Chronicle on the Mexican Revolution

Chronicle on the Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution, the first revolution of the 20th century

It is a Sunday, November 20, 1910. Porfirio Diaz, known by the people who oppose him as "the weeper of Icamole" given the way in which he ended his speech in the Chamber of Deputies in 1874, governs Mexico with a firm fist for almost 35 years. And although the country has prospered economically, it has done so by neglecting the impoverished peasant masses and denying the opposition any access to state institutions.

The first winds of change are blowing. Not long ago, the American journalist James Creelman, of the magazine “The Pearson’s Magazine”He has interviewed Porfirio Díaz, who has assured him that he will not stand for reelection.

This is a statement intended to calm foreign investors, nothing more. But the opposition parties cross their fingers and a voice calls them to organize, to win the upcoming elections: it is about of the businessman and politician Francisco Ignacio Madero, born in Coahuila in 1873 and founder of the National Party Anti-reelectionist.

Madero is a popular candidate and he knows it. At the head of a set of national tours to announce the upcoming democracyHe soon became the favorite and for that very reason he was arrested in San Luis de Potosí and accused of sedition. And with Madero in jail, Porfirio Díaz apparently changes his mind: he will stand for election again, with Ramón Corral as vice president. And so, in 1910, he was elected again to the presidency of Mexico, to the total indignation and suspicion of his opponents. A political crisis is yet to come.

The Plan of San Luis and the Maderista Revolution

On October 6, 1910, Francisco Madero escapes from prison and goes into exile in the city of San Antonio, Texas, in the United States. There he draws up a document that will be known as the "Plan of San Luis", in which he summons Mexicans to armed struggle to depose what is clearly an autocratic government.

In that same document the elections just held are declared invalid, as well as the positions of president, vice president, the Court Supreme Court and deputies and senators, and Madero himself is announced as provisional president of Mexico and "Head of the Revolution". The uprising, to which the Federal Army is also invited, would take place on November 20.

On October 19, Madero leaves Texas and crosses the Rio Grande to return to Mexico, where he is greeted by a small group of volunteers and former military personnel. But after a few skirmishes, Madero retreats again to the United States, this time to the city of New Orleans, where he hopes to regroup his forces and consolidate a strategy. What will be his surprise to learn that many more people have responded to his call, in the rural areas of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango and Coahuila. The Mexican Revolution takes its first weak steps.

This is how November 20 arrives and there are 13 uprisings against Porfirio Díaz: one in Durango, who takes the municipal jail and frees the prisoners to join his cause, eight in Chihuahua, three in Veracruz and another in San Luis de Potosi. And in the city of Guerrero, the next day, the first confrontation between revolutionaries and federal troops, as the armed struggle spreads to seven of the states of the Republic. Among the rebels are the leaders Pascual Orozco, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, Salvador Alvarado, Emiliano Zapata and several others.

Confronted with this new panorama, Madero decides to return to the country through Ciudad Juárez, with the purpose of assuming the leadership of the movement. In command of some 800 rebels, he attacks the city of Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua, but is defeated and wounded in the arm, and other revolutionary leaders must come to his support. But that matters little: the uprising has already turned into a rebellion and covers practically the entire country, and adds sectors workers, railroad workers, miners, ranchers, artisans and even some political sectors that were never too close to Log.

The first negotiations

The Díaz government tries to put out the fire, suspending individual guarantees and extending an invitation to a political dialogue to the Maderistas. In New York, United States, the two sides meet to confer, and the Revolutionary Junta sends its government demands: decree non-reelection, remove the vice president, guarantee political freedom and return to the channel democratic.

Several of these demands are implemented by the government, in part thanks to the insistence of his delegate in the negotiations, José Ives Limantour. But in Madero's opinion there are very few, so the revolutionary side is determined to achieve the resignation of Díaz and Corral. And although the government is willing to give up the vice presidency, it does not do the same with the Díaz mandate. Finally, on May 7, 1911, it was published in the newspaper The nation a government statement, reporting on the failure of the negotiations.

Hostilities resumed immediately, and this time they did not do so under Madero's absolute control. During May 8 and 9, 1911 there was an attack against Ciudad Juárez, under the command of "Pancho" Villa and Orozco and against the orders of Madero.

On the 10th the city is already under the control of the rebels, who immediately proceed to appoint an interim government, at the The head of which was Madero, and whose Council of State includes names such as Venustiano Carranza and José María Pino Suarez.

A new pause in combat is decreed for five days by the revolutionary government on May 17, extended to the country and, at the end of said period, peace is announced with the Díaz government, through the signing of the City Treaties Juárez. Both Díaz and his vice president agree to resign from their positions, which they do on the 25th of the same month. Porfirio Díaz leaves Mexico until the end of his days. The Maderista Revolution comes to an end.

The beginning of Zapatismo

On May 25, 1911, the interim government of Francisco León de la Barra, former minister of foreign relations of Porfirio Díaz, in whose hands it remains to resolve the political and social dilemma of the nation. In his cabinet there is room for representatives of the Maderism, the Porfiriato and independent politicians. But even so, the country is far from immersed in peace.

Madero and de la Barra continually compete for authority. And when the latter announces measures, somewhat hasty, for the disarmament of the rural revolutionary forces, he is faced with an important opposition in the figure of Emiliano Zapata, who demands that the distribution and restitution of lands that Madero had promised in his Plan of Saint Louis. The peasants, raised in arms, are not willing to meekly return to marginalization and poverty.

Madero tries to negotiate with the Zapatista army and, when he seems to be able to do so, de la Barra orders General Victoriano Huerta to violently repress them. Nobody can assume the cost that this will have for the future of the country. The forces of Emiliano Zapata withdrew in the mountains of Puebla and Guerrero, and announced to the people of Morelos the creation of the Liberation Army of the South, as well as their intentions to fight the "scientific traitors" who want to retake the can.

Within the new government, the peasant armed forces have the support of some factions, who defend their right not to lay down their arms until they feel satisfied with what they have obtained. This brings with it a certain political instability, which motivates other revolutionary sectors to resume the struggle.

On August 1, the Texcoco Plan was announced, signed by Andrés Molina Enríquez, in which the government was unknown; And on October 31, the same occurs with the Plan of Tacubaya, signed by Paulino Martínez, a future ideologue of Zapatismo, who accuses Madero of having betrayed the cause.

The Madero government

At the end of 1911 general elections were held and Francisco Madero was elected president, at the head of his newly founded Progressive Constitutional Party. His government undertakes significant changes: it moves away from the Porfiriato and grants power to the middle classes, something that the worker and peasant sectors, once again relegated, resent.

Madero then crossed a dangerous line: he sent a delegation to Morelos to ask Emiliano Zapata to demobilize his army, something to which he Revolutionary leader refuses unless certain conditions are met: the state governor must be removed from office, federal troops withdrawn, the Zapatista forces must receive a pardon and an agrarian law must be established that improves the living conditions of the peasants and the rural class.

Madero refuses to comply with those terms and sends the army after Zapata, who manages to escape to the state of Puebla and from there announce the Ayala Plan, accusing Madero of being a dictator, of being against the will of the people and of having allied with the landowners feudal. Zapata proclaims Pascual Orozco as the new head of the Revolution and, if he does not accept, he nominates himself for the position.

More and more uprisings

Thus, Madero loses revolutionary support. In 1912, Pascual Orozco, governor of Chihuahua, announced the Plan de la Empacadora (so called because it was signed in the building of a company Empacadora), also called Plan Orozquista: a document in which he severely criticizes the Madero government and under the slogan of "Reform, freedom and justice", proposes a different path, more daring, more revolutionary.

Along with him rise various soldiers of the old revolutionary army, who do not know the government and face successfully to his forces, at the head of which is once again the engineer and soldier Victoriano Huerta, by appointment of his own Log.

That same year the conservative sectors rose up against Madero, some of which had already failed in 1911 in a very brief attempt to ignore Madero and prevent changes in his government, known as the Plan de la Soledad, led by Bernardo Kings.

In 1912 the new uprising is headed by Félix Díaz, a nephew of Porfirio Díaz himself, in the state of Veracruz on October 16. His movement lacks the expected support and on October 23 he is already imprisoned and sentenced to death, a sentence that is later commuted to life imprisonment.

But that does not discourage other counterrevolutionary sectors, which at the beginning of 1913 rose up again, this time under the command of Manuel Mondragón, Gregorio Ruiz and Rodolfo Reyes. It is about the Tragic Ten: a coup d'état orchestrated with the help of the US ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson, and Victoriano Huerta himself, who commands Madero's military forces. In the revolt, the former conspirators, Bernardo Reyes and Félix Díaz, were released from jail, although the former was killed during the combat.

This betrayal takes Madero and Pino Suárez, his vice president, off guard. Both are captured, forced to resign their positions and later assassinated. Victoriano Huerta then assumed the reins of government, an action for which he was known as "the usurper." His government, allied with the great landowners and with the Church, suppresses democracy and intends to pacify the country by force, against the revolutionary sectors.

The Constitutionalist Revolution

In March 1913, northern Mexico was the scene of a new revolutionary military uprising, known as the Plan of Guadalupe. It is led by Venustiano Carranza, appointed as head of the Constitutionalist Army, whose mission is to depose the Huerta dictatorship and call for elections. Under his wing are many veterans of the struggle against the Porfiriato, as well as the revolutionary generals Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, from the state of Sonora.

Others, like Pascual Orozco, change sides and support Huerta, so the revolutionary troops of Chihuahua are commanded by Francisco "Pancho" Villa, who has the support of the popular classes. There are also uprisings in Durango, Zacatecas, Coahuila. Emiliano Zapata, on his part, has been alone in a fight against Huerta since March 4.

The arrival to the US presidency of Woodrow Wilson in 1913 leads the Huerta government into a dead end. The new neighboring government is adverse to him and rather sympathizes with the constitutionalist troops, so in 1914 the Second American Intervention in Mexico: US forces take the port of Veracruz militarily, thus preventing the arrival of a shipment of weapons purchased from Germany by the government of Vegetable plot.

For this they use as a pretext the so-called “Tampico Incident”, a minor maritime altercation between sailors Americans and the Mexican federal garrison in Tampico, Tamaulipas, which took place on April 9, 1914. The US occupation takes two days of fighting, lasts for seven months and finally hands over command of the port to forces loyal to Venustiano Carranza.

At the beginning of 1914, the constitutionalist army already controlled all of northern Mexico. On July 14, he entered the capital victoriously and put an end to the Huerta government, who fled to Cuba and from there to United States, where he is arrested and sentenced to prison in El Paso, Texas, where he dies a couple of years after. In his absence, Venustiano Carranza assumes the reins of Mexico.

Peace will have to wait

The Carranza government does not bring with it the long-awaited peace in Mexico, but the resentment of “Pancho” Villa, who accuses him of cunning during the seizure of power, since Carranza has excluded him from the Treaties of Teoloyucán, the pact that allows the peaceful end of the government of Vegetable plot.

Meeting on July 8, Carranza and Villa have signed the Torreón Pact, in which they establish agreements on the leadership of the revolutionary army. But this agreement would not prevent the two factions from quickly distancing themselves and waging a bloody conflict in the next stage of the Mexican Revolution.

On October 10, the government convenes the Aguascalientes Convention: an attempt to bring the Carranza, Villa and Zapata factions to an agreement. There, Eulalio Gutiérrez is appointed as interim president, against the will of Carranza, who considers his right to choose the president.

The armies march again. Villa and Zapata sign the Pact of Xochimilco in Mexico City: basically an anti-Castro alliance. Faced with the two caudillos, President Gutiérrez failed to govern and resigned on January 16, 1915, for which Roque González Garza was named as his successor.

Meanwhile, in Veracruz, Carranza de facto governs the country, which is divided between constitutionalist forces (at Carranza's command) and conventionist forces (under Villa's command, since Zapata is limited to defending and isolating his territory).

The civil war did not wait and in March 1915 the first battles took place, but soon the superiority of the constitutionalist army is noted, especially under the command of Álvaro Obregon. Thus, in October 1915, the United States de facto recognized the Carranza government (which caused a series of vengeful attacks by the Villista army against goods and US citizens), and at the end of 1916 the victory of the constitutionalist side is a reality.

The Constituent Congress of 1917

For many scholars of the Mexican Revolution, the year 1917 marks the end of a bloody stage of political, social and economic transformations in the country. And this is because the triumph of Carranza brings with it the promise of a refounding of the country: a new national Constitution, written almost entirely by the Carrancista forces in the city of Querétaro, although many of the demands of the Villista and Zapatista sectors are, in their own way, taken in bill. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 is the result of these efforts.

In February 1917 elections are held again in Mexico. Venustiano Carranza is elected for a period of three years, during which continuous Villa's uprisings take place. and Zapatistas, a new counterrevolutionary movement of Félix Díaz, and finally rebellions in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Michoacan.

The Carranza government navigates those uneasy waters, and on April 10, 1918, he deceives and shoots Emiliano Zapata to death on the Chinameca farm. But when he tries something similar with Álvaro Obregón, he announces the Agua Prieta Plan, in alliance with Plutarco Elías Calles, in which they are unaware of his government and rise up against him. Unable to confront his former allies, Carranza flees to Veracruz and is ambushed and shot to death on May 21, 1920.

The end of the Mexican Revolution

From 1920 to 1928, Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles ruled Mexico one after the other. During Calles' mandate, the Cristero War (from 1926 to 1929) took place, an armed uprising in defense of the privileges of the Church, strongly attacked by the revolutionary government.

This bloody conflict ends during the presidency of Emilio Portes Gil, since Álvaro Obregón, reelected for the position in 1928, he is assassinated before taking office by a Catholic fanatic in a restaurant in the City of Mexico. After his death, the "Chief Executive of the Revolution", Plutarco Elías Calles, will give a famous speech in which he announces the end of the "stage of the caudillos" and the beginning of the "stage of the institutions ”.

The following year, the National Revolutionary Party was founded, which under the name of Partido de la Mexican Revolution and Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), will finally rule Mexico for 70 years.

References:

• "Mexican Revolution" in Wikipedia.
• "Mexican Revolution: what it consisted of and who were the main leaders" in BBC News World.
• "Mexican Revolution" by Pedro Ángeles Becerra in the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo (Mexico).
• "Mexican Revolution, the great social movement of the twentieth century" in the Government of Mexico.
• "Mexican Revolution" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is a chronicle?

A chronicle it's a narrative text in which real or fictional events are addressed from a chronological perspective. They are often narrated by eyewitnesses, through a personal language that uses literary resources. Usually considered as a hybrid genre between journalism, history and the literature, the chronicle may cover types of narration very different, such as the travel chronicle, the chronicle of events, the gastronomic chronicle, and so on.

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