The years 1910 to 1932 represent a key period for the study of military politics in a country which has prided itself on its armed forces for their professional, constitutional and non-interventionist tradition. Existing studies of the subject, while providing much detail on the background, development and outcome of the 1924 military intervention which is the central landmark of the period, have concentrated predominantly on army affairs and events in the capital, taking the metropolitan view. The substance and contention of this article is that the navy, and events outside the capital, exerted a significant influence on developments. The contention calls for an examination of the anatomy of the navy, the evolution of its influence, and the sources of conflict which it harboured.

When Andrés Molina Enríquez wrote his polemical attack on the Mexican hacienda, published on the eve of the Revolution, he was particularly scathing about the cereal estates of the mesa central. According to his arguments, these were the properties most typically ‘feudal’, and thus he characterized them as vast tracts of land, under-used and undercapitalized, serving only to legitimize the seigneurial status of an elite class of rentier landowners. The proprietors were similarly castigated for preferring the low-risk security of irrigated crops, and for their withdrawal from the uncertainties of maize production on the temporal lands. As a result of these policies the routine supply of maize, the food grain of the nation, was, or so he argued, left to the efforts and tenacity of a multitude of smallholders and Indian villagers with access to a mere tenth of the cultivable of smallholders and Indian villagers with access to a mere tenth of the cultivable terrain.

A survey of the relevant literature indicates rather graphically that little scholarly attention has been given to an assessment of the independence of supreme courts in the developing areas. A familiar theme in the scant research which has been reported is not only the relative decline of these courts, but their political weakness and general dependence in Third World countries in the first place. Although the constitutions of most developing countries provide for independent, sometimes even coequal judicial branches of government, with clearly defined and significant powers, and with constitutional guarantees to protect their independence, the evidence suggests that no more than a mere handful of national courts in these countries are truly independent: that is, few courts are free to decide cases on the basis of the established law and the ‘merits of the case’, without substantial interference from other political or governmental agents. Gamer has concluded that usually the ‘highest power rests with a Prime Minister (or President) and a small inner circle of the cabinet, whose policy decisions are seldom challenged by courts, legislatures˜’ and ‘there are few constitutional/legal traditions to restrain this central power’. Almond has written that ‘central executives and bureaucracy tend to monopolize the “rule” functions at the expense of courts and legislature’.