Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution, (1910–20) was a long and wicked battle among a few groups in continually moving partnerships which came about eventually toward the finish of the 30-year autocracy in Mexico and the foundation of an established republic. The revolution was fueled by the people's disappointment with the elitist arrangements of Porfirio Díaz that supported affluent landowners and industrialists. When Díaz in 1908 said that he invited the democratization of Mexican political life and seemed irresolute about running for his seventh re-appointment as president in 1910, Francisco Madero rose as the pioneer of the Antireeleccionistas and announced his nomination. Díaz had him arrested and proclaimed himself the victor after a mock election in June, yet Madero, discharged from jail, distributed his Plan de San Luis Potosí from San Antonio, Texas, inciting a revolt on November 20. The revolt was a failure, yet it aroused revolutionary hope in numerous quarters. In the north, Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa prepared their worn out militaries and started striking government armies. In the south, Emiliano Zapata pursued a grisly battle against the nearby caciques.

In the spring of 1911 the progressive powers took Ciudad Juárez, constrained Díaz to leave, and pronounced Madero president.
Madero's system faltered from the beginning. Zapata betrayed him, incensed at his inability to effect the immediate restoration of land to dispossessed Indians. Orozco, at first a supporter of Madero, was additionally disappointed with the moderate pace of change under the new government and drove a progressive development in the north. The U.S. government at that point betrayed Madero also, expecting that the new president was conciliatory to the rebel groups and concerned about the threat that common war in Mexico was presenting to American business interests there.

Tensions reached a peak when one more group of renegade powers, led by Félix Díaz (the previous despot's nephew), conflicted with government troops in Mexico City under the order of Victoriano Huerta. On Feb. 18, 1913, after the ninth day of the skirmish (known as La Decena Trágica, or "The Ten Tragic Days"), Huerta and Díaz met in the workplace of the U.S. Representative Henry Lane Wilson and marked the supposed "Settlement of the Embassy," in which they consented to plan against Madero and to introduce Huerta as president. Huerta assumed the presidency the next day, in the wake of capturing Madero, who was killed a couple of days later.

Opposition to Huerta’s smashed and tyrannical standard developed in the north, and an uncomfortable alliance was shaped between Pancho Villa, Álvaro Obregón, and Venustiano Carranza, whose Plan de Guadalupe required Huerta's resignation. In the spring and summer of 1914, the renegade powers united in Mexico City, compelling Huerta into banish. Carranza announced himself president on August 20, over Villa's complaints. A condition of political agitation and bloodshed followed until Villa, Obregón, and Zapata held a show, choosing Eulalio Gutiérrez interim president. Villa retained the support of Zapata and backed Gutiérrez. Obregón, however, re-allied himself with Carranza and routed Villa in a bloody battle in April 1915 at Celaya. From that point, both Zapata and Villa lost ground, and Villa, accusing his annihilation on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's help of Carranza, propelled a feud against Americans in Mexico and in U.S. border towns. He executed around 17 U.S. residents at Santa Isabel in January 1916, and his assault on Columbus, New Mexico, after two months, which killed exactly 17 Americans, provoked President Woodrow Wilson to arrange Gen. John J. Pershing into the Mexican slopes in futile pursuit.

Carranza, president once more, directed the composition of the constitution of 1917, which presented conferred dictatorial powers on the president yet gave the government the right to confiscate land from wealthy landowners, guaranteed workers’ rights, and limited the rights of the Roman Catholic Church.

Carranza killed anyone that was a potential threat to his position. Zapata was assassinated in 1919. He stayed in power this way, but in 1920 his opposition reached a climax when he tried to break up a railroad strike in Sonora. All his potential supporters, including Obregón, deserted him and he was killed attempting to flee the capital on May 21. Adolfo de la Huerta became interim president until Obregón was elected in November.

In 1928 the presidential term was stretched out to six years, and the regulation of “no reelection” was modified to mean “no successive reelection.” Obregón was the successful presidential competitor in 1928, yet as president-elect, he was killed by José de León Toral, a strict aficionado.

With Calles legally banned from succeeding himself, a Mexican political party was shaped: the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Framed under Calles' motivation, it was at first an alliance of local and nearby military supervisors and work and laborer pioneers. To defend the additions of the upheaval, Calles avoided the Roman Catholic Church and other conceivable reactionary components. With Calles at its head, the official party governed in the name of the revolution. A congress, drawn from party ranks, named successive, short-term presidents to fill out the term to which Obregón had been elected.

Cardena seized Mexico's railroads and its oil industries and nationalized them, keeping them away from foreign control. Cardenas gave the peasants in the party more power. He expanded the PRI. The PRI arose from the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) that Calles founded in 1929 with the intention of uniting all the revolutionary factions that had fought each other. Generals suddenly became statesmen. The PNR renamed itself in 1938, becoming the PRI — and what some call the "perfect dictatorship."

Today, as more than a hundred years ago, most Mexicans live in extreme poverty. Corruption is growing. The countryside is controlled by big landowners. The factories are in the hands of people who win juicy contracts and give money to the government — but who pay poverty-level wages. It's as if there was no revolution.