Story on the Mexican Revolution

Story on the Mexican Revolution

Mexico, 1910: the first revolution of the 20th century

The 20th century took its first fearful steps, not suspecting the turbulent fate that it would soon face in many different countries. One of the first was Mexico, which in 1910 woke up from the long positivist dream that was the Porfiriato: three and a half decades in which the authoritarianism, political and social persecution, technological advance and industrial growth. Mexico had taken important steps towards development, but always with its back to the impoverished and marginalized majorities, especially in the countryside.

Thus, when in 1910 the caudillo Porfirio Díaz announced that he would not run for reelection for the office of president but would give way to the alternation of the democracy, new voices arose to herd the people towards the voting.

The main one of them all was that of Francisco I. Madero, a businessman and landowner who toured Mexico taking his anti-reelection and anti-Porfirian message to every corner, which earned him an unexpected arrest in San Luis Potosí, under accusations of "attempted rebellion" and "outrage against the authorities". The favorite opposition candidate was in prison when the elections were held, in which Díaz was re-elected to the position, betraying his word.

However, Madero escaped from prison to the United States, a country that had not gotten along very well with the Porfiriato. In San Antonio, Texas, Madero proclaimed the Plan of San Luis: a summons to the Mexican people to take up arms and depose Díaz, who obviously had no intention of leaving power. His summons was heard in different parts of the country, but the insurrection began in the north: Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, was the first city to be occupied by the insurgents. The Mexican Revolution had begun.

The defeat of Díaz's forces in Ciudad Juárez evidenced the weakness of his government, and with the signing of the peace treaties between rebels and rulers, known as the Ciudad Juárez Treaties, the Porfiriato reached its end.

The caudillo agreed to resign from the presidency and live the rest of his days in exile, in France, leaving an interim president to call new elections. But the interim president, Francisco León de la Barra, wanted to force the rebels to lay down their arms, and that led him to a continuous confrontation with Madero and with others. revolutionary leaders of rural populations such as Emiliano Zapata, who demanded immediate fulfillment of the promises of social change made by Madero in his Plan of Saint Louis.

The outlook was complicated. The interim government had a very plural cabinet, so much so that it could not agree on anything, and the presence of the insurgents in the field was a dagger pressed against its side.

It was thus that, taking advantage of the fact that Madero had tried to confer with Zapata in Cuautla in the middle of In 1911, the interim president sent the army, under the command of Victoriano Huerta, to appease by force the Zapatismo. This mistake would cost the country many years of coming war. Feeling betrayed not only by the government but by Madero, Zapata gathered his forces in the mountains between Puebla and Guerrero, and proclaimed the birth of the Liberation Army of the South.

The Madero government

In the midst of this turbulent climate, the necessary presidential elections were held in 1911, and Francisco I. Madero to drive to the country. Fulfilling its anti-reelectionist vocation, his government modified the constitution to prevent the perpetuity in power of any leader. In addition, the Madero government proposed the transformation of the country and, for that, handed over power to new governors and moved away from the Porfiriato model of the country.

However, two days after Madero took power, his government was unknown to Zapata, who proclaimed the Ayala Plan against him. In this document, Madero was accused of being a dictator, of betraying the revolutionary cause and the popular will, and proposed to Pascual Orozco (or, failing that, Zapata himself) as the maximum leader of the revolution, a symbolic title that until then had been held by himself. Log.

The government's response was to try to repress Zapatismo, as the interim government had previously done, but without success. The conflict between Madero and Zapata remained at a low intensity throughout 1912, which earned the then president the disagreement of the great landowners, even more so when in March of that year Pascual Orozco followed in Zapata's footsteps, ignored the government and proclaimed the Empacadora Plan (or Plan Orozquista). In this document they criticized the government and proposed measures of political, agrarian and labor reform much more advanced than those that initially existed in the Plan of San Luis.

On the opposite side, the counterrevolutionary, there were also uprisings against Madero. In 1911 Bernardo Reyes announced the Plan de la Soledad from San Antonio, Texas, an attempt to ignore the Madero's government and take up arms against him, which did not have popular support and led him to jail.

Later, in October 1912, a nephew of Porfirio Diaz, Félix Díaz, with the same results. However, at the beginning of 1913 the third attempt took place, this time successful: the so-called "Tragic Ten", a coup that overthrew the Maderista government.

The dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta

The coup was bloody and effective. In just ten hours the counterrevolutionary troops rose up and marched towards Tlatelolco and Lecumberri, in order to free both Bernardo Reyes and Félix Díaz.

Huerta, who was part of the conspiracy, dedicated himself to hindering attempts to establish order, and ended signing the Citadel Pact with Félix Díaz, in the presence of the US ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson. Now they would not stop until they ended the Madero government.

Captured by the insurgents, Madero and his vice president were forced to resign and, a few days later, they were sent to the Federal District Penitentiary. However, before reaching the jail, they were assassinated on Huerta's orders. The latter then assumed command of the country and established a conservative dictatorship, hand in hand with the great landowners, the Catholic Church and almost all the provincial governors.

However, the illegitimate arrival of Huerta to power unleashed new uprisings in the north of the country, this time under the command of Venustiano Carranza, governor of the State of Coahuila at the time. This new rebel movement called itself the "Constitutionalist Army" and adhered to the Plan of Guadalupe, proclaimed on March 26, 1913. The purpose of the latter was to end the Huerta government and restore democracy and legality in the country.

Along with Carranza, Plutarco Elías Calles and Álvaro Obregón rose up in Sonora, among other revolutionary leaders, and the same happened in Chihuahua, where the figure of Francisco "Pancho" Villa gathered the revolutionaries, unhappy with the accession of Pascual Orozco to the government of Vegetable plot. It is also important to mention Zapata again, who was unaware of the new government and opposed it from the beginning, although he never joined his forces with the constitutionalists.

A new turning of the tide

The new American government, led by Woodrow Wilson, was not sympathetic to the Huerta government or his methods of coming to power, and this led in 1914 to a diplomatic crisis that served as a cover for a new US intervention in Mexican lands, this time in support of Carranza and the Army Constitutionalist.

US naval forces occupied the port of Veracruz in April 1914, and this prevented the arrival of weapons. bought in Europe from the Huertista ranks and tipped the balance of the Mexican conflict in favor of the revolutionary troops. This fact marked the beginning of the end of the Huerta dictatorship: by June the revolutionary armies had already advanced immensely from the north of the country, and at the end of that same month they took Zacatecas, which implied a resounding defeat to the forces huertistas.

On July 14, Huerta fled the capital and presented his resignation to Congress. He escaped from Mexico to Cuba and from there to the United States, where he was detained and imprisoned in El Paso, Texas, until his death. The Constitutionalist Army, then, occupied the capital and started a new revolutionary government, whose program political should be set among the revolutionary troops in the Congress of Aguascalientes, held on October 1, 1914.

New fractures in the revolutionary camp

Once his common enemy had been defeated, the tensions between the revolutionary leaders did not wait. Villa, Carranza, and Zapata represented different and often conflicting sectors in the conduct of the country, and the Aguascalientes Convention could not find a common criterion.

While Villa and Zapata called for Carranza's resignation from leading the revolutionary movement and proposed as president Eulalio Gutiérrez, the latter refused and considered said government illegitimate. A new act in the civil war began and was now pitting the revolutionary forces themselves against each other.

Villa and Zapata signed the Pact of Xochimilco in December 1914, which was basically a anti-Franco alliance, and together his forces managed to take Mexico City in January next year. Meanwhile, Carranza ruled de facto the rest of the country, after reforming the Plan of Guadalupe.

On August 2, he rallied his forces and led them towards the reconquest of Mexico City, but this did not end the conflict, which lasted throughout 1915. At the end of that year, the president of the United States gave the Carranza government the recognition of him, since each time It was more obvious the superiority of his troops over those of Villa and Zapata, who could not even work properly. coordinated.

Towards the end of 1916, Carranza was already the virtual winner of the conflict and, using that authority, he summoned a Constituent Congress to draft a new Mexican Constitution. This congress held until the beginning of 1917. And although the Villistas and Zapatistas did not take part in this refounding of the nation, their demands were somehow taken into account. In 1917 the new constitution was promulgated, the positions of the three public powers were voted on and, with 98% of the votes, Carranza was elected president.

The end of the Mexican Revolution?

For many historians, 1917 marks the beginning of the end of the Mexican Revolution, with the Carranza government. This does not mean that it was a peaceful period: there were new revolutionary and counterrevolutionary uprisings, led by Félix Díaz himself. And although in 1919 the Carranza troops deceived and assassinated Zapata, putting an end to his rebel movement, Carranza ruled only until 1920.

Knowing that his period was nearing the end, Carranza was immersed in political intrigues to remove Álvaro Obregón from power and favor his chosen successor, Ignacio Bonillas. He tried, for example, to accuse Obregón of conspiracy and thereby succeeded in getting Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta to rise up against him, and proclaim the Agua Prieta Plan. Defeated by the insurgents, Carranza tried to flee the capital and was ambushed and killed in Puebla in May 1920.

The same fate awaited Francisco "Pancho" Villa in 1923, during the government of Álvaro Obregón. The three great revolutionary leaders had died. Although new massacres were predicted in Mexico's destiny, with the Cristero war that shook the country during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles, it was the latter who precisely announced the death of the time of the revolutionary leaders and the beginning of the era of institutions. In 1929 the Party of the Mexican Revolution was founded; but the latter could be considered finished.

References:

• "Narration" in Wikipedia.
• "Mexican Revolution" in Wikipedia.
• "Mexican Revolution: what it consisted of and who were the main leaders" in BBC News World.
• "Mexican Revolution" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

What is a story?

A story or narration is a set of real or fictional events organized and expressed through language, that is, a story, a chronicle, a novel, etc. Stories are an important part of culture, and telling and / or listening to them (or, once the writing, reading them) constitutes an ancestral activity, considered among the first and most essential of the civilization.

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