is particularly attached to, preoccupied with, and even burdened by the past. Some intellectuals and pundits have complained that Mexico has remained in the shadow of the Mexican Revolution far too long.9 This view has merit, but I wish to focus on how Mexicans have reflected the light and shadows of the revolution. Today it seems much more appropriate for commentators like me to praise the revolution than to bury it. What follows is a brief excursion through one century of memories, myths, and histories. The emphasis here is on how Mexicans have made sense of, given meaning to, and represented their revolution. Any brief survey such as this is risky business. This subject is, after all, a vast, complex, and incomplete story. Its contours are ragged and often undefined. Interpretative trends are fraught with countertrends and outliers, all of which have been controversial. With these warnings, let us proceed. inventing the Revolution: The 1910s Mexican revolutionaries carried on an uninterrupted discourse of memory during the 1910s. Writing about the revolution as a historical event begins with the revolution itself. Politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and other scribblers wrote about contemporary events and put them in historical perspective. These voceros de la Revolución—spokespersons or mouthpieces of the revolution—wrote 214 • thomas benjamin proclamations, articles, pamphlets, and books trying to make sense of it all and, more important, influence the course of events. In order to triumph, one...