I need to say that I enjoyed the readings of this week because it involves a lot of stories about Mexico. First of all, I think that countries like Mexico and Chile for example, used to have so many struggles and problems with poor people. With these kind of situations, the Mexican government at the beginning of the 20th century started to have issues involving the poor and the main strategy that politicians (elite or powerful people) used to eliminate these problems was the military so that they could establish order.

I have to mention that people from rural parts of Mexico were not very happy at all because the government didn’t supply education, people were starving, lack of permission to obtain new lands, among many others. I need to accept that Porfirio Diaz was a very good politician because when he was ruling the country he knew how to fix this kind of situations (preserve the order) and when he lost the power, Francisco Ignacio Madero who was the next president after Diaz had to deal with many difficult issues from his opponents like the “zapatistas and villistas”.

Moreover, the main cause of revolutions was because the poor people didn’t have the opportunity to participate in politics so my point of view is that if the government doesn’t give you the opportunity to have access in educational matters for example, it was better if you participate and fight against the government because the poor in those times didn’t have anything to lose.

Now I’m going to talk specially about the “Plan de Ayala and “La raza cósmica excerpts. The Plan de Ayala was a document written by Emiliano Zapata, this was very important because it was a way to challenge the actual president who was Francisco I. Madero. The main purpose of this piece of paper was to blame the hacendados (the rich and the powerful) for taking lands from the poor, peasants and of course the actual government for permitting this illegal actions. But what I think is that everyone in those times like Emiliano Zapata just wanted more and more power, and by exposing this document against Madero was a perfect strategy to encourage people to fight against the government ruled by Madero.

On the other hand, I am quite sure that Jose Vasconcelos wrote La raza cósmica because when he served as the secretary of education in Mexico between 1921 and 1925, he just realised that Mexican people specially the poor didn’t have the opportunity to have a good education because of their status or ethnic group. I also think that he just emphasise that knowledge was the most important thing no matter what you are or where you come from.

Ultimately, I need to say that Jose Vasconcelos and Emiliano Zapata are considered by all Mexicans as true heroes because they did change the country even when they had so many troubles they tried to help the poor by respecting their rights in front of the elite.