Revolution! Mexico 1910-1920 was written by Ronald Atkin. Mr. Atkin’s career before this published work was focused around journalism. Though he has written many short articles on various topics for such publications as The Times and The Independent, he seems to have no previous professional experience in writing a historical publication of this magnitude Revolution! Mexico 1910-1920 is about the Mexican revolution that began around 1910 and lasted through 1920 (although many Mexicans say that it is still going on).
Ronald opens the book with a vivid description of the grandeur that was Mexico, or the facade of Mexico, under the reign of Porfirio Diaz (the mestizo President of Mexico). (p. 3-8) Diaz had been a war hero alongside another Mexican President, Benito Juarez, in the French imposition. (p.
7) Because of Diaz’s star status and over fifty years of suffering through 36 different dictators, there was an extreme need for tranquility. (p. 5)Although the Diaz regime was an outright dictatorship, the people of Mexico “had known precious little liberty or democracy since independence, it was merely a question of whether Diaz proved a good dictator or a bad one. ” (p. 8) Outwardly Diaz seemed to have brought much prosperity to the country, but that prosperity was only being distributed to a select few.
In 1856 La Ley Lerdo passed. La Ley Lerdo divided up the ejidos (common lands in the villages of indigenous people of Mexico) and allowed them to be bought, or stolen, and sold to developers.Most of the land was sold to hacendados, or owners of haciendas. Under the rule of the Diaz regime, the robbery of land was even more fruitful due to the railroads being built and the profit they drew.
(p. 24) By 1910, the almost all of habitable Mexico belonged to private owners, usually in the form of haciendas (only around 3000 people). The workers of these haciendas (mostly native people, referred to by Atkin as peons) were treated horribly. (p.
25)Atkin’s work covers the beginnings of the revolution and implies that Francisco Madero was the inspiration behind the whole thing (besides the unrest of the entire Mexican people that had been ignored for centuries). Born in 1873, Madero was a creole, and his family was the arguably richest family in Northern Mexico. He had studied democracy in Europe, and even though he had the money and power to be just like the company Diaz kept, he thirsted for democracy for the Mexican people. (p. 44) Doroteo Arango, otherwise known as Fancisco Villa or Pancho Villa, was a rebel who started out working on a hacienda.
His sister was raped by the hacendado’s son. Villa killed the rapist and escaped.He became a rebel leader. (p.
51) He was a great general in the rebel forces, but he was also prone to extreme acts of violence on innocent people (for example the Chinese and many women). (p. 52, 151) Emiliano Zapata was also a great revolutionary. His roots were in Morelos, which is very near Mexico City. He was a smart man, and although born a lowly peon, his skills got him in very close with the hacendado he worked for. Soon though, the unequal treatment would prove fuel for Zapata to head the rebellion in Morelos.
He did, however, let the family he had worked for live because of their comparatively fair treatment of the peons.Atkins covers the revolution through till 1920. He organized the book very well. It was an easy read even though the revolution itself had so many players. Many of the leaders (provisional presidents, elected presidents, generals, admirals, etc.
) were mentioned multiple times throughout the book. The reason for this was that during the revolution, power shifted so many times. Many people pledged false allegiances many more times. The fact that Atkin was able to present the people in such a clear manner was the best part of the book.His writing style was thoroughly enjoyable. The revolution was so eventful and full of drama, there was not much romanticism needed to make the subject intriguing, but still, Atkin managed to do so in many ways.
My favorite example is in the opening when describing the scene laid out for the festivities under the Diaz Regime. Though there were many leaders in the revolution that did both wonderful and terrible things, Atkin’s clear favorite was Francisco Madero. Throughout the book even in Madero’s obvious wrongdoings, such as deserting his troops once they ran out of funds (he went to New Orleans to catch a ship to Europe but came back to fight once there was a warrant for his arrest).Atkins describes him as being honest and valiant.
He even went as far as to call him a “gentleman till the end. ” (p. 69) Madero was, in my opinion a good man for what he contributed to the rebellion (inspiration, money, and a hunger for democracy) but he was not a great leader, and once he was the president elect of Mexico, this was apparent to all but Atkin. Atkin has a great style for the dramatic, but in my opinion, he appears very racist at certain points in this book.
He often refers to the poor, indigenous, Mexicans just as Diaz himself would have done, and he does it very comfortably. He makes sweeping generalizations and does not hesitate to use stereotypes to in his language for comparison. One example was when he was describing a massacre of the public in the plaza (Part 1, Chapter 5). He stated that the Mexicans ran because it was raining and, “Mexicans are notoriously reluctant to get wet.
” (p. 76) Another occurrence of Atkin’s ignorance was when he was telling of General Huerta’s betrayal of President Madero. He described Huerta as having waited “with Indian patience.” (p.
110)At least this time had capitalized the ‘I’ in Indian. Other times in his work I was not sure if he was being blatantly racist by writing ‘Indian’ with a lowercase ‘i,’ or if he was just making yet another grammatical error. In Revolution! , I found many clumsy uses of punctuation and word usage. None perhaps quite as bad as the mistake I found when looking through the finer points of Madero’s desertion of his troops. “Madero was clearly guilty of breaking the United States law which forbade anyone starting a military expedition from American territory against a friendly power.
” (p. 56)The statement should have clearly been reversed so as to say, “…which forbade anyone starting a military expedition against a friendly power from American territory. ” This seems very careless for a published work of such importance to so many. Atkin did however do a good job in his use of photos and maps.
They were very graphic depictions of the revolution and of the revolutionaries. The maps helps readers to get a sense of where the battles were fought and why certain battles were of more importance (due to nothing more than location).One other good thing was that for his research, Atkin did go to Mexico to better understand the people and the culture. His resources were very reliable because he used such things as old interviews, arrest reports and newspaper articles not only from Mexico but from various third party countries such as France and United States. Originally, my intent was to learn of the history of the soldaderas (women soldiers) of the Mexican Revolution, commonly and collectively known as Las Adelitas. I rented Ronald Atkin’s book to get a more detailed background of the Mexican Revolution to subsequently understand my intended subject in more depth.
Las Adelitas, however, were not an easy subject to find information about. I had already started, and enjoyed the book Revolution! Mexico 1910-1920. I abandoned the impossible search for the type of book that I was looking for in order to read this one. I did gain a detailed knowledge of the Mexican Revolution just as I had planned. Now, with my new knowledge, I can go to Mexico and research in more depth my intended topic of las soldaderas and write the type of book for which I had been searching.
