Mexican Revolution

Eric Mayer, Instructor

On the eve of the presidential election of 1910 signs of unrest grew in Mexico. There were peasant uprisings, worker’s strikes in the cities and the Mexican Liberal party led by Ricardo Flores Magon conspired against Diaz.

Divisions began to appear in the ruling elite of Mexico over how to handle the growing crisis.

Diaz had contributed to the crisis by announcing in 1908 in an interview with a North American journalist that he believed that Mexico was now ready for democracy and that he would like to see the emergence of some form of opposition party.

Francisco Madero who was a hacienda owner from Coahuila and whose family interests included cattle ranches, wheat farms, mines, vineyards and textile factories, believed that Diaz was serious and sought to form a political opposition against Diaz.

Madero was clearly no revolutionary as he came from a wealthy background, but he was a reformer. But Madero made clear that when he said democracy he meant control by the Mexican elite.

Madero even wrote that the ignorant lower class should take no part in selecting who would lead Mexico. But Madero was a strong critic of Diaz’s social policies, especially the genocidal treatment of Indians, the violent suppression of strikes and instead that some concessions should be granted to the Indian and the worker.

Madero stressed education as a mechanism of political integration of the Mexican people and he regarded democracy as an instrument of social control that would promote the acceptance of capitalism.

In late 1909 Madero began touring the country and by April of 1910 an opposition anti-relection party was formed that announced that Madero would be its candidate for president.

But in June Diaz had Madero arrested because he began to grow afraid of Madero’s growing power and popularity. In late JUne the election was held and Diaz and his hand picked successor Ramon Corral had been elected by an almost unanimous popular vote.

After the election Diaz released Madero and in October he fled across the Texas border. There he announced the Plan of San Luis Potosi which declared that the elections were fraudulent and that he was the provisional president of Mexico. The plan also vaguely mentioned that peasant lands that had been stolen would be returned.

The US government was displeased with the Diaz election and with the fact that Diaz was giving British investors and corporations better deals than US interests and allowed Madero to plan his revolution on US soil.

The Mexican revolution started slowly for when Madero returned to Mexico he found that he had only 25 supporters. But the revolution quickly gathered momentum as two major peasant rebellions developed due to his call for revolt against Diaz.

In the northern border state of Chihuahua peasants who had long suffered under the iron fist of the Terrazas family of caudillos revolted under the leadership of a bandit named Pancho Villa who later became a social bandit. By the end of 1910 guerrilla armies had seized most of the state.

In the southern state of Morelos another rebellion was occurring. This area was a region where Indian communities had long waged a losing struggle against sugar haciendas that dispossessed them of their lands. The leader of this guerrilla movement was Emiliano Zapata who believed in Madero’s promise of land reform as stated in the Plan de San Luis Potosi and proclaimed his loyalty to Madero.

In May of 1911 the guerrillas won two important victories. In the south Zapata captured Cuautla, the provincial capital and an important railroad center; in the north Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa captured Ciudad Juarez.

It was at this point that Diaz and his advisors agreed to sue for peace with Madero. The left-wing of the revolutionary movement was against Madero negotiating with Diaz, but Madero signed the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez on May 21. The treaty forced Diaz into exile, but was silent on the issue of social change or a redistribution of wealth.

On June 7, 1911 Madero entered Mexico City amid rejoicing crowds. But Madero changed little in terms of the quality of life of the average Mexican and all of Diaz’s supporters still ran the country.

Under Madero, social conditions were the same as under Diaz and now Madero once he assumed power attempted to disband the revolutionary troops. At the same time the Zapatistas in Morelos began to confiscate huge haciendas and redistribute the land to the poor landless peasant who were starving.

Federal troops from Mexico City then invaded Morelos in an attempt to stop the land reform under the leadership of Zapata. The fighting intensified and Madero was ineffective in halting the fighting and Zapata and his social cause became more and more popular throughout Mexico and Madero less popular as people blamed him for unleashing anarchy throughout Mexico due to the revolution that he unleashed.

In October 1911 Madero and his vice-president were elected to the executive of Mexico by overwhelming majorities.

It soon became apparent that Madero had no solutions for the social, economic and political problems that faced Mexico.

In Many ways Madero created a system of political corporatism, that was an allusion of democracy. The corporatist political system that he believed in would give the masses an illusion of power and political participation, but all decision making would remain in the hands of a select political and economic elite.

Madero allowed workers to unionize and form organizations so that the government could use them and control labor more effectively.

In terms of the rural sector Madero believed that only large landholdings would permit Mexico to modernize and was totally opposed to any form of land reform.

Madero’s attitude towards land reform led to an open break with Zapata who refused to acknowledge or endorse the land and rural policy of Madero.

Madero then demanded the disarmament of Zapata’s peasant and guerrilla forces and Zapata’s total surrender.

Then in November of 1911 Zapata proclaimed his own reform program in the Plan de Ayala that promised that the land taken by elite from peasants would be returned to the peasants. The Zapatista movement then quickly spread to other states in Mexico.

Madero then sent the military after Zapata and while they burned Morelos to the ground their activities failed to capture Zapata or crush his forces.

Because of his weak leadership and indecisiveness Madero was in trouble by late 1911. His failure to enact an agrarian reform made him lose the support of the peasantry. The elite distance themselves from him due to his reforms that allowed freedom of speech and concessions to labor to organize.

The elite of Mexico dreamed of returning Diaz and the Porfiriato where the Indians, peasants and workers knew their v in society. Also counter-revolutionary movements broke out all over Mexico in opposition to Madero.

Throughout 1912 there were many revolts against Madero. He had also lost the support of the US. During this period US investments soared in Mexico, but Madero had made it clear that the US would be shown no special favors in terms of economic investing opportunity.

US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson also turned against Madero. In early 1912 100,000 US troops were stationed along the border and Wilson made threats to intervene if US property were endangered by the political situation in Mexico.

At the same time a coup was being planned against Madero by General Huerta. On Feb. 9, 1913 a military revolt broke out at the garrison of Tacubaya. Meanwhile Huerta, to whom Madero had entrusted command of military operations only awaited the proper time to attack Madero.

The American Ambassador was secretly conspiring with the Huerta forces. On Feb. 14 he sent a telegram to Madero ordering him to negotiate with the Huerta faction or the US would land troops at Mexican ports. On the same day Wilson invited other foreign diplomats to a conference at which they agreed that they would force Madero to resign.

Madero rejected the ultimatum.

Ambassador Wilson’s activities were closely coordinated with Huerta’s forces and there is reason to believe that he ordered Huerta to begin the coup on Feb. 18, when Huerta forces attacked the presidential palace.

Huerta accepted the "voluntary" resignations of Madero and his vice president and an intimidated congress accepted the resignations and recognized Huerta as the provisional president.

Asked by Huerta what should be done with Madero, the US Ambassador replied to "do what is best for the country". Despite urgent requests by Madero’s family and the diplomatic corp for sparing Madero’s life, Wilson remained silent. On Feb. 22 Madero and Pino Suarez were assassinated as they were being transferred from prison. The two assassins were promoted by Huerta and one became a general.

Huerta was a military dictator who quickly arrested 110 congressmen and dissolved congress and created a new congress staffed with his hand-picked supporters in the military.

At the same time political assassination and cases fo desaparacidos reached an all time high in Mexican history as Huerta made political opposition quite literally disappear.

Huerta did allow some minor concessions to labor but the terrorist nature of the regime quickly became apparent, and as labor began to align itself with the anti-Huerta movement they began to be repressed as well.

Huerta had planned on a quick victory over the peasant armies of Zapata, but he had miscalculated and the revolutionary fervor was still running high in the south and especially in Morelos.

Zapata then intensified his campaign against the great landowners. Huerta then launched successive campaigns against the Zapatistas but Huerta failed to achieve decisive victory.

In mid-1913 the peasant guerrilla armies laid siege to Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos and isolated it from the national capital.

Zapata led the struggle in Guerrero where he forces controlled the major towns of the state and took the state capital in 1914. In June they joined the siege of Cuernavaca and captured it in August 1914.

As Huerta was forced to commit many of his troops to combat the popular revolution in the south, new peasant insurrections broke out in the north under the leadership of Pancho Villa and they call themselves the constitutionalists.

In November he captured Ciudad Juarez and then took the capital of Chihuahua. Villa employed his soldiers as civil employees and sale of liquor was punishable by death and the army was put to work repairing the streets, the electrical lines and water service for the people.

Wealth was redistributed by Villa’s soldiers to the poor and landless peasants of the north. Land of the rich haciendas was given to the landless, as were money, clothes, food, beef and beans.

Villa who was illiterate, had a passion for education and he established over 50 schools in Chihuahua. In December he announced that he would confiscate all the lands of friends and supporters of Huerta.

Villa’s land reform program was different than Zapata’s in the south. Land taken by Zapata was promptly given to the peasants who worked the land. Villa, on the other hand confiscated the haciendas and had them run by the state which for all practical purposes was his army of supporters. Still Villa did redistribute an enormous amount of wealth to the poor.

Part of the reason for this difference in agrarian reform programs between Villa and Zapata was that in the north cattle lands dominated the rural sector and the lands needed to be kept large in order for them to be productive.

In the state of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza who had been appointed governor by Diaz revolted against Huerta. In March of 1913 he announced his Plan of Guadalupe which called for the overthrow of Huerta, but was silent of the subject of social reforms.

By 1914 the US became interested in the course of the Mexican revolution and Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize the Huerta government for Huerta had come to power through illegal means. Also Wilson was convinced that Huerta could not provide the social and political stability needed for a favorable climate for US investments.

Wilson continually urged Huerta to resign, but he refused. By Feb. 1914 Wilson decided that force must be used to get rid of Huerta and Wilson began actively supplying the forces of Carranza with arms and money.

Still Wilson wanted the US to actively intervene with US troops, but he needed a pretext. When some drunk US sailors were arrested in the Mexican port of Tampico and were released Wilson had his pretext. He demanded that Huerta issue a public apology and provide a military salute to the American flag. Huerta refused.

Wilson then sent a fleet into the Gulf of Mexico and upon hearing that a German freighter was headed for Veracruz with arms ordered the invasion of the city. For six days in April the citizens of Veracruz put up a heroic resistance. The occupation of Veracruz by US troops sent a wave of anti-Yankee sentiment throughout Latin America.

Protests were organized throughout Latin America and Carranza who Wilson hoped would support the invasion bitterly denonunced the US invasion.

Wilson attempted to secure support for the US invasion by hoping that delegates from Mexico and other Latin American nations would attend a conference in Niagara Falls. Wilson also spoke out against Villa and Zapata who he saw as subversives and insurgents. The Mexicans and Latin Americans informed Wilson that they would attend no conference and they informed Wilson also that they would not tolerate US meddling in the affairs and interests of Mexico and other Latin America nations.

By the middle of 1914 relations deteriorated between Carranza and Villa and between Carranza and Zapata. Zapata had waged war against Huerta independently of Carranza’s forces and refused to recognize him as the leader of the masses of Mexico’s peasants. Villa at the same time sought to gain assurances from Carranza that a democratic regime would be created after the armed struggle and Villa continued to distrust Carranza.

In October of 1914 a convention of revolutionary leaders met at Aguascalientes in an attempt to settle the conflict between Villa and Carranza and at the insistence of the supporters of Villa, Zapata was invited to the conference also and a delegation from the "Liberating Army of the South" arrived. The convention called for the resignation of Carranza as president and since Villa held all the guns in the convention the representative of Carranza had no choice but to name Villa as the commander of the northern forces.

When Carranza failed to meet the deadline for his resignation on November 10, the armies of Villa and Zapata advanced on the capital and took Veracruz.

In December Villa and Zapata held their first meeting and came to a full agreement.

But even thought the peasant revolutionaries controlled the provisional capital and most of the country they could not consolidate their gains in a political sense. They both were peasant leaders, but were unskilled when it came to national revolutionary politics. They foolishly trusted Gutierrez who had been a formal general in Carranza’s army who sabotaged the gains that they had made and opened secret alliances with Obregon.

In late 1914 Carranza issued proclamations that suggested that he endorsed land reform in Mexico, though he secretly assured land owners that he had no such intention. Carranza also courted organized labor in an attempt to gains urban support.

Obregon realigned himself with Carranza and his troops reoccupied Mexico City in January of 1915. Obregon also began to attack Villa and Zapata.

Under pressure from Carranza’s troops Villa was forced to flee from the area of Mexico City at the same time as Obregon entered the city. Obregon used trench warfare for the first time in the Mexican Revolution as well as machine guns to stop Villa’s heroic calvary charges.

At the battle of Celaya Villa’s forces suffered a disastrous defeat in which thousands of his forces were killed and thousands taken prisoner..

Villa then fought a series of battles northward in a rear guard action as he retreated. Still he issued one of the most comprehensive agrarian reform laws but it was never enacted. By the end of 1915 he was back in Chihuahua among his own people where he was undefeatable.

He carried on a guerrilla war for three more years, but he had little impact on the constitutionalist forces of Carranza and Obregon.

The last threat to the constitutionalists was that of Zapata whose forces temporarily occupied Mexico City, but his battered peasant army was driven back to Morelos, by the army that carried out a scorched earth policy that failed to capture Zapata or destroy his movement.

In late 1915 president Wilson, after trying to play the revolutionary chiefs off each other extended de facto recognition to the regime of Carranza and placed an arms embargo on Villa. Wilson would only give legal recognition if Carranza would agree to give US investors preferential treatment in Mexico, and the US also wanted to dictate what internal domestic policy would be in Mexico.

Carranza refused.

In early 1916, relations between Mexico and the US deteriorated. Mexican authorities were trying to regulate US oil companies operating in Mexico.

Also a crisis developed when Villa, raided Columbus, NM in order to force Carranza to respond as a Mexican patriot.

The US reacted by sending General John Pershing to chase Villa throughout Mexico.

Carranza denounced the US invasion and demanded the immediately withdrawal of US forces. Carranza then began to prepare for war with the US.

In a diplomatic memo to all the other Latin American nations, Mexico stated that the basic reason for the invasion by the US was its opposition to Mexico’s policy of eliminating privileges of foreign investment.

The US thought that it would be an easy invasion, but Pershing’s invasion proved to be a fiasco and Wilson quickly accepted an offer by Carranza to negotiate a withdrawal of US forces with the Mexican acceptance of the US solution for the course of Mexican domestic economic policy.

In Jan. of 1917, influenced by the troubled international conflict in Europe and estimates that a modest war in Mexico would involve at least 500,000 troops, Wilson ordered the withdrawal of US troops.

In 1917, the Mexicans drew up a new constitution. A most important article was Article 123 that created a labor code, provided for the 8 hour day, abolished the company store, guaranteed the rights of workers to organize and to strike and other stipulations that made it the most advanced labor code in the world.

Article 3 struck a heavy blow at the Church by forbidding religious corporations and church schools.

Article 27 dealt with property rights and it proclaimed that the nation was the owner of all lands, waters, and subsoil rights; and the state could expropriate foreign ownership of these rights with compensation. These resources could never be sold to foreigners, but individuals and corporations could obtain concessions for their exploitation.

The Constitution of 1917 was the most progressive document of its time and laid the basis for an assault on the hacienda, it weakened the power of the church and regulated the operation of foreign capital in Mexico.

But the constitution was not socialist, revolutionary or anti-capitalist for it reaffirmed the sanctity of private property and it sought to control rather than eliminate foreign capital. By controlling the role of foreign capital it created favorable conditions for the development of national capitalism in Mexico..

Carranza ordered the promulgation of the new constitution in Feb. of 1917, the exact time that the US began withdrawing its forces which was seen as a defeat for north American imperialism throughout Latin America and much of the world.

The three remaining years of Carranza’s presidency were marked by a sharp swing to the right and it became very evident that he had no desire to implement the reform articles.

Little land was distributed to the villages and in fact Carranza returned many confiscated haciendas to their former owners.

Official corruption existed on a massive scale and the working class who Carranza no longer needed for support was severely repressed.

When there were strikes in the federal district for higher wages, Carranza arrested all the leaders and threatened to shoot all the strikers if they did not return to their jobs.

However, Carranza resisted US pressure to give guarantees that Article 217 would not be implemented against foreign interests and he also kept Mexico neutral in WWI and insisted on an independent diplomatic position in the western hemisphere—attitudes that the US did not regard as friendly.

Carranza in the south of Mexico continued to battle the tenacious Zapata and Villa in the north.

Zapata’s force diminished and the territory under his control shrank to the vanishing point, but he remained unconquerable and continued to be the hero and champion of the Mexican peasantry.

The end of Zapata came through the treachery of Carranza. Zapata was invited to confer with an officer of Carranza about a peace settlement. Zapata attended and he was murdered by henchmen of Carranza in 1919.

Carranza’s legal term was to end in 1920 but he had no plans of leaving the presidency. Obregon helped to foment a coup against Carranza.

In November of 1920 Obregon assumed the presidency and peace had at last come to Mexico.

The revolution devastated Mexico, some 2 million people died and the country was in shambles.

The constitution of 1917 provided a blueprint for the future development of Mexico but many structural obstacles remained.

Hundreds of generals who were of humble origins before the revolution now were thrown out of work.

With Obregon there came to power a group of northern generals and politicians who began the work of economic and social construction that earlier leaders were unwilling to undertake.

During Obregon’s rule called the Obregonato he was aware of the appeal of socialism and anti-imperialism to the workers on whose support they counted on. Obregon and his successor Calles employed revolutionary rhetoric to mobilize popular support.

Obregon did redistribute some land to peasants in a successful attempt to show that something was being done for the rural sector.

Even after a village received land it prospects for success were poor for the government failed to provide adequate credit and technical training.

The Obregon land reform distributed only 3 million acres among 624 villages, while 320 million acres remained in the hands of a few thousand hacendados.