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Research Possibilities in the Mexican Revolution: The Governorship*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

William H. Beezley
William H. Beezley*
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
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Extract

In the era of the Mexican Revolution, research opportunities on the sub-national level are numerous and varied, although not completely untested. In recent monographs and dissertations, historians have examined the revolution in a few states, leading regional figures, the workings of national reform commissions in selected localities and hinted at the conflict of provincial interests that provoked violence in the name of opposition to national programs. Each of these themes needs further, more systematic evaluation. Still wanting are studies of local demographic changes and concomitant political and economic adjustments accompanying the revolution, of the appropriation of state and local administration, and of the local issues that confused reform programs such as land reapportionment and educational missions. Professor James W. Wilkie has made important national studies of efforts to implement revolutionary programs and to evaluate statistically the church-state question. Both of these themes should be assayed through case studies of states or somewhat larger regions. But rather than cataloging research possibilities, this paper concentrates on one sub-national topic: the state governors.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , January 1973 , pp. 308 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1973

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Footnotes

*

Paper delivered at the meeting of the Mexican Committee of the Conference on Latin American History, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Boston, December 28, 1970.

References

1 Among the recent studies that evaluate national developments in a local situation during the revolution are the following: Womack, John W. Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Random House, 1968),Google Scholar which in the course of tracing Zapata’s life provides an excellent account of the revolution in Morelos; Meyer, Michael C., Mexican Rebel: Pascual Orozco and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1915 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967),Google Scholar provides a biography of one of the most interesting secondary figures of the revolution; Cockcroft, James D., Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1913, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968),Google Scholar develops the revolutionary movement in the state of San Luis Potosí and contributes biographical studies of several secondary figures; in an article, “El maestro de primaria en la Revolución Mexicana,” Historia Mexicana, no. 64 (April-June, 1967), 565–587, Cockcroft examines the role of schoolteachers in encouraging the revolution in local areas; Raby, David L. in “Rural Teachers and Political and Social Conflict in Mexico, 1921–1940” (Unpub.Ph.D. dissertation, University of Warwick, 1970)Google Scholar and in “Los maestros rurales y los conflictos sociales en Mexico, 1931-1940,” Historia Mexicana, no. 70 (Oct.-Dec. 1968), 190–226, examines the operations of the federal educational commissions with particular attention to Michoacan and Campeche; Heather Fowler studied another of the federal agencies in a local context in “The Agrarian Revolution in the State of Veracruz, 1920–1940: The Role of Peasant Organizations” (Unpub. Ph. D. dissertation, American University, 1970) and in “Orígines de la organización compesina en Veracruz,” Historia Mexicana (no. 78 Oct.-Dec, 1970), 235–264. Friedrich, Paul Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Edgewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970 Google Scholar) in the process of examining the agrarian movement in a village in Michoacan, also has an excellent chapter on the regional leader, Primo Tapia. The Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana has published several volumes on revolutionary developments in the states, for example, Jesús Romero Flores, Historia de la Revolución en Michoacán.

2 Wilkie, James W., The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar and “Statistical Indicators of the Impact of the National Revolution on the Catholic Church in Mexico, 1910–1967,” Journal of Church and State, XII (Winter, 1970), 86–106.

3 Carranza was governor of Coahuila; Adolfo de la Huerta, governor of Sonora; Plutarco Elías Calles, governor of Sonora; and Lázaro Cárdenas, governor of Michoacan.

4 Archivo de Don Francisco I. Madero, Instituto Nacional de Antopología e Historia (Microfilmed by El Centro de Documentación Histórica), reel 18, decrees 4–12, Nov. 20, 1910.

5 See the exchange of correspondence on the peace negotiations reproduced with commentary in Estañol, Jorge Vera, La Revolución Mexicana: Orígenes y Resultados (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, S.A., 1957), 144–191.Google Scholar

6 Cumberland, Charles C., Mexican Revolutions Genesis Under Madero (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1952), 154–155 Google Scholar; also see front page stories on Madero’s problems securing the positions of his governors in the El Paso (Texas) Morning Times, May 26–31, 1911.

7 For a study of one governor during the Provisional Presidency, see the author’s “State Reform During the Provisional Presidency: Chihuahua, 1911,” Hispanic American Historical Review, L, no. 3 (August 1970), 524–537.

8 Archivo del Estado de Coahuila, legajo 293, Sec. 3a (1911), expediente 11, 154, circulars from Emilio Vázquez Gómez to the Governor of Coahuila, July 1, and July 21, 1911. Hereafter cited as AC.

9 Madero telegram to Abraham González and telegram to Venustiano Carranza, Sept. 7, 1911 in Valadés, José C. , ed., “Archivo de Madero,” La Opinión (Los Angeles, Calif.), March 18, 1934, sec.II, p. 2 Google Scholar; the same telegrams are also reprinted in Las memorias y las mejores cartas de Francisco I. Madero (Mexico: Libro Mexicana, 1956), 191–192.

10 Michales, Albert L., “The Modification of the Anti-Clerical Nationalism of the Mexican Revolution by General Lázaro Cárdenas and Its Relationship to the Church-State Detente… in Mexico,”… The Americas, 26, no. 1 (July, 1969) p. 37,Google Scholar shows how a state government could disrupt a national policy attempting to modify the church-state controversy.

11 One attempt to examine the problem of Asians during the revolution is Cumberland, Charles C., “The Sonora Chinese and the Mexican Revolution, ” Hispanic American Historical Review, 40, no. 2 (May, 1960), 191–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Other information on the problems of the Asians, the Germans, and the Spanish in the north is contained in the state reports, AC, Legajo 293, sec. 3a, exp. 11, 127, July 19, 1911; 11, 124, July 20, 1911; 11, 145, June 17, 1911.

12 For a brief study of the González administration see Almada, Francisco R., Vida, Proceso y Muerte de Abraham González (Mexico: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1967)Google Scholar which contains an extended introduction and a collection of documents.

13 The activities of the Carranza government are well documented in the AC, particularly for these items mentioned: Legajo 292, sec. 2a (1911), exp. 11, 087; Legajo 293, sec. 3a (1911), exp. 11, 101, 155, and 11, 142.

14 Almada, Francisco R., Historia de la Revolución en el estado de Chihuahua (Mexico: Talleres gráficos de la Nación, 1964)Google Scholar; Zuno, José G., Historia de la Revolución en el estado de Jalisco (Mexico: Talleres gráficos de la nación, 1964).Google Scholar