HIST 8B Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Machado De Assis, Amazon Rubber Boom, Neocolonialism
Document Summary
Total value of mexican trade grows by 900% in 1877-1910. Around 1900 about a million middle class mexicans are clerking in offices, riding bikes, listening to us ragtime music. Small working class (third of a million) cooks, laundresses, shoemakers, policemen make up rest of urban population. Meanwhile, 8 million country people, mostly indigenous, lucky to have a single change of clothes, sweat on sun drenched land to produce mexico"s agricultural products (thanks to progress, their lotgets worse) Arrival of railroads in mexico benefits owners of large estates by raising property values. Drives many peasants off the land, lets landlords make these peasants their employees and multiply their profits. Despite official abolition of communal village property in 1850s, many indigenous held their land through 60s-70s but the tracks of railroad ruined that. Only 3% of mexicans own land in 1910. Most of them work as peons on large haciendas.
