The Red Battalions were urban workers who were recruited by the Constitutionalist forces of the
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
to fight against the
Zapatistas
Zapatista(s) may refer to:
* Liberation Army of the South
The Liberation Army of the South ( es, Ejército Libertador del Sur, ELS) was a guerrilla force led for most of its existence by Emiliano Zapata that took part in the Mexican Revolut ...
and
Pancho Villa's army. The Mexican Revolution was a civil war that saw various alliances between different forces who fought various political reasons. The Red Battalions belonged largely to the ''
Casa del Obrero Mundial
The Casa del Obrero Mundial () or COM was a libertarian socialist and anarcho-syndicalist worker's organization located in the popular Tepito Barrio of Mexico City, founded on September 22, 1912. One of its founders was Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, ...
'' ("house of the world worker"), an
anarcho-syndicalist
Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in b ...
workers' organization. The battalions were deployed by
Carranza in exchange for various rights for workers, to defeat the "peasant counterrevolutionaries" of Zapata and Villa. They were called the Red Battalions because of their left-wing membership.
The battalions were ultimately disbanded after
Carranza no longer required their forces to subdue the insurgents of the north and the peasant guerrillas of the south. On 13 January 1916, amidst strikes incited by the ''Casa Obrera Mundial'', Carranza ordered the last of the Red Battalions to dissolve. Thereafter all labor unrest was suppressed, often violently, and the Casa went into decline.
See also
*
Casa del Obrero Mundial
The Casa del Obrero Mundial () or COM was a libertarian socialist and anarcho-syndicalist worker's organization located in the popular Tepito Barrio of Mexico City, founded on September 22, 1912. One of its founders was Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, ...
*
Index of Mexico-related articles
The following is an alphabetical index topics related to the Mexico.
0–8
* .mx – Internet country code top-level domain for México
A
*Adjacent countries:
:
:
:
*Adjacent states, departments, and districts
:Arizona (United States)
:Ca ...
*
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
References
Further reading
*Carr, Barry. "The Casa del Obrero Mundial. Constitutionalism and the pact of February 1915" in ''El Trabajo y los trabajadores'', 603-32.
*
*Hart, John Mason. ''Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1880-1931''. Austin: University of Texas Press 1978.
*Hart, John Mason. "The urban working class and the Mexican Revolution. The case of the Casa del Obrero Mundial", ''
Hispanic American Historical Review
''The Hispanic American Historical Review'' is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal of Latin American history, the official publication of the Conference on Latin American History, the professional organization of Latin American historians ...
'' vol. 58, no. 1, 1-20.
*Meyer, Jean A. "Les Ouvrier dans la révolution mexicane. Les Bataillons rouges". ''Annales: Économies, Sociétes, Civilisations''. vol. 25, no. 1 1970, 30-55.
Factions of the Mexican Revolution
Left-wing militant groups in Mexico
{{Mexico-hist-stub