In the Southern regions of the country, the Yucatan peninsula, a vast tropical forest extends from the Caribbean Sea across the Gulf of Mexico and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The wants and desires of the Mayas and other indigenous tribes of the region never entered into the overall story as these people felt little connection with their fighting compatriots elsewhere. Topographically, historically, and culturally there is little to connect the Yucatan region with any other in Mexico and their contribution to its lore has been as much through absence as it has been through participation.
Add to this the fact that the Yaqui Indians from the Northern regions, particularly Sonora, have always been fiercely independent, fighting tooth and nail for their territory, regardless of which Mexican group was rebelling there. The indigenous tribes of central Mexico, on the other hand, merely wanted more agrarian justice and sought egalitarian land rights almost exclusively. Of course, those tribes from the tropical rain forests of Southern and Southeastern Mexico had little desire to join in on the commotions elsewhere and preferred to allow the others to simply bludgeon each other to death.
The final layer of foreign ownership and intervention completes the complex tapestry that was Mexico at the beginning of the 20th Century. Most of the mines in Northern Mexico were owned by Americans who always benefited from tax breaks and other incentives to keep the mines active. The oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico off of the coast of Tamaulipas were also owned by American industries and were considered off-limits to Mexican internal strife and disorder, lest they suffer the wrath of American military intervention. The border towns in the US were also strictly off-limits with similar punishment as a threat, should that rule be breached.
McLynn does a very good job of showing how all this came into play over the first two decades of the 20th Century in a slow, macabre dance of egotistical men, each with his own set of criteria for running the country, and none willing to share it, save Villa and Zapata. He starts with a briefing of the prior 100 years in Mexico to lay the foundation for what was to transpire during the beginning of the revolution.
Throughout the 19th Century, Mexican leaders tried unsuccessfully to unite the country under one banner. However, Texas broke away by the 1830s and war broke out with the US a decade later. By 1850, Mexico had been reduced to almost half the size it started with. More turmoil came when Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon I, sent in a Hapsburg prince, Maximilian I, to rule over Mexico in the 1860s.
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