According to Thomas Benjamin in La Revolucion, history is much more
             than past events and the facts that describe them. It is also a collective
             memory and the way some reminiscences are passed on from generation to
             generation while others get lost or forgotten. Benjamin shows that people
             can fight with memories just as they fight with guns. In this way, memories
             may be as real, if not more so, than the "actual" events to which they
             refer. This is what happened during the Mexican revolution: Through such
             memories, the revolution with a small "r" became an all-compassing and
             almighty Revolution with a capital "R."
             In "Construction," the first section of La Revolucion, Benjamin
             discusses how from 1911 to 1928 each revolutionary faction put its own
             slant on the meaning of the political conflict within Mexico. For example,
             freelance writer Gaspar Bolanas wrote propaganda for newspapers and gave
             speeches that supported Madero. Bolanas and other Madero "voices," living
             in Mexico as well as Paris, New York and Havana, considered themselves
             interpreters of realityâ€"making events clearer and more easily understood by
             the masses. At the same time, however, they were creating a new occurrence
             that would go down in history as the "other reality," called the
             The Maderistas were not the only ones revising history. The factions
             of Villa, Emiliano Zapata, General Alvara Obregon, and Plutarco Elias
             Calles advanced their own versions of the Revolution and used them as
             ideological weapons to contest their rivals' positions. For example, the
             followers of Venustiano Carranza struggled to produce their
             own official memory, but because of competition from Zapatistas and
             Villistas, they never completely won the propaganda contest. Still, they
             did have some advantages over other political groups. They were well known
             for their highly intellectual members and made intensive...