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1908 an American journalist James Creelman visited Mexico to interview the country's present

Who we described as the foremost man at the American hemisphere?

General Porfirio Diaz was 77 at the time an authoritarian leader who'd ruled for more than 30 years

The president talked of Mexico's economic miracle and revealed plans to retire to the country after overseeing a transition to peaceful democracy

Things didn't turn out quite like that two years later

General Diaz was forced from power the Mexican revolution had begun

The resulting armed struggle lasted 10 years and involved landowners the church bandit chiefs out stunningly Pancho Rilla and

a peasant leader in Emiliano Zapata who a century later remains Mexico's most celebrated folk hero

With me to discuss the Mexican revolutions of 1910 and subsequently are

Alan Knight professor of the history of Latin America at the University of Oxford

Paul Garner

Hydra professor of Spanish at the University of Leeds and patient shell senior lecture in Latin American cultural studies at the University of Manchester

Alan Knight after 300 years of colonial rule, Mexico won independence from the Spanish in

1821. Can you sketch out briefly what happened between 1821 and they're coming to power up Porfirio Diaz in 1876

After 300 years of colonial rule ended as you said and ended amid a very costly bloody 10 years of civil war

Mexico entered upon its period of time as an independent country largely a republic and for about 50 years from the 1820s to the 1870s

The country went through serious political instability

Probably because there was no legitimate government to replace the colonial regime and thus battles between liberals and conservatives and other groups

Secondly because the economy had been ravaged and the economy lacked basic infrastructure as a result of which production was low

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