CW: Mentions of rape, cannibalism, etc
Excerpts from "Historia de las Revoluciones Mexicanas [History of the Mexican Revolutions]", by INEHRM, 2019, 2nd edition.
The last days of Callismo: the 1929 campaign.
Following the successive military defeats of the Mexican government against the Cristeros, aggravated at the political level by the assassination of candidate Alvaro Obregón in 1928 after his intention to be reelected (which contravened the principles of the revolution in which he himself had participated, incidentally), which resulted in the collapse of the political support of the CROM (and therefore, of the Laborist Party) after being accused of having aided in the assassination of him[1], it was decided quasi-unanimously to form a political party that would unify all the disparate forces emanating from the 1910 Revolution, a desperate attempt to avoid the societal collapse that was already looming in favor of institutional reforms that would allow the government to move forward and "see the light at the end of the tunnel". With the CROM and the PL discredited, and the Communist Party in virtual hiding after having veered to an anti-Callista position, it was foreseen that a single great nationalist party could win the peace in Mexico and force the Cristeros to negotiate, or be destroyed for good.
Under this framework, the National Revolutionary Party was born on March 4, 1929, under the auspices of various post-revolutionary forces aligned with Calles. Its program, although not necessarily reactionary or conservative by liberal standards, was eminently populist, paternalistic and even corporatist under some parameters, which is why the leadership of the Communist Party categorically refused to ally or unite with the nascent party. It is not as if the PNR sought this objective either, since the repression towards the communists was already becoming more or less direct, as a result of the loss of national control at the hands of the Cristeros; the former being accused of collaborating with the latter to "overthrow the revolutionary order". The gradual loss of federal control of states such as Jalisco and the initial but already adverse effects of the Great Depression only made the revolutionary bourgeoisie more in favor of taking more extreme measures to pacify Mexico.
The PCM had assumed the position of class against class, so that, in relative (although sometimes difficult) harmony with the National Peasant League, it sought to have the support of the peasant population in the country, guided by the industrial workers, to gain control of the Mexican state apparatus. While the LNC was not necessarily an organization that agreed with a revolution, the radicalization of the Mexican government to have the poor peasants "controlled" under its control only caused the chances of the LNC aligning itself with the state to gradually fade away[2]. To this had to be added that the then national hero Zapata was already a known militant and propagandist of the PCM, which increased the closeness between the PCM and the LNC, even if on a personal level criticism or even insult was common. In January 1929, the PCM, together with the LNC and other minor organizations, some of anarchist character due to the influence of the WCPA which precipitated a "truce" between Mexican communists and anarchists, founded the Bloque Obrero y Campesino, or BOC [Workers' and Peasants' Bloc].
The BOC, under the umbrella of a Popular Front which, although subordinate to the PCM, was not the PCM, accepted cooperation with forces of the so-called "democratic" or "progressive bourgeoisie" which saw with good eyes a radical transformation of Mexican society, although the members of the Bloc were not very optimistic about attracting bourgeois or petty bourgeois to their ranks, since after all their modus operandi was to attract the majority of workers, whether urban or rural, for the transformation of Mexico into a dictatorship of the proletariat.
In an effort to avoid popular discontent, the Mexican government granted the BOC the possibility of participating in the presidential elections, although, as was to be expected, strictly regulated (i.e., censored), just like the campaign of José Vasconcelos, the greatest opponent at that time to the nascent Callista hegemony.
The haut-bourgeoisie, fearful of the Cristero reaction and the peasant radicalism sponsored by the communists and radical agrarians, but ambivalent about the clear political instability, which the PNR did not seem to resolve, remained mostly on the sidelines, voting for the candidate that would satisfy their interests. For their part, although there was undoubtedly support from certain members of the petty bourgeoisie for Mexican communism, the vast majority supported Vasconcelos for his project of national construction based on a humanist and iberist ideology, as well as national democratization (what an irony that Vasconcelos, the democrat, would give way to vasconcelismo as a quasi-fascist reaction!)[3]. A few others supported the PNR, since, a priori, the programs of the PNR and the Partido Nacional Antireeleccionista [National Anti-reelection Party, or PNA] (the party that supported Vasconcelos' candidacy, and the final remnant of a moderate liberalism in Mexico) were similar, since they sought to solve educational and political problems, rather than economic, agrarian or labor ones. The Cristeros called for a boycott of the elections, although some of their elements openly supported Vasconcelos, if that guaranteed the end of anticlericalism in Mexico.
Each Party or coalition had its own Government Program, which could be summarized as follows:
-PNR [4]:
-PNA [5]:
-BOC [6]:
As can be seen, the first two programs have an openly corporatist connotation, while the third, although not as radical as the program of the then WCPA in the United States, went more or less hand in hand with the position of the Communist International on the semi-feudal character of Mexico (and the rest of Latin America). In any case, while the program of the PNR was more general, that of the PNA aspired to conciliation with the Cristeros.
In any case, the 1929 electoral process was particularly violent: the Escobarist rebellion in the middle of the year, with indirect Cristero support, had left the Mexican State in an even more precarious position than it already was, with both Vasconcelistas and Communists being the arduous defenders of the homeland by civically and militarily opposing the rebellion, showing a political strength that the nascent PNR clearly did not seem to have. The government of Emilio Portes Gil sought a truce with both political sectors, but while the Vasconcelistas accepted, the PCM (and, reluctantly, the LNC, given the talks between Zapata and Úrsulo Galván) did not, maintaining a critical position with anyone who did not openly advocate Soviet power (with the exception of the remnants of the Mexican Liberal Party and the CGT, with whom the PCM had an unstable, but not fully antagonistic, relationship)[7].
The presidential elections were held in November 1929, under an atmosphere of uncertainty and political violence: during the months prior to the election, militants and sympathizers of the PCM had been intimidated or directly assassinated by the state machinery, as was the case of José Guadalupe Rodriguez, one of the most important members of the Party for having been part of its Central Committee. In addition, the PCM had been outlawed, so they could only present themselves as the BOC, and even then there was still the real possibility that the BOC would be outlawed as well. The Vasconcelistas and the PNA also denounced the repressive tactics of the PNR, which led them to be accused of being "reactionaries" by Calles.
In any case, during the elections, political manipulation and accusations of fraud were not long in coming: vote buying, destruction of ballots or their modification to favor the candidate Pascual Ortiz Rubio; forcing the Mexican government to make the laborists join them in coalition even if they did not want to, etc. Both Vasconcelistas and Communists knew beforehand that, whatever the election result was, it would most likely have been falsified by the PNR to favor Ortiz Rubio.
The elections had the following results:
It can be seen that due to the destruction of electoral archives during the Second Revolution, there is no percentage of the electoral participation during the extraordinary election, so the total of votes counted are considered the "100%" of percentage of voting participation, even if it's obvious it's not the case. Likewise, it is taken for granted in our days that both Zapata and Vasconcelos won more votes, but unfortunately there is no way to know how many votes were falsified.
As was to be expected, neither the BOC nor the PNA recognized the results. However, while the BOC maintained a rather moderate position (since they did not have the strength to take up arms, on one hand, and in the other, the Comintern called for caution), Vasconcelos called for an armed insurrection through the Plan de Guaymas, ignoring the elected president and the PNR government as a whole, and calling the people to form alternative municipal councils and organs of government that rebelled in arms against the PNR. However, although some members of the PNA supported the initiative, Vasconcelos was overcome and was forced to go into exile in the United States, thus Vasconcelismo died as a political force in the country (or, rather, democratic Vasconcelismo, since some of its sympathizers fled to Cristero territory, forming the basis of the future Synarchism once they abandoned their democratic positions).
Once Vasconcelos went into exile and the PNA was practically outlawed for incitement to armed rebellion, the BOC was pressured to join the official project or be outlawed as well. Sadly, for the PNR, once 1930 entered, the effects of the Great Depression began to be felt in Mexico: given the Mexican state's heavy reliance on U.S. capital as a means for national recovery and industrialization after the economic destruction resulting from the 1910 Revolution [8], once the U.S. economy began to weaken and contract, that foreign capital was greatly diminished or outright disappeared.
Although the intentions of the Mexican government were to build a self-sufficient economy, the truth is that this objective was unattainable in 1930, in large part because the Cristero insurgency and agrarian radicalism had made it impossible for the peasants to submit to a national agrarian plan to develop self-sufficiency. In addition, the practical inexistence of national agrarian technicians made it impossible for Mexico to develop on its own more efficient methods of agriculture, since there were neither the tools, equipment, nor machinery necessary to really industrialize the countryside. This is not to mention, of course, the fear or distrust that many farmers had of technicians and scientists in general, partly because of the experience of the Cientificos of the Porfirian period.
During the whole of 1930, the Mexican government tried unsuccessfully to convince the Mexican Communists to abandon the war posture against the State, arguing (not necessarily a lie) that the Cristeros were a threat that both had to deal with, together. However, the PCM's position did not change, since, while the PNR and the PCM agreed that the democratic revolution was necessary, the PCM rejected the leadership of the haut-bourgeoisie in such process. Finally, the assassination of President Ortiz Rubio on February 5, 1931 at the hands of a Vasconcelista led the PNR to take extreme measures to guarantee public order, and although the perpetrator had Cristero sympathies, the assassination was used as a scapegoat to declare both the LNC and the BOC in general as illegal, effectively leaving the PNR as the only legal party, beyond the Laborist Party, which was in a decadent state and, therefore, was effectively destroyed.
This triggered many politicians, both inside and outside the PNR who maintained a more or less neutral position or in sympathies towards the PCM and decided to openly join in opposition to the regime of the Maximato, as was the case of Felipe Carrillo Puerto [9], who after the repression exercised against the Socialist Party of the Southeast in Yucatán had to leave the state and managed to rejoin the PCM. A similar case was that of Francisco J. Mugica [10], who left the PNR, openly calling the government of Abelardo L. Rodriguez (as interim president) as rightist, and Calles as a "fascist". Mexican laborists, angry with the increasingly anti-worker decisions of the government decided to break with it, and although it is well known that neither the Laborist Party nor the CROM had any sympathies for the communists, they assumed a role of institutional rejection of Callismo, with Luis Morones calling for the "restoration of a legitimate, revolutionary and nationalist government that protects the working class". Finally, the anarchists in the CGT and the PLM called for an indefinite general strike and called their own comrades in the US to join the fight using any means available at their disposition.
Although the recommendation of the Comintern was to try to continue accumulating forces until the American elections [of 1932], rather than launching into a war they probably could not win, the PCM did not have many options left. The Central Committee of the Party, among whom were Diego Rivera, Valentín Campa and Hernan Laborde called for sabotage, on the one hand, and on the other, anarchists and even Trotskyists were invited to fight side by side with the Party, either directly or through the CTM and the CGT as pro-insurrection unions, even if this attracted many voices within the Party that rejected any help from the "ultra-leftists and the revisionists". A good majority of the old Zapatista cadres, although not necessarily in favor of communism (whether out of disinterest, ignorance or direct rejection), decided to give political and military support to the PCM, thus de facto reconstituting the Liberation Army of the South, with one example being Antonio Soto y Gama, which was critical of communism but at the same time was a Zapata loyalist. The same cannot be said of the former Villista cadres, who in many cases remained loyal to the regime or joined the Cristeros, even after Villa himself announced his support for the Communists. Even people considered leftist at that time, such as Tomás Garrido, decided to join the Callista regime.
And, while the political scenario seemed to collapse, unemployment, hunger and death returned to plague a country that already knew about it. As many workers and peasants were forced to take up arms, either by levy/compulsion or on their own initiative, there was no one to maintain the national infrastructure, nor to distribute or produce food. The national GDP, which was just beginning to recover from the effects of the 1910 Revolution, rapidly declined by at least 5% annually, and without a social security apparatus given the lack of money and a functional bureaucracy, it was not uncommon to see entire families begging for alms or dying of starvation or diseases that hypothetically should have been treatable. In the worst cases, and as narrated in testimonies of the time, it was not uncommon to see the practice of cannibalism, or the use of prostitution as a method of survival on the part of some women.
The anger of the most vulnerable population towards a government that left them to their fate despite empty promises was not long in coming, and in many cases, there were takeovers of towns by their inhabitants, even if they did not declare allegiance to communists or Cristeros. Even the haut-bourgeoisie showed its clear anger towards the PNR, and the nascent COPARMEX in a hidden way began to indirectly support the Cristeros with monetary support, if that meant avoiding Mexico's fall to communism. It was clear that President Rodriguez was incapable of imposing order, although if we are fair, I believe that no one in his situation would have been able to do so.
The Second Mexican Revolution had begun. But it would not be a Glorious Revolution; quite the contrary: the road to Paradise would be filled with hell to defeat first.
Excerpts from "Does the end justify the means? War Crimes in the Name of the Mexican Revolutions".
Villa's sins between both revolutions [a].
Research carried out in our times by some historians tends to clarify that "although the actions of the villistas in the First and Second Revolutions were questionable from a moral point of view, it is necessary to understand the context in which they were developed". It is not that we disagree with the position, since it is Marxism that teaches us that history is not governed by moral positions, or that the attitude of a revolutionary with respect to the bourgeoisie must be amoral, outside the positions of good and bad.
But at bottom, our position is that, even if not on purpose, these historians assume a position similar to what the post-revolutionary apparatus tried to argue after the final victory in 1934: "it is not the time", "this may undermine revolutionary unity", "the State will take action on the matter in due course", and a long etcetera; until finally the POSM[11] was forced to lower Villa from the pedestal after joint pressure from feminist groups both inside and outside the Party, as well as from the Chinese-Mexican community, who demanded not only a trial of an already aged and incapacitated Villa as retribution for those innocents killed by him or his men between 1910 and 1934, but also as a way of demonstrating whether or not the POSM and its talk of bringing justice to a new Mexico was really true.
In this regard, we consider it necessary that we remind Mexican society of a fundamental principle: we are not in 1934 to justify atrocities, and if we have to retell the so-called summary trials of 1953, it will have to be done. Even Villa himself acknowledged that his actions were not human in any way, and encouraged the new generations not to make the mistakes that he, as Doroteo Arango [12], Zapata, Diego Rivera or anyone else of his generation might have made, but that did not prevent him from somehow not feeling fully guilty of his actions, so there have been people who have come to think whether Villa had tendencies to psychopathy. In any case, if Villa was one of the fathers of the Revolution, he was also a ruthless murderer, a sexist and racist, a potential genocidal, a rapist, an accomplice of rape, a pederast. All this so that, once the Second Revolution was over, Villa remained as an abandoned man, far from national politics, gradually despised by almost everyone, and; once the trials occurred, turned into an international pariah, begging for a peaceful death that never came; a man whose sins crawled on his back [13].
[...]
When the trials occurred, one of the events that initially sounded most shocking was the 1916 massacre of Chinese in the city of Torreón, Coahuila [14]; and the subsequent quest to forcibly exile them, or outright kill them and prevent further Chinese immigration to Mexico. The reborn Chinese community in Mexico, some of whom had had to suffer firsthand both the discrimination of the Mexican government after the fall of Diaz in 1911, and the degrading and vile actions of the Japanese imperial government in the 1930s and 1940s, forced the world to hear their voices full of rage, of dissatisfaction for years of material and human loss that could have been avoided had it not been for the anti-Chinese rhetoric of the Mexican revolutionaries, of which Villa and his men were probably the greatest apologists, especially if we take into account that the massacre in Torreon was directly done by them.
Villa alleged that his actions were blinded by a lack of knowledge of the conditions of the Chinese population in Mexico, and apologized, but that was not enough. Later testimonies went further, revealing that, although Villa was technically telling the truth, and that in reality most of the blame lay with others involved in the First Revolution, that did not exonerate Villa from supporting measures such as infanticide against minors of Chinese origin, as was the case of Leo Lid Tow, only 11 years old. Some accusers stated "what does it matter if you killed one, two or thirty of them? You did it out of hatred."
In defense of the devil, we must be frank: anti-Chinese sentiment in Mexico was relatively common among revolutionaries in the 1910s, and was used as anti-communist rhetoric to discourage any possibility of uniting local and migrant workers to the ranks of the PCM or unions not aligned with the Callista state. The xenophilia of the Porfirian regime only made many feel that the Mexican government at that time privileged foreigners over Mexicans themselves, so that events of assassinations of people of Chinese origin were not rare events, although that does not make it any less atrocious. Official propaganda after the First Revolution directly alluded to rejecting the Chinese, considering them as subhuman.
Anti-Chinese propaganda. The title reads: "Mestization", with a 12-year-old "indolatino" mestizo depicted on the left, and a 14-year-old "product of the Chinese-Mexican mix" depicted on the right.
However, what the state apparatus tried to justify using an argument not necessarily invalid, but evidently misused, could not be sustained once we got to the documentation on the case of Namiquipa, Chihuahua, which for a change was neither the first nor the last case of gang rape by villista troops, but it was the most notorious at the time.
As far as is known, the events in Namiquipa occurred on April 8, 1917, during the general retreat of the conventionists following Obregón's victories in 1915 and 1916. The Villista army arrived in the small town, which at that time had no more than 250 people, to take revenge for the refusal of the local male soldiers to join the Villista ranks. Since they had previously fled, knowing that they would be executed as soon as the villista troops arrived in the village, there were only women in the village. The next thing that happened was the rape of, at least, 110 women, many of them no more than 16 years old, as revenge, a form of threat, an example. Although some military villistas did not participate in such acts, and some even defended the girls, it was confirmed by the accounts of the survivors (since some of them were killed after being raped) that Villa was an active participant. The soldiers, not content with raping them, beaten them, threatened them, and used them as if they were mere objects of personal satisfaction [15].
To give a context of the gravity of the situation, Nicolas Fernandez, one of the most important Villista generals who joined during the Second Revolution on the Cristero side, was ironically one of the men who opposed joining such an act, protecting some women and threatening anyone who tried to abuse them. It is not surprising then that when the survivors of Namiquipa demanded the greatest punishment for Villa and the existing Villista military men still in the army that, it was assumed, called itself revolutionary, the indignation was such that the press both inside and outside the socialist camp joined in unison to demand a response from the Mexican government.
The Mexican press was in practical shock, apart from some journalists who already knew beforehand the events that had taken place in Namiquipa but who were not believed for "damaging the image of a revolutionary": if the enemy, the fascist who had been fought hard during the war was more chivalrous, more heroic, more disciplined than the self-proclaimed ally of the revolution, the one who was supposed to have read Marx, Lenin, Debs, Stalin or Zapata, then how revolutionary was the new Mexico? How safe could women feel in a regime that protected mass rapists just to avoid breaking a discourse of national unity?
The accusations were not long in coming: many former enemies of Villa, from anarchists to communists who already held him in low esteem even before the Second Revolution spoke out, either out of honesty and search for justice, or out of opportunism, to attack Villa even more, while POSM militants demanded that Villa needed to be executed, and the Communist International threatened with the suspension of POSM if action was not taken. The anarchist section of the POSM, the Mexican Anarchist Federation and the CGT called for a motion of no confidence against the Mexican government, and recalled an old dispute they had kept against Villa for the murders committed by his troops against anarchist militants, both during the First and the Second Revolution. As we already know from history, Villa ended up dead in prison under suspicious circumstances before his execution (among the last in our country) could be carried out, and as a precedent for the Mexican Cultural Revolution, driven against all forms of physical or emotional denigration towards women[16].
In any case, what is important is not so much what happened here, but to open another chapter not so explicitly mentioned when talking about the sins of Villa and Villismo. In this sense, we must mention the political repression against people we now call comrades, as another act of war crime.
Regarding this, the FAM argued that, during the "revolutionary struggle undertaken by us the rojinegros, the Maderista troops, among which Villa and his accomplices were part, tried to destroy us by every possible way"[17]. Villa's antipathy towards the anarchists was evident, which only became more acute during the desperate efforts to establish a connecting line between northern and south-central Mexico during the Second Revolution, in which it is said, Villa sought to repress the members of the still existing Mexican Liberal Party, since these were not exactly adept at following his orders. Paco Taibo II puts it this way:
"In mid 1932, during the Cristero offensive towards Durango and Chihuahua to destroy the Callistas and the Communists in both regions, the Villa leadership assumed a quasi-dictatorial role, in good part due to the distance from the leadership of the PCM and other leftist organizations, which were located in Puebla, Mexico City or Morelos, which allowed the elimination of any political dissident opposed to Villa, even if they were supposed to be officially allies, as was the case of the unfortunate anarchists in Chihuahua, all under the excuse of national security and the fight against the Cristeros. The situation was so chaotic that after the revolutionary victory hardly any records of these events survived, so it took years for the FAM to establish a connection between the anarchists disappeared in battle, and the Villist repressive actions, even if they already had a sense of knowing that they had been the cause of the disappearance of their cadres [...]"
Villa alleged that the actions of his command were necessary for the preservation of the Revolution in the face of the Cristero offensive, and although technically he was right, given that until the joint American-Soviet aid of 1933 the revolutionaries were at a disadvantage, that did not eliminate the demand for justice on the part of these groups, who counterargued, asserting that "if the preservation of the revolution was necessary, then why reject those very principles in favor of a caudillista pragmatism with a clear social conservative bent that not only failed to attract greater advantage, but damaged relations between anarchists and communists in the first place?" Members of the then still small Communist Workers' Party of Mexico[18], as the left-wing opposition to POSM, devoted an entire article favoring the anarchist point of view not so much out of sympathy but to make clear "that the regime of the so-called Socialist Party is a regime that shelters landlords and reactionaries like Villa [...].
After the proclamation of the Workers and Peasants Bloc "to the Mexican proletariat and peasantry" to rebel in arms after its illegalization on April 7, 1931, still against the demand of the Comintern, is when the Second Mexican Revolution technically began, although some call it the Mexican front of the American Socialist Revolution, given the events of the Red May Revolution or the Chilean Revolution, which occurred more or less at concurrent times. The Mexican government, led by Abelardo Rodriguez as a puppet of General Calles, assumed most of its efforts in discrediting the communists as allies of the Cristeros, as well as antinationalist, cosmopolitan, allied to foreign interests (namely, the Soviet Union). In extreme cases, racist rhetoric came to be used to discredit the communists, either as anti-Chinese or anti-American propaganda. For its part, the Cristero movement, not yet sufficiently radicalized towards fascist positions, was already influenced and aided by members of reactionary organizations such as the Comité Pro Raza, as well as by many Vasconcelistas who fled Callista repression, gradually promoting pro-mestizaje racial positions, but barely maintaining moderate liberal, democratic positions, which initially caused them to have problems with already radicalized members of the Cristeros in general. Other groups, such as the Acción Revolucionaria Mexicanista [19], formed by former Villistas, joined the government in a critical way, as Calles saw them as a useful resource to repress any strike or support for the communists.
Despite the efforts of the Callista regime to stop the different labor unions from joining the revolutionaries, this ended in a resounding failure due to the Mexican economic collapse as a result of the Great Depression. The CTM, the CROM and the CGT in alliance called for sabotage and the formation of workers' militias that were to act as disciplinary and defense elements. In addition, the division of the National Revolutionary Party between its Callista wing and its leftist-nationalist wing due to fears that Calles was pushing a pro-American, and therefore unpatriotic, platform only further delegitimized the regime. At the same time, the division of Villismo into pro-Communist, pro-Cristero, and pro-regime led to the hitherto peaceful northern Mexico being thrown into chaos. Although the Cristeros maintained a still ambiguous stance on whether to keep the government of the United Mexican States under their tutelage or not, the communists and allies assumed the role that the BOC sought from the beginning, calling for the formation "of a Soviet Mexico", as Hernan Laborde came to mention a few times.
In Tijuana, Ricardo Flores Magón declared the rebirth of the Tijuana Commune (the one that was originally repressed in 1911 by Maderista troops), inviting what was left of the PLM to unite at the national level, in critical alliance with the PCM. For their part, many regions in the south of the country with an indigenous presence were influenced by the position of the Communist Party as being, at least at that time, the most progressive and friendly with respect to them, their traditions and culture. Specifically, several Mayan groups supported the call of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, whom they knew well for his management in that region for his relentless commitment to them, even being nicknamed the Red Christ of the Mayan Indians or the Apostle of Socialism[20]. Although the WCPA had better things to worry about, the Party watched the development of events in Mexico with interest, and prepared for whatever happened later.
The Mexican government gradually collapsed, and the revolutionaries took possession of Mexico City on March 17, 1933. However, the Cristeros, who had finally abandoned all pretense of restoring the previous government, proclaimed the Government of National Salvation from Guadalajara, declaring the formation of a Mexico based on isolationism, the defense of "Catholic values", the end of secularism and outright anti-communism. While Abelardo Rodriguez was found dead in the National Palace in the capital (due to him committing suicide), Calles and much of the remaining leadership of the PNR was not found, having escaped to Tampico, the last government capital. On the other hand, workers' revolts of Chicano, Indian and black origin in the United States allowed communist expeditionaries from the UASR to provide direct aid to their Mexican counterparts, entering Sonora and Baja California to give indirect and direct aid where necessary, in an effort to stop the Cristero advance, which was effectively halted and reversed.
Faced with the clear withdrawal of Callista troops, a good part of the members of the ARM decided to flee to Cristero territory, in an effort to continue the fight against communism. There, they, the Vasconcelistas, the Cristero movement in general, and other minor organizations of a fascist or reactionary nature started to unite programmatically speaking in a single vision for Mexico, even if there were voices that rejected such ideological perversion, as is the case of Vasconcelos himself, who had been forced to flee to the Spanish Republic.
After the formation of the POLN on February 5, 1934, the revolutionary government proceeded to reunify the country from any remaining Cristero or Callista remnants in the country, although with several grades of success or failure, due to some regions simply not accepting Communist dominance. With the abandonment of the Callista government to London, the United Mexican States had de facto ceased to exist as a government, although some soldiers kept fighting, even though they knew they would eventually fall. As was to be expected, the government in exile of the United States of America did not recognize the communists, the same with the British, German and Italian governments, so the new Mexican government would be unable to develop self-sufficiently on the basis of minimal foreign investment, except in a few specific cases, being obliged to require constant American-Soviet material aid to recover from the devastating effects caused by the Second Revolution, which explains to some extent the Mexican economic and cultural disconnection with respect to the rest of the Latin American countries during the Cold War, and on the other hand, the political-economic and cultural rapprochement between Mexico and America[21].
Regarding the Cristeros, parallel to the formation of the POLN, the different movements, organizations and people in general that were part of the remnants of the Government of National Salvation were radicalized by the joint Mexican-American offensives, and together with the "Mexicanists'' of the ARM, they were all grouped in the Unión Nacional Sinarquista (National Synarchist Union). From Guadalajara, the Synarchists proclaimed a Holy War against the new revolutionary government, and reorganized the Government of National Salvation under a xenophobic, anti-communist, expansionist (longing for Central and South America), Catholic social and political, national-unionist and "pro-mestizaje" framework. These guerrilla troops would maintain some sort of ground dominance over the regions they controlled until the joint American-Mexican offensive in Guadalajara, which culminated with the city taken in October 1936. And even then, it was clear that the country would take time to recover.
The Second Mexican Revolution was over, but peace had not been won, not as long as the Synarchists were not destroyed.
Excerpts from "The Mexican Socialist Revolution as seen through the eyes of Private Harry Thompson*".
The abandoned: life among the most neglected indigenous peoples
[...]
When my platoon and I decided to serve as peacekeeping troops, we were usually sent to little known but sufficiently important places in the young Mexican republic, such as the Sierra Madre of Puebla, home to many indigenous Mexicans of various origins. While it is true that many of them had stayed out of the conflict, largely because the infrastructure there was so bad that it was barely possible to get there by vehicle, it is no less true to say that the effects of the collapse of the Mexican economy were present. Specifically, in the absence of a national market and a police or justice enforcement agency, the inhabitants of the Sierra Madre had been forced to ration food and arm themselves for self-defense. Many of the elderly had been left to fend for themselves, and recent harvests had not been particularly fruitful, so that, even without a particularly high degree of crime, it was not uncommon to see summary executions of alleged thieves, whether by firearms, by swords, or by beatings, the now familiar lynching.
Many other places, which coincidentally also had a majority indigenous presence, had been involved in similar problems: one of my most traumatic experiences was in villages far inland in the rural environment of Chiapas, far from the capital, Tuxtla. It was not uncommon to appreciate that many of these villagers viewed us with (justified) suspicion, in good part because, not being Mexican and not fluent in Spanish, it was difficult to convince them that we were emissaries from the new Mexican government. Although they eventually accepted that we were part of the government, they reproached us many times to our faces for the lack of order in their villages, towns or ranches.
Although we already knew beforehand that during the Revolution atrocities had been committed by all sides, such as the mass crucifixions carried out by Cristeros in Sinaloa, or the burning of properties with their inhabitants inside by some revolutionary soldiers and the accounts of the screams, the smell of burning flesh and the general cruelty already narrated by myself about these events, in many of these places one could notice corpses and graves dedicated to deceased boys and girls either because they were forced to fight and serve as child soldiers, or because the Horseman of Hunger whipped them with his relentless wrath. Some corpses appeared to have died an even peaceful death, perhaps just succumbing to starvation or committing suicide, but others had clearly been wounded by some weapon, as was not to be seen with the elderly, who were considered a burden. In the worst cases the bodies, already in a state of putrefaction, were consumed as there was no food to provide for the families. This made me and others, like Comrade Rogers, end up vomiting from disgust, before demanding that both our superiors and the new Mexican authorities solve this problem as soon as possible.
Another place we went was the former state of Oaxaca, now part of the Mixtec-Zapotec Autonomous Republic. A young woman, perhaps too young to be a mother, was several months pregnant, and it was not hard to notice that, whoever the father had been, was not caring for her or was missing altogether. Although we initially assumed that perhaps he had been drafted and was still a soldier, or had been killed in battle, it was truly dispiriting to learn that the father was in fact simply alive, but not caring for the girl, because he had raped her in the first place. The girl, although clearly in a state of trauma, was unable to recognize that the act of rape was cruel and inhumane, and her argument to justify the man's actions was that "that's the way it's been done for generations."
Another woman, living on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, who knew enough Spanish to be able to communicate with Comrade Miguel, told us of similar cases: multiple women with multiple children born of absent fathers, sheltered by concepts such as "tribal justice", "communal [local] law", and in general, the abandonment of the general laws and norms that governed in the big cities in favor of self-governance and the maintenance of homogeneous, isolated societies led by local indigenous "chiefs" who, depending on the place, could act with greater or lesser impunity to impose an openly macho culture under supposedly progressive frameworks (indigenous self-determination).
And it wasn't just rape of teenage or young adult women: girls were forced to marry clearly adult men, some of them even when they were old, even older than us. And even though most people were capable enough to understand that such acts were not good, because it was tradition for them, it had to be respected. In one altercation, we were devastated to see a girl no older than 12 suffering a miscarriage because her body had been brutally outraged by her captor, so we did not hesitate a second longer and "did justice". When we were accused of damaging a marital status by murdering the girl's "husband", we decided to inform our superiors, who advised us to withdraw. This was not an empty recommendation: although there were voices in our favor, most of the population threatened us.
We did not understand how the old Mexican state (i.e., the United Mexican States) had not been able to eliminate such inhumane attitudes...and yet, it seemed that the nascent Mexican government did not care much about changing this, not so much because it did not really want to do so, but rather because it feared that, in doing so, it might lose legitimacy in the eyes of these peoples. In the view of some of our Mexican comrades, these "forgotten Indians could not enter all at once into our new system in transition to socialism, and on the contrary, their treatment must be gradual." In some cases, we assumed that religious fundamentalism and lack of socio-political accessibility/openness contributed to forming societies of forgotten who, even if they did not do it out of malice, committed actions that for other Mexicans were unthinkable.
This phenomenon, of which I was an active observer, was later part of the discussions on the extent to which indigenous cultural autonomy should be respected without entering the terrain of cultural assimilation, which was so much sought to prevent. At least from my point of view, there was nothing to discuss: if any reactionary aspect of the indigenous culture had to be eliminated in order to avoid seeing pregnant girls or adolescents, child marriages, statutory rape, macho culture and so many other evils of capitalist societies, then it would be done without hesitation. Our Mexican comrades, on the other hand, were seriously divided, and no wonder: the indigenous issue was always sensitive. If you spoke too much, you could be accused of chauvinism, or paternalism.
While the Mexican authorities had higher priorities to attend to at the time (and I don't blame them, considering all that had happened during the Revolution, and the resulting carnage and disease), it was idealistically assumed that these societies, these villages would be re-educated quickly enough for the aforementioned practices to be eliminated. I am afraid that the POLN leaders acted idealistically at the time, and even my wife Ana was able to note with me and the rest of our comrades that unless the Mexican State really made material efforts to guarantee the integration of the indigena, these cursed lands would remain what they had already been since Spanish domination: lands of the forgotten.
At the end of 1935, shortly before the Socialist Republic was officially proclaimed, our group was again sent to the southern states to help in the reconstruction work. Although we found it hopeful to see how the effects of the Great Famine were finally disappearing, the indigenous customs and usages that permitted the vile practices of earlier times remained virtually untouchable. Neither local nor national laws prohibiting all forms of child marriage had taken effect. Moreover, it is as if nothing had changed, as if those laws had never existed[22].
Curiously, a phenomenon that we managed to notice at that time and not in the previous year, was the existing racism between Indians and blacks, and it so happens that the State was either not interested in eradicating it, or was not aware of the issue. A bit ironic, since in the Capital Commune it was not uncommon to see blacks, mestizos, Indians and whites shouting in unison and in Spanish, English or Nahuatl "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"But here, in the rural villages of Guerrero or Oaxaca, even if there was POLN propaganda or houses painted with Lenin's phrases in favor of proletarian internationalism, at the same time you would hear black day laborers calling the Indians uncivilized, uneducated and heathens, and the latter calling the blacks with racial slurs that had nothing to envy to the word "n*gger" in our America. Comrade Michaels confessed to us that he felt that he was being watched by the local Indians, since he was black, and that made him uncomfortable.
On the contrary, Ana made me appreciate how, despite all that racism, the young blacks and Indians tended to be more respectful and even loving towards each other. They organized events together, used Spanish as a lingua franca if necessary, and given their passion for learning, were curious and open about socialism, which made them more likely to be susceptible to what the POLN was at least officially trying to achieve.
Still, there was hope. [...]
Some War Flags from the Second Mexican Revolution
Literal recreation of a flag used by militants of the Communist Party of Mexico. Other variants include the machete-hammer, but officially the symbol of the PCM was still the hammer and sickle, so it was the version that most party militants used.
Literal recreation of a flag used by workers' militias during the Battle of Mexico City. The inscription reads "Long Live Terror", in a clear allusion towards red terror. It is reminiscent of the pro-Terror revolutionary banners used in the Russian Revolution.
Flag of the Government of National Salvation, a clear modification of the flag of the United Mexican States, but under Cristero dyes.
Flag used by some Cristero battalions, where Our Lady of Guadalupe can be seen. The words say, respectively: God, Fatherland, Freedom. Although it can be interpreted as an openly reactionary flag, some assume that this flag was used by the moderate Cristero sectors, who advocated the end of anticlericalism and little else.
Flag of the National Synarchist Union, which was used by the Synarchist "Resistance" until its definitive defeat in 1939. You can notice the imperialist/chauvinist sentiment that emanated from them.
[1] This is exactly the same as what happens OTL: Although the laborists were basically opportunists, one of their principles was anti-reelectionism, so they were "convinced" (forced) to support Obregón in 1928, even if the Party militancy was unhappy with the idea. Once Obregón was assassinated, the popularity of the PL and the CROM in the Mexican government would disappear.
[2] This is more or less the opposite of what happens OTL: while there is friction between the PCM and the LNC, the degeneration of the Cristeros and the Mexican government towards more extreme positions, and greater political experience on the part of the PCM, in part because of Zapata's survival, and in part because of the help given by the WCPA, guarantees a continued alliance, even if Ursulo Galván, the leader of the LNC, prioritizes peasant interests over the revolution.
[3] Vasconcelos OTL was what we could call a "classic liberal": pro-parliamentarian, in favor of non-reelection and the non-existence of single or hegemonic parties. His fascist tendencies would take place during the 1930s, but already in the 1920s he was a nationalist, opposed both to foreign interference in Mexico and to the workers and peasants leaders in the country, having his support base in the "middle class", especially teachers and the educated.
[4] OTL: The 1929 Program of the PNR.
[5] OTL: although the Program of the PNA is nowhere to be found as such, Vasconcelos gave a speech on July 5, 1929 that spelled out the Party's intentions if it assumed power, subdividing them into concrete issues/areas. Thus, Vasconcelos spoke directly of the Program in his speech. It's also added part of the PNA's Platform for Political Action in 1927. In any case, there are mostly anti-communist overtones, more so than in OTL.
[6] Mostly OTL, from both the 1929 BOC Political Program and the 1934 BOC Political Program. Some proposals are modified by the influence of the WCPA.
[7] Thanks to the influence of American communists and their treatment of their anarchist peers in the United States, Mexican communists, while critical of anarchism as "idealistic" or "petty-bourgeois," maintain an "outstretched hand" toward them if deemed necessary. Conversely, the thinking of people like Ricardo Flores Magón moves from an "intransigent anarchism" opposed to collaboration with syndicalists and socialists/communists, to a position of intensive cooperation with the former, and a less "cruel" or ruthless position of the latter.
[8] Given the implications of a greater struggle of interests between Germany and the US in Latin America before and during the Great War (where Mexico is also affected), as well as the existence of a "relatively" more interventionist US government compared to OTL, it is to be expected that, after the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican government will seek US economic aid to recover from the war. This also means that Mexico is in a better economic position, especially in the north and center of the country, than OTL, which means that Mexico will industrialize faster than OTL once WW2 happens. However, this is a "double-edged sword", since it implies a greater Mexican economic dependence on the United States; so when the Great Depression occurs, Mexico is "taken by the devil".
[9] Carrillo Puerto managed to escape death in 1924, unlike OTL, given the possibility of the PCM to help him, which reconciled the two. The Southeastern Socialist Party, for its part, ended up joining the PCM, giving the Party a local section in Yucatan, which would come in handy when it came to radicalizing the Mayans. The same cannot be said of his mentor, Salvador Alvarado.
[10] Mugica was briefly a PCM militant in 1920, before leaving the Party for reasons of disagreement with the political leadership; although as far as I know, he never lost sympathies with Marxism, given his political radicalism (in a progressive sense) and open stance in favor of closer ties with the USSR OTL. The turn "to the right" on the part of the PNR makes TTL Mugica abandon the PNR, with him considering that the revolutionary principles of 1910 had been abandoned.
[11] "Partido Obrero Socialista de Mexico/Socialist Workers' Party of Mexico", the successor to the POLN after its reorganization in the 1950s-60s, similar to how the PNR OTL morphed into the PRM first, and then the PRI. A post was made months ago about the POLN, so, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it: here
[12] Villa's real name.
[13] I hope someone understands this reference.
[14] In reality there were two massacres: the most well known and brutal in 1911, committed by Maderista troops, and the second, in 1916, committed by Villista troops.
[15] To be clear: this is real, this happened OTL, and it was not the only individual or group rape event committed either by Villa as an individual, or the villistas as an army. Even leftist historians like Pedro Salmerón or Paco Taibo II acknowledge that what happened in Namiquipa happened, but there are nuances (or deliberate attempts to whitewash what happened, even if not on purpose) about how it happened and why.
[16] This is a prelude to the content that Mexico will have once Reds! reaches the Cold War (if we ever get there, haha).
[17] During the (OTL) Mexican Revolution, PLM sympathizers after the defeat of the "revolutionary" experience in Baja California joined Pascual Orozco in the north of the country and fought against Villa's troops, even after Orozco joined Huerta. Here, the FAM is telling the half-truth, for while Villa was cruel and hated the anarchists, it is also true that the Orozquistas were deliberately aiding Huerta, which the PLM leadership in the U.S. rejected outright.
[18] This is also a hint towards Mexico's content for the Cold War. I will only say that the PCOM is in essence the "heir" of the German KAPD, but at the same time, they have sympathy for the Italian communist left.
[19] In detail in Part II of the Mexican lore: Ex-Villistas who reject the communists, but consider themselves the authentic continuators of the (First) Mexican Revolution, that of 1910, and who, therefore, although ideologically close to the Cristeros, decide to ally themselves with Calles, respecting him as a figure and because of the nationalist discourse of the Mexican State.
[20] Carrillo Puerto is known in Yucatán for having been an affluent speaker of Maya, promoting its use and preservation in the state, as well as seeking to "uplift" the indigenous people economically and educationally, while seeking to eliminate all forms of de facto slavery in the state at the hands of the henequen industry. Overall, Carrillo Puerto was one of the greatest defenders of the Maya, and his sympathy for communism, as he was aware of Marx and the Bolsheviks, makes him very important to Reds! Mexico.
[21] While Mexico will not give up its "Latin Americanist" rhetoric, I am already anticipating that, as South American countries unite fraternally in what will become Pan-America during the Cold War, Mexico will move closer and closer to the UASR, although not to the point of unification.
[22] This is real, this happened OTL, and this is happening OTL. Despite the multiple laws, decrees and documents in general that seek or have sought to limit or destroy child marriage in Mexico, it continues to exist, and indigenous communities are the ones that have the highest rate of suffering from this, largely due to the system of native "uses and customs", which, sheltering in the isolationism of various indigenous communities and the maintainment of patriarchal relationships (in a literal sense, due to the existence of patriarchal chiefs) these acts are still legitimized in a way. This causes problems to be solved because, on the one hand, if the State intervenes, it could be accused of being chauvinistic or paternalistic, but if not, then these abuses of the rights of indigenous women and girls continue. That is to say, it is a problem rooted in how much "autonomy" the State should really guarantee to the natives.
[a] Although I normally don't like to do "big" retcons of things I alone or in collaboration with other people already wrote, and despite the disappointment and sadness I had while researching Villa's crimes, I am compelled to say that this is a retcon to the entire section devoted to "Villa's redemption" in Part II of the Mexico lore, which can be seen here. Unlike other revolutionary generals, Villa never seemed to regret his OTL actions, and sometimes even laughed or boasted about it. Therefore, the whole post-traumatic stress, the struggle to "be better" and in general the quest for rehabilitation can go away as things that are no longer valid for the continuity of Reds! because it simply does not go with how Villa OTL was. For the same reason, that whole section will be modified so that it is understood that it is no longer canon. Other generals, such as Rodolfo Fierro or Felipe Angeles will have treatments according to their personality, separate from Villa specifically, but I'm already anticipating that while Angeles was more gentlemanly, pragmatic and pious, Fierro was closer to Villa in attitude and "world view", so my treatment of Fierro will also be harsh.
P.S. Nihiliste, if you see this, I am very sorry for changing part of what you wrote, I apologize.
Great stuff, all around. Isn't there a prior "Red-Mexico" constitution / state structure / early policy summary in addition to that of the 'united-front party' amalgamation you linked? Not sure where it is…
Post-WW2, what does the properly multi-party extreme [ 'matryoshka' ] democratic order look like? What are the competing 'leading' & 'acceptable coalition junior partner' parties in full-standing with respect to the socialist democratic order?
[ An aside, my family is from Torreón and my great-grandparents actually fled following the Villista entry in 1916 to resettle in the US, so some of the referents here are both true to fact & close to home. Great job. ]
