316 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
Development in Mexico
The Mexican revolution, according to Paz, was caused by the lack of development.
Indeed, even after the immensely important changes brought about by the Mexican
revolution, as of 1940 an estimated 60 percent of the peasants in Mexico still did not
have enough lands to sustain themselves, and 50 percent of all cultivable lands re-
mained under the control of large landowners (latifundistas). Industry continued to
be dominated by foreigners, despite the fact that majority ownership by law had to
be in the hands of Mexicans.
Under the guidance of the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico
launched development programs of such magnitude and success that they resulted
in what became known as the “Mexican Miracle.” Goals were shifted from public
welfare to economic development, and during the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth
exceeded 6 percent per year. Urbanization proceeded apace as peasants streamed
into the cities to work in the factories, especially in Mexico City. By 1960, the urban
workers and middle classes made up 40 percent of the total population of the coun-
try. Mexico was becoming modern, and new ideas about progress as measured by
the consumption of material goods were replacing the earlier revolutionary goals of
social equality through class conflict.
Changes after 1940 were also taking place in the political field. Following the
radical policies initiated by Cárdenas, the ruling party and its administrative organ,
the Mexican state, took on more authoritarian, corrupt, and repressive characteris-
tics. As Octavio Paz (1972) describes it, the system became a veritable “pyramid” of
power. The presidents of Mexico, chosen and essentially appointed by PRI, thor-
oughly dominated the legislative and judicial branches. The party and the army
closed ranks, and even after the army became more professional and less politically
active, powerful military, police, and paramilitary units were organized to control, by
terror if necessary, opposition to the state and its “institutionalized revolutionary”
policies. Indeed, in 1958 a large strike in Mexico City was ruthlessly put down by the
army; and again in 1968 a crowd of 400,000 antigovernment demonstrators in the
Tlatelolco Square was brutally fired upon by security forces, killing some 300 or more
persons (Figure 8.8).
The Mexican revolution was ostensibly fought on behalf of the Indians, while
its agrarian reforms, though not specifically formulated with the Indians in mind,
were thought finally to have restored the lands that the liberals had taken from the
Indian communities in times past. After the 1940s, however, Mexico began to turn
from radical change to economic development and the creation of a modern nation-
state. It became clear that the Indian peoples were lagging behind. In many of the
more isolated areas of Mexico, prerevolutionary conditions continued to prevail:
The Indians were enclosed in communities where they reconstituted through time
their traditional Mesoamerican languages and cultures, while still being exploited by
surrounding mestizo and creole landowners and merchants. Furthermore, the In-
dians and rural mestizos continued to be socially segregated by means of local caste-
like inequalities. Mexican anthropologists termed such Indian areas “refuge regions”
and argued that they negated the advances of the revolution by perpetuating colonial