He cared a great deal for the Mexican people and fought with their interests at heart although his patriotism could manifest into xenophobia. Not long after he took over the government in Chihuahua, he demanded all Spaniards be exiled from the state. .
The Mexican revolution involved everyone, men, women and children and from all kinds of backgrounds. There was a nationalistic fever, Mexicans dropped whatever they were doing and took up arms to fight for a better life. War cries such as 'long live the Virgin Guadalupe! Long live Francisco I. Madero!' (Mexico Reader 377) were screamed as villages were ransacked. There was a wide gap between the working class fighting for their rights and the middle class intellectuals prompted by their hatred for Porfirio Díaz and his regime. 'The Mexico Reader' provides a wide range of viewpoints from people from drastically different backgrounds. For instance Ricardo Flores Magón, a Mexican journalist and anarchist, was an important influence to the revolution. He had been encouraging resistance for years. Similar to Marx he encouraged the proletariat to rise up against those oppressing them. In his nationalistic essay 'Land and Liberty' (MR, 335), which appeared in his journal 'regeneración' a day before the revolution began, he dramatically encourages the redistribution of the lands. On the other hand we can bare witness, in Oscar Lewis' interviews with Pedro Martinez, to a Mexican peasant, someone who went through great hardship and suffered at the hands of the government. He joined the Zapatistas as a soldier. He claims to have fought for his nation, for what was right. Although his wife states that he did it for the desperate need of money. There is a definite sense that people in such dismal misery took up arms to fight for their country for loss of what else to do, for the wages and not necessarily for a particular cause.