The North Mexican Cattle Industry, 1910-1975: Ideology, Conflict, and Change

By the end of the nineteenth century the cattle industry in northern Mexico was thriving. Large haciendas, based on the peonage system and many of them foreign-owned, produced hundreds of thousands of head of cattle that enriched hacendados and filled ranges in both Mexico and the United States. But the Revolution of 1910 overturned Mexico’s social and economic structure, and by the 1920s large holdings were being broken up and almost 70 percent of the vast herds were gone.

Machado examines ...