Mexico, 1910-1929. Days of a “good” Revolution, boast governments that have come afterwards, all saying it ended in 1921. That’s reassuring fakery. There was the nearly successful 1923 rebellion coordinated by commandantes (governors) of Jalisco, Oaxaca, Veracruz and other states; the “uprising of the generals” in 1929, lead by General Gonzalo Escobar, put down only with the aid of the United States.
Most interestingly, these governments cling to the narrow-guage thesis that the Revolution was an “isolated affair.” They ignore Mexico’s revolutionary-era involvement with Europe: The fact is that Mexico was a testing ground for how powerful nations would shape new strategies in future empire building. That’s what polyglot, near-perennial immigrant multinational researcher — and adopted son of Mexico — Friedrich Katz dug out of much-ignored archives in Mexico, Great Britain, Germany. The U.S. Aztec Eagle winner — the highest honor Mexico can award a foreigner — and an honorary citizen of the state of Chihuahua, Katz suggested this to tone-deaf “experts” and officials fairly early on. After years of research and study, he summed up what he had unearthed in his 1981 book “The Secret War in Mexico.”
The 1910 Revolution was not isolated. Neither was it particularly successful. “Unfortunately, the Mexican Revolution, unlike the Russian, Chinese, French and American Revolutions, did not enjoy the same academic attention prior to the Cuban and Vietnamese Revolutions, which provided an intellectual impetus for social historians ...” wrote one analyst of Katz’s work.
Two decades of a series of revolutions and civil wars equal Mejico Bronco, social historians soon realized. Tomorrow, November 20, this nation will celebrate that long bloody season. Many Mexicans consider revolutionary triumphalism a “myth”: for one thing, the politicians say it lasted only eleven years. Tomorrow, Mexicans will see its conservative ruling Nation Action Party (of business and the Church — both of which still despise Father Hidalgo and his 1810 War of Independence and are sour about Francisco Madero’s 1910 uprising), with veiled reluctance, set pueblo children marching, cohetes exploding, bands playing. In big cities, overseen by police and the military, expensive exhibitions, performances, parades and speeches are promised. Many Mexicans will join in with varying interpretations of what’s going on. Some sincerely, many cheering this great time to party, some showing cynicism, others shrugging: “No hay remedio — ”There is no remedy.”
Friedrich Katz landed in Mexico at age 13 because his father, a Jewish Communist opponent of Hitlerian fascism, was forced to flee to France. There, father Katz bought arms for the Spanish Republican forces fighting Francisco Franco’s fascistic war (1936-39). Soon the family again was on the run. They tried the U.S., which was fearful of dedicated opponents of fascism. But Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-40) actively accepted those who had fought Spanish fascism. Friedrich was 13 when the Katzes settled here. Soon immersed in history and anthropology, he received a bachelor’s degree in New York, a Ph.D. in Vienna. He taught in Berlin, at the University of Texas. In 1971 he joined the University of Chicago. He never forgot that Mexico welcomed his family when no one else did. Katz wrote extensively on Mexico. He died October 16, 2010, just as the Mexico established the Katz Center to bring notable Mexican scholars and creative artists to lecture and teach at the University of Chicago.
Originally, major players on the Mexican “testing ground” were the United States, Britain, France and Germany. But others were watching. Some argue that “European powers didn’t adopt the ‘new’ strategy of exploiting social and anticolonial struggles until World War I.” Yet European maneuvering in Mexico began during the U.S. civil war. Germany and Britain, Katz shows, had long been competing for a foothold economically and strategically in Mexico. Mexico’s leaders sought European investment and influence to offset that of the U.S. Katz cites the United States’ earlier lesson in the new strategy, the 1898 armed expulsion of Spain from Cuba. It used “elements of the Cuban independence movement to expel Spain, and established U.S. supremacy.” Someone called it a natural “sanction” of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.
But much earlier, the “Manifest Destiny” version of the Monroe Doctrine, was used to justify the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War. A relatively small skirmish on the border of Mexico and the Republic of Texas pleased U.S. President James K. Polk. He wanted to extend the U.S. to the Pacific. Polk invaded Mexico. An Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln, opposed the war and its logic. Texas had tried to join the Union, but Washington had rejected it
The Mexican-American War created a new border. That changed both nations. A surge of U.S. investment laced both sides of the border. That would strengthen Mexico’s northern states — seemingly a good thing that spelled disaster for Mexico’s longest ruling (1876-1911) post-Independence dictator, Porfirio Diaz. Katz’s access to European and Mexican archives shows that Diaz, by favoring British, French and German companies to counterbalance powerful U.S. corporations, laid a foundation for increasing antagonism to his regime among American business leaders. Soon, the U.S. was covertly seeking a more friendly president to do business with. The just-exiled (October 1910) former presidential candidate Francisco I. Madero seemed to be just what the U.S., Germany and Britain were looking for. Madero’s call for a November 20 armed uprising was a failure. But it stirred the revolutionary impulse of others, several pueblo leaders revolted November 18. In February 1911, when Madero and 130 men entered Mexico, habitually aggressive men such as Francisco Villa and Pascual Orozco and a small army of followers had been fighting the federales since November. Madero was now receiving arms, ammunition, even recruits from the U.S. President William Howard Taft did little to interfere with this traffic.
By the time Orozco and Villa attacked and occupied Ciudad Juarez, May 21, 1911, 18 states had joined the Revolution. Under the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez, Diaz and Vice President Roman Corral agreed to resign. Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Leon de la Barra would be interim president until a free general election could held — giving Madero’s enemies time to organize.
All interested foreign powers found Madero’s presidency inept, vacillating, weak. All disastrously opted for an known drunkard, charlatan and conspirator, General Victoriano Huerta, whom they viewed as strong and resolute. This choice was based to great extent on the racist attitudes of these foreign leaders and envoys. German Minister Paul von Hintze’s assessment: “(Madero’s) error lies in his belief that he can rule the Mexican people as one would rule one of the more advanced Germanic nations. This raw people of half-savages without religion, with its small ruling stratum of superficially civilized mestizos can live with no regime other than enlightened despotism,” provides an understanding of where Hitler got his ideas on race.