What were the causes of the Mexican revolution?

Diaz, with his cronies, transformed his regime into an oligarchy. · Diaz suppressed political rights in the name of economic development and foreign investment. He ruled using the principle of pan o palo (bread or the club) · From the ranks of bandit chieftains and their followers Diaz created the rurales. Aside from chasing unrepentant bandits, the major function of the rurales was to suppress peasant unrest and break labor strikes. Opponents who refused Diaz's bribes were beaten up, murdered or arrested. By such means, Diaz virtually eliminated all effective opposition to his reign. · The church turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the masses and taught complete submission to the authorities. · The haciendas were generally inefficient, and most of their owners and managers were incompetent. Most of the hacendados refused to cultivate more than a small portion of their lands. · During his rule he took large amounts of land from the poor and gave it to the rich. This created only two classes the rich, and the poor. The separation between those classes was immense and this significantly affected their suffering economy. · Under Diaz the concentration of landownership in a few hands continued. Landless peons and their families made up 9.5 million of a rural population of 12 million. By the end of Diaz's reign, 17 people controlled 20% of Mexico's land area, and 3,000 families owned almost half of the country. One result of this concentration was the rise in the north of rancheros as a class. Foreigners controlled the mining, oil, and industrial wealth of the country. This control gave rise to a popular saying: "Mexico, mother of foreigners and stepmother of Mexicans." · Porfirio Diaz had been in power for over thirty years when he gave an interview with American journalist James Creelman in 1908 in which he stated that Mexico was ready for democracy and that the president to follow him should be elected democratically. He said that he looked forward to the formation of opposing political parties. Francisco I. Madero, a lawyer from Coahuila, took Diaz at his word and decided to run against him in the 1910 elections. Diaz (who apparently hadn't really meant what he said to Creelman) had Madero imprisoned and declared himself the winner of the elections. · Madero wrote the Plan de San Luis Potosi which called for the people of Mexico to rise up in arms against the president on November 20th, 1910. · The Serdan family of Puebla, planning to join with Madero, had arms stockpiled in their home when they were discovered on November 18th, two days before the revolution was to begin. The first battle of the revolution took place in their home, now a museum dedicated to the revolution. o The extremely corrupt government of Porifirio Diaz created severe poverty in Mexico, separating classes and creating tension between those classes. And the Mexican economy suffered from instability as a result of both extreme poverty and its overdependence on loans from foreign nations.
Causes of the Mexican Revolution: * The dictatorship-like rule of Pofirio Diaz for over 30 years * Exploitation and poor treatment of workers * Great disparity between rich and poor