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Mexican Dictator Porfirio Diaz

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From 1877 to 1910, Mexico was under the iron rule of one man, Gen. Porfirio Diaz. Gen. Diaz had brought order to Mexico. He expropriated Church lands, opened Mexico to foreign investment, and encouraged the development of commercial agriculture and the building of railways and industry. In many ways, the Porfiriato brought prosperity to Mexico. But this prosperity was not equally shared. The Diaz regime worked with the hacendados, powerful, semi-feudal landowners, to seize land held communally by Native Americans, to add to their estates. Just 3% of the population owned 95% of arable or grazing land in Mexico. Too many rural Mexicans were penniless sharecroppers, trapped in debt peonage; while Gen. Díaz and his henchmen ruthlessly stifled all …show more content…

Ambassador to Mexico. Wilson received the post primarily to protect U.S. economic interests there: oil, mining, and the railroads. Taft had limited experience in foreign policy and made little effort to understand his neighbors to the South. His idea of diplomacy was what his administration called dollar diplomacy (based on the economic benefits the U.S. could gain). Early on in his presidency, Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz had sold most of Mexico’s resources, especially those below the soil, such as copper and oil, off to the highest bidders–often to the U.S. U.S. ownership of these resources were investments worth protecting. But in 1910, revolution was in the air, and President Taft was concerned with the coming changes in Mexico. In 1911, Francisco I. Madero and his followers overthrew the Díaz regime, which had held power for almost forty years. Henry Lane Wilson became Taft’s eyes and ears in Mexico. In truth, Madero’s presidency represented no real danger to U.S. economic interests. Madero himself came from the upper class, and he was not about to upset the delicate economic balance in Mexico that had made his family rich. But Henry Lane Wilson disliked Madero, and decided that Madero had to be

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