The Porfiriato and the Causes of Revolution (1884–1910)

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Porfirio Díaz's long personal dictatorship over Mexico, from 1876/1884 until 1911.

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"Bread or the stick" — reward loyal supporters with favours and land, or crush opponents with force.

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Díaz's inner circle of technocratic advisers, who justified his rule using ideas of "order and progress".

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A mounted rural police force used by Díaz to suppress banditry and political opposition in the countryside.

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Roughly 1% of the population owned about 85% of Mexico's land, concentrated into large hacienda estates.

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A system where hacienda workers were paid in credit at overpriced company stores (tienda de raya), keeping them permanently in debt and tied to the estate.

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Striking miners and textile workers protesting pay and conditions were violently suppressed by Díaz's troops, exposing the regime's reliance on repression.

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Díaz told US journalist James Creelman that Mexico was ready for democracy and he would welcome an opposition party in 1910 — a promise he then broke.

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A liberal landowner from Coahuila who ran against Díaz in 1910 under the slogan "Effective Suffrage, No Re-election", demanding honest elections and no indefinite re-election.

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Madero's declaration, issued from exile in Texas, voiding the fraudulent 1910 election and calling on Mexicans to rise in armed revolt on 20 November 1910.

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Díaz's rigged, repressive rule concentrated land and wealth while crushing dissent (Cananea, Río Blanco) → Creelman Interview raised hopes of reform → Díaz jailed Madero and stole the 1910 election → Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosí called for armed revolt.

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Long-term: land concentration, debt peonage, foreign economic control, no political outlet. Short-term: Creelman Interview raising false hopes, Madero's 1910 candidacy, his arrest, and the fraudulent election that triggered the Plan of San Luis Potosí.