Under the Diaz régime in the last ten years of his rule, Felix Diaz, the nephew of the dictator, was able to expropriate most of those lands with the assistance of the governor and the jefes políticos of Tamaulipas. The company which expropriated the lands and paid the expenses was under the patronage of Felix Diaz. Roughly speaking there were about 75,000 acres under the control of that company. As soon as Gonzalez’s and Blanco’s troops had driven the Federals and the jefes políticos from the border, Lucio Blanco originated the idea of selling the lands of Felix Diaz to the peons of Tamaulipas. He asked the engineers fighting under him to survey the land in question and divide it into small lots from ten to sixty acres. Then he offered them at public auction, giving the preference to the soldiers under his command. The effect was surprising; peons came from everywhere to watch the proceedings. Most of the land was sold to the highest bidder at a very low price, on the installment plan, with a small sum to be paid in cash. The most astonishing and significant result of the experiment was that over 400 peons bought the land besides a great many soldiers who, having acquired small lots, refused to continue fighting. Their logic was irrefutable: they had taken up arms to get back the land and now that they were in possession of it, why fight any longer? The problem was perplexing in the extreme. If all the generals in the revolution acted on the same principle as Lucio Blanco then all the Constitutionalist soldiers would stop fighting. This incident proves quite conclusively that the revolution in Mexico is an economic more than a political upheaval. Carranza was informed of this land distribution and its disastrous results in as far as it touched the military question and the result was that Gen. Lucio Blanco had to shift his command to the western division under General Obregon. In the State of Chihuahua General Villa began a distribution of lands. Unlike General Blanco, he went at the problem in a haphazard, personal way. As the Terrazas were personal enemies of his and owners of almost one-third of the State of Chihuahua, he proclaimed the Terrazas estates confiscated. The distribution was made among some of his officers, civilians on his staff and personal friends. In Mexico wherever there is cultivation of any kind there will be found a farmhouse (hacienda) built like a fortress. The hacienda proper is a small village, sometimes a small city in itself, containing the house of the proprietor, the manager, the servants and the peons, a church, buildings for gathering the crops, often a factory, enclosures or stables for horses, cattle, sheep. The whole is surrounded by a high and very thick wall which can stand a prolonged siege and can defy capture by armed forces. Everything for its protection is found within its walls: gatling guns, rifles, ammunition, food, clothing, and even wells of water.