The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940

I. The Mexico of Porfirio Diaz. In 1876, Porfirio Diaz, a Mexican army general, seized power in a coup d’etat. He would control Mexico until 1911. Diaz, with his cronies, transformed his regime into an oligarchy. Diaz suppressed political rights in the name of economic development and foreign investment. He ruled using the principle of pan o palo (bread or the club)—the club could range from unemployment, exile, prison, murder and ley fuga (shot while trying to escape)—over 10,000 people died under ley fuga. Under Diaz economic development was the great object, the key to the solution of his own personal problems and those of Mexico. Economic development required political stability; Diaz promoted a policy of conciliation that consisted of offering a share of the spoils to all influential opponents, no matter what their political persuasion. As Diaz observed: "A dog with a bone in his mouth neither kills nor steals." In effect, Diaz invited all sections of the upper class and some members of the middle class, including prominent intellectuals and journalists, to join with him in ripping-off the country—only the poor and humble were barred. From the ranks of bandit chieftains and their followers Diaz created the rurales. Aside from chasing unrepentant bandits, the major function of the rurales was to suppress peasant unrest and break labor strikes. Opponents who refused Diaz's bribes were beaten up, murdered or arrested. By such means, Diaz virtually eliminated all effective opposition to his reign. Under Diaz the cost of government soared by 900 percent. In the army there was an average of one officer to every ten soldiers, a general for every 300 men. The Catholic church became another pillar of Diaz's dictatorship. In return for the church's support, Diaz suspended all the previous anticlerical laws that previous liberal governments had passed. Monasteries and nunneries were restored, church schools reestablished, and wealth again began to accumulate in the hands of the church. Faithful to its bargain, the church turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the masses and taught complete submission to the authorities. Diaz seemed to have attained all his political aims, but his economic ones were more difficult to achieve. He encountered many problems: how to turn Mexico into a modern capitalist economy, without giving foreigners too much power; how to integrate the hacienda and the Indian villages into this system; and, most of all, how to integrate a nation with many conflicting economies? His problems were analogous to those facing the United States before the Civil War, except that the North had to integrate just one antagonistic economy whereas Diaz had to deal with several. The eighth largest country in the world, with an area of 761,000 square miles, Mexico is a mixture of tropics, plateaus and mountains. One fourth of Mexico’s area is made up of the various parts of the Sierra Madre mountains. Broad in the north, with a 2,000 mile frontier with the USA, Mexico narrows rapidly toward the isthmus in a tangle of peaks and valleys. The central plateau, at an average altitude around 4,000 feet, had one-third of the country’s population and its two largest cities, Mexico City and Guadalajara. The southern tropical areas were overwhelmingly Indian. The different nature of the landscape in the 37 different states meant that Mexico’s economy, even at the pre-industrial level, was extremely diverse. In the mountainous and plateau areas mining was important; in the northern states cattle and other livestock, hides, corn and chickpeas were dominate; and in the tropics coffee, sugar, vanilla, rubber, chicle (chewing gum) and henequen—the plant whose fiber was used to make rope and string—were the principal moneymakers. All these products were grown for export. Corn, beans and chili were produced for domestic consumption. Mexico’s agricultural sector was centered on the village and the hacienda. Five million people, mainly Indians, lived in villages; another 4.5 millions worked on haciendas. The hacienda was a primitive colonial institution geared to local consumption of foodstuffs rather than production for the market. The

haciendas were generally inefficient, and most of their owners and managers were incompetent. Most of the hacendados refused to cultivate more than a small portion of their lands. Hence the paradox that a country where 75% of the population worked the land could not feed itself and had to import food. Under Diaz the concentration of landownership in a few hands continued. Landless peons and their families made up 9.5 million of a rural population of 12 million. By the end of Diaz's reign, 17 people controlled 20% of Mexico's land area, and 3,000 families owned almost half of the country. One result of this concentration was the rise in the north of rancheros as a class. Foreigners controlled the mining, oil, and industrial wealth of the country. This control gave rise to a popular saying: "Mexico, mother of foreigners and stepmother of Mexicans." Thanks to an influx of foreign capital, some quickening and modernization of economic life did take place under Diaz. The volume of foreign trade greatly increased (by 19ll Mexico was the world's third largest oil producer), a modern banking system arose, and the country acquired a relatively dense network of railways. The railroad was a necessary condition for the Mexican Revolution. By 1910 there were no lines south of Mexico City, but railways linked it with the US border. This connection meant that the great landowners could increase their harvests and take advantage of economies of scale. But these successes were achieved at a high price: a brutal dictatorship, the pauperization of the mass of the population, the stagnation of food agriculture (foodstuff production barely kept pace with the growth of population, and per capita production of such basic staples as maize and beans declined near the end of the 19th century), a concentration of land in fewer hands, and the survival of many feudal or semifeudal vestiges in Mexican economic and social life. II. The Overthrow of Diaz By 1910 Mexico was ripe for revolution. The Diaz regime had grown old and weak. Those in power appointed their friends and relatives to government jobs. These government jobs were among the few middle-class jobs available. People would hold these jobs until they died and this cut-off upward mobility for the next generation. The middle-class resented that government jobs were closed to them and their children. The working class resented that the best industrial jobs went to foreigners and that foreigners doing the same job (in mining, railroads, and oil for example) were paid more. Peons and rural workers resented the concentration of land in a few hands and they wanted land reform. Many Mexicans resented the government's close ties with foreigners and they wanted "a Mexico for the Mexicans." Diaz claimed that the foreigners were needed to make Mexico a modern nation, since the Mexicans themselves lacked the know-how. Although worsening economic conditions did not cause a revolution in Mexico, the rising prices and declining real wages in the years 1907-10 meant that if ever Diaz did come under serious threat, few hands would be raised to save him. The economically vulnerable regional elites were becoming fed-up with Diaz and were chafing at their lack of political influence. Diaz never solved Mexico’s root problem; the disharmony between the backward hacienda system and his aspirations for a modern capitalist nation. Revolution broke out late in 1910 principally because the 80-year-old Diaz could not decide what to do about his succession. In an interview Diaz said that he would like to see the emergence of an opposition party now that he had guided Mexico into an era when it was ready for democracy and he stated that he would not be a candidate in the 1910 presidential election. The announcement was a huge mistake. Although Diaz had no intention of keeping his word and he had himself duly re-elected in 1910, opposition to his reign immediately manifested itself.

Revolution broke out under the leadership of Francisco Madero from the northern state of Coahuila. Madero was in line to inherit the fortune of the fifth richest family in Mexico. He was only 5’3’’ tall, with a neatly trimmed goatee beard—allegedly to mask a weak chin. Madero was a vegetarian and teetotaler, with a nervous tic and a high-pitched voice that would become falsetto at moments of excitement. Madero’s opposition to Diaz was purely political since he did not have any real social or economic program to propose as an alternative to Diaz’s. On his 35th birthday—30 October 1908—Madero claimed that he received a message from Jose, a spirit who had been visiting him regularly. Jose told Madero that he had been chosen by God to “carry out a great mission on earth.” In November the spirit of Benito Juárez (ex-president, and the leader of the resistance against the French in Mexico) urged him to use the “sword of truth” against Diaz. Madero wrote The Presidential Succession of 1910 and then went into a retreat for the biblical 40 days and 40 nights at a desert ranch. His book was a best seller and Madero was nominated for president by the Anti [Diaz]-Re-election Party. Diaz had Madero and over 6,000 of his supporters arrested. On October 4, 1910 Madero jumped bail and escaped to the USA where he issued his Plan of San Louis Potosí, which proclaimed the elections of 1910 null and void, declared that he was the real president of Mexico and called for an armed rebellion against Diaz to begin on November 20th. The revolution started in the state of Chihuahua, the province next door to Madero’s Coahuila. The revolution started there, and not Coahuila, because the local oligarchy was unusually cruel and oppressive, all the northern provinces were significantly influenced by the ideas of democracy from the US, and a 1908 economic recession had hit Chihuahua harder than other parts of Mexico. In addition, the people of Chihuahua had been ravaged by Apache raids for years and violence was a way of life. It soon was apparent that both political and military factors favored the rebels in the long run. The rebels were fighting enthusiastically for core values and ideals, but the federal troops were in Chihuahua simply because they had been sent. Most of the federal troops were recent draftees, ill-trained, poorly led, and reluctant fighters. Very early-on the rebel general Pancho Villa turned himself into the military hero of the Revolution. While officially number two in the revolutionary military hierarchy behind Pascual Orozco, Villa was building up a personal power base. On February 14, 1911 Madero, with just 130 men, reentered Mexico from the US. Madero both appeared to be, and was portrayed by Diaz propaganda as, a far more revolutionary figure than he really was. The seeds of future disaster were sown: the revolutionaries thought Madero more radical than he was and thus hoped for more from him, only to be disappointed; in Mexico City meanwhile, the Army took his revolutionary rhetoric seriously, hated him for it and would never be loyal to him. Madero had no really sympathy for the revolutionaries of Chihuahua, but he was dependent on them, as he could not control events in the north. Madero was shrewd enough to see that Villa was just the man he needed: his courage and daring, and his tight discipline of his troops impressed Madero, and Villa’s impoverished background ensured that he would never cut a deal with the hated oligarchs. Madero wrote a letter, printed in the El Paso Morning Times, lauding Villa as a Robin Hood. This was probably the first time a US readership had heard of Pancho Villa. The rebellion in Chihuahua created a domino effect, whereby the more the rebels succeeded, the more other groups emerged to take revenge for local grievances. By April 1911 the Revolution had spread to eighteen states. Increasingly, an enduring truth about the Mexican Revolution was revealed, that it was always made up of disparate, often contradictory, elements. The line between banditry and revolution was especially blurred. By failing to stamp out the initial revolt in Chihuahua, Diaz had unwittingly lit a national brush fire.

In the state of Morelos (bordering Mexico D.F. on the south) the revolution was led by a 30 year old charismatic mestizo village chief named Emiliano Zapata. The basic conflict in Morelos was between small farmer villagers and the owners of the great sugarcane plantations. By 1910 Morelos produced one-third of Mexico’s sugar crop and was the third largest sugar-cane producing area in the world (behind Hawaii and Puerto Rico). A new US tariff designed to protect American sugar producers in Cuba had devastated the area. Mexican sugar growers cut production by 7%. The economic crisis in Morelos meant that many field and mill workers found themselves out of work. Morelos teemed with displaced workers, future recruits to the revolution. Seventeen owners of huge haciendas owned onequarter of the state and all the best land. The threat to all villagers was clear: if they lost their lands to the haciendas they would face starvation unless they became permanent employees on the haciendas and thus got sucked into the system of debt peonage. The peasants responded to Zapata’s slogan that “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” By January 1911 Zapata controlled the central region of Morelos, the most important part. Had Diaz not been preoccupied with Chihuahua, he would undoubtedly have sent an army to crush Zapata. In April Madero officially designated Zapata as his principal representative in Morelos. In May Zapata won a significant victory against Diaz at Cuautla that secured his national fame and ensured that he would not be just another forgotten southern commander when peace came. Diaz later said that Cuautla was the last nail in his coffin, that he could perhaps have held the line in Chihuahua if Morelos too had not been ablaze. Four days before Zapata’s victory in Cuautla, Villa and Orozco captured Ciudad Juárez and Diaz saw that his only option was to go into exile. On May 21, 1911 the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez was signed. Diaz agreed to depart for Europe and elections would be held in the autumn. Although deadly enemies, Diaz and Madero shared a mortal terror of the “anarchy of the masses” and they were particularly apprehensive about Zapata whose bloody triumph at Cuautla seemed like the harbinger of a racial and class conflict in which Zapata would unite the Indians and sympathetic mestizos in a campaign of genocide against whites. For years the elites had been reluctant to push Diaz to the limit because they thought through the consequences. Once Mexicans saw the fallacy of “there is no alternative to don Porfirio,” aspirations would be aroused that could not be contained, and the end of the road might be a convulsive social revolution. If a peon did not have to put up with Diaz, he did not have to put up with the hacendados either. Agrarian grievances were overwhelmingly the biggest issue in the Revolution, hardly surprisingly, given that 80% of the population lived in the countryside. For every 1,000 peasants, there were 120 artisans, 100 small farmers, forty factory workers, thirty miners, ten ranchers and two hacendados. Zapata’s achievement was to give a concrete form to peasant aspirations that had remained dormant and even partly unconscious. Zapatismo necessarily implied class-conflict, but the revolutionary leaders of the north, like Orozco and Villa, headed more fluid movements, opposed to Diaz because of unemployment, economic hardship, taxation, the ley fuga, conscription and press gangs. Because they fought for local independence against the centralizing tendencies of Mexico City, these rebels could transcend class issues, to the point where some historians have referred to them as “non-revolutionary rebels.” III. Mexico Under Francisco Madero Diaz formally resigned on May 25, 1911 and went into exile in France. Madero, an idealist—"the people of Mexico do not want bread, they want freedom"—arrived at the capital on June 7th to a hero’s welcome. Unfortunately, Madero had already made two mistakes that were to prove fatal. He had demobilized the revolutionary armies of the north, thereby putting himself entirely in the hands of the regular army; and by Allowing León de la Barra, Diaz’s foreign minister, to remain as interim president until the October presidential elections, he ensured that he would be second guessed at every turn. With Diaz supporters still in the majority in Congress and de la Barra as chief executive, Madero needlessly

faced four months of “Porfirismo without Porfirio,” during which he was constantly beset by hostile intrigues. Madero’s conservative nature is illustrated by his dealings with Zapata. When Zapata demanded land reform Madero replied that land reform was a matter for later, once the Zapatista armies had been disbanded. When Zapata indicated that this reply was unacceptable, Madero broke with him and sent the federal Army to Morelos to destroy the Zapatista movement. Fierce fighting broke out and Zapata issued his famous Plan of Ayala by which he would fight for the next seven years. The Plan contained detailed proposals for land reform—land that had been illegally seized by the large land owners would be restored to the villagers and Mexico would become a land of small independent landowning farmers. In the crucial five month period between the fall of Diaz and his election to the presidency, Madero lost the support of Zapata forever. Zapata and Madero could never agree on anything: for Madero the Revolution had ended when he took power, but for Zapata it would end only when there was true and lasting agrarian reform. Madero found it impossible to solve any of the problems bequeathed to him by Diaz. He refused to support land reform because it contrasted with social order, and in Madero’s book order always came first. Madero could not get enough recruits for the Army, and he introduced compulsory military service and press-gangs, Diaz’s leva in all but name. Above all, Madero did not extinguish the old culture of violence and oppression that he had inherited from Diaz. The le fuga continued to flourish; the Army continued to torture and kill people that opposed the government. Zapata’s perennial problem was that although he could blow up trains, occupy towns and even defeat the federals in battle, he lacked the strength for a knockout blow. By early May 1912 the Zapatista offensive had run out of ammunition. Stocks were so low that they had to revert to guerrilla activity, frantically trying to replenish their ordinance by theft and the black market. By the end of 1912 Zapata came up the idea of making the haciendas pay for the costs of his campaigns; if they refused to pay up, he simply burned down their cane fields. Soon the hacendados saw the light and the money began to flow in. An added benefit was that Zapata no longer alienated the villages by asking them for funds. Moreover, by destroying the cane fields he gained recruits, since many of the unemployed peons joined his army. In March 1912 Chihuahua rose in revolt against Madero under the leadership of Pascual Orozco. The northern rising was primarily the cynical maneuvering by different personalities and power groups for control of Chihuahua. At the simplest level, it was a three-way fight between conservatives representing the oligarchy and the old Diaz system, Madero representing the middle classes, and the dispossessed looking to Orozco. To defeat Madero the oligarchy first had to make common cause with Orozco; clearly their intention was defeat Madero first, then turn on Orozco. The conservatives saw themselves in a no lose situation: whoever won, hundreds of rebellious peasants would have been killed and they would emerge as the rulers. Pancho Villa did not like Orozco personally and he never would support a man backed by the oligarchy of Chihuahua so he supported Madero. In April, after a stubborn resistance with only 300 men, Villa lost the city of Parral to Orozco. An orgy of looting and rapine broke out that seriously damaged Orozco’s cause. Villa retreated to Torreón where he was put under the command of Victoriano Huerta. Huerta was the most repulsive figure in the entire Mexican Revolution. Huerta seemed to loathe and despise all other humans. Almost 60, Huerta was of mestizo-Indian heritage. He entered the Army at 14. A believer in the use of force to solve all problems, Huerta was a cruel, bloodthirsty authoritarian. Huerta would start drinking at seven in the morning and would continue all day so he was never wholly sober. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his drinking, Huerta was a good general and he defeated Orozco. Huerta returned to Mexico City to a hero’s welcome, Madero was furious that Huerta had stolen huge sums from the campaign accounts, but popular acclaim forced him to promote Huerta as Commander-in-Chief

of the armed forces. The significance of the Orozco rising was that it made Madero dependent upon the Army for his survival. Several clashes over tactics and leadership had made Villa and Huerta implacable enemies and Huerta had Villa arrested. Villa was only saved from the firing squad by the last minute intervention of a friendly army officer. Huerta could not make any of his charges against Villa stick over the next seven months and it was increasingly clear that Villa was being detained for purely political reasons. On Christmas Day 1912 a friend smuggled civilian clothing into prison and Villa put on dark glasses and simply walked out of captivity. Madero’s support was narrowly based among the middle class and the urban working class. The peasantry was extremely disappointed by the lack of land reform and the Right hated Madero for having displaced Diaz and ending the “good old days” when they could command automatic deference and obedience from the lower orders. With the support of the American ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson, who was looking to stabilize the situation in Mexico, a right-wing coup began against Madero on February 9, 1913. The bloodshed continued for ten days and gave the coup the name of La Decena Trágica (Ten Days that Shamed the Nation). After much double crossing and chicanery, Huerta gained control of the government and Army. Madero, anxious to avoid bloodshed, and not knowing that his brother had already been murdered, resigned with promises of safe conduct from Huerta. Huerta broke his word and had Madero murdered. Huerta had made a grave mistake. Not only had he alienated international opinion, but he had created the Revolution’s first martyr, a man in whose name many Mexicans would now arise to fight Huerta and the Army to the death. IV. The Revolt Against Huerta Huerta’s regime hardly enjoyed a moment’s rest, for even as the war with Zapata continued in the south, there came a potentially yet more formidable challenge from the north; 1913 marked the emergence of Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, as a national figure. Carranza thought that Madero had made two mistakes: he had truckled to the Right, whereas “a revolution that makes concessions commits suicide”; and he had not acted decisively enough against Henry Lane Wilson and the US government. Since Huerta was determined to impose his own Army cronies as governors in all the states and to give no guarantees whatever on local autonomy, Carranza saw no future for himself, so he rebelled. Carranza issued his manifesto as the Plan of Guadalupe. Nothing whatever was said about agrarian matters or land reform; the Plan was a purely political call for the overthrow of Huerta. Carranza was only interested in a political transfer of power, and he was aware that a commitment to land reform would merely stiffen the opposition to him. Most importantly, Carranza declared war to the death; there would be no compromises and no deals. For this reason Carranza set himself up as an alternative government, and he stated that all enemy prisoners were to be executed as rebels against his properly constituted government. This single action began a cycle of atrocities that by the end of the Revolution had spiraled almost out of control. Pancho Villa was overwhelmed by news of Madero’s murder. All his differences with him were forgotten and Madero was henceforth remembered as “Maderito—dear little Madero.” Villa had two scores to settle with Huerta: vengeance for the death of Madero and personal revenge for the attempted firing squad and the seven months in prison. Villa reasoned that the way to get recruits and turn his campaign into a high-profile affair was by spectacular attacks on haciendas and dramatic redistributions of land. Villa’s approach was simple: where the old oligarchs had fled, Villa gave their haciendas to his supporters; where they supported him, he left their lands untouched. Land reform was never the pressing issue in Chihuahua that it was in Morelos. In Chihuahua the struggle was not class against class but regionalism against central government. While confiscating and redistributing lands, and providing villagers with extra food, Villa executed all bandits and made a great show of protecting US property.

Americans responded by selling arms and ammunition to the Villistas; a raid on a silver train had given Villa the money for the purchases. The warlords of the north unanimously elected Villa as supreme chief of the Division of the North. In November, at the battle of Tierra Blanca, Villa defeated a major federal force and during the winter of 1913-14 was the undisputed master of Chihuahua. He controlled Ciudad Juárez and the border traffic with the USA. What changed most under Villa was the mentality of the ordinary person. The rich cowed and the poor enjoyed unheard of privileges, with one of their own the ruler of Chihuahua. The poor no longer perceived obedience, deference and rigid hierarchy as laws of nature. One of the first casualties of the new attitudes was the Catholic priesthood. Under Diaz the parish priest was widely perceived as a leech and a lecher who took advantage of the confessional to enjoy young women. Under Villa in 1913-14, anticlericalism was the order of the day. Particular targets were priests who owned village lands or supported the local elites of the pre-Villa era; especially hated were Spanish priests and nuns, who were expelled en masse. Villa’s triumphs were viewed by Carranza in Sonora with mounting jealousy and concern. Carranza therefore steadily advanced the career of Álvaro Obregón, his one truly able commander, trying to build him up as a counterweight to Villa. Obregón, who had been brought up among Indians, was particularly successful at recruiting Yaquis (Apaches), who became his crack troops. He promised that we would restore the Yaquis to their lands if they campaigned for him. Once he was successful, Obregón forgot his promise and destroyed them as a culture in the late 1920s. Although Huerta’s path to power had been brutal, if he had been cleverer he could have conciliated all factions of the opposition except Zapata. The events of 1913-14 are a classic example of self-destructive behavior by a man who would not compromise with anyone in his bid for absolute power. Huerta’s greatest single problem was that President Woodrow Wilson would not recognize him unless the Huerta regime held elections and promoted the values of liberal-capitalism. At first Wilson ordered a policy of strict neutrality between Huerta and his opponents, the Constitutionalists (so-called because they wanted the honest presidential election required by the Mexican Constitution), but when Huerta ordered the murder of a senator that opposed him and rigged the presidential elections, Wilson turned against Huerta. In February 1914 Wilson lifted the embargo on arms to the Constitutionalist rebels. On April 9, 1914 the federals arrested a landing party from an American warship in Tampico that had come ashore to buy fresh food. Tampico was under attack by the rebels at the time and the local commander feared for the Americans’ safety. Although the local Mexican commander apologized to the sailors for their arrest, the US admiral in charge demanded a public written apology, the arrest of the Mexican culprits and the firing of a 21 gun salute to the US flag (the firing of a 21 gun salute is reserved for heads of state). Huerta refused to comply with these insulting demands and Wilson welcomed the pretext to remove Huerta by force; Huerta thought he could harness anti-American chauvinism into a national crusade that would rally the Mexican people behind him. President Wilson ordered the US navy to intercept a German ship heading to Veracruz that was bearing arms for Huerta from Europe, and to prevent all further deliveries by seizing the port (Veracruz was picked over Tampico because important American oil refineries were located in Tampico). By the evening of April 22 Veracruz was in American hands at a cost of 19 American dead and 47 wounded, as against Mexican casualties of more than 200 dead and 300 wounded. Carranza was determined to be the next president and after the Veracruz incident he ordered Obregón to beat Villa to the capital. Obregón realized that taking Mexico City would make him a national figure, and would further his own ambitions, so he readily agreed with Carranza’s order. In late June, in the bloodiest battle of the entire campaign against Huerta, Villa took Zacatecas. The combination of US intervention at Veracruz and the catastrophic defeat at Zacatecas finished Huerta. As Huerta now faced an inevitable exit, tensions between Carranza and Villa increased. Immediately after Villa’s victory at

Zacatecas, Carranza embargoed all shipments of coal to the Division of the North. Since Carranza controlled the coal mines of Coahuila, Villa was unable to fuel his trains for the final drive on Mexico City. At the same time, Villa was hit by a shortage of ammunition because President Wilson ordered the US-Mexico border sealed while he allowed arms to be shipped to Carranza through Tampico. Wilson did not any one faction in Mexico to grow too powerful and he played one side off against the other. Wilson wanted the disappearance of Huerta and a weak Mexican government that would be proAmerican. Carranza would have none of this: he insisted on unconditional surrender of the federal army to him alone. V. Zapata’s and Villa’s Fight Against Carranza Huerta resigned on July 15, 1914 and Obregón entered Mexico City in August with Carranza right behind him. After a series of attempts to reconcile their differences, Villa announced in September that he no longer recognized Carranza as First Chief and issued a manifesto that embraced Zapta’s Plan of Ayala and denounced Carranza’s anticlericalism (conveniently forgetting his own earlier anticlericalism). Villa’s goal was to appeal to the Zapatistas and Woodrow Wilson. The uncertainty about US intentions was a paramount factor, for Wilson’s support would be decisive. In this sense the constitutional convention at Aguascalientes in October was crucial. The Convention was a genuine cross section of participants in the Revolution—precisely what infuriated Carranza. Four main groupings were at Aguascalientes: Villistas, a handful of Carranza men, independents and the Zapatistas. The Villistas were prepared to divide the country into spheres of influence on an “as is” basis, whereas Carranza insisted on total national domination. The star of the Convention was Obregón, the only one of the “big four” (Carranza, Obregón, Villa and Zapata) to attend in person. Obregón’s oratory, wit and charm and his patent reasonableness made a great hit and convinced many undecided revolutionaries that the future lay with him rather than Villa. Both Zapata and Villa made major psychological and political errors in not attending the Convention. On paper the Zapatistas scored a great victory at Aguascalientes. The Convention agreed to the Plan of Ayala “in principle.” For the first time in Mexican history a sovereign body had committed itself to large-scale agrarian reform; the immense influence of Zapata on the Mexican Revolution was clear for all to see. In addition, the Convention voted in closed session to dismiss Carranza who was seen as an impediment to national unity since neither Zapata or Villa would accept him as President. Carranza replied to the request for his immediate resignation by stalling. On November 10, 1914 the Convention declared Carranza to be in open rebellion. Villa was appointed General in Chief and head of all operations designed to overthrow Carranza. Villa compounded his original mistake in not attending the Convention by not waiting until constitutional law had run its course. Before the Convention declared Carranza a rebel, Villa lost patience and sent his troops into Aguascalientes. The final sessions of the Convention took place with 30,000 Villista soldiers in town. This action alienated many of the independent delegates who were still attempting a last minute reconciliation with Carranza. The most important man so alienated was Obregón. Obregón was deeply critical of Carranza’s autocratic behavior, but he now faced a stark choice: Villa or Carranza. He chose Carranza. Since Obregón dominated the Convention, when he chose to throw in his lot with Carranza, many other men went with him. Villa’s great mistake had been to hold himself aloof and to come into town only for the signing of the final protocol, allowing Obregón to reap all the rewards of charismatic leadership. Zapata’s error had been even more serious, for he had neither entered wholeheartedly into the business of the Convention nor boycotted it and thus ended up with the worst of both worlds. Zapata was now involved with the national struggle even though he was uninterested in it. In a somber letter written on November 10, Villa

told Zapata that the men who had defeated Huerta were now doomed to fight each other. The Revolution had become a genuine civil war. Carranza abandoned Mexico City in November and the Zapatistas entered the city. The core of Zapata’s own beliefs was his mystical feeling for the land. The ideology of Zapata envisaged a free association of landowning villages and was fundamentally nostalgic, backward-looking and defensive. Zapata had four main problems confronting him. He lacked the resources and the will to export his revolution to Mexico’s deep south where the Revolution had so far had little impact. All the old abuses by the hacienda owners in these areas continued. A more serious problem for Zapata was banditry. Unfortunately for him, bandits inspired purely by loot and the desire to rape and kill with impunity fastened on the identical victims targeted by the Zapatistas—principally haciendas and trains—and justified their bloodthirsty marauding as Zapatismo. A third problem that Zapata had to face was the duel problem of the hacienda. It was both a means of oppressing the peasantry and depriving them of traditional rights and a fetter on capitalism. The hacienda was under attack from peasants demanding land reform, and from entrepreneurs that wanted to use more advanced technologies. Zapata would not allow the principle of profit maximization to override the principle of village independence and selfsufficiency. In any conflict between ancient rights and customs and new technologies, no matter how efficient, Zapata always came down on the side of tradition. The final and most immediate of Zapata’s problems was the proposed alliance with Villa. The Zapata movement was focused on land reform; the Villa movement was a trans-class coalition. Villismo did not have one single goal, but several, often mutually contradictory. Rancheros dominated Villa’s movement. In states where the hacendados dominated, the rancheros were their natural enemy; in states where the hacienda was insignificant, the ranchers tended to be as reactionary as the hacendados elsewhere. Villa headed a movement that was primarily concerned with political revolt and the transfer of national power; Zapata headed a movement that was primarily social, concerned purely with land ownership in Morelos. Zapata and his followers reveled in parochialism and Villa was seeking a national solution for his cause. On December 4, 1914 Zapata and Villa met for the first and only time. The two both claimed that neither wanted the presidency but that the next president had to be under their control. Villa accepted the Plan of Ayala in principle, but was vague about the how, when and where of land distribution. They agreed that any future government must give them a free hand in their respective regions, and they in turn would leave the government a free hand in foreign policy and in the states where they had no vital interests. Because neither wanted the presidency, their meeting to discuss the consequences of victory can be seen in hindsight as setting the seal on their eventual defeat. They wanted to find people who would loyal to the Revolution, so that they could retire to their provinces, but if they themselves were not prepared to play a national role, who could such people be? Zapata could plead his ideology of localism as the reason for his refusal to assume power, but in Villa’s case it was laziness, lack of willpower and taking the line of least resistance. By his renunciation of the presidency Villa ensured that however many battles he won, Carranza and Obregón were bound to win in the long run. As an observer wrote of the opportunity missed by Villa and Zapata in December 1914: “He who refuses power, through a fatal process of reversion will be destroyed by power.” The alliance between Villa and Zapata did not last long. Villa murdered an aide of Zapata’s and instituted a reign of terror in Mexico City in which Zapatistas were frequently targets. There were more than 200 murders by Villistas in a month and thousands of cases of rape. The behavior of Villa’s troops alienated the middle class, foreigners and the Catholic Church. Villa ordered the execution of the interim president, Eulalio Gutiérrez, who had been putting out feelers to Carranza after Villa’s men’s rampage. Tipped off, Gutiérrez fought his way out of Mexico City with 10,000 loyal troops. Once at large, Gutiérrez issued a manifesto excoriating both Villa and Zapata for their reign of terror, their inability to discipline their men, their printing of worthless paper money, and for their incoherent foreign policy.

Villa responded by ordering Gutiérrez shot on sight. Gutiérrez renounced the presidency and went over to Carranza. The utter inability of Villa and Zapata to cooperate was one of the great tragedies of the Mexican Revolution and was the principal reason for their ultimate defeat. Villa was seldom more selfdestructive than in December 1914. While his men raped and murdered and he womanized, Carranza and Obregón were making careful preparations to destroy him. Even as they forged an alliance, Obregón and Carranza eyed each other with suspicion. Carranza was aware that Obregón intended to use the Army against him if they were successful against Villa, and was able to out-scheme Obregón and keep him firmly in his place as a subordinate. Carranza knew that whatever happened Obregón would never throw his lot in with Villa. Between April and July Obregón severally defeated Vila in three decisive battles. By July Carranza had won the civil war and Obregón was the most important man in Mexico. In October Wilson recognized Carranza as the legitimate ruler of Mexico and embargoed all arms sales to his enemies. In December 1915 Obregón offered amnesty to all Villistas except Villa himself and 14 top ranking Villista bureaucrats. Forty generals, 5,046 officers and 11,128 soldiers took advantage of the offer. Many of these men promptly joined Carranza’s army. Villa and 200 hardcore followers headed for the mountains of Chihuahua, intending to wage guerrilla warfare until the inevitable happened and Obregón and Carranza started to fight each other. VI. Mexico Under Carranza While Villa was fighting Obregón and Carranza, Zapata focused on land reform in Morelos and did nothing to help Villa. Too late did Zapata realize the danger he was in and began attacking in late July, but he did not have the forces to succeed. Hard pressed by the Carrancistas, Zapatista chiefs started accepting amnesties from Carranza. As 1916 opened, Carranza bent all his energies to destroy Zapata for good and Zapata had to resort to fighting guerrilla warfare in the mountains. It was not until April 1919 that Carranza was finally able to kill Zapata. General Pablo González, the general responsible for defeating Zapata, had a fight with his cavalry commander Jesús Guajardo (he was caught in a bar instead of out fighting) and jailed him and threatened to have him court martialed. Hearing of the conflict between the two men, Zapata had a note smuggled into Guajardo’s cell, asking him to join him with his regiment. González intercepted the letter, and gave Guajardo two choices: cooperate in a plot or be shot for treason. At González’s direction, Guajardo wrote to Zapata, saying he was prepared to come over to him with his cavalry. To prove his loyalty Zapata asked Guajardo to shoot 50 ex-Zapatista soldiers who had defected to Carranza and Guajardo did so. When Zapata met with Guajardo to consummate the deal, a bugler sounded the honor call and a guard of honor presented arms. As the last bugle note sounded the guards opened fire at point-blank range killing Zapata immediately. On March 8, 1916 Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico intending to provoke US intervention and discredit Carranza. Villa had claimed the Carranza and Wilson were in a secret partnership and American intervention in Mexico would vindicate him. During the raid 17 Americans and over 100 Villistas were killed. In the short run the raid was a failure, for Villa came away with no guns, stores or money. But in the long term it gave Villa a new lease on power. The raid caused a sensation in the US. Wilson was up for reelection and an enraged public opinion forced him to act. Wilson contacted Carranza and assured him that any expedition was not a prelude to a wider attempt at US annexation. In return for a pledge that Mexican sovereignty and the dignity of the Mexican people would be respected, Carranza acquiesced to American intervention and on March 10 Wilson ordered General Pershing to take the US Army into Mexico to capture Villa. By the end of March, Pershing was 350 miles into Mexico with 7,000 men and a air squadron of eight planes. On March 17 Villa had been seriously wounded in the right knee in a battle with federal troops and he hid out for seven weeks in a cave high in the Sierra mountains. One day he saw Pershing’s columns ride by in the valley below. Even though the US offered a $50,000 reward for Villa dead or alive, no one turned him in. With the destruction of many of the Villista bands, by the end of April

Wilson came under pressure to withdraw the Punitive Expedition. Although US business interests were pressing for Pershing to remain in Mexico as a bargaining counter until Carranza gave them the economic and financial guarantees they wanted, tensions with Germany were rising, and it was clear that if the US wanted to go beyond the destruction of the Villista bands to the imposition of a friendly administration in Mexico City, it would have to settle for an all-out war with Carranza. Carranza was concerned at the growing public perception that he was the yanquis’ lackey while Villa was the true national hero. Carranza demanded immediate US withdrawal with an implicit threat of war. Pershing was informed that unless he began to move back to the Rio Grande he would be opposed by federal forces, and on June 21 a clash with federal troops resulted in 12 American and 33 Mexican deaths. War did not break out because neither Wilson nor Carranza wanted it. Carranza realized that a war with the US would probably result in his overthrow and Wilson did not want to play Germany’s game and get sucked into a protracted conflict in Mexico. In February 1917 the last American soldier left Mexican soil. Carranza had won a great diplomatic victory and greatly enhanced his status among the Mexican people. After six years of virtually non-stop warfare, Mexico was in chaos. Crops were unharvested, cattle had been exported to buy arms, mines and factories closed. In the cities banks failed, capitalists hoarded their assets, black markets flourished. Everywhere there were shortages of food, water, coal and other basics. Famine stalked the land, and in its wake came disease and pestilence. In 1918 the worldwide flu epidemic killed 300,000 Mexicans. Since all sides in the Revolution had simply printed money and forced people to accept it, hyperinflation was the result. Even when faced with chaos Carranza did not put his political program on hold. He eliminated the supporters of Huerta, rigidly controlled the newspapers, purged the civil service and diplomatic corps, took personal control of the railways, forced loans and taxes on all areas deemed hostile, persecuted Spaniards and executed anyone he considered an enemy. Carranza wanted the Catholic church firmly under his control so that it could not emerge as an ideological rival to his version of the Revolution or mobilize its supporters to form a powerful political party. Carranza saw the penetration of the Mexican economy by foreign capitalists as a deep affront to Mexican sovereignty and made clear his determination to reform the basis on which foreign companies operated in Mexico. To gain support from as many groups as possible, Carranza and Obregón convened a broad cross-section of loyal revolutionaries and produced a new constitution. The Constitution of 1917 increased the power of the presidency, abolished the office of vice-president and weakened the legislature. The Revolution had created a new chief executive with powers greater than Diaz had enjoyed. This was exactly what Carranza wanted. Article 27 declared that private property was not an absolute right but one that could be revoked, as the ultimate owner of land, water and subsoil rights was the nation, and that foreign owners would not be allowed to appeal to their governments over any conflict but have to abide by the decision of the Mexican courts. In Articles 3 and 130 the Catholic church was refused recognition as a legal entity, priests had to be publicly registered, religious education and all religious rituals outside churches were prohibited, and the churches themselves were made the property of the state. Carranza’s main problem was with the military. To ensure that the Army was reliable, the budget for the Army was ten times more than under Diaz. However, because of padded payrolls the tax burden on citizens was out of all proportion to the security the military provided. In June 1916 Villa reappeared and called a general rendezvous of all Villista bands. Many of his veterans concluded that life in the saddle with him was preferable to unemployment. The second half of 1916 saw Villa raiding throughout Chihuahua, seemingly without hindrance. Between September and December 1916 Villa was victorious in 22 armed encounters, in all of which he captured further arms and ammunition. By now he controlled all Chihuahua outside the big cities. Ominously, he was beginning to alienate the peasantry and the middle classes now that there were no longer any oligarchs’

estates to confiscate. The bourgeoisie objected to his forced loans, and the peasantry to forced military service. In Torreón Villa made a crucial mistake. After easily subduing the garrison, when Villa rode into town, a woman tearfully implored him not to kill her husband, the Carrancista paymaster. Intending to do her a favor, Villa made enquiries and discovered that the man was already dead. The woman then unaccountably flew into a rage, accused Villa of killing her husband and defied him to murder her as well. In a white heat of fury, Villa pulled out his pistol and shot her dead. This act roused the blood lust of his followers, who asked permission to kill all the other women who had given their favors to Carrancistas. Villa agreed; the upshot was that 90 women went before the firing squad. This atrocity was widely publicized and effectively killed off popular support for Villa. In March 1917 Villa compounded his error by allowing his troops to gang-rape all the young women of another village. Whereas previously villagers had alerted Villa to his enemy’s approach, they now ceased to help him. At this point the Villista movement started seriously imploding. By his atrocities Villa had lost the support of the peasantry and he was seriously short of arms and ammunition. Forced back once more to guerrilla warfare, Villa divided his strength into small units, which made hit-and-run raids on towns and garrisons; the idea was supposed to be that once the harvest was gathered in, the various units could recombine, but the snag was that Villa could not exert control over what actions the units took in his name. Nor could he explain why he went on fighting, if indeed he knew himself. Villa was saved in 1919 when Carranza repeated Diaz’s mistake and tried to perpetuate his rule. Obregón had retired with the clear understanding that he would be Mexico’s next president, and he declared his candidacy for the presidency in June 1919. Soon Obregón built a powerful coalition, uniting the military, the huge middle-class opposition to Carranza, and the working class. Campaigning as the military genius of the Mexican Revolution, and cultivating a populist political style, Obregón drew to him the masses of disaffected Mexicans. Carranza had Congress strip Obregón of his military rank, but this absurd act simply increased Obregón’s popularity. Then Carranza accused Obregón of engineering a military plot and ordered his arrest. On April 20, 1919 Obregón announced that Carranza was in breach of the Constitution and called for a rising. In May Carranza tried to flee to Veracruz taking 60 railway cars of his hangers-on, arms and ammunition, government files and the entire national treasury in the form of gold bars. Carranza was attacked on the way and killed. With Carranza no more, Villa had a unique opportunity to secure peace with honor. In September 1919 Obregón agreed to Villa’s request for amnesty. Villa was to retire absolutely from public life to a hacienda with a bodyguard of 50 armed men. Villa and his last 759 men laid down their arms, and were given mustering-out pay and lands. The death of Carranza and the surrender of Villa effectively ended the Mexican Revolution. VII. The Impact of the Mexican Revolution Obregón was a natural politician and fixer, a deal-maker who, by cooptation, cajolery and bribery restored the country to a peace it had not known since 1910. His basic approach was to freeze the status quo. In some states the old elites were still in charge, while in others village communes and agrarian reformers were dominant. He offered all rebels attractive amnesty terms, which they accepted. Obregón was always a capitalist who believed that the true business of the Revolution was business. He disliked landowners not for ideological reasons but because they were incompetent as entrepreneurs. He announced that Article 27 of the Constitution would not apply to mineral rights acquired by foreigners before 1917 and negotiated a deal with the US whereby the taxes levied on US oil companies would be

earmarked to pay foreign (mainly US) bondholders, after nine years in default. In August 1923 Washington recognized the Obregón government. Obregón wanted Plutarco Elias Calles to succeed him in 1924. Obregón asked Villa to give a press conference stating that he would not reenter politics. Villa refused and instead told the press that he could raise 40,000 armed men in forty minutes. Obregón read the interview as a threat that if he tried to impose Calles by manipulated elections, Villa would rise in rebellion. On July 20th Obregón had Villa assassinated. Historians estimate the death toll of the Mexican Revolution between 350,000 and one million. All the leading figures of the Revolution were assassinated or died violent deaths. In Mexico capitalism took a firmer hold, older elites were displaced by newer ones, a handful of men achieved fame and fortune, the Catholic church lost power, but the lot of the masses was scarcely improved. It is possible to discern three main strands in the Mexican Revolution. First, there were the progressive capitalists spearheading the rise of an emerging industrial middle class: in this category are Madero, Carranza and Obregón. Ranged against them were the reactionary elements who saw no reason to replace the hacienda as the premier economic institution in Mexico. Here are located Diaz and Huerta. Secondly, there was the entire village movement of free peasants in communal pueblos demanding the return of their ancestral lands; clearly the key figure here is Zapata. Thirdly, there is the least clear-cut category of all, where an alliance of cowboys, miners and other marginal peoples of the Northern states aimed at the overthrow of the oligarchy—Villa is the primary figure in this movement. Without any doubt it was the Madero strand, especially in the form of the Obregonistas and Carrancistas, that emerged triumphant from the Revolution, while Villa and Zapata won at best partial victories. Whether the problem was the hacienda as an institution or simply the person of Diaz as caudillo, a modern economy was impossible while this political and economic system continued in being. So, apart from making Mexico safe for capitalism, what did the revolution accomplish? Except in the south-east the revolution broke up the political elite and replaced it with a new elite of ambitious younger men. Most of the old landowning aristocracy never returned to their pre-1910 positions of power and influence. They lost their estates and their families were permanently weakened. What changed most in 1910-20 were popular attitudes. Deference and a subservient attitude to the elite was no longer expected or given and men of ability and ambition were now better able to rise to the top without the necessary family connections. VIII. Mexico Under Calles In and out of office, as legal president or de facto dictator, Calles dominated Mexican politics from 1924 to 1934. Building on the foundations Obregón had laid, he continued his work with much the same methods. His use of radical phraseology tended to conceal the pragmatic essence of his policy, which was to promote the rapid growth of Mexican national capitalism. He created the Bank of Mexico, the only bank permitted to issue money. Protective tariffs, subsidies, and other forms of aid were generously extended to industry, both foreign and domestic. Like Obregón, Calles regarded land reform as a safety value for peasant unrest. During the four years of his term, Calles distributed about twice as much land as Obregón, but most of the land given up came from pasture, forest or barren land. The hacendados did not have surrender productive land. By 1930 grain production had fallen below the levels of 1910, and Calles, concluding that peasant proprietorship was economically undesirable, announced the abandonment of land distribution. A serious dispute with the US arose in 1925 when the Mexican Congress passed laws to implement Article 27 of the Constitution. The most important of these measures required owners of oil leases to

exchange their titles for concessions from the Mexican government. The law eliminated the vagueness of foreign oil companies under Article 27, gave them firm titles emanating from the government, and served to quiet more radical demands for outright nationalization. However, a number of American oil companies denounced the law as confiscatory and threatened to continue drilling operations without confirmatory concessions. President Calvin Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg sought a way out of the impasse and were aided by US international bankers. When the US government refused to back the oil companies the crisis blew over. In January 1926, the Catholic church hierarchy signed a letter declaring that the Constitution of 1917 “wounds the most sacred rights of the Catholic Church” and disavowed the document. Calles responded by imposing the anticlerical clauses of the Constitution, which had not been enforced. The Calles Law, as it was called, ordered the registration of priests with the civil authorities and the closing of religious primary schools. The Church struck back by suspending church services throughout Mexico, a powerful weapon in a country so overwhelmingly Catholic. By the end of 1926, militant Catholics, in frequent alliance with local hacendados, rose in rebellion. The mountainous backcountry of Jalisco was the main focus of their activity. The total number of Catholic guerrillas, known as Cristeros from their slogan, Viva Cristo Rey (Long Live Christ the King), was small, but federal commanders helped to keep the insurrection alive by the brutality of their repressions. By the summer of 1927 the revolt was largely put down. Obregón and Calles were able to get a constitutional amendment passed that extended the presidential term to six years and allowed former presidents to seek reelection after one term out of office. Although this was designed to rotate the presidency between Obregón and Calles, Obregón’s assassination by a fanatical Crisero in July 1927 spawned a new political crisis. Calles became the jefe máximo, the maximum chief of the Revolution. The three presidents who held office during what was to have been Obregón’s six-year term were Calles’s stooges and obediently resigned when they incurred his displeasure. In 1929 Calles organized the National Revolutionary Party (PRN later PRI)) to institutionalize the rule of the “revolutionary family,” the military leaders and politicians who had ruled Mexico since 1920. This party controlled Mexico until the election of Vicente Fox to the presidency in 2000. As the “revolutionary family” consolidated its power and its wealth increased, its members became even more corrupt and predatory than the old Porfirista aristocracy. Calles and his cronies had never been committed to a radical reconstruction of Mexican society, but after 1928, they retreated from their own modest reform program. To camouflage this shift of emphasis and validate their revolutionary credentials they indulged freely in anti-clerical demagoguery and excesses. Their acts blew new life into the dying Cristero movement, causing a brief but bitter new conflict that took many lives. This reactionary change in the Callista regime coincided with the Great Depression. A new generation of young, middle-class reformers began to demand vigorous implementation of the Constitution of 1917. By 1933 the growing influence of the progressive wing within the PNR had led to a partial reform of the agrarian laws that transferred land distribution from the states to the federal government and to the beginnings of school reform. The leader of the reform group within the PNR was General Lázaro Cárdenas, governor of Michocacán, who had established a record for honesty, compassion and concern for commoners. Despite his progressive ideas, he was close to the inner circle of the “revolutionary family,” and Calles regarded him as a loyal lieutenant. With Calles’s blessing the PNR nominated Cárdenas for president and also drafted a Six-Year Plan (in imitation of the Soviet model) that would give life to the ideals and promises of the 1917 Constitution. When Cárdenas was elected in July 1934 Calles was confident that the loyal Cárdenas would carry out his orders as the puppet presidents who preceded him had done.

IX. Mexico Under Cárdenas Under Cárdenas, land distribution to the villages on a massive scale was accompanied by a many-sided effort to raise agricultural productivity and improve the quality of rural life. Labor was encouraged to replace the old, corrupt leadership with militant leaders and to struggle for improved conditions. Cárdenas cut the presidential salary in half, and made himself available to delegates of common folk. These and other policies—such as the closing down of illegal gambling houses, most of which were owned by wealthy Callistas—angered the jefe máximo. When Calles tried to move against Cárdenas, Cárdenas purged Calles’s supporters from all levels of the government and in April 1936 ordered Calles deported to the US. Cárdenas was now the undisputed master of Mexico. During the Cárdenas years, some 45 million acres of land were distributed to almost twelve thousand villages. This distribution struck a heavy blow at the traditional, semifeudal hacienda and peonage, satisfied the land hunger of the Mexican peasantry for the time being, and promoted a general modernization of Mexican life and society. By 1940, thanks to land reform and government assistance, the standard of living of the peasantry had risen, if only modestly. Yet, the fact remains that the land reform suffered from structural defects. Often the land given to the peons was of marginal quality and too small to make a living from (the agrarian law always allowed the landowner to retain a portion of his estate, and naturally landowners kept the best portions for themselves). In addition, the peasant farmers lacked the capital to develop their land to its fullest. After 1940 these defects produced a gradual decline of small farmers and the growth of large landed property owners that led to the emergence of a new landed elite. On March 18, 1938 Cárdenas expropriated the properties of foreign oil companies. With support from the Mexican people, Cárdenas was able to ride out the storm caused by economic sanctions against Mexico on the part of the US, England, and the oil companies. The oil nationalization was a major victory for Mexican nationalism. It provided cheap, plentiful fuel for Mexican industry, and oil exports became a major source of hard currency for Mexico. But the oil nationalization did not set a precedent; about 90% of Mexico’s mining industry remained in foreign hands. In the last years of his presidency, in apparent deference to clerical and conservative opposition, Cárdenas abandoned many reforms. He slowed down the pace of land distribution and displayed a conciliatory attitude toward the entrepreneurial class, assuring its members that he regarded them as part of the vital force of the country and that they need not fear for the safety of their investments. By 1940 the PNR was an amalgam of many forces including increasingly conservative and influential industrialists. General Manuel Ávila Camacho, a Cárdenas loyalist, a devout Catholic, and a man of generally conservative views, assumed the presidency in December 1940 with 99% of the vote. Camacho dissociated himself from the radical leadership of the unions, indicated that land reform was not a pressing issue to him, and assured the Catholics that he was a believer. The Cárdenas era was the high-water mark of the struggle to achieve the social and economic goals of the Revolution. Under his successors, there began an erosion of the reforms of the Cárdenas years. After 1940 the rulers of Mexico favored a development strategy that sharply restricted union activity, slowed the tempo of agrarian reform, and reduced the distribution of income to the bottom two-thirds of the Mexican population.

Outline The Mexican Revolution I. The Mexico of Porfirio Diaz 1) Diaz ruled Mexico 1876-1911. Ruled as a caudillo. 2) Mexico’s inefficient economic system revolved around the hacienda. Foreigners controlled much of the country’s wealth (natural resources). II. The Overthrow of Diaz 1) Lack of upward mobility, foreign domination of industry, concentration of agricultural land in few hands, economic recession, and Diaz’s ineptitude in the presidential election of 1910 all helped lead to revolution. 2) Revolution led by Francisco Madero from Coahuila. 3) Pancho Villa, a rebel general from Chihuahua, became the military hero of the Revolution. 4) Emiliano Zapata led the Revolution in Morelos. Zapata became the hero of the Mexican peasant with his demands for land reform in his Plan of Ayala. 5) In May 1911, under the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, Diaz went into exile. 6) A breach opened-up between the Zapata in the south and Madero and his followers from the north. III. Mexico under Francisco Madero (1911-1913). 1) Madero was too idealistic to be a good president. In addition, his conservative nature alienated many revolutionaries, especially Zapata and his followers. 2) Madero sent the army into Morelos to destroy Zapata. Zapata could avoid destruction, but he was too weak to defeat the federal forces. 3) In March 1912 Pascual Orozco led a revolution against Madero. Villa and Victoriano Huerta defeated Orozco. Huerta became head of the army and Madero became totally dependent upon the army for his survival. 4) Huerta arrested Villa (he later escaped from jail) and murdered Madero in February 1913 and took over as President. Madero became a martyr. IV. The Revolt Against Huerta (1913-1915). 1) Venusiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, led the revolt against Huerta. 2) Villa joined with Carranza and won many victories. Carranza became jealous and advanced Álvaro Obregón as a counter-weight to Villa. 3) US President Wilson refused to recognize the Huerta government and in April 1914 US forces occupied Veracruz. 4) Carranza ensured that Obregón beat Villa to the capital after the resignation of Huerta in July 1915. V. Zapata’s and Villa’s Fight Against Carranza. 1) At the Constitutional Convention at Aguascalientes (Oct. 1914) Obregón gained significant influence while Villa and Zapata, because they had not attended the session, lost influence. The Convention declared Carranza “in rebellion” because he refused to share power. 2) In November 1914 Villa & Zapata controlled Mexico City. A reign of terror ensued that greatly discredited both men. Obregón and Carranza formed an alliance against them. 3) By July 1915 Obregón had defeated Villa, and in October the US recognized the Carranza government. Villa resorted to guerrilla warfare. VI. Mexico Under Carranza (1915-1919). 1) Carranza had Zapata killed in April 1919. 2) In March 1916 Villa attacked Columbus, NM and President Wilson sent the army under general Pershing into Mexico to catch him. 3) War almost broke out between Mexico and the US. Because neither side wanted war, and the US wanted to focus on Europe, war was avoided and US troops left Mexico in February 1917.

4) The Constitution of 1917 increased Carranza’s power and gave the Mexican government the power to take private property. The Catholic church was restricted. 5) In June 1916 Villa began raiding again. Atrocities by Villa’s men turned peasants against him. 6) When Carranza refused to leave office in 1919 Obregón rose against him. Carranza was killed in May 1919. Obregón granted Villa a pardon. The Revolution was over. VII. The Impact of the Mexican Revolution. 1) When Villa refused to recognize Plutarco Calles as Obregón’s successor, Obregón had Villa murdered in 1924. Obregón froze the status-quo. 2) Between 350,000 and one million deaths during eight years of warfare. 3) The economy of Mexico was modernized. The hacienda no longer dominated the Mexican economy. 4) The Catholic church lost power. 5) New elites from the urban and industrialized middle-class arose. Upward mobility became available to men without family connections. The mass of people gained little. VIII. Mexico Under Calles (1924-1934). 1) Encouraged industrial and commercial development. 2) Land distribution to peasants increased initially, then stopped. 3) The 1926-27 Cristeros Rebellion by militant Catholics was brutally repressed. 4) Obregón was supposed to be president after Calles but he was assassinated by a Cristero in July 1927 and Calles ruled as the jefe máximo through presidential surrogates. 5) Calles created the National Revolutionary Party (PRI) to institutionalize his, and his followers, power. IX. Mexico Under Cárdenas (1934-1940). 1) When Calles tried to control him, Cárdenas had Calles exiled. 2) Major redistribution of land temporarily helped peasants, but lack of capital for small farmers led to the reestablishment of large estates. 3) In March 1938 Cárdenas expropriated the properties of foreign oil companies. 4) By the end of his presidency Cárdenas had abandoned reform. The conservative general Manuel Ávila Camacho succeeded Cárdenas and all pretence of reform ended.

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Barbarous Mexico [Excerpt] by John Kenneth Turner From Barbarous Mexico by John Kenneth Turner (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1910), pp. 120 137, passim. The slavery and peonage of Mexico, the poverty and illiteracy, the general prostration of the people, are due, in my humble judgment, to the financial and political organization that at present rules that country-in a word, to what I shall call the "system" of General Porfirio Diaz. That these conditions can be traced in a measure to the history of Mexico during past generations, is true. I do not wish to be unfair to General Diaz in the least degree. The Spanish Dons made slaves and peons of the Mexican people. Yet never did they grind the people as they are ground today. In Spanish times the peon at least had his own little patch of ground, his own humble shelter; today he has nothing. Moreover, the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed just one hundred years ago, in 1810, proclaimed also the abolition of chattel slavery. Slavery was abolished, though not entirely. Succeeding Mexican governments of class and of church and of the individual held the people in bondage little less severe. But finally came a democratic movement which broke the back of the church, which overthrew the rule of caste, which adopted a form of government as modern as our own, which freed the slave in fact as well as in name, which gave the lands of the people back to the people, which wiped the slate clean of the blood of the past. *** It was under Porfirio Diaz that slavery and peonage were reestablished in Mexico, and on a more merciless basis than they had existed even under the Spanish Dons. Therefore, I can see no injustice in charging at least a preponderance of the blame for these conditions upon the system of Diaz. I say the "system of Diaz" rather than Diaz personally because, though he is the keystone of the arch, though he is the government of Mexico more completely than is any other individual the government of any large country on the planet, yet no one man can stand alone in his iniquity. Diaz is the central prop of the slavery, but there are other props without which the system could not continue upright for a single day. For example, there is the collection of commercial interests which profit by the Diaz system of slavery and autocracy, and which puts no insignificant part of its tremendous powers to holding the central prop upright in exchange for the special privileges that it receives. Not the least among these commercial interests are American, which, I blush to say, are quite as aggressive defenders of the Diaz citadel as any. Indeed . . . these American interests undoubtedly form the determining force of the continuation of Mexican slavery. Thus does Mexican slavery come home to us in the full sense of the term. *** In order that the reader may understand the Diaz system and its responsibility in the degradation of the Mexican people, it will be well to go back and trace briefly the beginnings of that system. Mexico is spoken of throughout the world as a Republic. That is because it was once a Republic and still pretends to be one. Mexico has a constitution which has never been repealed, a constitution said to be modeled after our own, and one which is, indeed, like ours in the main. Like ours, it provides for a national congress, state legislatures and municipal aldermen to make the laws, federal, state and local judges to interpret them, and a president, governors and local executives to administer them. Like ours, it provides for manhood suffrage, freedom of the press and of speech, equality before the law, and the other guarantees of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which we ourselves enjoy, in a degree, as a matter of course. Such was Mexico forty years ago. Forty years ago Mexico was at peace with the world. She had just overthrown, after a heroic war, the foreign prince, Maximilian, who had been seated as emperor by the armies of Napoleon Third of France. Her president, Benito Juarez, is today recognized in Mexico and out of Mexico as one of the most able as well as unselfish patriots of Mexican history. Never since Cortez fired his ships there on the gulf coast had Mexico enjoyed such prospects of political freedom, industrial prosperity and general advancement. But in spite of these facts, and the additional fact that he was deeply indebted to Juarez, all his military promotions having been received at the hands of the latter, General Porfirio Diaz stirred up a series of

rebellions for the purpose of securing for himself the supreme power of the land. Diaz not only led one armed rebellion against a peaceable, constitutional and popularly approved government, but he led three of them. For nine years he plotted as a common rebel. The support that he received came chiefly from bandits, criminals and professional soldiers who were disgruntled at the antimilitarist policy which Juarez had inaugurated and which, if he could have carried it out a little farther, would have been effective in preventing military revolutions in the future-- and from the Catholic church. *** In defiance of the will of the majority of the people of Mexico, General Diaz, thirty-four years ago, came to the head of government. In defiance of the will of the majority of the people he has remained there ever since--except for four years, from 1880 to 1884, when he turned the palace over to an intimate friend, Manuel Gonzalez, on the distinct understanding that at the end of the four years Gonzalez would turn it back to him again. Since no man can rule an unwilling people without taking away the liberties of that people, it can be very easily understood what sort of regime General Diaz found it necessary to establish in order to make his power secure. By the use of the army and the police powers generally, he controlled elections, the press and public speech and made of popular government a farce. By distributing the public offices among his generals and granting them free rein to plunder at will, he assured himself of the continued use of the army. By making political combinations with men high in the esteem of the Catholic church and permitting it to be whispered about that the church was to regain some of its former powers, he gained the silent support of the priests and the Pope. By promising full payment of all foreign debts and launching at once upon a policy of distributing favors among citizens of other countries, he made his peace with the world at large. *** Take, for example, Diaz's method of rewarding his military chiefs, the men who helped him overthrow the government of Lerdo. As quickly as possible after assuming the power, he installed his generals as governors of the various states and organized them and other influential figures in the nation into a national plunderbund. Thus he assured himself of the continued loyalty of the generals, on the one hand, and put them where he could most effectively use them for keeping down the people, on the other. One variety of rich plum which he handed out in those early days to his governors came in the form of charters giving his governors the right, as individuals, to organize companies and build railroads, each charter carrying with it a huge sum as a railroad subsidy. The national government paid for the road and then the governor and his most influential friends owned it. Usually the railroads were ridiculous affairs, were of narrow-gauge and of the very cheapest materials, but the subsidy was very large, sufficient to build the road and probably equip it besides. During his first term of four years in office Diaz passed sixty-one railroad subsidy acts containing appropriations aggregating $40,000,000, and all but two or three of these acts were in favor of governors of states. In a number of cases not a mile of railroad was actually built, but the subsidies are supposed to have been paid, anyhow. In nearly every case the subsidy was the same, $12,880 per mile in Mexican silver, and in those days Mexican silver was nearly on a par with gold. This huge sum was taken out of the national treasury and was supposedly paid to the governors, although Mexican politicians of the old times have assured me that it was divided, a part going out as actual subsidies and a part going directly into the hands of Diaz to be used in building up his machine in other quarters. Certainly something more than mere loyalty, however invaluable it was, was required of the governors in exchange for such rich financial plums. It is a well authenticated fact that governors were required to pay a fixed sum annually for the privilege of exploiting to the limit the graft possibilities of their offices. For a long time Manuel Romero Rubio, father-in-law of Diaz, was the collector of these perquisites, the offices bringing in anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 per year. The largest single perquisite whereby Diaz enriched himself, the members of his immediate family, his friends, his governors, his financial ring and his foreign favorites, was found for a long time in the confiscation of the lands of the common people--a confiscation, in fact, which is going on to this day. Note that this land robbery was the first direct step in the path of the Mexican people back to their bondage as slaves and peons.

. . . The lands of the Yaquis of Sonora were taken from them and given to political favorites of the ruler. The lands of the Mayas of Yucatan, now enslaved by the henequen planters, were taken from them in almost the same manner. The final act in this confiscation was accomplished in the year 1904, when the national government set aside the last of their lands into a territory called Quintana Roo. This territory contains 43,000 square kilometers or 27,000 square miles. It is larger than the present state of Yucatan by 8,000 square kilometers, and moreover is the most promising land of the entire peninsula. Separated from the island of Cuba by a narrow strait, its soil and climate are strikingly similar to those of Cuba and experts have declared that there is no reason why Quintana Roo should not one day become as great a tobacco-growing country as Cuba. Further than that, its hillsides are thickly covered with the most valuable cabinet and dyewoods in the world. It is this magnificent country which, as the last chapter in the life of the Mayas as a nation, the Diaz government took and handed over to eight Mexican politicians. In like manner have the Mayos of Sonora, the Papagos, the Tomosachics-- in fact, practically all the native peoples of Mexico--been reduced to peonage, if not to slavery. Small holders of every tribe and nation have gradually been expropriated until today their number is almost down to zero. Their lands are in the hands of the governmental machine, or persons to whom the members of the machine have sold for profit--or in the hands of foreigners. This is why the typical Mexican farm is the million-acre farm, why it has been so easy for such Americans as William Randolph Hearst, Harrison Gray Otis, E. H. Harriman, the Rockefellers, the Guggenheims and numerous others each to have obtained possession of millions of Mexican acres. This is why Secretary of Fomento Molina holds more than 15,000,000 acres of the soil of Mexico, why ex-Governor Terrazas, of Chihuahua, owns 15,000,000 acres of the soil of that state, why Finance Minister Limantour, Mrs. Porfirio Diaz, Vice-President Corral, Governor Pimentel, of Chiapas, Governor Landa y Escandon of the Federal District, Governor Pablo Escandon of Morelos, Governor Ahumada of Jalisco, Governor Cosio of Queretaro, Governor Mercado of Michoacan, Governor Canedo of Sinaloa, Governor Cahuantzi of Tlaxcala, and many other members of the Diaz machine are not only millionaires, but they are millionaires in Mexican real estate. Chief among the methods used in getting the lands away from the people in general was through a land registration law which Diaz fathered. This law permitted any person to go out and claim any lands to which the possessor could not prove a recorded title. Since up to the time the law was enacted it was not the custom to record titles, this meant all the lands of Mexico. When a man possessed a home which his father had possessed before him, and which his grandfather had possessed, which his great-grandfather had possessed, and which had been in the family as far back as history knew; then he considered that he owned that home, all of his neighbors considered that he owned it, and all governments up to that of Diaz recognized his right to that home. Supposing that a strict registration law became necessary in the course of evolution, had this law been enacted for the purpose of protecting the land owners instead of plundering them the government would, naturally, have sent agents through the country to apprise the people of the new law and to help them register their property and keep their homes. But this was not done and the conclusion is inevitable that the law was passed for the purpose of plundering. At all events, the result of the law was a plundering. No sooner had it been passed than the aforesaid members of the governmental machine, headed by the father-in-law of Diaz, and Diaz himself, formed land companies and sent out agents, not to help the people keep their lands, but to select the most desirable lands in the country, register them, and evict the owners. This they did on a most tremendous scale. Thus hundreds of thousands of small farmers lost their property. Thus small farmers are still losing their property. *** Another favorite means of confiscating the homes of small owners is found in the juggling of state taxes. State taxes in Mexico are fearfully and wonderfully made. Especially in the less populous districts owners are taxed inversely as they stand in favor with the personality who represents the government in their particular district. No court, board or other responsible body sits to review unjust assessments. The jefe politico may charge one farmer five times as much per acre as he charges the farmer across the fence, and yet Farmer No. 1 has no redress unless he is rich and powerful. He must pay, and if he cannot, the farm is a little later listed among the properties of the jefe politico, or one of the members of his family, or among the properties of the governor of the state or one of the members of his family. But if he is rich and powerful he is often not taxed at all. American promoters in Mexico escape taxation so nearly

invariably that the impression has got abroad in this country that land pays no taxes in Mexico. Even Frederick Palmer made a statement to this effect in his recent writings about that country. Of course such bandit methods as were employed and are still employed were certain to meet with resistance, and so we find numerous instances of regiments of soldiers being called out to enforce collection of taxes or the eviction of time-honored land-holders. *** Hardly a month passes today without there being one or more reports in Mexican papers of disturbances, the result of confiscation of homes, either through the denunciation method or the excuse of nonpayment of taxes. *** Graft is an established institution in the public offices of Mexico. It is a right vested in the office itself, is recognized as such, and is respectable. There are two main functions attached to each public office, one a privilege, the other a duty. The privilege is that of using the special powers of the office for the amassing of a personal fortune; the duty is that of preventing the people from entering into any activities that may endanger the stability of the existing regime. Theoretically, the fulfillment of the duty is judged as balancing the harvest of the privilege, but with all offices and all places this is not so, and so we find offices of particularly rosy possibilities selling for a fixed price. Examples are those of the jefes politicos in districts where the slave trade is peculiarly remunerative, as at Pachuca, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Orizaba, Cordoba and Rio Blanco; of the districts in which the drafting of soldiers for the army is especially let to the jefes politicos; of the towns in which the gambling privileges are let as a monopoly to the mayors thereof; of the states in which there exist opportunities extraordinary for governors to graft off the army supply contracts. Monopolies called "concessions," which are nothing more nor less than trusts created by governmental decree, are dealt in openly by the Mexican government. Some of these concessions are sold for cash, but the rule is to give them away gratis or for a nominal price, the real price being collected in political support. The public domain is sold in huge tracts for a nominal price or for nothing at all, the money price, when paid at all, averaging about fifty Mexican centavos an acre. But never does the government sell to any individual or company not of its own special choice; that is, the public domain is by no means open to all comers on equal terms. Public concessions worth millions of dollars-to use the water of a river for irrigation purposes, or for power, to engage in this or that monopoly, have been given away, but not indiscriminately. These things are the coin with which political support is bought and as such are grafts, pure and simple. Public action of any sort is never taken for the sake of improving the condition of the common people. It is taken with a view to making the government more secure in its position. Mexico is a land of special privileges extraordinary, though frequently special privileges are provided for in the name of the common people. An instance is that of the "Agricultural Bank," which was created in 1908. To read the press reports concerning the purpose of this bank one would imagine that the government had launched into a gigantic and benevolent scheme to re-establish its expropriated people in agriculture. The purpose, it was said, was to loan money to needy farmers. But nothing could be farther from the truth, for the purpose is to help out the rich farmer, and only the richest in the land. The bank has now been loaning money for two years, but so far not a single case has been recorded in which aid was given to help a farm that comprised less than thousands of acres. Millions have been loaned on private irrigation projects, but never in lumps of less than several tens of thousands. In the United States the farmer class is an humble class indeed; in Mexico the typical farmer is the king of millionaires, a little potentate. In Mexico, because of the special privileges given by the government, medievalism still prevails outside the cities. The barons are richer and more powerful than were the landed aristocrats before the French Revolution, and the canaille poorer, more miserable. And the special financial privileges centering in the cities are no less remarkable than the special privileges given to the exploiters of the hacienda slave. There is a financial ring consisting of members of the Diaz machine and their close associates, who pluck all the financial plums of the "republic," who get the contracts, the franchises and the concessions, and whom the large aggregations of foreign capital which secure a footing in the country find it necessary to take as coupon-clipping partners. The "Banco National," an institution having some fifty-four branches and which has been compared flatteringly to the Bank of England, is the special financial vehicle of the government camarilla. It monopolizes the major

portion of the banking business of the country and is a convenient cloak for the larger grafts, such as the railway merger, the true significance of which I shall present in a future chapter. Diaz encourages foreign capital, for foreign capital means the support of foreign governments. American capital has a smoother time with Diaz than it has even with its own government, which is very fine from the point of view of American capital, but not so good from the point of view of the Mexican people. Diaz has even entered into direct partnership with certain aggregations of foreign capital, granting these aggregations special privileges in some lines which he has refused to his own millionaires. These foreign partnerships which Diaz has formed has made his government international insofar as the props which support his system are concerned. The certainty of foreign intervention in his favor has been one of the powerful forces which have prevented the Mexican people from using arms to remove a ruler who imposed himself upon them by the use of arms. When I come to deal with the American partners of Diaz I mention those of no other nationality in the same breath, but it will be well to bear in mind that England, especially, is nearly as heavily as interested in Mexico as is the United States. While this country has $900,000,000 (these are the figures given by Consul General Shanklin about the first of the year 1910) invested in Mexico, England (according to the South American Journal) has $750,000,000. However, these figures by no means represent the ratio between the degree of political influence exerted by the two countries. There the United States bests all the other countries combined. *** In this chapter I have attempted to give the reader an idea of the means which General Diaz employed to attract support to his government. To sum up, by means of a careful placing of public offices, public contracts and special privileges of multitudinous sorts, Diaz absorbed all of the more powerful men and interests within his sphere and made them a part of his machine. Gradually the country passed into the hands of his office holders, their friends, and foreigners. And for this the people paid, not only with their lands, but with their flesh and blood. They paid in peonage and slavery. For this they forfeited liberty, democracy and the blessings of progress.

Modern History Sourcebook: Francisco Madero: The Plan of San Luis Potosi, November 20, 1910 The Mexican presidential election of 1910 was stolen when Porfirio Diaz - the longtime dictator, had his opponent Madero arrested and imprisoned. Madero took refuge infled to San Antonio, and issued the Plan of San Luis Potosi calling for the nullification of the elections and upon Mexicans to take up arms against the government. The date of its issue marks the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Peoples, in their constant efforts for the triumph of the ideal of liberty and justice, are forced, at precise historical moments, to make their greatest sacrifices. Our beloved country has reached one of those moments. A force of tyranny which we Mexicans were not accustomed to suffer after we won our independence oppresses us in such a manner that it has become intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny we are offered peace, but peace full of shame for the Mexican nation, because its basis is not law, but force; because its object is not the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, but to enrich a small group who, abusing their influence, have converted the public charges into fountains of exclusively personal benefit, unscrupulously exploiting the manner of lucrative concessions and contracts. The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico; the administration of justice, instead of imparting protection to the weak, merely serves to legalize the plunderings committed by the strong; the judges instead of being the representatives of justice, are the agents of the executive, whose interests they faithfully serve; the chambers of the union have no other will than that of the dictator; the governors of the States are designated by him and they in their turn designate and impose in like manner the municipal authorities.

From this it results that the whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost. For many years profound discontent has been felt throughout the Republic, due to such a system of government, but General Diaz with great cunning and perseverance, has succeeded in annihilating all independent elements, so that it was not possible to organize any sort of movement to take from him the power of which he made such bad use. The evil constantly became worse, and the decided eagerness of General Diaz to impose a successor upon the nations in the person of Mr. Ramon Corral carried that evil to its limit and caused many of us Mexicans, although lacking recognized political standing, since it had been impossible to acquire it during the 36 years of dictatorship, to throw ourselves into the struggle to recover the sovereignty of the people and their rights on purely democratic grounds.... In Mexico, as a democratic Republic, the public power can have no other origin nor other basis than the will of the people, and the latter can not be subordinated to formulas to be executed in a fraudulent manner. . . , For this reason the Mexican people have protested against the illegality of the last election and, desiring to use successively all the recourses offered by the laws of the Republic, in due form asked for the nullification of the election by the Chamber of Deputies, notwithstanding they recognized no legal origin in said body and knew beforehand that, as its members were not the representatives of the people, they would carry out the will of General Diaz, to whom exclusively they owe their investiture. In such a state of affairs the people, who are the only sovereign, also protested energetically against the election in imposing manifestations in different parts of the Republic; and if the latter were not general throughout the national territory, It was due to the terrible pressure exercised by the Government, which always quenches in blood any democratic manifestation, as happened in Puebla, Vera Cruz, Tlaxcala, and in other places. But this violent and illegal system can no longer subsist. I have very well realized that if the people have designated me as their candidate. for the Presidency it is not because they have had an opportunity to discover in me the qualities of a statesman or of a

ruler, but the virility of the patriot determined to sacrifice himself, if need be, to obtain liberty and to help the people free themselves from the odious tyranny that oppresses them. From the moment I threw myself into the democratic struggle I very well knew that General Diaz would not bow to the will of the nation, and the noble Mexican people, in following me to the polls, also knew perfectly the outrage that awaited them; but in spite of it, the people gave the cause of liberty a numerous contingent of martyrs when they were necessary and with wonderful stoicism went to the polls and received every sort of molestation. But such conduct was indispensable to show to the whole world that the Mexican people are fit for democracy, that they are thirsty for liberty, and that their present rulers do not measure up to their aspirations. Besides, the attitude of the people before and during the election, as well as afterwards, shows clearly that they reject with energy the Government of General Diaz and that, if those electoral rights had been respected, I would have been elected for President of the Republic. Therefore, and in echo of the national will, I declare the late election illegal and, the Republic being accordingly without rulers, provisionally assume the Presidency of the Republic until the people designate their rulers pursuant to the law. In order to attain this end, it is necessary to eject from power the audacious usurpers whose only title of legality involves a scandalous and immoral fraud. With all honesty I declare that it would be a weakness on my part and treason to the people, who have placed their confidence in me, not to put myself at the front of my fellow citizens, who anxiously call me from all parts of the country, to compel General Diaz by force of arms, to respect the national will.

Source: From United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, Revolutions in Mexico, 62nd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), pp. 730-736, passim

PLAN DE AGUA PRIETA Hermosillo, Sonora. April 29, 1920. CONSIDERING: I. That National Sovereignty resides essential and originally in the people: that all public power emanates from the people and is established for their benefit, and that the power of public office is only a partial delegation of popular sovereignty, by the same people. II. That the current President of the Republic, C. Venustiano Carranza, had been formed to head a political party, and pursuing the triumph of that party has flouted in a systematic way of the popular vote, has been suspended, in fact individual guarantees, has repeatedly attack against the sovereignty of states and has radically undermined the organization of the Republic. III. That the acts and procedures are briefly exposed at the same time, flagrant violations of our supreme law, serious crimes of the ordinary and absolute betrayal to the fundamental aspirations of the Constitutionalist Revolution. IV. That having exhausted all peaceful means to channel the procedures of repeated president of the Federation, through constitutional, without having achieved that end, it is time that the Mexican people throughout its sovereignty gun revoking the absolute rule of its institutions and its laws. Thus, the undersigned, Mexican citizens in full exercise of our political rights, we have taken in all its parts to uphold protest endurance and, the following: Plan organic claims of the Movement for Democracy and the Law. Art. I. Cesa in the exercise of the executive branch of the Federation of C. Venustiano Carranza. Art. II. It is not known to civil servants whose investiture derived from the last elections of Local verified in the states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Art. III. Also unknown is the nature of Councilors of the Municipality of Mexico City to the CC. Declared elected during the last elections held in this capital. Art. IV. It is recognized as Governor of the State of Nayarit to C. Jose Santos Godinez.

Art. V. It is also recognized all other legal authorities of the Federation and the States. The Liberal Constitutionalist Army will hold such authorities provided they do not fight or hostilicen this movement. Art. VI. Is explicitly acknowledged as Basic Law of the Republic to the Constitution of February 5, 1917. Art. VII. All the generals, chiefs, officers and soldiers who endorse this plan will form the Liberal Constitutionalist Army. The current Governor of Sonora, C. Adolfo de la Huerta, will be interim chief of the Army with all the powers necessary for the political and administrative organization of this movement. Art. VIII. The governors of the constitutional rule that recognize and adhere to this motion within 30 days from the date of the enactment of this plan, each appoint a representative duly authorized to allow those delegates gathered to 60 days of the date hereof, at the site designated by the Chief Supreme Int. ultimately come to appoint, by a majority of otos, the chief of the Liberal Constitutionalist Army. Art. IX. If, under the circumstances created by the campaign, the Board of Governors of the Constitutional Delegates referred to in Art. Most do not meet earlier in the day indicated, is definitely as Army chief of the Liberal Constitutionalist current Governor of the State of Sonora, C. Adolfo de la Huerta. Art. X. As soon as this plan is adopted by a majority of the nation and occupied Mexico City for the Liberal Constitutionalist Army, will be to appoint an Interim President of the Republic, as provided in the following articles. Art. XI. If the motion falls consummated before the end of the current session of Congress, the head of the Liberal Constitutionalist Army, will convene to Congress to special sessions, in the place where he can meet, and members of both chambers will elect the President Interim, in accordance with the existing Constitution. Art. XII. If the case provided for in Article X comes to the show after the completion of the constitutional term of the current Chambers, the chief of the Liberal Constitutionalist Army will assume the interim presidency of the republic. Art. XIII. The Interim Chairperson to convene elections of executive and legislative branches of the Federation immediately to take up office.

Art. XIV. The Supreme Head of the Liberal Constitutionalist Army appointed Interim Governing Council of the States of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Queretaro, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, which have no Governor and all other Federal Entities whose former presidents fight or unaware of this movement. Art. XV. Consolidated the triumph of this plan, the President would authorize the Interim Provisional Governors to immediately convene of Local elections in accordance with the respective laws. Art. XVI. The Liberal Constitutionalist Army is governed by the Ordinance and General Military Law currently in force in the Republic. Art. XVII. The Supreme Head of the Liberal Constitutionalist Army, and all civilian and military authorities who endorse this plan will provide guarantees to protect foreign nationals and especially the development of industry, trade and all businesses. Effective suffrage. No Re-election. Agua Prieta, April 23, 1920.

Plan de Ayala, John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Knopf, © 1969), pp. 400-404. Translation by John Womack Liberating Plan of the sons of the State of Morelos, affiliated with the Insurgent Army which defends the fulfillment of the Plan of San Luis, with the reforms which it has believed proper to add in benefit of the Mexican Fatherland. We who undersign, constituted in a revolutionary junta to sustain and carry out the promises which the revolution of November 20, 1910, just past, made to the country, declare solemnly before the face of the civilized world which judges us and before the nation to which we belong and which we call [sic, love], propositions which we have formulated to end the tyranny which oppresses us and redeem the fatherland from the dictatorships which are imposed on us, which [propositions] are determined in the following plan: 1. Taking into consideration that the Mexican people led by Don Francisco I. Madero went to shed their blood to reconquer liberties and recover their rights which had been trampled on, and for a man to take possession of power, violating the sacred principles which he took an oath to defend under the slogan "Effective Suffrage and No Reelection," outraging thus the faith, the cause, the justice, and the liberties of the people: taking into consideration that that man to whom we refer is Don Francisco I. Madero, the same who initiated the above-cited revolution, who imposed his will and influence as a governing norm on the Provisional Government of the ex-President of the Republic Attorney Francisco L. de Barra [sic], causing with this deed repeated sheddings of blood and multiplicate misfortunes for the fatherland in a manner deceitful and ridiculous, having no intentions other than satisfying his personal ambitions, his boundless instincts as a tyrant, and his profound disrespect for the fulfillment of the preexisting laws emanating from the immortal code of '57 [Constitution of 1857], written with the revolutionary blood of Ayutla; Taking into account that the so-called Chief of the Liberating Revolution of Mexico, Don Francisco I. Madero, through lack of integrity and the highest weakness, did not carry to a happy end the revolution which gloriously he initiated with the help of God and the people, since he left standing most of the governing powers and corrupted elements of oppression of the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz, which are not nor can in any

way be the representation of National Sovereignty, and which, for being most bitter adversaries of ours and of the principles which even now we defend, are provoking the discomfort of the country and opening new wounds in the bosom of the fatherland, to give it its own blood to drink; taking also into account that the aforementioned Sr. Francisco I. Madero, present President of the Republic, tries to avoid the fulfillment of the promises which he made to the Nation in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, being [sic, restricting] the above-cited promises to the agreements of Ciudad Juárez, by means of false promises and numerous intrigues against the Nation nullifying, pursuing, jailing, or killing revolutionary elements who helped him to occupy the high post of President of the Republic; Taking into consideration that the so-often-repeated Francisco I. Madero has tried with the brute force of bayonets to shut up and to drown in blood the pueblos who ask, solicit, or demand from him the fulfillment of the promises of the revolution, calling them bandits and rebels, condemning them to a war of extermination without conceding or granting a single one of the guarantees which reason, justice, and the law prescribe; taking equally into consideration that the President of the Republic Francisco I. Madero has made of Effective Suffrage a bloody trick on the people, already against the will of the same people imposing Attorney José M. Pino Suáez in the Vice-Presidency of the Republic, or [imposing as] Governors of the States [men] designated by him, like the socalled General Ambrosio Figueroa, scourge and tyrant of the people of Morelos, or entering into scandalous cooperation with the científico party, feudal landlords, and oppressive bosses, enemies of the revolution proclaimed by him, so as to forge new chains and follow the pattern of a new dictatorship more shameful and more terrible than that of Porfirio Díaz, for it has been clear and patent that he has outraged the sovereignty of the States, trampling on the laws without any respect for lives or interests, as has happened in the State of Morelos, and others, leading them to the most horrendous anarchy which contemporary history registers. For these considerations we declare the aforementioned Francisco I. Madero inept at realizing the promises of the revolution of which he was the author, because he has betrayed the principles with which he tricked the will of the people and was able to get into power: incapable of governing, because he has no respect for the law and justice of the pueblos, and a traitor to the fatherland, because he is humiliating in blood and fire, Mexicans who want liberties, so as to please the científicos, landlords, and bosses who enslave us, and from today on we begin to continue the revolution begun by him, until we achieve the overthrow of the dictatorial powers which exist. 2. Recognition is withdrawn from S. Francisco I. Madero as Chief of the Revolution and as President of the Republic, for the reasons which before were expressed, it being attempted to overthrow this official. 3. Recognized as Chief of the Liberating Revolution is the illustrious General Pascual Orozco, the second of the Leader Don Francisco I. Madero, and in case he does not accept this delicate post, recognition as Chief of the Revolution will go to General Don Emiliano Zapata. 4. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos manifests to the Nation under formal oath: that it makes its own the plan of San Luis Potosí, with the additions which are

expressed below in benefit of the oppressed pueblos, and it will make itself the defender of the principles it defends until victory or death. 5. The Revolutionary Junta of the State of Morelos will admit no transactions or compromises until it achieves the overthrow of the dictatorial elements of Porfirio Díaz and Francisco I. Madero, for the nation is tired of false men and traitors who make promises like liberators and who on arriving in power forget them and constitute themselves tyrants. 6. As an additional part of the plan, we invoke, we give notice: that [regarding] the fields, timber, and water which the landlords, científicos, or bosses have usurped, the pueblos or citizens who have the titles corresponding to those properties will immediately enter into possession of that real estate of which they have been despoiled by the bad faith of our oppressors, maintain at any cost with arms in hand the mentioned possession; and the usurpers who consider themselves with a right to them [those properties] will deduce it before the special tribunals which will be established on the triumph of the revolution. 7. In virtue of the fact that the immense majority of Mexican pueblos and citizens are owners of no more than the land they walk on, suffering the horrors of poverty without being able to improve their social condition in any way or to dedicate themselves to Industry or Agriculture, because lands, timber, and water are monopolized in a few hands, for this cause there will be expropriated the third part of those monopolies from the powerful proprietors of them, with prior indemnization, in order that the pueblos and citizens of Mexico may obtain ejidos, colonies, and foundations for pueblos, or fields for sowing or laboring, and the Mexicans' lack of prosperity and well-being may improve in all and for all. 8. [Regarding] The landlords, científicos, or bosses who oppose the present plan directly or indirectly, their goods will be nationalized and the two-third parts which [otherwise would] belong to them will go for indemnizations of war, pensions for widows and orphans of the victims who succumb in the struggle for the present plan. 9. In order to execute the procedures regarding the properties aforementioned, the laws of disamortization and nationalization will be applied as they fit, for serving us as norm and example can be those laws put in force by the immortal Juáez on ecclesiastical properties, which punished the despots and conservatives who in every time have tried to impose on us the ignominious yoke of oppression and backwardness. 10. The insurgent military chiefs of the Republic who rose up with arms in hand at the voice of Don Francisco I. Madero to defend the plan of San Luis Potosí, and who oppose with armed force the present plan, will be judged traitors to the cause which they defended and to the fatherland, since at present many of them, to humor the tyrants, for a fistful of coins, or for bribes or connivance, are shedding the blood of their brothers who claim the fulfillment of the promises which Don Francisco I. Madero made to the nation. 11. The expenses of war will be taken in conformity with Article 11 of the Plan of San Luis Potosí, and all procedures employed in the revolution we undertake will be in conformity with the same instructions which the said plan determines. 12. Once triumphant the revolution which we carry into the path of reality, a Junta of the principal revolutionary chiefs from the different States will name or designate an interim President of the Republic, who will convoke elections for the organization of the federal powers.

13. The principal revolutionary chiefs of each State will designate in Junta the Governor of the State to which they belong, and this appointed official will convoke elections for the due organization of the public powers, the object being to avoid compulsory appointments which work the misfortune of the pueblos, like the so-well-known appointment of Ambrosio Figueroa in the State of Morelos and others who drive us to the precipice of bloody conflicts sustained by the caprice of the dictator Madero and the circle of científicos and landlords who have influenced him. 14. If President Madero and other dictatorial elements of the present and former regime want to avoid the immense misfortunes which afflict the fatherland, and [if they] possess true sentiments of love for it, let them make immediate renunciation of the posts they occupy and with that they will with something staunch the grave wounds which they have opened in the bosom of the fatherland, since, if they do not do so, on their heads will fall the blood and the anathema of our brothers. 15. Mexicans: consider that the cunning and bad faith of one man is shedding blood in a scandalous manner, because he is incapable of governing; consider that his system of government is choking the fatherland and trampling with the brute force of bayonets on our institutions; and thus, as we raised up our weapons to elevate him to power, we again raise them up against him for defaulting on his promises to the Mexican people and for having betrayed the revolution initiated by him, we are not personalists, we are partisans of principles and not of men! Mexican People, support this plan with arms in hand and you will make the prosperity and wellbeing of the fatherland. Ayala, November 25, 1911 Liberty, Justice and Law Signed, General in Chief Emiliano Zapata; Generals Eufemio Zapata, Francisco Mendoza, Jesús Morales, Jesús Navarro, Otilio E. Montaño, José Trinidad Ruiz, Próculo Capistrán; Colonels...; Captains... [This] is a true copy taken from the original. Camp in the Mountains of Puebla, December 11, 1911. Signed General in Chief Emiliano Zapata.

Plan of Guadalupe Manifesto to the Nation Considering that General Victoriano Huerta, to whom the constitutional President Don Francisco I. Madero had trusted the defense of the institutions and legality of his Government, when siding with the enemies who rebelled against that same Government, to restore the latest dictatorship, committed the crime of treason to scale in power, arresting the President and Vice-president, as well as their Ministers, demanding of them by violent means to renounce their posts, which is verified by the messages that the same General Huerta sent to the Governors of the States communicating to them that he had taken prisoner the Supreme Magistrates of the Nation and their Cabinet. Considering that the Legislative and Judicial Powers in spite of the laws and constitutional rules have recognized and protected General Victoriano Huerta and his illegal and unpatriotic procedures, and considering, finally, that some Governments of the States of the Union have recognized the illegitimate Government imposed by that part of the Army that carried out the treason, headed by the same general Huerta, in spite of having violated the sovereignty of those States, whose Governors should have been the first to not recognize him, the following subscribers, Chiefs and Officers commanding the constitutional forces, have agreed and will sustain with arms the following: PLAN 1. General Victoriano Huerta is not recognized as President of the Republic. 2. The Legislative and Judicial Powers of the Federation are also not recognized. 3. The Governments of the States that still recognize the Federal Powers that form the present Administration, are also not recognized thirty days after the publication of this Plan. 4. For the organization of the army entrusted with fulfilling our intentions, we name as First Chief of the Army that will be denominated Constitutionalist, the citizen Venustiano Carranza, Governor of the State of Coahuila. 5. When the Constitutionalist Army occupies Mexico City, the citizen Venustiano Carranza, First Chief of the Army, will be in interim charge of the Executive Power, or whoever would have substituted him in command. 6. The interim president of the republic will call for general elections as soon as the peace has been consolidated, handing over power to the citizen who is elected. 7. The citizen acting as First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army in the states whose governments have recognized that of Huerta, will assume command as provisional governor and will call for local elections, after having taken possession of their posts the citizens having been elected to carry out the powers of the federation, as called for by the previous rule. March 26, 1913

The Plan of San Luis Potosi (November 20, 1910) Peoples, in their constant efforts for the triumph of the ideal of liberty and justice, are forced, at precise historical moments, to make their greatest sacrifices. Our beloved country has reached one of those moments. A force of tyranny which we Mexicans were not accustomed to suffer after we won our independence oppresses us in such a manner that it has become intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny we are offered peace, but peace full of shame for the Mexican nation, because its basis is not law, but force; because its object is not the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, but to enrich a small group who, abusing their influence, have converted the public charges into fountains of exclusively personal benefit, unscrupulously exploiting the manner of lucrative concessions and contracts. The legislative and judicial powers are completely subordinated to the executive; the division of powers, the sovereignty of the States, the liberty of the common councils, and the rights of the citizens exist only in writing in our great charter; but, as a fact, it may almost be said that martial law constantly exists in Mexico; the administration of justice, instead of imparting protection to the weak, merely serves to legalize the plunderings committed by the strong; the judges instead of being the representatives of justice, are the agents of the executive, whose interests they faithfully serve; the chambers of the union have no other will than that of the dictator; the governors of the States are designated by him and they in their turn designate and impose in like manner the municipal authorities. From this it results that the whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost. For many years profound discontent has been felt throughout the Republic, due to such a system of government, but General Diaz with great cunning and perseverance,

has succeeded in annihilating all independent elements, so that it was not possible to organize any sort of movement to take from him the power of which he made such bad use. The evil constantly became worse, and the decided eagerness of General Diaz to impose a successor upon the nations in the person of Mr. Ramon Corral carried that evil to its limit and caused many of us Mexicans, although lacking recognized political standing, since it had been impossible to acquire it during the 36 years of dictatorship, to throw ourselves into the struggle to recover the sovereignty of the people and their rights on purely democratic grounds.... In Mexico, as a democratic Republic, the public power can have no other origin nor other basis than the will of the people, and the latter can not be subordinated to formulas to be executed in a fraudulent manner. . . , For this reason the Mexican people have protested against the illegality of the last election and, desiring to use successively all the recourses offered by the laws of the Republic, in due form asked for the nullification of the election by the Chamber of Deputies, notwithstanding they recognized no legal origin in said body and knew beforehand that, as its members were not the representatives of the people, they would carry out the will of General Diaz, to whom exclusively they owe their investiture. In such a state of affairs the people, who are the only sovereign, also protested energetically against the election in imposing manifestations in different parts of the Republic; and if the latter were not general throughout the national territory, It was due to the terrible pressure exercised by the Government, which always quenches in blood any democratic manifestation, as happened in Puebla, Vera Cruz, Tlaxcala, and in other places. But this violent and illegal system can no longer subsist. I have very well realized that if the people have designated me as their candidate. for the Presidency it is not because they have had an opportunity to discover in me the qualities of a statesman or of a ruler, but the virility of the patriot determined to sacrifice

himself, if need be, to obtain liberty and to help the people free themselves from the odious tyranny that oppresses them. From the moment I threw myself into the democratic struggle I very well knew that General Diaz would not bow to the will of the nation, and the noble Mexican people, in following me to the polls, also knew perfectly the outrage that awaited them; but in spite of it, the people gave the cause of liberty a numerous contingent of martyrs when they were necessary and with wonderful stoicism went to the polls and received every sort of molestation. But such conduct was indispensable to show to the whole world that the Mexican people are fit for democracy, that they are thirsty for liberty, and that their present rulers do not measure up to their aspirations. Besides, the attitude of the people before and during the election, as well as afterwards, shows clearly that they reject with energy the Government of General Diaz and that, if those electoral rights had been respected, I would have been elected for President of the Republic. Therefore, and in echo of the national will, I declare the late election illegal and, the Republic being accordingly without rulers, provisionally assume the Presidency of the Republic until the people designate their rulers pursuant to the law. In order to attain this end, it is necessary to eject from power the audacious usurpers whose only title of legality involves a scandalous and immoral fraud. With all honesty I declare that it would be a weakness on my part and treason to the people, who have placed their confidence in me, not to put myself at the front of my fellow citizens, who anxiously call me from all parts of the country, to compel General Diaz by force of arms, to respect the national will.