MEXICAN POLITICS AND ECONOMY1876 - 1910Pgs 220 - 226

Dictatorship Under Diaz

•General Porfirio Diaz seized power in 1876 in the name of republican legality.

•Erected the Porfiriato, one of the longest personal dictatorships in in LA history.

•Diaz favored great landowners, moneylenders, and foreign capitalists to assure political survival.

Economic Development Requires Political Stability•Policy of Conciliation = Share of spoils to

all influential opponents. (pan o palo – bread of the club).

•Dissidents were beaten up, murdered, or arrested.

•Diaz virtually eliminated all effective opposition at the end of his 2nd term (1888).

Conciliation

•Increased benefits for the army and church.

•Policy was directed towards prominent intellectuals, wealthy, and powerful figures.

•Cientificos = clique of Diaz’s advisers. For these men the economic movement was everything.

Concentration of Landownership•20th century – Mexico still predominantly

an agrarian country.•Laws enacted that took / bought land

from the indigenous people. 90 % lose their communal lands.

•Land is not used effectively, which hinders food production for the domestic market.

The Economic Advance

•Production of food and industrial raw materials for the foreign market increase.

•Mexican export production became increasingly geared to the needs of the U.S. and other foreign nations.

•“Mexico, mother of foreigners and stepmother of Mexicans.”

•Modernizations – trade, banking, and transportation.

Social Unrest

•The depression of 1906-1907, which spread from the U.S. to Mexico, caused a wave of bankruptcies, layoffs, and wage cuts.

•The crop failures of 1907-1910 provoked a dramatic rise in the price of staple foods.

•The house of Diaz was rotten from top to bottom.

The Storm That Swept Mexico pt1/8•LA TORMENTA QUE AZOTO MEXICO pt1

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