Page 312 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

revolution—mexico 1613

Mariano Azuela: The Under Dogs

Mexican author and doctor Mariano Azuela showed Natera shook hands with Demetrio effusively while
the day-to-day fighting between the two factions in the Luis Cervantes said:
Mexican Revolution. As a doctor in 1914 and 1915, “With men like General Natera and Colonel
Azuela accompanied the fighting forces on the side of Demetrio Macias, we’ll cover our country with glory.”
the “under dogs” who for four centuries lived a life of Demetrio understood the purpose of those words,
servitude.The novel was published in Mexico and after after Natera had repeatedly addressed him as
a few years was translated into many languages and “Colonel.”
sold worldwide. Wine and beer were served; Demetrio and Natera
drank many a toast. Luis Cervantes proposed: “The
On the day General Natera began his advance against
triumph of our cause, which is the sublime triumph
the town of Zacatecas, Demetrio with a hundred men
of Justice, because our ideal—to free the noble long-
went to meet him at Fresnillo.
suffering people of Mexico—is about to be realized
The leader received him cordially.
and because those men who have watered the earth
“I know who you are and the sort of men you
with their blood and tears will reap the harvest which
bring. I heard about the beatings you gave the Feder-
is rightfully theirs.”
als from Tepic to Durango.”
Source: Azuela, M. (1929). The Under Dogs. London: Brentano’s, Inc.

by Emiliano Zapata in the sugar plantations of south- summer the military government collapsed, but in
central Mexico. Madero refused to return the privatized November the U.S. military decided to support Carranza,
lands or to restore local governments.Then, in February and a new civil war began. The middle- and working-
1913, the army staged a golpe de estado (coup d’etat) and class-led Zapatistas and Villistas faced the forces headed
killed Madero.This killing led to the nationwide civil war. by Carranza and the northern elites.
The rebels made Madero a martyr and rallied the public. In a monumental step Alvaro Obregon, the military
This uprising spread rapidly and took on special strength commander of Carranza’s forces, gained the support of
in the North, where the rebels could buy arms by selling the Casa del Obrero Mundial by promising that the Mex-
confiscated cattle to U.S. dealers. Meanwhile, U.S. Presi- ican Revolution would be the first step toward worldwide
dent Woodrow Wilson provisioned Mexican dictator proletarian revolution. Disorganized and poorly armed,
General Victoriano Huerta with arms until September. Carranza’s forces fled to the state of Veracruz. There, on
During 1913 and 1914 the Villistas, an armed move- 23 November 1914, U.S. General Frederick Funston
ment centered on the states of Chihuahua and Durango, supplied them with ammunition and arms. By the end of
formed under the leadership of town elites, cowboys, 1914 Obregon commanded more than twenty thou-
miners, and lumberjacks in favor of agrarian reform and sand troops calling themselves “Constitutionalists”
political freedom and against debt peonage (form of because they planned to reinstate the liberal constitution
bondage in which the laborer is held in place through the of 1857. As Obregon’s troops defeated the Villistas and
employer’s control of his debt accounts which are not Zapatistas, Obregon allowed the Casa del Obrero
paid off) and segregation. Meanwhile, the state elites of Mundial activists to organize the workers in each city that
Coahuila, Sonora, and Sinaloa who had supported his forces captured.
Madero rallied behind Venustiano Carranza, the former
governor of Coahuila. Carranza, like Madero, favored The Tide Turns
political liberalism. During 1913 and early 1914 Villa’s In January 1915 the fight between the Constitutionalist
forces marched southward until they controlled most of and Villista armies at El Ebano turned the tide in favor of
the North.Then, in April 1914, U.S. armed forces occu- the Constitutionalists. Using several thousand “red
pied Veracruz with heavy civilian casualties. During the battalion” troopers from the Casa del Obrero Mundial,