Mexico: A Matured Latin-American Revolution,1910-1960

Abstract

From initially political motivations at its out break in 1910, the credos and ideals of the Mexican Revolution have broadened to include social, economic, and cultural mat ters and changes. Developments in ideologies and events have been uneven. The main focus was on political life from 1917 to 1933; from 1934 to 1940 it was on social, especially agrarian, reforms; there were major shifts toward balanced economic growth, including industrialism, from 1940 to the present. Militarism has waned. Under the Institutional Revolution, since 1940, a second generation of leaders has accepted the often utopian objectives of earlier phases but has emphasized harmony, a directed economy, and national unities rather than class struggle and state socialism as bases for policy. Goals remain autodetermination, liberal democracy, big government, nationalism. Major revolutionary hopes, summarized in Arti cles 3, 27, and 123 of the 1917 Constitution, are being imple mented, but by less doctrinaire means. Revolution has imper ceptibly passed into normal evolution. Lack of predetermined ideology, plus alternatives, compromises, and contradictions in the original 1910-1917 credos of the Revolution have per mitted a salutary flexibility and continuity of the Revolution. A main result of a half century of varied programs has been to reshape society, creating a relatively open system. One effect has been to increase the middle sectors, with a dwindling of the proletarian base from an estimated 90 per cent in pre- revolutionary days to about half that in 1960. As a process, the Revolution continues within stable frameworks.