Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

6. The Mexican Pentagon: Adventures
in Collectivism during the 1970s
COLLECTIVISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY MEXICO
RUBÉN GALLO
Collectivism, in its various guises, shaped crucial aspects of twentieth-century
Mexican culture and politics. The 1917 constitution, drafted in the Wnal
stages of the Mexican revolution, contained several articles promoting the
collective organization of agriculture, business, and the economy; the most
famous was article 27 instituting the ejido, or communally owned farmland,
as the guiding principle of land redistribution. This article was meant to
replace the greedy individualism that had become a trademark of the old
regime—the presidency of PorWrio Díaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 until
the revolution exploded in 1910—with a socialist legal framework emphasizing
the well-being of the collective.
One of the tacit messages of the 1917 constitution was that individualism—especially
in regard to owning property—was to blame for the
social ills that led to the outbreak of the revolution in 1910. Land ownership
was a compelling example: before 1910, most land was owned by a tiny elite
who controlled most of the country’s wealth and had tremendous inXuence
in politics. Revolutionary Wghters like Emiliano Zapata fought to break up
latifundia and replace them with communally owned plots of land that would
give impoverished peasants a means of subsistence. (One of Zapata’s mottos
was La tierra es de quien la trabaja [The land belongs to those who work it].)
In the years following the revolution, the zeal for collectivism
extended beyond agriculture into other Welds, including the economy (postrevolutionary
governments nationalized factories and industries so that the
means of production would be collectively owned by all Mexicans) and
the arts. In the arts, the muralist movement—led by Diego Rivera and Wnanced
in large part by Minister of Education José Vasconcelos—emerged
as the preferred postrevolutionary art form, in part because it replaced the
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