This essay examines the divergent political philosophies of three pivotal figures in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mexican history: Porfirio Díaz, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata. Drawing on Frank McLynn's Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution, the paper analyzes how each leader understood the relationship between the state and the individual. Díaz is characterized as a paternalistic authoritarian who used the façade of republican governance to mask dictatorship. Villa is portrayed as a political opportunist who suppressed workers' rights and used the peasantry as a means to personal power. Zapata, by contrast, is presented as a reluctant revolutionary whose commitment to collective land rights reflected a fundamentally different — though ultimately impractical — vision of government and society.
Government in many areas of the world has shifted from a model in which the people are the vassals of the state to one in which the government serves the people. Individuals form societies out of a need for protection, and they form governments for that purpose. Unfortunately, those governments sometimes abuse their power and forget what they exist to do. Mexico experienced this tension acutely during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, producing three leaders whose beliefs about government and individual rights could hardly have been more different. This essay examines the authoritarianism of Díaz, Villa, and Zapata, and how each dealt with the subject of individual rights.
Porfirio Díaz enjoyed one of the longest tenures as ruler of Mexico of any leader in the nation's history. Ostensibly he presided over a representative republic, but in reality he was a dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist. He believed himself to be the "father of the nation" (43), and he governed his people with corresponding authoritarianism. There are many examples of how Díaz exercised power and what he truly thought of his subjects. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Díaz invited dignitaries from around the world to a celebration at his palace in Mexico City. The ambassadors were shown carefully curated sections of the capital — sanitized of both poverty and people — so that they could see his vision of Mexico. The poor, meanwhile, had been banished to the slums so that Díaz could present a whitewashed image to the world (1, 2).
He was the epitome of the seemingly benevolent dictator: projecting to the world the good he did for his people while keeping the average citizen in abject poverty. The rights of individual citizens were defined entirely by what they could provide for the government and for Díaz himself. He claimed the Mexican people as his children, but he was, by any measure, an abusive father.
The problem with government, according to Pancho Villa, was that it existed primarily to serve Pancho Villa. He cared about the people only insofar as he could use them. In comparing his style of leadership to Zapata's, McLynn writes that "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). Villa was capable of winning the loyalty of those who fought for him because he needed them at the time, but in reality he regarded the peasants with the same contempt as Díaz. There was very little ideological distance between the two men. Both were opportunists who rose from the poorest ranks of the mestizo class through a combination of cunning and brute force.
On the question of individual rights, Villa believed the common people had none worth protecting. He seemed to regard them as a permanent laboring class with no right to higher ambitions. He "went on record as opposing workers' rights to strike or form trade unions," and he worked to ensure that full-blood Indians remained under firm control (293). In Villa's world, the people were subject to the rule of the governor — not the other way around.
Emiliano Zapata came to prominence as a peasant who refused to accept the power Díaz claimed over his people. He was among the first supporters of Madero, but he was equally quick to denounce him when it became clear that Madero lacked the strength to lead (110). Zapata was an unwilling revolutionary whose original ambition was simply to reclaim the land that wealthy landowners had stolen from his family and neighboring villages. He even traveled with a delegation to meet Díaz before becoming one of the leading revolutionary figures in southern Mexico. He was, in many ways, pushed into a larger leadership role by others — including Villa — who recognized how popular he was among the rural poor.
"Zapata's collective land rights philosophy and limitations"
McLynn, Frank. Villa and Zapata: A History of the Mexican Revolution. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000. Print.
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