Mexico had made the law an idol to be revered and not a functional instrument to be put to use. How can a law be functional if the legislator who drafts it does not take the concrete facts of the reality he seeks to govern into account?

And what was Mexico for the Mexican people but an enigma, a vague specter, a nameless monster? It had to be reduced to clear notions, exact figures. As full an awareness as possible had to be gained of the natural resources available, the quantity of persons among whom they had to be distributed, and the way in which they had to be exploited in order to give the greatest possible yield.

Once the lies of propaganda and the exaggerations of optimism were put aside, the countenance of the fatherland was found to be an immense and desolate horizon. Misery, ignorance, moral rot. A soil that is either exhaustingly sterile or exuberant to the point of annihilation; a population pulverized into innumerable isolated villages. A man whose work does not keep him from the slow agony of hunger. Another man who knows no voice but the whip’s.

And the truth becomes apparent. Where does Mexico’s wealth lie? The mines are stripped of their riches, the prosperity of the cities declines. Nothing is certain but the land.

What a pity, what a waste, what a crime that vast expanses of land lie fallow! What a scandalous price their owners demand to rent those lands out, since they do not want to sell them! A just government (and in politics, justice takes the form of skill) has the obligation to wrest the land from the “dead hands” that are now in possession of it and place it in the empty hands of the campesino, the Indian, those who sow and will share their harvest with all.

But those dead hands, which were once the sacred hands of the priest, the monk, are now the powerful hands of rich men, which have become claws that will not release their prey. What, then, is to be done? Struggle, combat. Not only against the landowners, those who are opposed to the redistribution of the latifundios, but also against the great crowd of those who have been turned into fanatics and refuse to accept an improvement in their lot because they have been made to believe it is a sacrilege.

“The Government has enough strength and will use it, if necessary, but it is also on the side of right and prefers to convince both the egotists who don’t want to give up a single one of their privileges and the faint-hearted who don’t dare claim any of their rights that a country is not great if it is not just, that a society is not prosperous if it is not equitable, that goods are not goods if they are not enjoyed by all citizens.”