Orozco: The Life and Death of a Mexican Revolutionary

(Wild West) After Hernán Cortez destroyed the Aztec empire, he worked to avoid the mistakes the Spanish made with the Indians of the Caribbean islands. For one thing, he put military police in Mexico City to enable local artists and merchants to safely sell their products in the open markets. He also permitted Indian communities to keep and collectively cultivate what he called “common land.”
Evidently failing to learn from that bit of history, President Porfírio Díaz and his political circle started to seize that land—and sure enough, Mexico erupted in revolution in early 1911. Continued