Mexican industrialization, which began during the second half of the nineteenth century, was paralleled by the appearance of an urban labor movement. Industrialization resulted in a sudden concentration of new workers from the countryside in a few urban areas—especially Mexico City. Living conditions for the new city dwellers were generally intolerable and were compounded by chronic economic and political instability. Crowning the laborer's difficulty were the almost impossible working conditions in the new factories. The working class, virtually in self-defense, began to organize. Because the urban labor movement during the last third of the nineteenth century was a prelude to similar and more famous developments during the violent years of the early twentieth century, analysis of its causes, nature, and significance is essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

Julio Roca and the Generation of 1880 are best characterized by their liberalism. Indeed Argentine politics ever since the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas had adopted an increasing liberal tone. These beliefs included the encouragement of constitutionalism, federalism, freedom, and democracy. The last two points were rather vague; and democracy, especially, was interpreted in a more theoretical than practical way by the aristocracy that remained in charge of political, economic, and social affairs. However, efforts to stress the immigration of workers and capital from Europe, a relatively free trade policy, and public education for all were more clear and determined. On most of these points, the leaders of the nation seemed to agree. But on another point, that of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentine life, there was sharp disagreement. At no time was this more evident than during Roca's first administration, 1880-1886.

Northeast Brazil had traditionally maintained two functionally separate but structurally related Catholic Churches: on the coast, usually in the state capitals, the “ official church ” has been manned and officiated by a well-trained bureaucratic hierarchy; and in the hinterlands, the backlanders have often practiced a variety of “ folk Catholicism.” In a social and economic context, the Brazilian Northeast can also be divided into the “ far Northeast” of Gilberto Freyre and Jorge Amado, the world of opulent sugar and cacao planters on the one hand, and on the other the Northeast of drought, poverty, hunger, and superstition described by Rachel de Queiroz and Graciliano Ramos. In this divergent Northeast, religion has played an important role in the lives of the backlanders, and often priests, both the practitioners of the folk Catholicism and the ordained of the official church have managed to influence the politics of the region.