Perspective; Unfinished Revolution
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- Transcript
it's been now many many mexico had the revolution that became a few years ago
and i think in the real division is not completed before he knows much to be done these movies you can see the united states influence in the traffic
travels new york's and in the modern towering skyscraper mexico is contracts often the man in the street has only a generation removed from india sometimes even less call mexico city the paris of western hemisphere oh it looks much like someplace for some people the wealthy i really do the city and the nation illustrated many of the problems all latin american countries facts or will face as the industrialized for most people
and he plays about four and a half million people live in mexico city some thirteen percent of all mexicans with its large population it's well and governmental headquarters the capital dominates the nation its traditions go back in history to another bar owner civilization near the president's palace then the remnants of ancient palaces and parents the foundations of modern mexico literally on the ruins of the aztec indian empire remember laboring in the nation
and collectors of the spaniards and they didn't have the nineteen eighties competent and joined the white men against the aztec this week on the economy for three hundred years the spaniard to cruelty and violence they wiped out the indian civilization exploited the wealth of the country then came a long period of war and revolution in which modern mexico was born in mexico city the street names and the monuments recall the struggles for freedom again
in the war of independence from spain but by priests another wore only thing forty six invasion by the united states one of several mexico's defeated lost half their territory to the united states at age eighteen for a short time on the president on the water as the first modern indian leader mexico was a piece that was followed by porfirio diaz and years of brutal dictatorship and cisco montero exploded the revolution that swept away the dictator in nineteen ten revolution promised land to the peasants work of the workers' freedom and a decent standard of living for all under strong man like <unk> the country began to rebuild
we mentioned you're a low level middle of the revolution you send your mother was a successful businesswoman famous for wine collection of mexican art senator obama has a prominent mexican artist and architect i was initially went when i was at for by security the hamlet you need to go to the governor that we have now shown unity and women have a right of all the indian ocean alone in the event of a funny thing right the name will work and many women mr maury lane you're wearing from a bar arthur he produced the great big in all the news of what was going to be there and to the rest of mexico is so
what i believed women i certainly i have been another who benefited from the revolution is better than window for this is a leading government economist and professor at the national university political will usually political that would move things we hope that the violent bought has stopped wherever the bavarian revolution in mexico moves to change the adoption of innovation thats don't forget that this revolution has been left alone before revolution the national debate and that is the revolution the past it was going the gun made of mexico more than growing nation it means the right wing a conservative or a minute fifty the ipad
people change with it they have a century after the revolution began the mexican status quo continues to change that's due largely to the spread of higher education this is the national university located on the outskirts of mexico city physically abuse you constructed on a scale and meat well since the building of the aztec pyramid is artistically it attempts to fuse mexico's past and present p art of the indians the art of the revolution the architecture of the mid twentieth century the facilities for twenty five thousand students and roman has jumped to seventy thousand in the university's first ten years mexico has only fourteen schools of
higher education and most of these scholastic we are poor young ambitious they demanded change tuitions almost free zones have the overcrowding they come here from every part of the republic so i'm seeing fewer europeans other shows strong traces of their indian heritage almost all out nixon indian and spanish ancestry the mestizo of the students dr flores says the new generation of what were going to vote or highway or that's the thing that is getting the end of having a good general people your typical of the new generation is available can make her she's well dressed well groomed well educated but not so long ago and there was life was very different i
mean i know i would slap a small village about fifteen miles from mexico city she came to the university to study medicine or course is completed she returns now two decades later where she will serve a one year internship at the village health center a shortage of rain for pollution the government has given a world that is divided into small an economical
there are many places in the suburbs or the standard of living as little higher than it was five hundred years ago before court has in his venues around in movies there's no sanitation and any humans and animals share the same living quarters and poor food or clothes that makes a vicious cycle areas are changing these years here's why
the union and his own personal spying for customers to pursue its year as the music played by the chairman terrorism account because you'd prefer modern get a few of them and can still speak nahuatl the ancient indian language a typical big shoes are taking the place of the indians sent instead of bringing their years the mother has been some women are adapting modern style
on the autobahn says another important year cummings some twenty five years ago with a paved road and the puppets land centuries of isolation with her modern training and it is available can aggravate presents the greatest change of all at the time of the revolution university graduates were almost unknown in the us about eighty percent of the villagers were illiterate today most people can read and write and each year the island sends a number of young people likened a lot to the national university broken that your family is wealthy standards of slack those parents school teachers they have a living room in separate sleeping quarters the kitchen as running
water that the floor is paid actress to be a telephone and a typewriter one of the few in the village but most villages balkan neighbors are deeply religious skeptics like ninety seven percent of mexico is capped i'm sure many villages taking part in the annual pilgrimage to the shrine of the virgin of mexico's patron saint some halter fifty miles from atlanta mexico city they're joining pilgrims from other parts of the country on a national scale the catholic church has regained much of the power lost during the revolution on the church side of against the revolution that's for years afterward church and government were at war
freedom of worship everyone's doing previously the creek from earliest childhood many mexicans believed in and pray for americans to relieve the harshness of their lives after more than four centuries of christianity many are half naked superstitious fatalistic it's
a pain as big a piece it's b
oh yes to in church or future elementary school education is compulsory in the village and attendance has doubled in the past ten years and it's in your book and they better as the deep personal interest in this particular school was built by the mexican government in answer to request he made when he served as a volunteer in the second world war to reach onto the government granted a witch say your bocanegra ask for a school principal in this classroom since the
revolution the government of thousands of schools claim thousands of teachers to de mexico spends more than fifteen percent of the annual budget and schools and schooling for more than most nations but education is expensive and your father has been much progress the problem of schooling is doing great at it another mexican problem is public health modern hospitals like this one and type of slime have been built by the government and hundreds of rural villages but most this instilled fear sites claim to superstition instead of the hospital some take their children to the cuban darrow the witch doctor are all health standards and higher than most villages
and you have the towns closest to mexico city and to the efforts of young doctors like available can make medical services free of charge of the clinic that was paid by the government the job is educational as well as medical to prove to the people that science is better than superstition turn them away from the traditional ways of the past but the traditional way is the only way that millions of women like i'm not alone real life of the daily routine of backbreaking labor beginning of dawn and ending only when he goes to bed you mexican peasant women never heard of washing machines are you even in mexico city machines are expensive human labor is cheap in mexico
you're welcome he's totally submissive to her husband was absolute master of the family he accepts her was burdened kerry without question her day is an endless succession of europe swept over and over to keep it clean several times daily they're made by hand of images using the same impact of the aztecs used five hundred years ago that turkey is mexico's basic food sin euro as cooks them on an open fire in her which is made of
adobe some very much the corncrib stands in the middle of the one room of the park service for both living and sleeping and corn which that is my dates the conditions of existence forty two million residents more than half of mexico's people larry loo it's much less for
her land under cultivation even more important was the introduction of modern machinery and they have the access and that's what i am although there are still a few tractors in the south of mexico has been a full scale change over in the north of the country where farming is carried on by the most advanced connects commercial agriculture growing crops for export ginger edition projects at the water to millions of acres of previously with the dams generate some of the most modern world results the production of electric power has gone up more than five hundred percent
similar increases have been made by all the basic industry so you have the manufacture and consumer goods industries have been developed in twenty years the nation's gross national product as more than double mexico has become an industrial leader of latin america the mexican economy depends on the golan on that he says but they think i'm going to nationalize some basic and because all of it is pretty cute of development like how to go in the rest of the country to the economy
what we have found it necessary to confiscate looked like great but the purchase many of the barbecue picnic that i have been as the patrimony of the country david mattson is head of an american light and power company in mexico one of the utility companies nationalized by the mexican government he administered upon own power empire worth millions of dollars mr madsen has lived and worked in latin america for twenty five years fifteen of them in mexico he knows the company well mr mattson was your company forced to sell out to the mexican government no no how important is foreign investment to the growth of the mexican
economy absolutely necessary that just isn't enough money in mexico to take care of the industrialization o'clock and you make a general statement on the most significant changes in mexico since you have known the country drew so much for art history for the new middle class professionals government employees and high paid factory workers new housing projects like sewage that independents and independents government a fifty thousand year the housing shortages severe the use of indian politics is encouraged by the government which likes to
remind mexicans that they are an indian people rentals range from about ten dollars a month for the smallest sixty eight dollars or less are you mostly by well to do williams they are supervised by men like monologue poor uneducated is improve himself his troubles reveal some of the problems of this new middle class river has nine children and the financial squeeze to make ends meet he worked hard one of his judges teaching the children of independence or the other swim
does this every morning at a small more in the present another daily job of acting as secretary to an automobile dealer who is also a part time sales were always just manages to the cars of a status symbol of mexico's new middle class as they are everywhere else in more significant at the number of new superhighways in the number of cars that has more than doubled in the past few years at it with the automobiles on the
highways the road has been open to a glamorous new way of light mexican scholar cultural americanization again this is not in the past you knew that maine families like the bill passes into a long weekend and some summer home on the shore of the lake barbecue's really is obsolete for a new life in the middle class seems to produce tar well build healthy young people they look and that's exactly like the middle class teenagers north of the mexican border hour by hour
modernism this one is owned by a us corporation much of that package to revive made by us firms like food to be cellophane wrap it in selecting a very influenced by american style advertising following the american patent putin has become big business in mexico weekly visits to the beauty salon and made by nora and her mother norm morrow the days of a shy young maiden but the barred window waiting for young men to appear with a guitar and the serenade no more traditional folk dances for mexico's malesky is now a days it's like a
plan well at the top of mexico's social and economic ladder other people at the agriculture spray you with most of the industrial boom which has followed the revolution and luxury their homes people and you were in and an ultra modern setting up new aristocracy surrounds itself with servants almost as many as the pre revolutionary russia this is the home of luis diaz a young architect i know
whose grandfather owned a huge sea and with thousands of acres of lost during the revolution his father then went into the construction business and became rich in the post revolution building boom he'll is a very well educated and designs modern homes and factory buildings for the wealthy you could guess these huge personal wealth by his waterloo better yet buy the troubled public costumes hanging there each of these umbrellas cost one hundred and fifty dollars on each of these cowboy suits cost two hundred dollars they're
intricately made of the finest skin loaded down with so when someone says in one year almost as much money as a mexican laborer hasn't might turn into like graham some of the hacienda owner he tries to continue the traditions of revolutionary mexico and gentlemen wore silver spurs he owns guns although the revolution reduced the political power of memory to use class recently they have actually increased their economic influence and wealth you can use
the power to pay it only five percent of all mexicans received thirty seven percent of mexico's annual income on reflection of these you want to avoid boos you what about those at the other end approximately
sixty five percent twenty five percent of the annual mass hoosiers you did please purchase tickets and the national lottery the streets are full of people are anxious salesman young and each time that we do have a few more pesos to the family a
whole families were complaining one workshops men women and children work cook eat and sleep in the same room child laborers come on fortunately for them mark williams newton diller markets called macondo are being built by the government to take food off the street it's part of a government drive to improve health conditions
has the government also controls the prices of important food items like milk and me his most important for the workers' perhaps other governments actions to protect their wage standards minimum wage rates have been increased several times during the past ten years the writers' strike for higher wages guarantee but even so most wage increases have been wiped out by inflation most mexican workers today earn about twenty dollars a week compare that with the average forty four dollars per week of the english work and ninety two dollars per week of the worker in the united states in ending george george
lauren rich live side by side in most parts of mexico will undoubtedly series democracy he lives on the streets of the cherry but it's been a long time since cherry blossoms bloom here and kagan wrote the street is lined by adobe walls make sure that their belongings churchill has lived on this republicans like thirty five years so it still america says it can't afford a family of his own in his income when he lives with his parents as the traditional mexican respect for elders in the house started out as a squatter sure to chile now after many years of belongs by squatters right to the family but its badly overcrowded twenty one people live here
with two children a few small routines parents sisters uncles aunts cousins nieces and nephews adults and children sleep with georgia consider themselves lucky because there are beds to sleep in the rooms clean and all night long you can watch your family is in morning is a busy time as twenty one people wait to use the water faucet as usual unpleasant the number workers their employees breadwinner like most
mexicans much yours believe impersonal one women's votes difficult to keep clean with reports of blowing dust members of the house members of the daily show and joy's are completed her children healthy adults with the flowers and which the collectors get some additional income the women raised the flowers for sale in the market place every morning probably payloads is correct meanwhile emma best don't personally see it get busy with a new work which is also sold in the market and a stolen pedro
prepared a shoeshine boxes were morning's work my oldest leaders and the combined efforts of wheat adults in seven young people can watch your family manages to live in comparative comfort poor but they're far from the bottom of the letter he has this is the bottom shanty towns that sprung up on the outskirts of mexico's big cities squatter village is warehouses are made of packing crates and bits of cotton just a cave on the side of the deal
here children grow up on the garbage dump and on that same garbage dump ramen mr navarrette players rejected by society as the refuse from which they get their livelihood even a stick of wood has back and then became clear years ago as beacons be here's spirits our main crippled by these are only a visible symptom of a deeper disease grinding poverty and all
these other homes of people whom are blowing statistics of mexico's agricultural and industrial no plans to improve education and expand public health have been just so many empty promise new housing projects are castles in the sky problem is very simple didn't approve each day to stay alive most of them were landless peasants we're in better condition and found unemployment it was better in the old days we can eat
this is more than ten percent of mexico among the lowest class of them little has changed since the old days before the revolution and the division of mexico's new well they have been shoved aside for them since it has done little good the revolution might never have happened fb and that liberty and they will present a challenge which is
not limited to mexico in a situation where they're just castro message was that it had some impact on certain parts or a much worse situation the synthetic the mythical path towards cuba is not seeing that from like an idea but rather from the mexican revolution occupation not from any ideas and vote on what the united states should understand that if they really want that in america and then they went and they kept from bonnie raitt a couple hundred and then either of those cuban background vehicle
and one way of leaving when a great man frank doing that what the united states the relationship between the unites states and american countries where in proper order we mexicans law that man because he'd need the progress of our country possible the underside of the underdeveloped countries where they've been on the force no not always a vis the united states dr flores is there any similarity between mexico to date and cuba before the castro regime none whatsoever in cuba something that is so forgotten they have a dictatorship
of the rat very much similar to the one that prevailed in the republic of mexico we get away with dictatorship for more than fifty years now this is a free country you a report back door of the country which was really was a colony of the united states along with the benefit of a few days where the tubes what about that charge that mexico is run for the benefit of the few wealthy mexicans says indicate that any day even if it would like to be the wide open today which until april you think that there that the income gap between the mexican middle class and the working classes to why any country that didn't inform pentagon from so we come somewhere there's a naked there's a certain
categories to a vote to make the necessary to squeeze the lie detector population wide about that you don't know and we will provide the goods consumption goods for this week what would forever go to different third cd is somewhat including endemic corruption and the fifteenth when the riot hyatt so the world mexico were carried the burden of the nation's recent role or asked to shoulder the load a while longer but the revolution among other things developing mexican governments have struggled for half a century to make good that prompts have achieved much of mexico is still far short of the goal how much
longer will be patient and the latin america well these years there's bees
nico this has been the perspective of hearing the reports in depth on matters of importance to the boil over with an e it's been
- Series
- Perspective
- Episode
- Unfinished Revolution
- Producing Organization
- National Educational Television and Radio Center
- Westinghouse Broadcasting Company
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/516-s46h12wb4m
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/516-s46h12wb4m).
- Description
- Episode Description
- Mexico, in the past twenty years, has seen a rapid and dramatic surge forward in almost every phase of national activity: economics, politics, agriculture, industry, education, health, and housing. The revolution against economic feudalism and political dictatorship took place in 1910. Now a new revolution is underway. With a stable government and a people eager to improve their lot, the nation has moved rapidly into the industrial, technical, and scientific age of the second half of the Twentieth Century. A new agriculture and a new industry have come into being, and with them a new working class, a new middle class, and a new class of professionals, scientists, managers and technicians. Life has changed drastically at every level of Mexican society except the very lowest. Problems remain: problems of growth and problems inherited from Mexico's stormy past, as well as those of climate and geography. This film deals with the meeting of those problems, with the strides that have been made, and with the future plans of a nation with the most remarkable record of recent growth and accomplishment in Latin America. Because the panorama in Mexico is so vast, the film concentrates on the visible effects of this "unfinished revolution" in a few varied areas - and on a few areas as yet untouched by the winds of change. It opens with a brief historical review of Mexico's past, and progresses to views of Mexico City as it is now: the traffic, the skyscrapers, the modern apartment houses - and the poverty stricken sections where the new gold age has not yet penetrated. The cameras then move to the home of Senora Lola Olmedo, a prominent business woman and collector of Mexican art. She and her guest, Senor Juan O'Gorman, well-known Mexican artist and architect, both believe that they would never have had the opportunity to achieve their present success had the 1910 Revolution not taken place. Dr. Edmundo Flores, professor at the National University and leading government economist is filmed in his study as he analyzes the effects of the Revolution. He points out that it was, of necessity, a left-wing movement. A conservative, right-wing revolution, he says, could never have brought the drastic changes in the Mexican government, economy, and way of life that this one did. The continual changes taking place in the Mexican status quo, the program continues, are due largely to the spread of higher education. Today, Mexico spends more than eighteen percent of her national budget on schools and schooling, far more than most nations. The National University, built ten years ago to accommodate 25,000 students, now has an enrollment of 70,000. Adela Bocanegra is typical of the new, ambitious generation, hungry for education. She comes from Tepotzlan, a small village about fifty miles from Mexico City. When she completes her medical studies at the National University, she will return to her village for a year's internship in the Tepotzlan health center. The village is in an area of Mexico that is scenically magnificent but economically miserable. Even though illiteracy (once afflicting 80% of the population) has been radically decreased and despite the elements of the modern world brought in by the advent of busses and paved roads - extreme poverty has kept the people from advancing as rapidly as those in the more urban areas. The peasants are deeply superstitious and suspicious of modern science. Even with a fully-equipped hospital offering free medical care, many of them still prefer to take their children to the "curandero" or witch doctor. So when Adela Bocanegra returns to her village, she will have to help educate as well as heal her people. The pall of poverty and endless, primitive labor that hangs over Tepotzlan and other villages in Mexico's southern regions once enveloped the entire country. Now it is gradually lifting in the northern areas where farming methods have been improved through the introduction of modern machinery. Huge irrigation projects have brought water to millions of acres of previously arid land. The production of electric power has risen over 500% as a result of new hydro-electric plants. Similar advances in all the basic industries have more than doubled Mexico's gross national product in the past twenty-years, and have made her an industrial leader in Latin America. The resultant growth of a new middle class with increased income and the leisure to enjoy it has, in turn, created a demand for automobiles, supermarkets, pleasure resorts, and other outlets for affluence. The very rich, of course, live in unmatched luxury. Luis Gil, for example, who designs modern homes and factory buildings, is among the five percent of Mexico's population who control 37% of the country's annual income. When he appears in the traditional Charro Festival he wears a sombrero costing $150 and a $250 cowboy suit. In contrast, the average work in Mexico makes about $20 a week - and his life, as the film shows, is quite different from that of Luis Gil. An even greater gap exists between the top and the bottom of the economic ladder - and the shantytowns on the outskirts of the larger cities. Here children grow up on garbage dumps and their homes are seldom more than packing cases and bits of tin. None of Mexico's advances have reached these people; most of them are landless peasants who came to the city looking for work and found only unemployment and misery. Ten percent of the Mexican population lives in this grinding poverty - a poverty that nourishes sympathy for Cuba - anger and resentment toward the United States. Here, among those who have no part of Mexico's new prosperity, the extreme left finds its most willing converts. The film concludes the Revolution of 1910 promised, among other things, a decent standard of living for all. Mexican governments have struggled for half a century to make good that promise; they have achieved much; but Mexico is still far short of the goal. How much longer will the poor be patient? In a Latin America tempted and propagandized by Cuba, how long can Mexico afford to delay the completion of "the unfinished revolution?" "The Unfinished Revolution" is the second Intertel program produced by National Educational Television and the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, joint American partners in the International Television Federation. Music score: Ross Gaffney Co. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
- Broadcast Date
- 1962-10-01
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Documentary
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 00:53:41
- Credits
-
-
Camera Operator: Carabjal, Carlos
Director: Alexander, Michael
Editor: Kirchheimer, Manfred
Executive Producer: Sklar, Michael
Interviewee: O'Gorman, Juan
Interviewee: Flores, Edmundo
Interviewee: Olmedo, Lola
Interviewee: Bocanegra, Adela
Narrator: Julian, Joseph
Producer: Alexander, Michael
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
Producing Organization: Westinghouse Broadcasting Company
Writer: Sklar, Michael
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Identifier: cpb-aacip-516-s46h12wb4m.mp4.mp4 (mediainfo)
Format: video/mp4
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 00:53:41
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Perspective; Unfinished Revolution,” 1962-10-01, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 7, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-s46h12wb4m.
- MLA: “Perspective; Unfinished Revolution.” 1962-10-01. American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 7, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-s46h12wb4m>.
- APA: Perspective; Unfinished Revolution. Boston, MA: American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-516-s46h12wb4m