The Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution began in the year of 1910 and ended on 1917. It was a time of political and social unrest that emerged out of the rebellion against long-time dictator Porfirio DÐ"­az. Porfirio Diaz was a former brigade general in the Mexican-American War who first rose to Presidency in the year 1876. Diaz served one term of four years on his first election, in 1876, and then allowed his successor, Manuel Gonzalez, take his place as President of Mexico. Gonzalez’s term was filled with so much corruption that when Diaz retook his Presidency, in 1884, he found that the country was left with almost no money.

Porfirio Diaz won all of his re-elections by manipulating his votes and assassinating most of his opponents. During the election of 1910, Diaz promised Mexico, in an interview, that the election would be democratic. However, when the “Apostle of Democracy”, Francisco I. Madero joined the political race, Diaz had Madero and 5,000 members of the Anti-Reelectionists put into prison. Diaz won the electoral vote and Madero soon escaped into America. Madero decided that there was only one way to free Mexico from Porfirio Diaz’s rule. While Madero was in San Antonio he wrote the “Plan of San Luis Potosi”, which stated that the 1910 elections didn’t count because it was rigged and it also called for an armed Revolution to begin at 6 p.m. on November 20, 1910. Madero had the support of many other popular leaders of the time, including Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. Although the “Plan of San Luis Potosi” called for a revolution on November 20, there was a small battle beforehand. Diaz sent a very small force to the home of Aquiles Serdan because it had recently been found out that Serdan was a part of Madero’s revolution. However, Serdan fought back with the aid of his family. Unfortunately most of Serdan’s family, as well as Serdan, were killed in the battle. Diaz resigned from his Presidency on May 25, 1911 as a result of the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez.

Francisco I. Madero took the presidency after Diaz’s resignation. However, Madero proved to be a very inadequate president. At first, Madero had the favor of the U.S. and many popular Mexican Revolutionists. However, the country soon realized that Madero was a very weak president. He upset both the revolutionists and the conservatives. As a result, his former ally, Emiliano Zapata, declared the Plan de Ayala. The Plan de Ayala declared that free elections should be held once the country was back to normal and that the land should be returned to the people of Mexico, rather than be run by “hacendados”(owners of haciendas). The poor, working class, which used to support Madero, now decided to fight against him while supporting Emiliano Zapata and Pascual Orozco. Pretty soon, nobody in Mexico supported Madero as his or her president anymore.

Madero’s presidential finished abruptly when General Victoriano Huerta staged a coup d’etat. Victoriano Huerta was previously Madero’s commander in chief. He devised his plan with the U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, Felix Diaz and Bernardo Reyes. Madero was forced to give up his presidency after Huerta’s coup d’etat. Francisco Madero and his vice president, JosÐ"© MarÐ"­a Pino SuÐ"ÐŽrez, were both assassinated less than a week after Madero’s resignation. As a result of Madero and Suarez’s assassinations, both of their reputations soared, and they immediately became the first martyrs for the Mexican Revolution.

When Huerta became the Mexican President, many authorities all around the world recognized Huerta as the rightful president of Mexico. However, the new president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, refused to acknowledge President Huerta's government. President Woodrow Wilson and many Mexicans agreed that Huerta was not the true president of Mexico, but was instead an “illegal usurper of presidential power in violation of the Constitution of Mexico.”

Venustiano Carranza was a politician and rancher from Coahuila, a northern state in Mexico. Carranza was the voice of the opposition against Huerta. Carranza began calling his forces the Constitutionalists and he also had the secret support of the United States. On March 26, 1913, Carranza issued the Plan de Guadalupe. The Plan de Guadalupe was a refusal to recognize Huerta as president and called for a declaration of war between the two factions. Many leaders came out to fight against President Huerta, such as Pancho Villa, Zapata, Alvaro Obregon, and Venustiano Carranza. The U.S. soon made it clear that they did not want Huerta in the presidency of Mexico. On April of 1914, American forces took over one of Mexico’s largest ports, Veracruz. The U.S. cut off all arms and money supplies from the German Empire. In late July, Huerta finally fled to Puerto MÐ"©xico, which was a major port city in the southern state of Veracruz.

The German Empire was mainly using Huerta in order to gain an advantage in the World War I. They believed that if Huerta could establish himself once again as leader of Mexico, the United States would be distracted on both sides of the country and this would give the Germans an advantage and a better chance to win the war. As a result, Huerta moved to the United States. While in the U.S., he began his operation of holding down another revolution inside Mexico. Carranza, Mexico’s new Mexican president, and the U.S. government became worried upon Huerta’s arrival. As a result, they set up a surveillance system in order to observe Huerta and to make sure that he would not be able to get into Mexico and start another Revolution. Fortunately, Huerta didn’t survive long enough to begin another revolution. He was stopped in El Paso, Texas, by the United States government, and was kept there under house arrest until he died in early 1916.

Venustiano Carranza became president in 1914, after the overthrow of the Huerta government. He was driven out of Mexico City by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata in 1915. However, he later gained the support of many Mexicans by his development of a program of social and agrarian reform. He was then elected as president of Mexico in 1917. In an attempt to hold back the slaughter, Carranza formed the Constitutional Army with an eye towards bringing peace by means of adoption of the majority of the rebel social demands into the new constitution. He reluctantly incorporated most of these demands into the new Constitution of 1917. The socialist constitution addressed foreign ownership of resources, an organized labor code, the role of the Roman Catholic Church in education, and land reform.