Brenner Anita - The wind that swept Mexico: the history of the Mexican Revolution ; 1910-1942

THE WIND THAT SWEPT MEXICO

THE TEXAS PAN AMERICAN SERIES

THE HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION 1910-1942

text by ANITA BRENNER
184 historical photographs assembled by
GEORGE R. LEIGHTON

International Standard Book Number 978-0-292-79024-7
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-149021
Copyright 1943 by Anita Brenner and George R. Leighton.
Copyright renewed 1971 by Anita Brenner
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Ninth paperback printing, 2011

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this
work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas
Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, Texas 78713-7819.

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The paper used in this book meets the minimum
requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997)
(Permanence of Paper).

Immediately upon its publication in 1943, The Wind That Swept Mexico was widely recognized as one of the most powerful and discerning pictorial histories ever published. Twenty-eight years later it is still regarded as a unique achievement.

Only 100 pages of text and 184 historical news photographs, yet this is the Mexican Revolution in its drama, its complexity and its incompleteness! wrote Bertram D. Wolfe in Book Week in 1943. One could not have seen it more closely and fully had one taken part in it, nor could one have understood as much of its essence as Anita Brenner has managed to distill out of a life-time of living in Mexico.

When the decision was reached to bring The Wind That Swept Mexico back into print, it was suggested that the story of the revolution be brought up to date. Also, Miss Brenner thought of adding a section comparing it with other revolutionary movements in the world. In the end it was decided to keep this minor classic intact and virtually unchanged. The text has been completely reset and the plates have been remade from exhibit prints kindly furnished by the New York Public Library. No other changes from the original edition have been made.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

THE WIND THAT SWEPT MEXICO

WE ARE NOT SAFE in the United States, now and henceforth, without taking Mexico into account; nor is Mexico safe disregarding us. This is something that Mexicans have long known, with dread, but that few Americans have had to look at.

We are interdependent for two reasons. The first is geography. The second is what has been happening in Mexico from 1910 to now. The first is quickly seen on the map. Mexico is a tapering continuation of the same land mass as the United States. It is the longest stretch between us and the Panama Canal, key to our defense of Americas coasts. The largest, most secure deep-water harbor off California is Mexicos Magdalena Bay. Its rich oil deposits are part of the same Gulf belt that reaches from Louisiana and Texas south. All supplies moving north to us, south to the other Americas, must travel, overland, through Mexico; by sea, past Mexican waters; the urgent traffic of the air flies depending on Mexican landing fields. Physically we are most vulnerable through Mexicoand Mexico from us. In every war in which the United States has been engaged, the enemy has bent every effort to take advantage of this Mexican vulnerability. This time, because of the kind of war it is, the goodwill of the Mexican people is itself a military objective. We are endangered to the degree that they believe we interfere with what they want.

But the relationship between us goes much farther still, because Mexico occupies a crucial position in hemisphere politics and culture. What the Mexican government does guides, in many important matters, the policies of other Latin American authorities. What the Mexican people think and feel about us is a sort of lens through which the rest of Latin America regards us. For them Mexico is a central stage on which they see their own struggles going forward. Our relations with Mexico are seen as a test of our intentions toward other peoples on this continent. Thus Mexico connects or disconnects inter-American solidarity.

The reason why Mexico has key moral prestige and provocative leadership is not size nor strength nor place; it is the Mexican Revolution, 1910 to now, the story told in this book. Most people in the United States know a great deal more about the Russian Revolution, and the Chinese, and other upheavals in this era of revolutions, than about the one next to us. It has come through dimly, confusedly, in headlined incidents: Pershing chasing Villa in the desert lurid tales of religious conflict scandalous reports of oil expropriations. It has not looked like that in Mexico, nor in the rest of Latin America. And it is not a finished story.

It is a living story underneath what happens in Mexico now, and tomorrow. It begins in 1910, goes through ten years of civil warfare and twenty-two of further struggle, and projects itself into the future. The phrase la revolucin, invoked so often by two generations of Mexicans, even the children, and so common a part of the national mood and vocabulary, has many meanings. It is the past, and it is a set of beliefs. The phrase runs like a live current through everything public and personal too: politics and art and business and thought and industry and now war. Each event forecasts the next; the whole chain of events is prophetic, because the set-ups are similar, of struggles elsewhere in America. Many North Americans have taken and continue to take an active part in the Mexican struggle. Our government has played and continues to play a decisive role. That is why the Mexican struggle is like a nerve-center to the rest of Latin America.

Before this war is over, probably, and certainly when it is ended, there will be uprisings and upheavals in many American countries. The American Revolution set off, soon after 1776, revolutions of national independence; it was furthermore an example toward self-rule that crashed European thrones. It started something that has now spread, on a scale so colossal that it staggers the mind to grasp it, to every people and race on earth. Political freedom, as has been demonstrated here, is possible only to the extent each individual can be economically independent; and economic independence for each person is not achievable either, without political freedom. The two things have here shown themselves to be one, and though we have not gone so far toward their accomplishment as we know is necessary and possible, we have gone further than any nation. So we are the strongest, and so we have the most to lose, in this war. But the millions and millions in it with us have more to gain, and they will not stop fighting, and we will not be safe to pursue our freedoms, until they have gained theirs. To the degree they lose, ours will be menaced by the same sort of enemies. We will not be safe even on this continent, because even isolated in America the order to cease firing is not entirely in our hands.

The story of the Mexican Revolution throws up, violently, the issues being fought inside each land, within the war. It puts questions to us our government will have to meet, and is already in the midst of; questions which the American people cannot leave safely to deals and power-barters and accident and intrigue. Policies shaped for export have their internal consequences. For we are not safe, either, from the inner struggles tearing other peoples. What led to the Mexican Revolution, economically, is happening to us now.