757

REVOLUTIONARY

MEXICO AND THE WORLD ECONOMY

The 1920s in Theoretical Perspective

R I C H A R D TARDANICO

Did the Mexican Revolution promote social equality, political democracy, and national autonomy? Or did it simply modernize the state apparatus and economy of the old regime and expand opportunities for metropolitan investors? These questions stand at the forefront of the revisionist literature on Mexico, a nation troubled by growing dependency on petroleum exports and a massive foreign debt, by a widening gap between rich and poor, by stepped-up leftist and rightist challenges to the central government, and by a highly authoritarian state.~ The revisionists have not restricted their attention to Mexico's manifold problems of recent years, however, for their efforts to analyze the present situation have led many to examine the historical foundations of the status quo. That they have devoted considerable attention to the Revolution is no surprise. Even as government policy favors multinational business over the middle and lower classes, Mexico's rulers persist in manipulating popular-nationalist oratory and revolutionary symbols to legitimate state power. In response, critical scholars, trying to understand and challenge the established order, confute the official account of the origins, course, and outcome of the Revolution. 2 This essay examines the efforts of new-regime leaders in the 1920s to consolidate public authority and rebuild the economy. It synthesizes revisionist conclusions about revolutionary Mexico and recent theoretical work on the world-historical development of capitalism, focusing on how the interplay of local struggles in Mexico and transnational production, commerce, and geopolitics affected (1) the structure and power of the Mexican state and (2) its place in the global political economy. What follows is divided into two parts. The first reviews major interpretations of the Mexican Revolution, and discusses two leading revisionist analyses of the interaction of new-re-

Department of Sociology, Tulane University.

758 gime state building with United States' investment and foreign policy during the 1920s. The second presents a world-historical framework for studying state formation and socioeconomic change in late-industrializing societies, and applies this framework to the case of revolutionary Mexico, 1920-28.

Approaches to Revolutionary Mexico Recent critical scholarship on the Mexican Revolution contradicts the official view that a revolution by the Mexican "people" between 1910 and 1917 swept away the Diaz dictatorship (1876-191 l) and its predominant social institution, the semi-feudal hacienda. This claim does not deny the persistence of much poverty and dependence associated with Spanish colonial rule and Western European and United States military intervention and exploitation of Mexico's resources. Nevertheless, it portrays the Revolution as a unified, popular struggle against the colonial and neocolonial heritage of economic backwardness and political oppression. And it regards the Revolution as a continuing process that, in the"institutionalized" form administered by the Mexican state and its "one-party democracy," moves gradually toward social justice and national autonomy. 3 For the most part, scholars in the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s did not challenge this pro-Revolution propaganda. Their works did transcend the official view by analyzing problems such as regionalist disunity and political corruption. 4 Yet, like the government version, the message is that the Revolution promised democratic participation and improved living standards as well as economic development and national independence. Even as Mexicans expressed their disenchantment with the "Institutionalized Revolution" during the 1960s, historians and social scientists in the United States praised Mexico's as the "preferred revolution" of the Third World. The Mexican Revolution was an ongoing affair that, having passed through its "violent" and "social" stages in 1910-40, had settled into its "established," "mature," "economic," or "balanced" phase. 5 In recent years, however, these interpretations have been scrutinized by critics who regard the Revolution's popular-nationalist unity as a fiction imposed by the new regime. They stress that, far from encouraging social justice, democratic government, and national autonomy, the Revolution modernized capitalist class relations, rationalized an authoritarian state, and promoted dependent industrial growth. And they see the Revolution not as a continuing process but as having ended, depending on one's point of view, between 1917 and the 1950s. 6

759 Having reviewed basic approaches to the study of revolutionary Mexico, let us examine how two leading revisionists explain the interplay of new-regime state making and the world political economy in the 1920s.

Arnaldo C6rdova and Jean Meyer: Revisionist Analyses of the 1920s Arnaldo C6rdova argues that while rural mass upheavals were the Revolution's driving force, the traditionalism and localism of the agrarian and urban poor enabled the Constitutionalist movement, which represented the nascent middle classes, to gain control of the post-insurrectionary state. Presidents Alvaro O breg6n (1920-24) and Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-28) were bent on developing an indigenous business class. Yet, unlike the new regime's first president, Venustiano Carranza (1917-20), they built land and labor reforms into their agenda to coopt popular radicalism and broaden their bases of support against competing revolutionary bosses, surviving members of the old elite, and metropolitan investors. Although Obreg6n and Calles frequently spoke in radical terms, C6rdova regards their reformism, including the establishment of a central party apparatus in 1928-29, as a potent and successful weapon against the socialist challenge. By portraying the state as the instrument of no particular class, reformist policies cultivated a social consensus to underpin political stabilization and industrial growth in capitalist Mexico. 7 Jean Meyer differs from C6rdova in downplaying the role of the agrarian masses in the demise of the Porfirian order, but underscores the new state's campaign against the rural and urban lower classes during the 1920s. Meyer notes that the vast majority of Mexico's poor did not take up arms for the Revolution, and that those who did were mutually antagonistic as well as at odds with the middle-class victors. Indeed, he highlights the anti-popular purposes and results of reform in the 1920s, and observes that the extension of central authority sparked the largest mass movement of the entire Revolution - north-central Mexico's counterrevolutionary agrarian revolt of 1926-29. Like C6rdova, Meyer regards Obreg6n and Calles as representatives of the native bourgeoisie, yet he analyzes the post-insurrectionary state as, first and foremost, a modernized authoritarian organization: Leadership relied not on ideological hegemony but on the state's coercive and administrative powers to dominate the popular classes, s These differences aside, C6rdova and Meyer agree that the state-making tactics of the 1920s accentuated Mexico's social inequality, political oppression, and economic dependence. They stress that even as the new state suppressed domestic opponents, it remained extremely vulnerable to United

760 States military intervention as well as to resistance by metropolitan oil, mining, and banking interests. C6rdova and Meyer assert that, because of the new regime's vulnerability, the Revolution assisted the extension of North American influence over Mexican affairs. Despite their avowed nationalism, Obreg6n and Calles sought United States investments to foster economic recovery, and even relied on United States diplomatic support to overcome local military uprisings and to end the counterrevolutionary rebellion of 1926-29. C6rdova concludes that, by strengthening an authoritarian state, the Revolution promoted the dependent economic development begun during the Porfiriato. 9 Meyer concurs that the Mexican Revolution, like all revolutions hitherto, centralized and rationalized the state structure that defends the power and privilege of dominant groups against new revolutionary challenges. 10 C6rdova and Meyer contribute penetrating insights into the Mexican RevolutionJ l Yet recent scholarship on the world-historical development of capitalism suggests that they, like other revisionists, minimize or overlook the interdependence of the Revolution's struggles and outcomes with global shifts of production, trade, and geopolitics. Important here are the role of the state in leading Mexico from peripheral to intermediate or semiperipheral status, 12 and the interdependence of Mexico's advancement with political and economic transformations not only in metropolitan areas but in other underdeveloped areas as well. The following section addresses these issues. It first outlines a world-historical view of state formation and economic change in late-industrializing countries, and then uses it to reanalyze revolutionary Mexico, 1920-28.

Statemaking and Economic Change in Late-Industrializing Countries The literature on imperialism and dependency explains the unequal distribution of wealth on a global scale by reference to the impact on the Americas, Africa, and Asia of Western European and United States political and economic expansionism. Some theorists speak of "sub-imperialism," and some recognize the active resistance of the periphery against foreign intrusion. Generally speaking, however, this literature analyzes international production, trade, and geopolitics in terms of the class struggles within, and competitive relations among, metropolitan nations and the means by which their hegemonic groups siphon wealth from less-developed societies.Z3 Hence the central questions become: What political and business deals have been struck between metropolitan interests and the domestic upper classes? And what consequences do these deals have for local power and economic

761 growth? I discuss this view of underdevelopment in general and the Mexican Revolution in particular, not to challenge its findings, but to note that it overlooks how socio-economic and political transformations in one peripheral area are connected with such changes in other late-industrializing areas as well as in metropolitan nations. Theories of imperialism overlook how state and class relations within, and political-economic rivalry among, underdeveloped countries influence the distribution of foreign investments throughout the periphery. 14 Let us take, then, an alternative approach to the interplay of conflict and change in the periphery with the transnational development of capitalism. Like the literature on imperialism and dependency, this "world-historical" alternative notes how North Atlantic states and firms extend their influence over less-developed societies; and it considers the resistance by peripheral peoples to the destruction of their traditional ways of life/5 Yet it analyzes the transformation of any late-industrializing society in terms not simply of the ties between external powers and local dominant groups, but also of its relation to other late-industrializing societies. 16 In this view, because of growing economic and diplomatic-military interdependence between societies, class formation and state building are increasingly influenced by transnational arrangements. ~7 Hence the world-historical view poses two questions: First, what domestic and international conditions have helped strengthen some peripheral states and advance their economies to intermediate standing in the world division of labor? And, second, what were the consequences of such gains, not merely for the distribution of wealth and power locally, but for the international political economy as a whole? Peripheral states that achieved intermediate standing did so either by nationalist action against metropolitan governments and enterprises, by collaboration with such interests, or by some combination of the two strategies.18 The nationalist strategy exploits domestic and world crises that neutralize internal and external opponents. Where successful, nationalist state administrators and the middle and lower classes gain at the expense of metropolitan governments, investors, and their local allies. 19The collaborationist strategy likewise plays on internal configurations of power, but depends on the inflow of metropolitan investments. While foreign investments strengthen the dominance of North Atlantic states and firms, they also enhance the prosperity of client governments and business elites in the periphery. These dependent partners boost themselves at the expense of the native entrepreneurs and masses as well as other underdeveloped areas. The latter may be freer of external influence than more prosperous zones, and their domestic inequalities of wealth and power may be less pronounced. But they suffer economic

762 stagnation and increased vulnerability to their strengthened counterparts in other regions. 2~ How might this view enhance understanding of interactions between Mexican state building, 1920-28, and global production, commerce, and geopolitics? The decade after World War I was a time of international economic growth, led by the industrialization and foreign investments of the United States. 21 With respect to post-insurrectionary Mexico, the world-historical view leads us to ask: How did local and global conflicts influence the distribution of foreign investments throughout the periphery?22 How did foreign investments affect state power and economic development in peripheral societies? How were state-making conflicts and economic changes of the 1920s in underdeveloped areas related to their nationalist achievements and failures during the Great Depression and World War II? 23What impact did government policies in late-industrializing countries during the 1930s and 1940s have on subsequent state formation and economic development, and on metropolitan interests after World War II? With these questions in mind, we may reanalyze revolutionary Mexico, 1920-28.

New-Regime State and World Economy The governments of Alvaro Obreg6n (1920-24) and Plutarco Elias Calles (1924-28) faced many problems. During the Revolution, the Mexican economy suffered extensive damage, including the collapse of banking and the destruction of railroads. Despite the Revolution, moreover, foreign companies - above all from the United States - virtually monopolized petroleum, mining, and electric power. Though farming remained mostly in Mexican hands, North Americans took advantage of revolutionary strife to expand their holdings in export agriculture. Finally, joint ownership of firms by foreigners and Mexicans was common in the small manufacturing sector. 24 Hence the new-regime was highly vulnerable to external pressures, primarily from the investors and government of the United States, which faced little European competition in the Caribbean basin. 25 Meanwhile, architects of the new state faced major domestic challenges. The revolutionary bourgeoisie itself was not only economically weak but politically divided into regionalist fractions that resisted the creation of a strong, centralized government, whose makers had also to contend with mobilized segments of the lower classes (especially in the countryside), numerous cliques of military bosses, and surviving members of the Porfirian aristocracy.26 Thus Sonoran hegemony and the survival of the new state were both at risk. The Sonorans proved remarkably adept, however, at consolidating their

763 power as well as strengthening the state. C6rdova, Meyer, and other revisionists show that Sonoran leaders wanted government centralization for personal advancement and to develop the Mexican business class. 27 How, and to what degree, did Obreg6n and Calles strengthen their personal power and the state organization? Let us first address local and then international conflicts attending the new regime's formation. Domestically, central authority hinged on the Sonoran group's pragmatic reformism. Obreg6n and Calles employed reformist tactics to establish state control over the key trade union, the politically moderate Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM). By backing CROM in selected strikes, appointing CROM leaders to political office, and opposing the formation of competing labor organizations, Obreg6n and Calles could use CROM to discipline domestic and foreign companies. The allied workers, who served in militias, constituted a valuable weapon against regionalist challenges by military strongmen, civilian politicians, and the rural poor. 2s New-regime executives used the same strategy to neutralize campesino opposition and undercut rural powerholders. Favoring some factions, they appointed campesino leaders to political and military posts; they courted, for a while, the reformist National Agrarian Party (PNA); and they cultivated client village bosses. They promoted agrarian reform to pacify militant campesinos and to mobilize popular support against wealthy landowners and personalist rivals. Rural militias such as the PNA served to complement and counterbalance their urban working-class counterparts. 29 Thus pragmatic reformism, reinforced by nationalist slogans and programs of cultural unification, helped Obreg6n and Calles transform disunited workers and campesinos into bulwarks against the opposition, a~ These tactics were not entirely successful, however. In the late 1920s the campesinos of north-central Mexico waged a protracted struggle against the new regime. And, throughout the decade, provincial bosses retained considerable autonomy vis-h-vis the national government. 3~ Nevertheless, tactical populism did help consolidate the new regime. By establishing coalitions with selected campesino and worker groups, the Sonoran diarchy eliminated rival caudillos, initiated military reform, and extended government authority over the upper classes. They also took measures to rationalize the federal bureaucracy, which through land redistribution, fiscal reform, and economic reconstruction, assumed a more prominent role in provincial affairs) 20breg6n and Calles levied new taxes and, cutting the army's relative share of the budget, established a national

764 bank and built roads and irrigation systems.33 They thereby spurred the growth of export agriculture, light industry, and commerce, which enriched many "revolutionary" elites, strengthening their dependence on the national state.34 This dependence, and the upsurge of factionalist rivalries after Obreg6n's assassination in 1920, helped Calles incorporate many such elites into an official party by the end of his presidencyY The party, which in the 1930s became a powerful instrument of cooptation and control, further centralized political authority. 36 Thus Obreg6n and Calles made substantial progress consolidating federal authority over domestic challengers. But how successful were their attempts to strengthen the state against foreign investors and the United States government? As noted above, United States interests faced little competition from Europeans in the Caribbean basin. Although European investors sustained the greatest losses during the revolutionary strife of 1910-17, North Americans led the international campaign to obtain compensation from the Mexican government. Here Obreg6n and Calles faced a dilemma. They wanted to establish greater control over petroleum and mining, as well as other foreign economic spheres of influence. But they dared not risk war with the United States. Furthermore, national reconstruction required loans and investments, and postwar conditions in Europe forced Obreg6n and Calles to seek North American capital. 37 Hence, Mexico's pragmatic foreign policy complemented her pragmatic domestic policy. In international politics, of course, the new regime was considerably more restricted. But United States interests were far from monolithic. During the administrations of Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), Warren Harding (1921-23), and Calvin Coolidge (1923-29), diplomatic considerations often overrode the hard-line stance of big capital; business itself comprised competing factions; and a variety of other interests, such as organized labor, religious groups, and newspapers, further complicated matters. 38 Obreg6n and Calles, striving to maximize their bargaining leverage, attempted to assert federal authority over foreigners and attract their investments. For example, early in his presidency, Obreg6n exploited the divergent interests of North American oil firms and international bankers. He undertook to enlarge the state's share of petroleum profits to pay United States and European creditors, thus to gain favor with foreign bankers and raise prospects for a loan. At the same time he courted the mining companies, in the midst of a downturn by reducing their taxes; and he encouraged, without success, new European investment in petroleum. A wide range of United

765 States business groups lobbied for diplomatic recognition of the Obreg6n regime and the expansion of United States-Mexican trade. 39 But after Obreg6n doubled the petroleum export tax in 1921, North American oil firms suspended production and the State Department threatened military intervention. The resulting settlement lowered the tax; and, subsequently, Obreg6n was conciliatory toward international business, granting concessions on external debt, property losses, and the rights of foreign enterprises. His administration did not obtain a loan, but it did gain United States diplomatic recognition and backing against a major domestic uprising, the de la Huerta revolt, in 1923-24. 40 Calles renewed the nationalist campaign by introducing legislation to limit the independence of foreign entrepreneurs and, as oil production diminished and the mining industry recovered, by increasing the tax burden on mining firms. 41 Yet, like his predecessor, Calles balanced nationalism with measures to secure investments and loans. These measures included tax concessions to manufacturers, promises of a docile labor force, and a new debt agreement to secure the support of international bankers. 42 Nevertheless, nationalist policies renewed the threat:of North American invasion. This threat, along with domestic tensions, economic recession, and the business activities of the new elite, led Calles after mid-1927 to accommodate the United States government and foreign investors. Using the state's powers of cooptation and control, he curtailed land and labor reforms and initiated several years of harmonious United States-Mexican relations. 43 But Obreg6n and Calles never seriously challenged the hacienda; nor did they reduce the economic and diplomatic influence of North Americans. Indeed, commercial growth spawned a new group of"revolutionary" entrepreneurs who, through inter-marriage and business deals, closed ranks with the surviving Porfirian elite. 44 Meanwhile, the value of United States investments in Mexico reached its highest point ever, and foreigners may actually have increased their share of Mexican wealthy Latin America accounted for roughly 33 percent of United States overseas investments and 20 percent of British overseas investments in the 1920s. 46 But, despite the growth of metropolitan lending to underdeveloped countries, uncertainties in Mexico kept its leaders from obtaining a foreign loan. 47 The value of North American investments in Mexico rose from $909 million in 1919 to $1,550 million in 1928, while the value of British investments rose from $820 million in 1918 to $995 million in 1928. 48 But these increases represented little new direct investment. 49 Moreover, Mexico, which before World War I absorbed 65 percent of United States investments in Latin

766 America, slipped by 1929 to 28 percent and a first-place tie with Cuba, followed by Argentina (11 percent), Brazil (9 percent), and Chile (7 percent). 5~ In regard to British investments, Mexico remained a distant third in Latin America after Argentina and Brazil. 51 Still, as Obreg6n and Calles began to reestablish political order, their minimal success in attracting foreign capital, the growth of Mexican exports, and the modest impact of nationalist fiscal policies combined to promote the expansion of manufacturing by 45 to 50 percent and the Gross Domestic Product by 30 to 38 percent. 52 Compared with Latin America's two other largest economies, in rate of growth in manufacturing in the 1920s Mexico matched Brazil (50 percent) but not Argentina (70 percent), while in rate of growth in Gross Domestic Product Mexico lagged behind both Brazil (50 percent) and Argentina (60 percent). 53 By the end of World War II, all three nations had industrialized considei'ably, Brazil and Mexico outstripping Argentina to become the dominant economies of Latin America. 54 Of the three, Mexico had experienced the most far-reaching sociopolitical changes, reflected in its political stability, agricultural development, and comparative success at negotiating the terms of foreign investment. 55 What, then, was the relationship between government policy in the 1920s and Mexico's later sociopolitical and economic transformation? Fundamental was the use of worker and campesino groups to centralize government authority. To be sure, Obreg6n and Calles only partially consolidated the new state, and they did not significantly alter land tenure. The Revolution appeared to have ended in the late 1920s with the rapproachement between old and new elites, and between the Calles administration and the United States. Yet Calles, in striving for political stability, coopted into the party many mass-based regionalist leaders. I n their quest for both personal advancement and national development, these leaders, like other civilian and military functionaries, sought to renew and deepen the state's commitment to the Revolutionary constitution of 1917. Potential allies included intellectuals, small business interests, and, most crucially, the lower classes. 56 The popular-nationalist coalition materialized during the Great Depression and, under the leadership of President L~izaro C~rdenas (1934-40), ended the dominance of Calles and his associates. 57 Once again, campesinos and urban workers played a strategic role: By incorporating the masses into the official party and by reconstituting popular militias, C~irdenas not only undercut the autonomy of the army but greatly reduced the leverage of other opponents, domestic and foreign. C~trdenas took advantage of a weakened upper class and foreign pressure during the Depression to launch the Revolu-

767 tion's most radical program of agrarian and labor reform, and to expropriate part or all of certain businesses most notably petroleum. Doing so, he undermined the hacendado class and, more generally, improved the government's ability to neutralize rightist and leftist threats at home and to negotiate with powerful groups abroad. Flexible in response to economic disruption and conservative opposition, Cfirdenas and his successor, Manuel Avila Camacho (1940 46), downplayed land and labor reforms in favor of native and international business. 58 They thereby stabilized the postrevolutionary state, fostered import-substitution development, and opened the way for multinational industry after World War II. 59 Mexico, of course, was not the only peripheral country to industrialize during this period. 6~ Nor did the industrialization of postrevolutionary Mexico ameliorate authoritarian rule, poverty, and economic dependence. But compared with other Latin American regimes, Mexico has proved remarkably adept at managing reactionary and radical pressures alike and, within the limits of its capital and technology, at harnessing foreign investment. And its leaders, attempting to maintain domestic legitimacy and distance themselves from North American interests, have invoked Mexico's revolutionary heritage to extend diplomatic support to popular-nationalist movements in the Caribbean basin and elsewhere. 61 The policies of Obreg6n and Calles by no means guaranteed that the Revolution would issue in the Cfirdenas reforms, or that Mexico would develop an intermediate, semi-industrialized economy. Meyer notes that the Revolution's outcome would have differed substantially but for events beyond the leaders' control, including Obreg6n's assassination in 1928 and the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the state built by Obreg6n and Calles was crucial to reform, political stability, and industrial development in postrevolutionary Mexico. Conclusion

Obreg6n and Calles encountered intense but disunited resistance at home and abroad. They responded with land and labor reforms to coopt campesinos and urban workers, thereby undercutting popular opposition and enlisting the masses in the campaign against regionalist bosses, Porfirian oligarchs, and foreign investors. These populist alliances helped the Sonoran diarchy build more loyal and professional military and civilian bureaucracies, which in turn helped regulate local and metropolitan firms, increase and stabilize tax revenues, and develop the economy's infrastructure. Following Obreg6n assasination in 1928, Calles forestalled collapse by integrating many military and civilian bosses into a central party organization.

768 Yet the state remained only partially consolidated. At the end of the Calles administration, regionalist cliques retained considerable political autonomy, and a major campesino rebellion challenged federal authority. Furthermore, dependence on foreign petroleum and mining companies limited government revenue and spending. In mid-1927, Calles inaugurated several years of conservative domestic policies and open collaboration with North Americans. But Calles did not purge all progressive elements from the state machinery. His quest for political stability led him to enroll in the official party many elites who depended on mass followings and who opposed the rightward shift of government policy. During the Great Depression, these elites formed a coalition with intellectuals, small business, and the lower classes that after electing Lhzaro C~rdenas president, ended Callista hegemony and undertook far-reaching reforms. Thus the Cardenistas completed what Obreg6n and Calles had begun: the Mexican state's transformation from the poorly centralized oligarchic structure of the Porfiriato to the highly centralized, mass-inclusionary structure of the postrevolutionary era. In the next decade, Mexico joined the ranks of the world's intermediate, "semiperipheral" economies thanks to import-substitution and metropolitan capital. Since then, Mexican governments have maintained political stability and spurred industrialization by steering a pragmatic course between reformism and conservatism, nationalism and collaborationism. In regard to future research, this essay suggests that we consider not only Mexico's relationship to North Atlantic powers in the 1920s but also its standing vis-/l-vis the states and classes of other late-industrializing countries. One possibility is to study the interplay of metropolitan actions to control the raw materials and markets of the periphery with the politics of resistance and accommodation throughout the Caribbean basin: How did international and local conflicts affect the distribution of United States and Western European investments in the Caribbean basin? What impact did metropolitan investments have on the region's struggles over state power and pattern of economic change? How did the state-building struggles and economic changes of the 1920s influence the region's nationalist breakthroughs and defeats during the Great Depression and World War II? What were the consequences of nationalist successes and failures for the subsequent paths of state making and economic development in the Caribbean basin, as well as for North Atlantic investors and governments after World War II? NOTES 1. See, for example, Pablo Gonz:~lezCasanova and Enrique Florescano,eds., Mbxico, hoy (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1979),and recent issues of the weeklymagazine Proceso (Mexico City).

769 2. Among the relevant works are Stanley R. Ross, ed., Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?. rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 19763; David C. Bailey, "Revisionism and the Recent Historiography of the Mexican Revolution," Hispanic American Historical Review 58 (1978): 62-79; John Womack, Jr., "The Mexican Economy during the Revolution, 1910 1920," Marxist Perspectives I ( 1978): 80-123; Adolfo Gilly et al., Interpretaciones de la revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico City: Nueva lmagen, 1979); David A, Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Barry Carr, "Recent Regional Studies of the Mexican Revolution," Latin American Research Review 15 (1980): 3 14; Ram6n Eduardo Ruiz, The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905 1924 (New York: Norton, 1980); Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981 ); Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); James Cockcroft, Mexico: Class Formation, Capital Accumulation, and the State (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983). 3. See the following two essays by former presidents of Mexico: Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, "A Presidential Reply," and Luls Echeverrla Alvarez, "Our Revolution Has Not Ended," in Ross, ed., ls the Mexican Revolution Dead?. 4. Prominent examples include Ernest Gruening, Mexico and Its Heritage (New York: Century, 1928); Frank Tannenbaum, Peace by Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933); and Frank Brandenburg, The Making oiCModern Mexico (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964). 5. These writing include Howard F. Cline, "Mexico: A Matured Latin American Revolution," in Ross, ed., Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?.; Stanley R. Ross, "Mexico: The Preferred Revolution," in Politics of Change in Latin America, ed. Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead (New York: Praeger, 1964); Robert E. Scott, "Mexico: The Established Revolution," in Political Culture and Political Development, ed. Sidney Verba and Lucien Pye (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19643; Charles C. Cumberland, Mexico: The Struggle for Modernity (New York: Oxford, 1968); and James W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution: Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970). 6. In addition to the works cited in note 2, see especially Adolfo Gilly, La revoluci6n interrumpida (Mexico City: "El Caballito," 1972); Arnaldo C6rdova, La formaci6n del poder politico en Mbxico (Mexico City: Era, 1972); and Jean Meyer, La revoluci6n mejicana, 1910 1940 (Barcelona: DOPESA, 1973). 7. C6rdova, Formaei6n del poder politico; idem, La ideologia de la revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico City: Era, 1973); and idem, "M~xico: Revoluci6n burguesa y polltica de masas," in Gilly et al., lnterpretaciones. 8. Meyer, Revoluci6n mejicana; idem, "Periodizaci6n e ideologia," in Contemporary Mexico, ed. James W. Wilkie et al. (Berkeley: University of California press, 1976); idem, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People between Church and State, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 9. C6rdova, Formaci6n delpoderpolltico, chap. 5. 10. Meyer, Revoluci6n mejicana, 190-94, 228-31,260-61, part 2, chap. 5. I 1. See, for example, Bailey, ,Revisionism"; and Womack, "Mexican Economy." 12. Intermediate, or"semiperipheral," economies are characterized by a rough balance between capital- and labor-intensive production. See Immanuel Wallerstein, "Semiperipheral Countries and the Contemporary World Crisis," in idem, The Capitalist Worm Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Peter Evans, Dependent Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); and Gary Gereffi and Peter Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy in the Semiperiphery: A Comparison of Brazil and Mexico," Latin American Research Review 16 (1981): 31-64. 13. Overviews of this literature include Evans, Dependent Development, chap. 1; and Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980). 14. These issues are implicit in recent writings by Folker Fr~bel et al., "The Tendency towards a New International Division of Labor," Review 1 (1977): 73-88; Peter Evans, "Recent Research on Multinational Corporations," Annual Review of Sociology 7 (1981): 199-223; Alejandro Portes and John Walton, Labor, Class, and the InternationalSystem (New York: Academic Press, 1981); and Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Strangely enough, critics of world capitalism say virtually nothing about warfare between peripheral states. What are its causes? And what are its consequences for the countries involved and for other underdeveloped countries as regards their sociopolitical structures and relationships to foreign investors and states? 15. See, for example, Juan Corradi et al., eds., Ideology and Social Change in Latin America (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1977); and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla and James Lowel Dietz, "Toward a New Understanding of Development and Underdevelopment," Latin American Perspectives 8 ( 1981): 138-47.

770 16. See especially Wolf, Europe and the People Without History. He quotes Alexander Lesser admonishing us to "think of human aggregates as 'inextricably involved with other aggregates, near and far, in weblike, netlike connections'" (385). Wolf summarizes his own analysis of world-historical change since the fifteenth century: "As we unraveled the chains of causes and effects at work in the lives of particular populations, we saw them extend beyond any one population to embrace the trajectories of others all others" (385). 17. See Portes and Walton, Labor, Class, andthe lnternationalSystem, chaps. 1 2, 5 6; Wolf, Europe and the People Without History; Fr6bel et al., "Tendency towards a New International Division of Labor"; Albert Bergesen, "From Utilitarianism to Globology: The Shift from the Individual to the World as a Whole as the Primordial Unit of Analysis," in Studies o f the Modern World-System, ed. idem (New York: Academic Press, 1979); Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, "Patterns of Development of the Modern World-System," Review 1 (1977): 11! 45; and Anthony Giddens, A Contemporao' Critique of Historical Materialism (London: MacMillan, 1981), chaps. 8, 10. 18. See Hopkins and Wallerstein, "Patterns"; immanuel Wallerstein, "Dependence in an Interdependent World: The Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist WorldEconomy," in idem, The Capitalist World-Economy; Evans, Dependent Development; Gereffi and Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy"; Folker Fr~bel, "The Current Development of the World-Economy: Reproduction and Accumulation of Capital on a World Scale," Review 5 (1982): 507 55. 19. Wallerstein, "Dependence in an Interdependent World," 72 83. 20. Ibid. For comparative analyses ofthe"semiperipherar' transitions of Mexico and Brazil, see Susan Eckstein and Peter Evans, "The Revolution as Cataclysm and Coup: Political Transformation and Economic Development in Mexico and Brazil," Comparative Studies in Sociology 1 (1978): 129 55; and Gereffi and Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy." A fundamental issue is whether the discussion of nationalism and collaborationism accurately describes the relation of socialist states to the capitalist world economy. See, for example, Andr6 Gunder Frank, "Long live Transideological Enterprise! The Socialist Economies in the Capitalist International Division of Labor," Revie~ 1 (1977): 91 140; Wallerstein, "Semiperipheral Countries and the Contemporary World Crisis"; Giddens, Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, 200 202, chap. 10; and Christopher Chase-Dunn, ed., Socialist States in the World-System (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1982). 21. See Cleona Lewis, America's Stake in International Investments (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1938); Derek H. Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, 1919 1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Daniel Chirot, Social Change in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977), 91 98,109 11, chap. 5. 22. See Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, chaps. 2, 5, 8 10. 23. On Latin American responses to these international crises, see Pablo Gonz~.lez Casanova, ed., Ambrica Latina en los a~qostreinta (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mbxico, 1977); and Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, trans. Marjory Mattingly Urquidi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), chap. 5. 24. Womack, "Mexican Economy"; Roger D. Hansen, The Polities of Mexican Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 13 28; Clark W. Reynolds, The Mexican Economy: Twentieth Century Structure and Growth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 26 32; Cristina Pugna, "La confederaci6n de camaras industriales, 1917-1924," Trimestrepolltico 1 (1976): 103-31. 25. Katz, Secret War in Mexico, chaps. 13 14; Robert Freeman Smith, The United States and Revolutionary Nationalism in Mexico, 1916-1932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972); Lorenzo Meyer, Mexico and the United States in the Oil Controversy, 1917-1942, trans. Muriel Vasconcelos (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). 26. See Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peassant; and Barry Carr, El movimient o obrero y la politica en Mbxico, 1910 1929 (Mexico City: Era, 1981), chaps. 3-5. 27. See, for example, Carr, Movimiento obrero, chaps. 3 8; H6ctor Aguilar Camin, "The Relevant Tradition: Sonoran Leaders in the Revolution," in Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peasant; and Linda B. Hall, Alvaro Obreg6n: Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911 1920 (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1981). 28. Carr, Movimiento obrero, chaps. 4-6; Ram6n Eduardo Ruiz, Labor and the Ambivalent Revolutionaries: Mexico, 1911-1923 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Randall Hansis, "The Political Strategy of Military Reform: Alvaro Obreg6n and Revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1924," The Americas 36 (1979): 197-232. 29. J. Meyer, Revoluci6n mejicana, 214 30; C6rdova, ldeologia, 282 87,334-46; Carr, Movimiento obrero, 155; Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peasant; Hansis, "Military Reform," 212, 214-16; John Womack, Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1969), 365-70, 372 77; Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), chap, 5; Arturo Warman . . . . Y venimos a contradecir: Los

771 campesinos de Morelos y el estado naeional (Mexico City: Ediciones de la Casa Chata, 1976), 158 61; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis: A Cultural History (Tucson: University of

Arizona Press, 1980), chap. 5. 30. See Mary Kay Vaughn, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880 1928 (DeKalb: Northern lllinois University Press, i982). 31. G ruening, Mexico and Its Heritage: J. Meyer, Cristero Rebellion; idem, Revoluci6n mejicana, Part I, chaps. 3 4; Brading, ed., Caudillo and Peasant; Rafael Loyola Diaz, La crisis Obreg6n-Calles y el estado mexicano (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980), introduction and chap. 1. 32. C6rdova, Ideologia, chaps. 5 6; J. Meyer, Historia de la revoluci6n mexicana, perlodo 1924 1928: Estado v sociedad con Calles, with the collaboration of Enrique Krauze and Cayetano Reyes (Mexico City: Colegio de M6xico, 1977), chap. 6; Enrique Krauze, Historia de la revoluci6n mexicana, perlodo 1924 1928: La reconstrucci6n econ6mica, with the collaboration of Jean Meyer and Cayetano Reyes (Mexico City: Colegio de M6xico, 1977). 33. Krauze, Reconstrucci6n econ6mica; Wilkie, Mexican Revolution, 57 63; Alberto J. Pani, La polltica hacend6ria v la revoluci6n (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1926); Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, "Notes on Quantitative History: Federal Expenditure and Social Change in Mexico Since 1910," Latin American Research Review 5 (1970): 74; Richard Tardanico, "State Dependency, and Nationalism: Revolutionary Mexico, 1924 1928," Comparative Studies in Society and Histoo' 24 (1982): 410-13, 416 17. 34. Krauze, Reconstrucci6n econ6miea; Reynolds, Mexican Economy, 30 32, 102 107, 163; C6rdova, ldeologla, 376-79; Womack, "Mexican Economy," 92--104; Edwin Lieuwen, Mexican Militarism: The Rise and Fall ~[" the Revolutionary Army, 1910 1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968), 85 92, 104-105. 35. Loyola Diaz, Crisis Obreg6n-Calles, chap. 2; C6rdova, Formaci6n del poder politico, 38-40; Wayne A. Cornelius, "Nation Building, Participation, and Distribution: The Politics of Social Reform Under Chrdenas," in Gabriel A. Almond et al., Crisis, Choice, and Change: Historical Studies o f Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 401 402; Luis Javier Garrido, El partido de la revoluci6n institucionalizada: La formaci6n del nuevo estado en Mkxico, 1928 1945 (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1982), chap. 2. 36. See especially Javier Garrido, Partido, chaps. 3-5; and Hamilton, Limits o f State Autonomy, chaps. 4 9. 37. Smith, United States and Revolutionao' Nationalism, chaps. 8 9; L. Meyer, Mexico and the United States, chaps. 5 6; idem, Los grupos de presi6n extranjeros en el Mbxico revolucionario, 1910 1940 (Mexico City: Secretafia de Relaciones Exteriores, 1973). 38. See Dana G. Munro, The United States andthe Caribbean Repubfics 1921 1933(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964); Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionao, Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), 108-21; Katz. Secret War in Mexico; L. Meyer, Mexico andthe UnitedStates, Chaps. 4 6; and Smith, United States and Revolutionary Nationalism, chaps. 4 9. 39. L. Meyer, Grupos, 29 36, 55; idem, Mexico and the United States, chap. 5; Smith, United States and Revolutionao' Nationalism, chap. 8; Marvin D. Bernstein, The Mexican Mining lndusto', 1890 1950 (Albany: State University of New York, 1965), 130 136. 40. L. Meyer, Mexico and the United States, 84-106; Smith, United States and Revolutionao, Nationalism. 204-28. 41. L. Meyer, Mexico and United States, 107 -26; Smith, United States and Revolutionary Nationalism, 229 37. 42. Joseph E. Sterrett and Joseph S. Davis, Fiscal and Economic Condition o f Mexico (New York: Report Submitted to the International Committee of Bankers on Mexico, 1929), 208, 210 11; Smith, United States and Revolutionary Nationalism, 230-31; Carr, Mo vimiento obrero, chap. 5; J. Meyer, Estado v sociedad con Calles, 77 96. 43. L. Meyer, Mexico and the United States, 126 38, chap. 7; Smith, United States and Revolutionao' Nationalism, 244 64. 44. Krauze, Reconstrucci6n econ6mica; Reynolds, Mexican Economy, 30-32, 102 107, 163; Womack, "Mexican Economy," 92-104; Lieuwen, Mexican Militarism, 85 92, 104 5; C6rdova, Ideologla, 376 79. 45. Lewis, America's Stake in International Investments, 606; Reynolds, Mexican Economy, 203; Womack, "Mexican Economy," 95-104. 46. See Lewis, America's Stake in International Investments, 606; and Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Problem o f Foreign Investment (London: Oxford University Press, 1~937), 144. 47. Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, chap. 10; Edgar Turlington, Mexico and her Foreign Creditors (New York: Columbia U niversity Press, 1930); Sterrett and Davis, Fiscal and Economic Condition; Smith, United States and Revolutionary Nationalism, chaps 7 9. 48. Womack, "Mexican Economy," 95. Figures include direct and indirect investments. Womack presents the values of United States and British investments in pesos; I have converted pesos to dollars.

772 49. National Chamber Foundation and Council of the Americas, Inc., Impact of Foreign Investment in Mexico (Washington, D.C., and New York, n.d.), 17 19; Harry K. Wright, Foreign Entertprise in Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 61 66; United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, "The Growth of Foreign Investments in Latin America," in Foreign Investment in Latin America: Cases and Attitudes, ed. Marvin D. Bernstein (New York; Knopf, 1966), 45-46; L. Meyer, Mexh'o and the United States, 11 13; Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, 243; Lewis, America's Stake in International Investments. appendix D: Sterrett and Davis, Fiscal and Economic Condition; Gereffi and Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy," 35. 50. Max Winkler, Investments of U.S. Capital in Latin America (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971), 275,278. See also Lewis, America's Stake in International Investments, 606; United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, American Direct Investments in Foreign Countries (New York: Arno Press, 1976),8 28; United Nations,"Growth of Foreign lnvestments," 45-46; and Aldcroft, From Versailles to Wall Street, chaps. 5, 8 10. 51. J. Fred Rippy, British Investments in Latin America (M inneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959), 67, 76; Winkler, Investments of U.S. Capital, 280, 283. 52. Calculated from estimates by Leopoldo Solis and Clark W. Reynolds, as presented in Womack, "Mexican Economy," 94. 53. Calculated from Nathaniel H. Left, Underdevelopment and Development in Brazil, vol. 1: Economic Structure and Change, 1882-1947 (London: George Allen & Unwin,.1982), 166; and Carlos F. Diaz Alejandro, Essays on the Economic History of the Argentina Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 52 53. The Argentine data lump together manufacturing and mining. 54. See, for example, Reynolds, Mexican Economy; Diaz Alejandro, Essays; Evans, Dependent Development; Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America; and Gereffi and Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy." 55. See Eckstein and Evans, "Revolution as Cataclysm and Coup"; Evans, Dependent Development, 297 308; Gereffi and Evans, "Transnational Corporations, Dependent Development, and State Policy"; Reynolds, Mexican Economy, epilogue; Gonz~lez Casanova and Florescano, eds., M~xico, hoy; and Hamilton, Limits of State Autonomy, 25 38. 56. Tvzi Medin, El minimato presidencial: Historia politica del Maximato, 1928 1935 (Mexico City: Era, 1982); Cornelius, "Nation Building"; Hamilton, Limits of State Autonomv, chap. 4. 57. Medin, Minimato presidencial; Cornelius, "Nation Building"; Hamilton, Limits of State Autonomy, chap. 4. 58. L. Meyer, Mexico and the United States, chaps. 8-10; Cornelius, "Nation Building"; Hamilton, Limits of State Autonomy, chaps. 5 8. 59. Hamilton, Limits of State Autonomy, 267-80. 60. See, for example, Wallerstein, "Dependence in an Interdependent World," 77; and Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, chap. 5. 61. See, for example, Claude Heller, "Las condiciones internacionales de cambio social y la participaci6n politica en M~xico," Foro internaciona120 (1980): 411-26; Samuel Berkstein, "M6xico: Estrategia petrolera y politica exterior," Foro internacional 21 (1980): 65 82; Mario Ojeda, Alcances y llmites de la politica exterior de M~xico, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Colegio de M6xico, 1981); Edward J. Williams, "Mexico's Central American Policy: Revolutionary and Prudential Dimensions," in Colossus Challenged: The Struggle for Caribbean Influence, ed. H. Michael Erisman and John D. Martz (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982); Rene Herrera and Mario Ojeda, "La polltica de M6xico en la regi6n de Centroamerica," Foro lnternaciona123 (1983): 423 40.

Acknowledgment This essay forms part of a project on state building in revolutionary Mexico. The project has been furided by the Doherty Foundation, the American Philosophical S ociety, the Council on Research (Tulane University), and an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship (Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University). The ideas expressed in the essay, however, are my own responsibility. Theory and Society 13 (1984) 757-772 0304 2421/84/$03.00 9 1984 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.