Mexico from 1910 is first a war, Madero against the old dictator Porfirio Díaz, Villa's trains in the north, Zapata's villages in the south, and then a revolution that learns to paint itself: murals on ministry walls, and a constitution that promises land and makes the oil the nation's, while generals still settle arguments with rifles.
The pressure
Díaz's thirty-five-year peace built railways and a grievance: land in a few hands, foreign companies owning the oil. A rigged election in 1910 breaks the presidency. About a million people die in the decade of fighting that follows, and the United States sends troops in twice.
Which future
Villa and Zapata fight for different Mexicos and are murdered before they can rule one. Calles and Cárdenas build a state that can outlast the generals. Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros make the walls teach. The Church fights back in the Cristero war.
What survived
By 1940 the revolution has a party that will rule until 2000, a mythology, and the oil, expropriated from foreign companies in 1938. The murals still argue from the plaster, and the party has learned to speak the language of 1910 while it counts the votes.
Whose story
Alan Knight reads it as a true popular revolution, made in the villages; revisionists see middle-class state-builders who used the peasants and then tamed them in a one-party state.