Mexico

K

The Restored Republic

Although Benito Juárez now faced some opposition from other liberals who opposed his efforts to alter the Mexican constitution, he won the presidential elections of December 1867. In the struggle to put down chronic political and social violence in the aftermath of the French intervention, Juárez sought to draw liberals and conservatives together in some sort of political consensus. He also suspended some constitutional guarantees and worked to strengthen the presidency, which prompted critics to accuse him of running a dictatorship.

Juárez’s decision to run for a fourth term in 1872 split his followers. After an indecisive election in 1871, the congress of Mexico declared Juárez president. Díaz, who had been defeated in the election, led an unsuccessful insurrection. Juárez died in office in 1872 and was succeeded by Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, head of the Mexican supreme court. In 1876, when Lerdo de Tejada sought reelection, Díaz led another revolt. Successful this time, he became president in 1877.

Díaz used his first term to consolidate his position and then stepped aside for a personally selected successor, General Manuel González. In 1884 Díaz once again became president. He would remain in office until 1911 and his long rule would become known as the Porfiriato.

L

The Díaz Years

Porfirio Díaz projected a statesmanlike image of calm strength that reassured the country. He accepted the notion that Mexico’s future depended upon modernization and foreign investment. Completion of the nation’s railway network and its links with that of the United States received considerable attention, and Díaz did everything in his power to attract foreign investment. In 1888 Mexico negotiated a debt consolidation plan that opened the way for a flood of foreign money to pour into the nation. The country opened up new markets for its mineral and agricultural products and brought new land under cultivation. Díaz also laid the foundation for industrial development.

---

---

Concentration of land ownership during the Porfiriato, coupled with the loss of communal holdings, made it difficult for people to practice subsistence agriculture. Díaz favored the rich owners of large estates, increasing their properties by allowing them to absorb communal lands that belonged to Native Americans. Many landless peasants fell into debt peonage, a system of economic servitude in which workers became indebted to their employers for both money and supplies and were forced to labor in mines or plantations until the debt was paid. Sometimes the debt was handed down from generation to generation, forcing the children of indebted laborers to work to pay off their parents’ debts. By 1910 some 90 percent of the rural inhabitants of central Mexico were landless.

During the Porfiriato a two-tier society emerged, as those able to take advantage of modernization became rich and the poor sank further into poverty. As many rural inhabitants and Native Americans lost land to large commercial interests, agricultural workers failed to secure a reasonable share of the nation’s growing wealth. Large operations, intent on achieving the most production at the lowest cost, kept wages low. Most employees had no paid holidays, sick leave, or industrial accident insurance. This started to change in 1904, when legislation began to address the problems.

Real wages relative to purchasing power declined approximately 20 percent in Mexico between 1876 and 1910. Moreover, agricultural production for internal consumption dropped as agricultural exports reduced food stocks. Corn and beans, the core of the lower-class diet, had to be imported. Sporadic food riots occurred throughout the country. In 1905 the government sold food at subsidized prices, and in 1909 it opened 50 subsidized food stores in Mexico City.

Unbalanced economic progress was one problem that marred the Porfiriato, but there were others. Díaz gave insufficient attention to social needs, paying little attention to education for the people. He also favored the church, ignoring the secularization policy of 1859. Finally, he failed to modernize the political system, allowing regional elites to control the country’s economic and political affairs. Although elections were held at all levels of government, they were generally meaningless. Only handpicked candidates were allowed to win, and the president appointed his loyal friends to political offices throughout the country.

Discontent and a spirit of revolt increased throughout Mexico. Many working-class Mexicans became sympathetic to the ideas of people such as Ricardo Flores Magón, a journalist and labor activist who founded the newspaper Regeneración in 1900 to oppose the Díaz dictatorship. The paper was shut down the next year and Flores Magón was arrested. He continued to criticize the tyranny of the government in other newspapers and was eventually banned from publishing in Mexico; in 1904 he renewed publication of Regeneración from Texas. Flores Magón’s attacks on the Díaz regime in turn influenced other radical reformers such as Emiliano Zapata, in the state of Morelos, and Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Yucatán.

Aware of the growing discontent, Díaz announced in 1908 that he would welcome an opposition candidate in the 1910 election. The candidate put forward by a liberal group was Francisco Indalécio Madero. However, Díaz had Madero arrested and Díaz won the election. After Madero was freed, he fled to San Antonio, Texas, where he proclaimed a revolt. His first call to arms met with little response, but across the border in Mexico, small groups began to gather recruits and oppose the Díaz regime with violence. Madero soon found himself at the head of an unexpectedly successful movement. Díaz resigned on May 25, 1911, and went into permanent exile in Europe. See also Mexican Revolution.

M

The Mexican Revolution

Madero was swept into office with few concrete ideas. As a wealthy northerner, he envisioned political reform, not revolution. Radical groups who had pinned their hopes on Madero quickly became disenchanted. Emiliano Zapata soon understood that Madero had no interest in revolutionary change. When Madero adopted a cautious policy on land reform, Zapata revolted and issued his Plan of Ayala in November 1911. The proclamation called for the immediate transfer of land to peasant farmers and insisted on the right of Mexican citizens to choose their own leaders. In the north, Madero’s former followers, most notably supporters of rebel leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa, felt betrayed and also took up arms against Madero.

Many feared that Madero could not control the increasingly chaotic situation. Anti-Madero conspiracies and an attempted coup further unsettled the nation. The head of Madero’s army, Victoriano Huerta, seized control of Mexico City and became provisional president in February 1913. Four days after assuming power, Huerta had Madero murdered. Huerta attempted to make peace with Zapata, but Zapata did not trust him and the fighting continued. A third group, known as the Constitutionalists, was outraged at the blatant seizure of power. This group, led by the governor of the state of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, also challenged the federal army.

In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize the Huerta government because Huerta had taken power illegally. Under Wilson’s order the U.S. Navy seized the port of Veracruz to prevent the delivery of weapons to Huerta’s forces. To Wilson’s surprise the occupation of Veracruz set off violent anti-American protests throughout Mexico. Nevertheless, Huerta resigned in July 1914.

Huerta’s resignation further split the rebels into factions. Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata pressed for social change and land reforms, while Carranza thought primarily in terms of political reforms. The two rebel leaders eventually teamed up against Carranza; by December 1914 rebel forces had occupied Mexico City and Puebla. Carranza’s general, Alvaro Obregón, succeeded in driving Villa and Zapata out of Mexico City, and his forces eventually dominated the country.

As head of the Constitutionalist forces, Carranza became provisional president in 1914 and manipulated events along the border to force the United States to recognize his government. Carranza insisted he could not control cross-border violence unless the United States recognized his authority. Mexican rebels had attacked a ranch, derailed a passenger train, and engaged in other types of violence on the U.S. side of the border, killing more than 100 people. In August 1915 a commission representing eight Latin American countries and the United States recognized Carranza as the lawful authority in Mexico. The rebel leaders, with the exception of Villa, laid down their arms.

In March 1916 Pancho Villa sent a raiding party into Columbus, New Mexico, apparently attempting to demonstrate that Carranza did not control northern Mexico. He evidently hoped to provoke a reaction from the United States—perhaps an arms embargo that might deny his enemies the weapons they needed. As a result of the raid, a punitive expedition under U.S. General John J. Pershing chased the rebels for more than a year, but failed to capture Villa.

N

The Constitution of 1917

Carranza called for a constitutional convention, which met in Querétaro in 1917 to draft a new constitution. Many of the delegates shared Carranza’a belief that political reform combined with some minor social reforms were all that the country needed. Others insisted that social issues needed more attention. In the end, the document that emerged was clearly more radical than the president desired.

The new constitution provided for a labor code that established the right of workers to organize and strike. It also stated that all subsoil minerals, including petroleum and silver, belonged to the people of Mexico. This measure aimed to curb foreign ownership of mineral properties and land and represented a sharp break with Mexico’s past natural resources policies, which had encouraged foreign investment in the nation’s economy. In addition, the constitution prohibited a president from serving consecutive terms, placed severe limitations on the ability of the Roman Catholic Church to own land, and restored communal lands to Native Americans. Many provisions were, for their day, quite radical. The constitution fostered the development of organized labor in Mexico, severely reduced the role of the Catholic Church in education, and laid the groundwork for the nationalization of Mexico’s petroleum industry in the 1930s. It also paved the way for the land reforms that would occur from the 1920s through the 1940s.

Carranza, who was elected president in 1917, did not enforce many of the constitutional provisions, and turbulence continued. In 1920 three leading generals—Plutarco Elías Calles, Obregón, and Adolfo de la Huerta—revolted against Carranza, who was killed in the ensuing conflict. Obregón was elected president in 1920.

Obregón hoped to end the widespread violence, restore the nation’s shattered economy, and make the social reforms necessary to establish class cooperation. He instituted some land reforms and established rural schools, but he also used bribes, concessions, or force to gather support. Obregón secured U.S. recognition for his regime in 1923 when he consented to arbitrate and adjust the claims of U.S. oil companies. Later in the year, the United States supported the Obregón regime during an abortive revolt. Obregón chose Plutarco Elías Calles to succeed him as president.

O

The Calles Years

President Calles continued Obregón’s land and education policies and cut the army’s budget to free money for social needs. He also rehabilitated Mexican finances, instituted an educational program, and succeeded in adjusting the dispute with the foreign oil companies. In carrying out religious reforms, however, Calles provoked considerable opposition; relations between the church and the Mexican government became severely strained. The church resisted the placing of primary education under secular supervision, the required registration of priests, the expulsion of foreign-born priests, and the closing of 73 convents.

In 1926 a general religious strike suspended all public religious services. In what came to be known as the Cristero Rebellion, Catholic insurgents burned schools, dynamited troop trains, and even murdered rural schoolteachers. The states of Jalisco, Michoacán, and Colima echoed with the cry, “Viva Cristo Rey” (Long Live Christ the King). The tension was lessened largely through the mediation of Dwight W. Morrow, who became U.S. ambassador to Mexico in 1927. The Mexican government eventually compromised on some of the most anticlerical measures. At least 90,000 Mexicans died during the three-year conflict.

Presidential succession again resulted in a crisis after Obregón was assassinated on July 17, 1928, at a dinner to celebrate his reelection. Calles devised a solution in which he would effectively run the country through a series of puppet presidents. He established an official party, the Partido Nacional Revolucionario, or PNR, known in English as the National Revolutionary Party. The PNR was the forerunner of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI, known in English as the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The PRI has dominated Mexican politics since its formation. Calles became known as the undisputed Jefe Maximo, or Maximum Chief, of Mexico and his period of rule via puppet presidents was known as the Maximato.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain