Join us for a film & discussion on the Mexican Revolution - 1810 and 1910snapshot!
Between 1776 and 1836, several colonial independence movements shook the Americas. One of the leaders of the Mexican revolution was Father Miguel Hidalgo, who led a revolt that sparked the outbreak of Mexico's war of independence. On September 16, 1810, Hidalgo shouted the famous "Grito de Dolores"--"Long live our Lady of Guadalupe, down with bad government, down with the Spaniards!" For the next eleven years there were many more uprisings and in 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain.
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In the early 1800s two economic systems were competing in the U.S.: slavery and capitalism. The southern slave system, with its constant need for new land, was the driving force behind the seizure of the territory of northwest Mexico (what is now the U.S. Southwest). But the capitalists in the North also eyed the territory as a source of land, gold and other mineral resources, and as an opening of trade to the West. In 1836, slave owners, who had moved into the eastern part of Texas, stole the land from Mexico and declared it the Independent Republic of Texas. Despite warnings from the Mexican government, the U.S. annexed this so-called republic in 1845, and this led to the U.S.-Mexican War. At the end of the U.S.-Mexican War the U.S. ripped off approximately 50% of Mexico's territory...and the theft of this land crippled Mexico's future economic development.
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Revolution broke out in Mexico in 1910 as peasants rose up demanding "Tierra y Libertad--Land and Liberty." Ninety-five percent of the Mexican people were landless peasants and tenant farmers and they fought for the land to be redistributed. Peasant leaders like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata led the Mexican people in resistance. Organizations in the U.S. like the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), led by Ricardo Flores Magon, actively built support for the revolution among Chicano and Mexicano workers. Magon was later imprisoned by the U.S. government and murdered in prison. This period saw the first large-scale migration of Mexican workers into the U.S. The political and economic upheaval that accompanied the Mexican Revolution led to hundreds of thousands coming to the U.S.--nearly 10% of Mexico's population. (excerpts from The Chicano Struggle and Proletarian Revolution in the U.S. Part 2: Mexican Independence from Spain, and the U.S.-Mexican War.)
