Hello dear readers and welcome once
again. Today we’ll go on an adventure through history once again, and travel
exactly 105 years into the past, to November 18th 1910 to see the
beginning of the Mexican Revolution. So with that out of the way, strap in and
get ready for another exciting adventure into Mexican history!
Let’s start off by talking about Mexican
political history. After the Mexican War for Independence (more info on that here)
Mexico became an empire though the Emperor, Agustin de Iturbide, was quickly
deposed and the empire was replaced with a republic. Because of this, there was
much conflict over how the new government should be run. For decades, the
president would be forcibly removed from office, only to be replaced with a new
one. This trend of an unstable government would continue until the mid-1850s
when then President, Benito Juarez and other liberals took power. While in
office, Juarez wanted to weaken the power of the Catholic Church and the
military. The Conservatives were against this and a civil war, known as the War
of the Reform, was fought for about 4 years until 1861. This war weakened the
Mexican government but ultimately the liberals won and Juarez asked foreign
investors, specifically France, Britain, and Spain to wait until stability was returned to Mexico before repaying the debts owed to the Europeans. Those three European powers
did not accept this and decided to take over the port of Veracruz in an attempt to
force Mexico to pay the debts. France, under Napoleon III, wanted to colonize
and take over Mexico and decided to move inland into Mexico. Once Britain and
Spain saw this, they withdrew their support. This French invasion would be
known as the French Intervention, and would last from 1861 until 1867 when
Juarez and the Mexican forces managed to defeat the French and executed
Maximilian, the Austrian that was put on the Mexican throne to rule Mexico in
France’s place.
 |
| The execution of Maximilian |
Once the French Intervention ended,
both the Conservative forces and the Liberal forces managed to put aside their
differences and work together to make Mexico great once again. This would lead
to Juarez remaining in power and being re-elected in 1867 and 1871 until he
died in 1872 from a heart attack. In 1872 after Juarez’s death, there were two
other presidents until in 1876 when Porfirio Diaz rose to power and became
president. Diaz’s regime as president is an era known as the Porfirato, named
after him. During the Porfiriato there was a large increase in technology and
growth for the country, especially creating large European-like cities and
infrastructure. All of this was built on the backs of the poor and caused many
social issues and problems between Diaz’s elite cronies and the poor and
working classes. Another aspect of the Porfiriato era was that many foreign
investors, often investors from the United States, would take precedence in
legal problems, particularly in strikes. There were also some times that US
soldiers would take control and put down rebellions or strikes. This would lead
to more problems that Diaz would attempt to quench using the force of the Army
and along with his rural police force, known as the Rurales. Diaz would use force to violently put down these revolts
and strikes quickly and efficiently, though if there were many revolts to occur
at the same time, Diaz would be powerless to stop them all. This is why the
Mexican Revolution managed to start, because it started off as multiple
different revolts and rebellions taking place at the same time.
 |
| Porfirio Diaz, the dictator of Mexico for three and a half decades |
Let’s talk about the man that made
the call for revolution, and would later become a martyr for the Revolution and
become a symbol for the end of tyrannous rule, Francisco Ignacio Madero. Madero
had been educated in France and the United States and later would go to University
of California Berkeley. This would influence him and made him want to reform
Mexico politically with little change for social conditions. In 1908 when Diaz
said in an interview that he would not run for re-election in 1910, Madero took
advantage of the moment to announce that he would run for president and he
wrote a book titled La Sucesion
Presidencial en 1910 (The Presidential Succession in 1910) in which he talks
about how the country has problems, how Diaz having control over the political
system caused various problems. This book became a national best seller and
after Madero decided to run for presidency, he used the platform of “No
reeleccion y sufragio effective” meaning “No re-election and effective
suffrage” which essentially means that there should be secret ballots and that
all men, regardless of class and social status, should be allowed to vote and
that the president should only serve one term to prevent anyone from gaining
too much power and not giving it up as necessary.
 |
| Francisco I. Madero, the Martyr of the Revolution |
Madero ran for president and took advantage
of the trains and other vehicles to help promote his presidential campaign. Overall,
Madero was similar to Diaz, politically speaking, in the sense that he wanted
to modernize Mexico as well and that Madero believed that the only real thing
necessary to fix Mexico was by having new people involved in the political
process. In June 1910 Madero would be arrested by Diaz’s orders due to trumped
up charges of Madero having disturbed the peace. During this time that Madero
was jailed, Diaz managed to win re-election, to no one’s surprise. Madero then
used the connections that his father had to manage to get out of jail on a
bail. Soon after he got out on bail, Madero escaped to the United States. Soon after
this, Madero issued his famous Plan de San Luis Potosi, named after the city
where he was jailed. The Plan de San Luis Potosi, which can be read here in Spanish,
has Madero explain that the biggest problem to Mexico is Diaz and that the best
way to fix this problem was for the people to take up arms and remove Diaz by
force. If you recall, I earlier mentioned how Diaz was able to use harsh
methods of violence and force to stop any and all revolts but that if multiple
revolts were to break out simultaneously, he’d be helpless to stop all of the
revolts. This is precisely what Madero wanted to happen, and it did. At the end
of the Plan de San Luis Potosi, Madero calls for everyone to revolt against
Diaz on a specific day, November 20th, 1910 at 6 pm. The tl;dr
version of the Plan de San Luis Potosi is this: 11/20/10 let’s kick Diaz out of
power guys.
I’m sure some of you may be
wondering if the Mexican Revolution happened the way Madero wanted, or if it
ended up succeeding. The answer is yes and no. Initially Madero had promised
various kinds of reforms but nothing ever entirely specific, preferring to give
vague ideas and statements. One of the things he was vague about was land
reform, stating that it would be something that would happen. Because of this,
many campesinos decided to side with
Madero and planned to arm themselves in preparation of this. You’d think that this
would end up working greatly for Madero, but in actuality it wouldn’t. Two days
before Madero’s plan was to be used, there was an issue. On November 18th,
1910 while gathering supplies for the revolution, the Serdan family was
ambushed by Diaz’s men. This ambush resulted in a violent attack and as a
result the Mexican Revolution began two days prior to when Madero wanted. After
this, the Mexican Revolution began and many battles would occur between the
Diaz regime and the various revolutionary factions. In this initial part of the
Mexican Revolution many of the revolutionaries were siding either with Madero
or with local agrarian leaders, such as Emiliano Zapata in Morelos and Jose
Doroteo Arango Arambula, better known as Francisco “Pancho” Villa, in the
North. Villa and Zapata both admired Madero, though in different ways. While
Villa firmly believed in Madero, and in fact (spoiler alert: Madero gets
killed), openly wept at Madero’s funeral, Zapata was less of a believer in
Madero and would later break away from Madero after (spoiler alert again:
Madero becomes president) Madero became president.
 |
| Emiliano Zapata (right) and Pancho Villa (left) in Mexico City in 1914 |
As the spoiler alert above
mentioned, Madero would become president, though only after the Treaty of
Ciudad Juarez of May 1911, where Diaz and his vice president would step down
from power and Francisco Leon de la Barra would become interim president until official
elections could be held. An interesting
saying often attributed to Diaz after the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez says that “Madero
has a tiger by the tail, let’s see if he can control it.” After this, Madero officially declared the Mexican
Revolution would end and that all insurgents would lay down their arms since
the main objective, removing Diaz from power, was completed. This didn’t work
since as soon as you let people take up arms it becomes difficult for the
people to put their arms away, especially since many were trying to avenge
family or improve their conditions against hacendados,
or large land owners. After ordering the insurgents to put away their arms,
Zapata refused saying that the goal of the revolution hadn’t been completed
yet, which he believed to be more agrarian and land reforms to improve
conditions for the poor campesinos. The
greatest problem that Madero and the revolution faced as time went by was that for
many people the Mexican Revolution held many different meanings. For Zapata and
other agrarian leaders, there was a large focus on helping and reforming the
working conditions for campesinos as
well as distributing land for those that needed land, whereas for various political
leaders, such as Madero, wanted to fix the political system by adding new
blood, so to speak, and allowing a new generation to be involved in the
political system. It was this problem that caused the Mexican Revolution to
have completely different meanings for different people and prevent Madero from
easily taking power after the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez.
Now, for Madero the Treaty of
Ciudad Juarez was the end of the Revolution, Diaz was out of power and the political
system could, theoretically, be improved and fixed. Because of this, Madero
asked all the revolutionary fighters to put down their arms, but the campesinos were not going to put down
their arms until they got the things they wanted and the reforms they wanted. Due
to this, the Mexican Revolution continued for almost another decade and there
would be very little political and social change during this era. Madero made a
few mistakes after he managed to take power as president, one of which was
keeping most of Diaz’s cabinet/assistants. One of the people that Madero
allowed to remain in power was Victoriano Huerta. Huerta was a high ranking
member of the military under Diaz’s regime. Huerta was initially used by Madero
to put down any anti-Madero revolts, not necessarily because the
revolutionaries were against Madero, but because they were revolts that
disrupted Mexican life and would prevent the changes that Madero wanted. During
this time, there were very few, if any, battles that took place in Mexico City
but that all changed in 1913. Now, by 1913 popular support for Madero had been
in decline mainly because he did not implement, nor did he plan to implement,
any type of social and agricultural reform until the political process had been
changed and reformed. You can easily see why the population did not fully
support Madero at this point and it wasn’t just the general population that
disliked Madero either. Many elites disliked Madero, even though most kept
their jobs after he took over. One person that greatly disliked Madero by 1913
was General Manuel Mondragon. Mondragon was a top general in the Porfirio era
and disliked Madero, wanting to take him out of power as soon as possible. In a
(failed) coup, he and other conspirators planned to break Felix Diaz out of
prison and take Madero out of power. This initial coup failed, though Diaz was
able to break out of jail. For those wondering, yes, Felix and Porfirio were related
the elder Diaz was Felix’s uncle.
The similarities are uncanny, just look at their hats, moustaches, shiny medals and military uniform.
Felix on the left and Porfirio on the right
Now back to the fighting. After
this failed coup, Huerta began conspiring against Madero thanks to intervention
from the United States ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson, (who really put the “ass”
in “ambassador”) who convinced Huerta that Madero was unfit to be the true
ruler of Mexico. Huerta then hatched a plan to remove Madero from power. Madero ordered Huerta to go out and
put down an anti-Madero rebellion in Mexico City led by, who else but Diaz and
Mondragon. Huerta initially fought against the anti-Maderista rebels, but later
on sided with them to take Madero out of power. This coup against Madero is
known as the Decena Tragica, the Ten
Tragic Days, where Madero and his vice president, Pino Suarez, were essentially
held hostage by Huerta from February 9 to the 19th hence the name,
the Ten Tragic Days. During this time, Madero and Suarez were held hostage by
Huerta and this caused problems. On February 19th Madero and Suarez
were killed, though the circumstances surrounding this event are relatively
unknown. While it is certain that Huerta either killed or ordered the death of
Madero and Suarez, not much other than that is known. According to Huerta, both
Suarez and Madero were trying to flee with assistance from pro-Maderista
rebels, and of course no one believed him.
Throughout this time, the
Constitutional Army fought united against Huerta until 1914 when, after
numerous defeats at the hands of the Constitutionalist Army, Huerta decided to
step down from power and fled to Germany until he decided to go to the United
States to return to Mexico, but this was thwarted by US officials that arrested
him and he died in 1916. On October 1914, after forcing Huerta into exile, the
Constitutionalist Army united once again, this time to speak about the future
of the nation, joining to form the Convention of Aguascalientes, which was
described by Carranza as the “Great Convention of Commanding Military Chiefs
and State Governors.” Ultimately this Convention would be the breaking point
for the Constitutionalist Army since each of the leaders held a different
opinion as to what where the Revolution was headed and what the government
should be like in the future. One major problem with the Convention was that
there was no real consensus as to what types of reforms and changes there
should be. There was little talk of what should be done for the poor working
class and as a result both Villa and Zapata split from the Constitutional Army.
After this, both Villa and Zapata had a deal where neither would attack the
other. The picture showing Villa and Zapata was taken in December 1914 and
would be the last time that either Villa or Zapata would be in Mexico City
after they took it in a joint effort. After this in 1919 Zapata was killed in
an ambush by Carranza. It wouldn’t be until 1920 that the Mexican Revolution
ended when Villa made a deal with the government, where Villa would go into retirement
in exchange for an hacienda of over
20000 acres.
 |
| Victoriano Huerta, the "Usurper" |
So where do we go from here? Well,
honestly this is the highest point of the Mexican Revolution, with many different
factions unite to depose Huerta, who would take power after Madero’s death.
Huerta became known as “The Usurper” because he stole power and took it for him
after Madero died. Because of this and because of the fact that Huerta was a
crony of Diaz for some years, the general population didn’t like him and tried
to get him out of power. As I mentioned above, Villa was a great supporter of Madero
and because of that, Villa would want to avenge Madero. Zapata, now that Madero
was dead, was able to focus more on fighting the government and attempt to
create more agrarian reforms. Two other important players show up now as well,
Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregon. Collectively these men would help form
the Constitutionalist Army, though Zapata, as expected, would not actually be a
part of the Constitutionalist Army but would still assist them as needed.
Carranza was more of a politician than a general which was why Obregon was
assisting him as the general of his faction. Carranza, Obregon, and Villa were
generals in the North while Zapata was primarily in the South, centered mainly
in his home state of Morelos.
 |
| Venustiano Carranza, future president of Mexico |
This is where I’ll end this history
of the Mexican Revolution. I generalized and glossed over some points,
primarily the events in between the various presidential eras and with the
battles. Many more things happened, such as Villa making a film for the US
about his battles and exploits against Huerta or Zapata’s various campaigns in
Morelos, but those may show up on another day. I'd like to point out; however, that Madero's dream of a fixed political system happened with the Constitution of 1917, which had several clauses to prevent another regime like Diaz's, and the Revolution made clear that the working class would never be ignored again. I’ll end and remind all of my
readers that they must work together for a brighter future and that only by
working together, united in spite of our differences, can true peace be
accomplished. Never forget how every person has their own story and their own
lives each as different and complex as the next.
