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Mexican Government
Diaz, Villa and Zapata's Ideas of Government and the Individual:
Similarities and Dissimilarities
Government in many areas of the world has changed from one in which the people are the vassals of the government to one in which the government is the servant of the people. Individuals form societies because they have a selfish need for protection, and they form governments for that purpose. Unfortunately, those governments sometimes abuse their power and forget what the government is for. Mexico had three rulers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who epitomized divergent beliefs regarding the government and individual rights. This essay reflects the authoritarianism of Diaz, Villa and Zapata and how they dealt with the subject of individual rights.
Diaz
Porfirio Diaz had one of the longest reins as ruler of Mexico of any leader. Ostensibly he was the leader of a representative republic, but in reality he was a dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist. He believed that he was the "father of the nation" (43), and he treated his people as an authoritarian would. There are many examples of how Diaz ruled the people and what he actually thought of them. In one instance, his 80th birthday, Diaz invited dignitaries from around the world to a birthday celebration at his palace in Mexico City. The ambassadors were shown the innermost parts of the city that Diaz had sanitized of people, as well as grime, so that...
The poor meanwhile had been banished to the slums so that Diaz could look good in his whitewashed world (1, 2).
He was the epitome of the, seemingly, benevolent dictator who showed the world the good he did for his people while keeping the average citizen in abject poverty. The rights of individual citizens were wrapped up in what they could provide for the government and Diaz. He claimed the Mexican people as his children, but he was a very abusive father.
Villa
The problem with the government according to Pancho Villa is that it was all about Pancho Villa. He cared about the people only as far as he could use them. In comparing his style of leadership to Zapata's the book says "Villa had none of Zapata's mystical feeling about the soil or about the village as personality. He was more of a political opportunist, proactive where Zapata was reactive" (71). This meant that Villa was able to win the love of the people who fought for him because he needed them at the time, but in reality he believed that the peasants were scum the same as Diaz. There was really very little difference between Diaz and Villa. Both were opportunists who came from the poorest of the mestizos and rose to power through wheedling and strong-handed techniques.
As far as individual rights, he believed that the peons had none. It seemed that to him, they were a permanent working class who should have no higher ambition than that. He "went on…
Works Cited
McLynn, Frank. Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000. Print.
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