The Beginning of the Mexican Revolution

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 18^th 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 20^th, 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 18^th, 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 19^th hence the name, the Ten Tragic Days. During this time, Madero and Suarez were held hostage by Huerta and this caused problems. On February 19^th 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.

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

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.

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.