The book analyzes Mexican history from the country's independence to the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 - the most significant social revolution in Latin America until 1959. The reason for the revolutionary upheavals was the tough policy of modernization of Mexico, carried out at the expense of the broad masses of the population, based on foreign (primarily American) capital during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. The driving forces of the revolution, its successes and failures, as well as US attempts to use the Mexicans' desire for social reconstruction for their own purposes are described. The book contains panoramic, living portraits of the outstanding popular leaders of the Mexican Revolution - Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata - whose names are known far beyond the borders of Mexico. The first volume of the author's Mexican trilogy ends in 1917, when the people of Mexico adopted the country's most progressive constitution for that time.