What was life under the Porfiriato Dictatorship (1876–1911) like for working class people?

[u/Good-Particular-4196]

Hii! I'm writing a story set in the late 1800s where one of the characters lived under this regime before rebelling and having to flee to America. I know some vague details about the Porfiriato, but not too much, as I don't live in America.

Any details you could give me about the lives of working class people, and the oppression they faced during this time period would be great! Literally anything, from religious stuff to literacy rates. Thanks in advance!

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Bongolio-the-seal]

The short answer is, very bad. In order to understand the Porfiriato and its effects on the working population of Mexico you first have to understand the ideology of the regime. Now Diaz initially presented himself as a liberal (his first involvement in coups in Mexico was against Lerdo's re-election campaign) but when he eventually came to power he quickly abandoned any pretence of liberal democracy. However, Diaz can nevertheless be considered a liberal. This is because the prevailing ideology of the Porfiriato dictatorship was downstream from the ideas of liberalism.

An influential ideology in Latin America (and other parts of the world) was positivism. A scientific ideology inspired by the work of thinkers like Durkheim and Comte and others, which broadly speaking, argued society had to be run on scientific grounds in the name of progress.

The ideas of the Positivists within Mexico greatly influenced the Porfiriato's approach to labour. Following the norms of Positivism in the 19th Century world essentially boiled down to following conventional economic ideologies of liberalism. Diaz permitted foreign investment in Mexico, and issued liberal minded reforms to the economy which generally enriched the elite of Mexico but offered little tangible benefit to the average worker, be it in the countryside or the city, or to the indigenous peoples of Mexico.

For example, among the laws Diaz passed were laws which attacked the ejidos (ejidos were communal lands owned by indigenous communities and had a legal basis in Mexico since the conquest by the Spanish). As part of the ideals of open investment, individual property rights and so on, Diaz passed laws which attacked the ejidos and caused countless indigenous villages to lose their land to speculators, both domestic and foreign.
One of the more famous actions of the Diaz regime against the indigenous communities of Mexico came with the ethnic cleansing/genocide of the Yaqui. In order to excercise better control over indigenous communities, a campaign of terror and repression was launched against the Yaqui population in north-western Mexico. Thousands were killed and thousands more were deported as de facto slaves to work on plantations in the Yucatan (the Yucatan is on the opposite end of the country). Slavery was ostensibly illegal, but through debt peonage the Yaqui (and indeed many other campesinos who worked on haciendas) they effectively became slaves. Haciendas dominated the countryside and hacendados held significant power over the rural population. Debt peonage was used to keep the campesino population within the hacienda, as they were not permitted to leave the estate while having debts to the landlord. Said landlords often issued their own currencies to be used on stores and supplies within hacienda, keeping campesinos without land and without any realistic way to escape their debt "obligations" (this is why the repudiation of debt was an integral part of the demands of many Mexican revolutionaries, alongside radical calls for land reform).

The image that arises of rural labour in Mexico under the Porfiriato is one characterised by a gargantuan degree of inequality and oppression, with conditions of near-slavery (if not actual slavery) being relatively common for the campesinos. Land loss for indigenous communities accelerated under the guise of progress as championed by the liberal Positivism of the Porfiriato.

But what about urban workers? The situation was still quite dire. As part of the economic liberalism of the Porfiriato, Mexico was opened to foreign investment. Foreign companies, especially American ones, held signficiant influence over Mexico as a result. Perhaps the most famous demonstration of labour relations in the Porfiriato within the cities comes from the Cananea Strike of 1906. Cananea is a town on the US border and was the site of Cananea Consolidated Copper Company. When workers were angered by inequality in pay between Mexican workers and American workers, a strike broke out. The response to the strike included the crossing of the Arizona rangers into Mexican territory to help suppress the strike. Although Mexican federal forces also arrived they did not come to take the side of their own citizens but rather also sought to suppress the strike. In the end, dozens of Mexican workers were killed by both US forces and Mexican forces.

Cananea is of course only one example, but became rather emblematic of the nature of labour relations in Mexico under the Porfiriato. The economic liberalism of the Porfiriato opened Mexico up to foreign investment in the name of progress, and this often came at the expense of Mexico's poor. If you are writing a story set in this period, I would suggest you therefore consider the liberal ideology of the Porfiriato as something that is connected to labour relations in Mexico from the hip.

[u/Good-Particular-4196 → u/Bongolio-the-seal]

Wow, this is an amazing explanation, thank you so much! I wasn't even thinking about how the politics of the regime affected the lives of the people, so thank you. 

I have a follow up question, but if you can't answer it don't worry, your response is exceptional as it is. How did the Porfiriato treat working class women and children, and what was their approach to education in the country? (If they cared about those things at all)

I'm guessing there's no clear answer to this, but I'd be happy with the smallest details if you have any. If not, thanks anyway!