John A. Britton - Revolution and Ideology: Images of the Mexican Revolution in the United States

Revolution and Ideology

Images of the Mexican Revolution
in the United States

John A. Britton

Copyright 1995 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University

Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Britton, John A.

Revolution and ideology : images of the Mexican Revolution in the United States / John A. Britton.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8131-5143-4

1. MexicoHistoryRevolution, 19101920Foreign public opinion, AmericanHistory. 2. MexicoPolitics and government19101946Foreign public opinion, AmericanHistory. 3. Public opinionUnited StatesHistory. 4. IdeologyPolitical aspectsUnited States. I. Title.

F1234.B855 1995

972.08 16dc20

94-46148

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Illustrations follow

Researching and writing this book took more than fifteen years (with some interruptions) and owes a great deal to individuals who provided encouragement and stimulation at crucial times. Those who read portions of the manuscript and made valuable commentary include Don Mabry, Mark Gilderhus, Tom Leonard, Helen Delpar, Ken Clements, William O. Walker III, and Richard Chapman. Helpful insights and sage advice through interviews, letters, and informal conversations came from Woodrow Borah, Ted Cart, Susannah Glusker, Richard Greenleaf, Charles Hale, Alicia Hernndez Chvez, G. Wayne King, Enrique Krauze, Lester Langley, Townsend Ludington, Eugenia Meyer, Don Olliff, Fred Pike, Richard Salisbury, Josefina Vazquez, Ella Wolfe, Lee Woodward, and Heidi Zogbaum.

Financial support for necessary travel to research collections was provided by the American Philosophical Society, Francis Marion University Foundation, Francis Marion University Faculty Research Committee, Mellon Library Research Grant at Tulane University, National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grants to the University of California at Berkeley and the Hoover Institution, and the Southern Regional Education Board.

Members of the James Rogers Library reference staff have been helpful in obtaining interlibrary loans and answering a wide assortment of questions over the years. My gratitude goes to Neal Martin (now director of the Coker College Library), John Summer, Suzanne Singleton, Roger Hux, and Yvette Pierce. Students in History 340 at Francis Marion responded to my incorporation of large parts of my research into their course work with questions and comments that pulled me back from the tangential and toward the need to identify and explore the main themes in modern Mexican history.

The 1989 appointment of Richard Chapman as head of the History Department at Francis Marion University was a turning point. I am grateful for his insistence that scholarly activity should be a legitimate part of the life of the universitya view not widely accepted at that time. His support in overcoming institutional barriers and bureaucratic infighting was crucial to the completion of this project.

Finally, I relied heavily on my family for support. My wife, Kathy, and our children, Jeannie, Dan, and Maria, were very patient with my work habits and my occasional absences. Their tolerance of this project and their instinctive and humorous ridicule of the world of bureaucracy helped me to see it through to completion.

Revolution remains a subject of prime importance in the post-Cold War era. Although Communism in general and Marxist-Leninist theory in particular have lost much of their credibility, the continuation of massive social and economic problems provides an environment in which political unrest and social revolution refuse to disappear. Under these conditions, the Mexican revolution of the 191040 period has a new significance because it was one of the last major revolutions before the onset of the Cold War and worldwide fascination with the Marxist-Leninist formula for revolution. Although Mexico had a small but active Communist organization after 1918, the revolution lay just on the edge of the reach of the Comintern and other influences emanating from the Soviet Union. In short, Mexico produced a large-scale revolution in which Marxist-Leninist theory and praxis amounted to only one of the many radical and reformist influences that intermingled in a complex and often contradictory movement. The commentary of U.S. observers on the Mexican revolutionlargely free from Cold Warstyle preoccupations with international Communismconstitutes a body of information and opinion concerning a revolutionary movement that, although peculiar to Mexico in these years, has relevance to an understanding of other non-Communist revolutionary movements.

As a conceptual framework to accommodate these circumstances, this book employs a definition of revolution similar to that of Gordon S. Wood in his study of the radical nature of the American Revolution (with allowances for differences in historical context and social background). Wood argues that the political-military conflicts of the Revolutionary War were less important than the social transformations that unfolded in the decades before and, especially, after the war.

Ideology is a central part of this study primarily because most of the observers who expressed judgments about the Mexican revolution couched them in ideological terms. The majority of these observers were not political theorists and did not organize their thoughts in a systematic way, but they did make use of the existing symbols, values, and beliefs. This classification scheme may seem an artificial construct imposed upon reality, but a close examination of the writing of these observers confirms that such a framework is necessary to explain the patterns of commentary that emerged with fairly obvious consistency. The ideological categories are the products of an inductive analysis based upon the publications (and, in a few cases, speeches) of these individuals, followed by a sorting process whereby I placed these evaluations in coherent groupings. I believe that to minimize or ignore these patterns would be a serious omission in a study primarily concerned with numerous efforts to evaluate the Mexican revolution for an English-language readership that was familiar with the ideologies of the first half of the twentieth century.

Another reason for the emphasis on ideology is the close connection between revolutionary movements and ideological statements. Revolutions seem to stimulate ideological responses because these massive upheavals often bring to the forefront of public discourse issues such as the control of political power, the role of the nation-state, the redistribution of property, and the relative condition of various social and ethnic groups. When a nation is debating the nature of its polity, economy, and society, those who observe and comment on this debate are likely to employ ideological formulations to explain their version of these issues.