ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on five continually glorified principles or goals: political stability, political liberty, economic growth, increased economic equality, and national independence. It explores signs that some important modifications in the basic development model did in fact continue under Lopez Portillo, but the overriding point is that economic growth, not increased economic equality, was once again viewed as political stability's most critical partner. The Indians who inhabited Mexico in the precolonial period form an integral part of contemporary Mexico. The Aztecs ruled over other tribes, and some of these saw in the commotion surrounding the Spanish arrival an attractive opportunity to rebel. The coup installed dictator Victoriano Huerta, destroyed political freedom, and inaugurated the revolution's most violent epoch. Emiliano Zapata's forces had a coherent revolutionary program but were perhaps essentially conservative socially. The revolution weakened the explicitly European orientation of the Diaz regime and focused on Mexico's indigenous roots.
