Page:Margaret Shipman - Mexico's Struggle Towards Democracy (1927).pdf/9



HE basic cause of the Mexican Revolution of 1857 was the struggle between an oppressive and decadent feudal aristocracy and a rising middle class. Economic antagonisms were rendered more bitter by racial division between the classes.

The Mexican ruling class was exclusively of Spanish descent. The followers of Cortez had imposed upon the people of Mexico a drastic system of exploitation. The masses became peons of the land and slaves of the mines. From intercourse between conquerors and natives, there arose the half-castes or mestizos, most of whom remained in the status of the natives. Some became wage workers, artisans, traders, professionals, and small property owners, but were excluded from governmental and higher economic positions.

It was mainly this mestizo class, lead by some of the lower clergy, that started the revolution for independence in 1810, arousing the apathetic peons to fight for their land. They were finally put down by the upper clergy and the creole property owners. Thereafter, the efforts of this reactionary ruling class to suppress the rising ambition of the middle class and the land hunger of the peons was the un-