Villa and Zapata : a history of the Mexican revolution / Frank McLynn

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 and lasted for over a decade, a bloody and confusing saga of betrayal, corruption, misshapen politics and mislaid trusts that, in the end, accomplished little for lower- and lower-middle class Mexicans. Historian and biographer McLynn reconstructs the revolution through the biographies of its two most important figures, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, the bandit-turned-revolutionary, and Emiliano Zapata, whose declaration, "It's better to die on our feet than to live on our knees," later became La Pasionaria's Spanish Civil War slogan. McLynn devotes many pages to other key players: Francisco Madero, who, having defeated President Porfirio Diaz, stopped short of killing the president and members of the fallen government and Pascual Orozco, a controversial revolutionary figure believed by some (his pal Villa later among them) to have been on Diaz's payroll. McLynn also compares conservative histories to liberal ones and accounts for trends (economic, cultural, agricultural, industrial) concurrent with and pertinent to the revolution.