Mexican history

After the rainy season-like weather, this week it has been sunny, hot and dry again. However, the rains we did have brought some green to the mountains. But now we are again waiting for the rain to start in earnest and more continuously.

We are going to change the day we get the girls from Love in Action from Sunday to Saturday. Today, however, when we went, the girls were all sleeping. We were going to come back to take the girls out later, but Elvia, who is recovering from an operation, hinted that maybe we could bring ice cream for all the kids in that dormatory. That was a good idea. We got ice cream and cones; the kids all sat in a row as they got their cones. It became very much quieter than usual as the kids were preoccupied with their ice cream cones.

I have been reading another history of Mexico--700 pages. That is not quite as impressive as it sounds. It is a textbook for a university survey course; thus, it has lots of pictures and big margins. Nevertheless, it is fascinating. From 1810 when the war for independence started until almost 1940, there were numerous revolutions and civil wars and at least 2 major foreign invasions--one American and one French. There was a 25 year period of relative peace from 1885 - 1910 during the dictatorship of Diaz. It was a time of remarkable economic development, but all the wealth went to foreigners and a very small number of very rich Mexican families. Common lands that the Indians had had since before the Spanish conquest were stolen and accumulated by land companies and private families. One guy got about 7 million acres; others had 400,000-500,000. Wages during the period remained virtually unchanged, but the prices of corn and other necessities more than doubled. Thus, the lot of the vast majority got much worse (kind of like in the US in the last 25 years! [sorry, a bit of political commentary]). The rural population were frequently in debt bondage on the huge haciendas. In the mines and factories, workers were required to work at least 12 hour days, 7 days a week.

This was the background for the revolution that began in 1910. It lasted until 1920 and was really a series of civil wars as sides kept changing. During that time, it is estimated that 1.5 - 2 million people (almost 1 in 8 in the population) died as attrocities were committed by people on all sides. Even then, there were revolts and assassinations until well into the 1930s. The problem has been intense disagreements about the kind of political system and distribution of power. Frequently, they could join together against something or someone (Spanish domination or a dictator), but as soon as they were successful, their differences led them to begin fighting each other. Reading Mexican history helps one to appreciate our own history. Differences have not been sufficiently great that the sides have felt it necessary to resort to violence. I still have to read the section from 1940 to the present. Fortunately, in that period, violence was much less. Also, since the 1990s, power has changed hands via the ballot box, not via revolution and alternate political parties have had a real chance of being successful.