GARCIA-NAVARRO: OK, we're going to do a bit of a history lesson here. The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 within communities of peasants across Mexico. They were living in poverty. There were land ownership laws, harsh labor conditions. Can you give us an overview of their fight for change, which is the story of the revolution?
AVINA: Yes, of course. When we're talking about the Mexican Revolution, we should start off by saying that it was a peasant-led social revolution that primarily fought for two main things - land and liberty. They were fighting against a Cinco de Mayo war hero, Porfirio Diaz, who had turned into a dictator and ruled Mexico for decades in an era that witnessed the implementation of an economic system that only benefited a few at the top, those close to Porfirio Diaz, who quote, unquote "modernized" Mexico but at the expense of peasant communities who - you know, most were landless. They had lost their lands amongst expanding haciendas, or large landed estates, the building of railways and mines, et cetera.
So you have this rapidly expanding socioeconomic inequality between the people at the top and the vast majority of people in Mexico who lived in the countryside as campesinos, or as peasants. So when the revolution breaks out in late 1910, early 1911, the people who took up arms throughout the country - they did so thinking that they would receive the return of plundered lands or receive new lands from a potentially post-revolutionary government.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So the revolution stretched on for decades, and there was tremendous loss, with at least 1.7 million Mexicans dying. But a pivotal moment came seven years into the revolution, 1917, when Mexico ratified a new constitution right that envisioned sort of a democracy for the working class. What new protections did it offer workers?
AVINA: Yeah, so the peasants and the workers were not going to put down their arms unless their demands were met, and these demands were enshrined in the 1917 Constitution in the form of agrarian reform, or the redistribution of lands, and an assortment of workers' rights that included the right to organize unions, protection for laboring women and children, the eight-hour workday, a living wage, the sharing of profits for workers, equal wages for equal rights.