THE MYTH OF A POPULAR REVOLUTIONOver the course of the past decade at least, historians have debated the essential character of the Mexican revolution with regard to the level of participation of the masses. Two major schools of interpretation have coalesced:(1) the older, orthodox &dquo;populist&dquo; interpretation, which has taken its cue from several generations of &dquo;pro-revolutionary&dquo; Mexican historians and from distinguished North Americans like Frank Tannenbaum and Ernest Gruening, who were first active in the 1920s and 1930s;1 and (2) a newer revisionist (and hence &dquo;antipopulist&dquo;) interpretation based upon the work of a younger generation of Mexican historians (e.g.,