ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that a preliminary assessment of the model through a look at the three full-fledged cases of social revolution in twentieth-century Latin America – Mexico 1910–20, Cuba 1956–59, and Nicaragua 1977–79. It represents an initial stock-taking of a much vaster project, one which will attempt to bridge the gap a little further between theoretical elaboration and empirical research in the sociology of revolution. The two structural factors of dependent development and exclusionary, personalistic regimes, then, mark off a specific, limited subset of Third World countries where people might expect to see revolutionary movements. One key finding has been the variable timing and phases provided by the dual crisis: in Mexico, economic downturn preceded the outbreak of revolution more clearly than in Cuba, with Nicaragua somewhere in between. In economic terms, rural society was dominated by hacendados, urban society by capitalists, merchants, and clerics.
