The Working Class and the Mexican Revolution, c. 1900–1920
Like any major historical phenomenon, the Mexican Revolution can be viewed from a variety of angles. From one, arguably the most important, it was a rural phenomenon, rightly categorised by Eric Wolf as a ‘peasant war’, hence comparable to the Russian or Chinese Revolutions. Form another it can be seen as a generalised social and political (some might like to call it ‘hegemonic’ crisis, marking the end of the old oligarchic Porfirian order and characterised by mass political mobilisation; as such it bears comparison with the crises experienced in Italy and Germany after the First World War; in Spain in the early 1930s; in Brazil in the 1960s or Chile in the 1970s. But what it emphatically was not was a workers' revolution. No Soviets or workers' party sought — let alone attained — political hegemony. No Soviets or workers' councils were established, as in Petrograd or Berlin. There were no attempts at works' control of industry, as in Turin, Barcelina — or the gran mineria of Bolivia.