How long did the Mexican Revolution last?
Economic history of Mexico
Regional civil wars broke out in 1910 and lasted until 1920, known generally as the Mexican Revolution. Following the military phase of the Revolution, Mexican regimes attempted to "transform a largely rural and backward country … into a middle-sized industrial power." The Mexican Constitution of 1917 gave the Mexican government the power to expropriate property, which allowed for the distribution of land to peasants, but also the Mexican oil expropriation in 1938. Mexico benefited economically from its participation in World War II and the post-war years experienced what has been called the Mexican Miracle (ca. 1946–1970). This growth was fueled by import substitution industrialization. The Mexican economy experienced the limits of ISI and economic nationalism and Mexico sought a new model for economic growth. Huge oil reserves were discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in the late 1970s and Mexico borrowed heavily from foreign banks with loans denominated in U.S. dollars. When the price of oil dropped in the 1980s, Mexico experienced a severe financial crisis.
History of Mexico
After independence, Mexican politics was chaotic. The presidency changed hands 75 times in the next 55 years (1821–76).
Centralist Republic of Mexico
The Centralist Republic of Mexico (), or in the anglophone scholarship, the Central Republic, was officially the Mexican Republic (). It was a unitary political regime established in Mexico on October 23, 1835, under a new constitution known as the Seven Laws after the repeal of the federalist Constitution of 1824. Mexican conservatives attributed the political chaos of the federal era to the empowerment of states over the federal government, participation of non-elite men in the political system through universal male suffrage, rebellions, and economic stagnation to the weakness of the federal government. Conservative elites saw the solution to the problem as abolishing the federal system and creating a centralized one, reminiscent of the colonial era. Federalism had given a range of powers to Mexican states, their legislatures and municipalities. It was favored by the states outside the center of Mexico. Those favoring a centralized state were the conservative urban elites. Mexican conservatives saw federalism as a failure and Mexico not prepared for such a system. They considered the ideal form of government as a centralized, administrative republic, with the states losing power to the central government. Conservatives with the support of the Mexican army created the Central Republic, which lasted eleven years, 1835–46. The unitary regime was formally established on December 30, 1836, with the enactment of the "Siete Leyes". However, the Seven Laws proved unworkable and were abandoned four and a half years later, and replaced by a military dictatorship under Antonio López de Santa Anna. On August 22, 1846, acting President José Mariano Salas issued the decree that restored the Constitution of 1824 and, with this, the return to federalism.
Celebration of Mexican political anniversaries in 2010
In 2010, Mexico celebrated both the 200th anniversary of its Independence and 100th anniversary of its Revolution. The entire year was proclaimed by President Felipe Calderón as "Año de la Patria", or "Year of the Nation." 16 September 1810 is the day of the "Grito de Dolores" or Miguel Hidalgo's call to take up arms against the Spanish colonial government. The start of the Mexican Revolution is celebrated as being 20 November 1910, when Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Pascual Orozco led the first insurrectionist attack. Events and other promotions of these celebrations were designed to link of Mexico's identity and historic continuity. During a speech at the inauguration of the Casa de Allende (Allende House) Historic Museum, Felipe Calderón called upon Mexico to use the upcoming anniversaries to reflect on where the country has been and to think about what kind of Mexico descendants will inherit in the future. He said the vision of the insurgents of the War of Independence was forward, not backward, so every celebration of these past events must consider the future as well.
Mexico–Spain relations
The late 18th and early 19th century saw much revolutionary feeling in the countries of Western Europe and their colonies. The feeling built up in Mexico after the occupation of Spain by the French Revolutionary Emperor Napoleon in 1808, and the 1810 "Grito de Dolores" speech by Mexican Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla against Spanish rule is widely recognized as the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. In 1811, Hidalgo was executed by the Spanish militia, but his movement fought on until the establishment of the independent constitutional Mexican Empire in 1821, after the Treaty of Córdoba. The Empire was ousted and the first Mexican Republic created in 1823.
New Spain
In the 1821 Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire, both Mexico and Central America declared their independence after three centuries of Spanish rule and formed the First Mexican Empire, although Central America quickly rejected the union. After priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's 1810 Grito de Dolores (call for independence), the insurgent army began an eleven-year war. At first, the Criollo class fought against the rebels. But in 1820, a military coup in Spain forced Ferdinand VII to accept the authority of the liberal Spanish Constitution. The specter of liberalism that could undermine the authority and autonomy of the Roman Catholic Church made the Church hierarchy in New Spain view independence in a different light. In an independent nation, the Church anticipated retaining its power. Royalist military officer Agustín de Iturbide proposed uniting with the insurgents with whom he had battled, and gained the alliance of Vicente Guerrero, leader of the insurgents in a region now bearing his name. Royal government collapsed in New Spain and the Army of the Three Guarantees marched triumphantly into Mexico City in 1821.
Economy of Mexico
Political repression and fraud, as well as huge income (in)equalities exacerbated by the land distribution system based on "latifundios", in which large haciendas were owned by a few but worked by millions of underpaid peasants living in precarious conditions, led to the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), an armed conflict that drastically transformed Mexico's political, social, cultural, and economical structure during the twentieth century under a premise of social democracy. The war itself left a harsh toll on the economy and population, which decreased over the 11-year period between 1910 and 1921. The reconstruction of the country was to take place in the following decades.
Mexican Revolution
In 1988, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of president Lázaro Cárdenas, broke with the PRI, forming an independent leftist party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. It is not by chance that the party used the word "Revolution" in its name, challenging the Institutional Revolutionary Party's appropriation of the Mexican Revolution. Earlier, there was a leftist party the Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution, which never functioned as a full political party fielding presidential candidates, but asserted its legitimacy as the party of Revolution in Mexico until its demise.
In this the Mexican Revolution was not revolutionary, only making the mechanisms of power less autocratic and more efficient in the attainment of its interests. Octavio Paz wrote that the revolution strengthened the Mexican state more than ever, making Mexico a very state-centered and patrimonialist society. In such a development they betrayed their acknowledged liberal predecessors of the Restored Republic of 1867–1876 which saw the most significant break from authoritarian politics in Mexico's history.
Mesoamerican chronology
Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, with some participation of indigenous in decade-long political struggles, but for their own motivations. With the fall of colonial government, the Mexican state abolished distinctions between ethnic groups, that is the separate governance for indigenous populations in the "República de Indios". The new sovereign country made, in theory at least, all Mexicans citizens of the independent nation-state rather than vassals of the Spanish crown, with different legal standing. A long period of political chaos in the post-independence period among white elites largely did not affect indigenous peoples and their communities. Mexican conservatives were largely in charge of the national government and kept in place practices from the old colonial order. However, in the 1850s, Mexican liberals gained power and attempted to formulate and implement reforms that did affect indigenous communities, as well as the Catholic Church. The Mexican Constitution of 1857 abolished the ability of corporations to hold land, which aimed at taking assets out of the hands of the Catholic Church in Mexico and forcing indigenous communities to divide their community-held lands. Liberals' aimed at turning indigenous community members pursuing subsistence farming into yeoman farmers holding their own land. Mexican conservatives repudiated the liberal reform laws since they attacked the Catholic Church, but indigenous communities also participated in a three-year civil war. In the late nineteenth century, liberal army general Porfirio Díaz, a Mestizo did much for modernizing Mexico and integrating it into the world economy, but there were renewed pressures on indigenous communities and their lands. These exploded in certain areas of Mexico during the ten-year long civil war, the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). In the aftermath of the Revolution, the Mexican government attempted simultaneously shore up indigenous culture, while at the same time also attempting to integrate the indigenous as citizens of the nation, turning indigenous into peasants ("campesinos"). This has proved more difficult than policy planners imagined, with resilient indigenous communities continuing to struggle for rights within the nation.
Texas Revolution
The revolution began in October 1835, after a decade of political and cultural clashes between the Mexican government and the increasingly large population of American settlers in Texas. The Mexican government had become increasingly centralized and the rights of its citizens had become increasingly curtailed, particularly regarding immigration from the United States. Colonists and Tejanos disagreed on whether the ultimate goal was independence or a return to the Mexican Constitution of 1824. While delegates at the Consultation (provisional government) debated the war's motives, Texians and a flood of volunteers from the United States defeated the small garrisons of Mexican soldiers by mid-December 1835. The Consultation declined to declare independence and installed an interim government, whose infighting led to political paralysis and a dearth of effective governance in Texas. An ill-conceived proposal to invade Matamoros siphoned much-needed volunteers and provisions from the fledgling Texian Army. In March 1836, a second political convention declared independence and appointed leadership for the new Republic of Texas.
First Mexican Republic
The First Mexican Republic, known also as the First Federal Republic (), was a federated republic and nation-state officially designated the United Mexican States (, ). "Independence transformed Mexico from Spain's largest and most prosperous colony to a sovereign nation suffering economic decline and political strife." The First Mexican Republic lasted from 1824 to 1835, when conservatives under Antonio López de Santa Anna transformed it into a centralized state, the Centralist Republic of Mexico.
Mexico–United States relations
Since the late nineteenth century during the regime of President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911), the two countries have had close diplomatic and economic ties. During Díaz's long presidency, Mexico was opened to foreign investment and U.S. entrepreneurs invested in ranching and agricultural enterprises and mining. The U.S. played an important role in the course of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) with direct actions of the U.S. government in supporting or repudiating support of revolutionary factions.
Big tent
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which held power in Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years from 1929 to 2000 was founded following the Mexican Revolution. Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles founded the PRI, then known as the National Revolutionary Party, in 1929 with the intent of providing a political space in which all the surviving leaders and combatants of the Mexican Revolution could participate, and to solve the grave political crisis caused by the assassination of president-elect Álvaro Obregón in 1928. Throughout its nine-decade existence, the PRI has adopted a very wide array of ideologies (often determined by the President of the Republic in turn). It nationalized the petroleum industry in the 1940s and the banking industry in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the party went through reforms that shaped its current incarnation, with policies characterized as centre-right, such as the privatization of State-run companies, closer relations with the Catholic church, and embracing free-market capitalism and neoliberal policies.
Mexico City
The Grito de Dolores ("Cry of Dolores"), also known as El Grito de la Independencia ("Cry of Independence"), marked the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence. The Battle of Guanajuato, the first major engagement of the insurgency, occurred four days later. After a decade of war, Mexico's independence from Spain was effectively declared in the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire on September 27, 1821. Unrest followed for the next several decades, as different factions fought for control of Mexico.
Lázaro Cárdenas
Cárdenas ran on the Six Year Plan for social and political reform that the party drafted under Calles's direction. Such a multiyear program was patterned after the just-completed Five Year Plan of the Soviet Union. The Six Year Plan (to span the presidential term 1934–40) was a patchwork of proposals from a variety of participants, but the driving force behind it was Calles, who had given a speech in May 1933, saying that the "Mexican Revolution had failed in most of its important objectives," and that a plan needed to implement its objectives. Interim President Abelardo L. Rodríguez did not get his cabinet's approval for the plan in 1933, so that Calles's next move was to present it in draft form to the party convention. "Rather than a blueprint, the Six Year Plan was a sales prospectus," and a "hopeless jumble" filled with compromises and contradictions, as well as utopian aspirations. But the direction of the plan was toward renewed reform.
Presidio La Bahía
The Mexican War of Independence began in 1810 at the instigation of Miguel Hidalgo. At the end of November, Texas governor Manuel María de Salcedo received notice that Hidalgo and his confederates Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama were expected to invade Texas, and that Salcedo was expected to capture them. On January 2, 1812, Salcedo summoned troops throughout Texas to Bexar, leaving La Bahia with a minimal force. Mexican revolutionary Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara had been in the United States organizing support for the revolution. In early August 1812, his recruits under the name, the Republican Army of the North, invaded Texas. In November, Salcedo led Spanish Army forces to the Guadalupe River to ambush the Republican Army of the North. One of the soldiers was captured, however, and revealed details of the ambush. The invading army turned south to avoid the trap and quickly captured Presidio La Bahia. Salcedo promptly began a siege of the fort. The siege lasted four months, with occasional skirmishes.
Mexican Revolution
Lame duck U.S. President Taft, whose term ended 4 March 1913, left the decision of whether to recognize the new government up to the incoming president, Woodrow Wilson. Despite the urging of the U.S. ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson, who had played a key role in the coup d'état, President Wilson not only declined to recognize Huerta's government, but first supplanted the ambassador by sending his "personal representative" John Lind, a Swedish-American progressive who sympathized with the Mexican revolutionaries, and then, in the summer of 1913, recalled Wilson. Further, under Wilson, the United States lifted the arms embargo imposed by Taft in order to supply weapons to the landlocked rebels, since while under the complete embargo Huerta had still been able to receive shipments from the British. While urging other European powers to likewise not recognize Huerta's government, Wilson also attempted to persuade Huerta to call prompt elections "and not present himself as a candidate." The United States offered Mexico a loan on the condition that Huerta accept the proposal. He refused. The envoy Lind "clearly threatened a military intervention in case the demands were not met."
New Spain
After the conquest of central Mexico, there were only two major Indian revolts challenging Spanish rule. In the Mixtón war in 1541, the viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza led an army against an uprising by Caxcanes. In the 1680 Pueblo revolt, Indians in 24 settlements in New Mexico expelled the Spanish, who left for Texas, an exile lasting a decade. The Chichimeca war lasted over fifty years, 1550-1606, between the Spanish and various indigenous groups of northern New Spain, particularly in silver mining regions and the transportation trunk lines. Non-sedentary or semi-sedentary Northern Indians were difficult to control once they acquired the mobility of the horse. In 1616, the Tepehuan revolted against the Spanish, but it was relatively quickly suppressed. The Tarahumara Indians were in revolt in the mountains of Chihuahua for several years. In 1670 Chichimecas invaded Durango, and the governor, Francisco González, abandoned its defense.
First Mexican Republic
The first election immediately after the promulgation of the 1824 brought two heroes of independence to the fore as candidates. Guadalupe Victoria was considered a “natural choice” for the presidency. His opponent for the election was another hero of the insurgency, Nicolás Bravo. Both men ran restrained campaigns, and were, in fact, occupied with peacekeeping in the post-independence period. Bravo, however, signaled that he was opposed to the states’ rights of federalism and moved to protect Spaniards still in Mexico. Victoria won the indirect election, carrying all the northern states, most in favor of federalism. He served his entire four-year term, a feat not duplicated for decades. The fact that it lasted did not mean it was effective. It had no clear cut program of its own and was generally passive.
Second Federal Republic of Mexico
With conservatives discredited by their support of the ill-fated monarchy, Juárez was able to implement liberal policies. This period of federalism in Mexico is widely known as the Restored Republic, lasting from 1867 to the 1876 coup of liberal army general, Porfirio Díaz, ushering in a long period of authoritarian rule, peace, and economic development known as the Porfiriato. The liberal constitution remained nominally in force, with regular elections held that were increasingly seen as fraudulent. The Constitution of 1857 was supplanted by the Mexican Constitution of 1917, as an outcome of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920).
Timeline of Mexican War of Independence
The Mexican war of independence was an attempt, ultimately successful, led by Mexican-born Spaniards, called "criollos", to shake off the rule of Spain and the political and social dominance in Mexico of a small number of Spanish-born people living in Mexico, called "peninsulares" or derisively "gapuchines." The war began in 1810 with a small group of criollos in the Bajio region, supported by a large number of mixed-blood mestizos and indigenous people.
Republic of the Rio Grande
The Republic of the Rio Grande () was an independent nation that insurgents against the Central Mexican Republic
sought to establish in northern Mexico. The Republic of the Rio Grande was just one of a series of independence movements in Mexico under the unitary government dominated by Santa Anna, including the Republic of Texas, the Republic of Zacatecas, and the Republic of Yucatán. The rebellion lasted from January 17 to November 6, 1840.
Pancho Villa Expedition
The Pancho Villa Expedition—now known officially in the United States as the Mexican Expedition, but originally referred to as the "Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army"—was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa from March 14, 1916, to February 7, 1917, during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920.
Reform War
After the end of the Mexican War of Independence, the country was strongly divided as it tried to recover from more than a decade of fighting. From 1821-57, 50 different governments ruled the country. These included dictatorships, constitutional republican governments and a monarchy.
Mexican Revolution
The origins of the conflict were broadly based in opposition to the Díaz regime, with the 1910 election becoming the catalyst for the outbreak of political rebellion. The revolution was begun by elements of the Mexican elite hostile to Díaz, led by Madero and Pancho Villa; it expanded to the middle class, the peasantry in some regions, and organized labor. In October 1911, Madero was overwhelmingly elected in a free and fair election. Opposition to his regime then grew from both the conservatives, who saw him as too weak and too liberal, and from former revolutionary fighters and the dispossessed, who saw him as too conservative.
Revolution Day (Mexico)
Revolution Day is an official Mexican government holiday, celebrated annually in Mexico on November 20th, marking the start of what became the Mexican Revolution.
Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones
The Porfiriato Room is concerned with the thirty-year-long presidency of Porfirio Diaz. Diaz's regime was primarily concerned with the modernization of the economy and resulted in the concentration of power and wealth among the Mexican elite. The room serves as a context to understand why the Mexican Revolution happened. The Mexican Revolution Room traces the progress of the civil struggle for power from its beginnings in 1910 to its end in 1916 and how foreign influences affected the conflict. There are also artifacts related to U.S. invasion during this event from 1914 to 1916.
Miguel Alemán Valdés
Miguel Alemán Valdés (; September 29, 1900 – May 14, 1983) served a full term as the President of Mexico from 1946 to 1952, the first civilian president after a string of revolutionary generals. His administration was characterized by Mexico's rapid industrialization, often called the Mexican Miracle, but also for a high level of personal enrichment for himself and his associates. His presidency was the first of a new generation of Mexican leaders, who had not directly participated in the Mexican Revolution, and many in his cabinet were also young, university-educated civilians.
Mexico–United States relations
Beginning in the 1820s, Americans led by Stephan F. Austin and other non-Mexicans began to settle in eastern Texas in large numbers. These Anglo-American settlers, known as Texians, were frequently at odds with the Mexican government, since they sought autonomy from the central Mexican government and the expansion of black slavery into Mexico, which had abolished the institution in 1829 under Mexican president Vicente Guerrero. Their disagreements led to the Texas Revolution, one of a series of independence movements that came to the fore following the 1835 amendments to the Constitution of Mexico, which substantially altered the governance of the country. Prior to the Texas Revolution the general public of the United States was indifferent to Texas, but afterward, public opinion was increasingly sympathetic to the Texans. Following the war a Republic of Texas was declared, though independence was not recognized by Mexico, and the boundaries between the two were never agreed upon. In 1845 the United States annexed Texas, leading to a major border dispute and eventually to the Mexican–American War.
Green Revolution
It has been argued that "during the twentieth century two 'revolutions' transformed rural Mexico: the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and the Green Revolution (1950–1970)". With the support of the Mexican government, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Rockefeller Foundation, Mexico made a concerted effort to transform agricultural productivity, particularly with irrigated rather than dry-land cultivation in its northwest, to solve its problem of lack of food self-sufficiency. In the center and south of Mexico, where large-scale production faced challenges, agricultural production languished. Increased production meant food self-sufficiency in Mexico to feed its growing and urbanizing population, with the number of calories consumed per Mexican increasing. Technology was seen as a valuable way to feed the poor, and would relieve some pressure of the land redistribution process.
History of Mexico
The Porfiriato is the era when army hero Porfirio Díaz held power as president of Mexico almost continuously from 1876–1911. He promoted "order and progress" that saw the suppression of violence, modernization of the economy, and the flow of foreign investment to the country. The period ended with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Under Díaz, Mexico's industry and infrastructure were modernized by a strong, stable but autocratic central government. Increased tax revenues and better administration brought dramatic improvements in public safety, public health, railways, mining, industry, foreign trade, and national finances.
History of Mexico
In much of Spanish America soon after its independence, military strongmen or caudillos dominated politics, and this period is often called "The Age of Caudillismo". In Mexico, from the late 1820s to the mid-1850s the period is often called the "Age of Santa Anna", named for the general turned politician, Antonio López de Santa Anna. The federalists asked Santa Anna to overthrow conservative President Anastasio Bustamante. After he did, he declared General Manuel Gómez Pedraza (who won the election of 1828) president. Elections were held thereafter, and Santa Anna took office in 1832. He served as president 11 times. Constantly changing his political beliefs, in 1834 Santa Anna abrogated the federal constitution, causing insurgencies in the southeastern state of Yucatán and the northernmost portion of the northern state of Coahuila y Tejas. Both areas sought independence from the central government. Negotiations and the presence of Santa Anna's army caused Yucatán to recognize Mexican sovereignty. Then Santa Anna's army turned to the northern rebellion.
Military history of Mexico
The Plan of San Luis Potosí started what is known as the Mexican Revolution. Madero was incarcerated in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States, but his plan took effect in spite of him being in jail. The Federal Army was defeated by the revolutionary forces which were led by, amongst others, Emiliano Zapata in the south, Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco in the north, and Venustiano Carranza. Porfirio Díaz resigned in 1911 for the "sake of the peace of the nation" and went to exile in France, where he died in 1915.
History of California
Mexico, after independence, was unstable with about 40 changes of government, in the 27 years prior to 1848—an average government duration was 7.9 months. In Alta California, Mexico inherited a large, sparsely settled, poor, backwater province paying little or no net tax revenue to the Mexican state. In addition, Alta California had a declining Mission system as the Mission Indian population in Alta California continued to rapidly decrease.
History of Mexico
The Mexican Revolution is the chaotic period between 1910 and 1920 when Mexicans fought to determine their future after the end of the Díaz era. The uncertainty about presidential succession in 1910, when 80 year-old Díaz was re-elected in clearly fraudulent elections, touched off violence in northern Mexico and in the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City. The sparking forces of the Mexican Revolution were elites outside Díaz's inner circle, such as wealthy estate-owner Francisco I. Madero, plus liberal intellectuals, as well as industrial labor activists and peasants seeking land. Díaz was ousted by force of arms by rebel fighters and went into exile in 1911. Madero was democratically elected later in the year, but was overthrown in February 1913 by reactionary forces, with General Victoriano Huerta seizing power. Anti-Huerta forces in the north of Mexico unified under northern politician and landowner Venustiano Carranza, the leader of the Constitutionalist faction. In Morelos, peasants under Emiliano Zapata independently also opposed Huerta. The conflict was not politically or militarily unified, and violence did not occur in all parts of the country. In northern Mexico, conflict took place with organized armies of movement under Constitutionalist generals such as Pancho Villa and Alvaro Obregón; and in the center of Mexico, particularly the state of Morelos, peasants pursued guerrilla warfare and sought to gain land. The Constitutionalist faction won the civil war and Carranza was elected president in 1917. The war killed a tenth of the nation's population and drove many northern Mexicans across the U.S. border to escape the fighting.
Mexican War of Independence
Although Mexico gained its independence in September 1821, the marking of this historical event did not take hold immediately. The choice of date to celebrate was problematic, because Iturbide, who achieved independence from Spain, was rapidly created Emperor of Mexico. His short-lived reign from 1821–22 ended when he was forced by the military to abdicate. This was a rocky start for the new nation, which made celebrating independence on the anniversary of Iturbide's Army of the Three Guarantees marching into Mexico City in triumph a less than perfect day for those who had opposed him. Celebrations of independence during his reign were marked on September 27. Following his ouster, there were calls to commemorate Mexican independence along the lines that the United States celebrated in grand style its Independence Day on July 4. The creation of a committee of powerful men to mark independence celebrations, the "Junta Patriótica", organized celebrations of both September 16, to commemorate Hidalgo's grito and the start of the independence insurgency, and September 27, to celebrate actual political independence.
Naco, Sonora
A more important confrontation took place here called the Siege of Naco. The siege was the longest sustained battle of the Mexican Revolution lasting 119 days from 1914 to 1915. The conflict directly or indirectly involved or affected all of the major players of the Revolution and affected the final outcome of the conflict. The battle was fought between forces loyal to Francisco Villa (called Villistas) and forces loyal to the Constitutionalist faction of Venustiano Carranza and Alvaro Obregón. The battle was prompted by Governor José María Maytorena’s decision to challenge Constitutionalist forces under command of Plutarco Elías Calles in Sonora for control of this state in the fall of 1914. Maytorena’s forces attacked Calles’ forces in Nogales and forced them to retreat to Naco. Here the Constitutionalists dug in and Maytorena began a siege, trying to overrun Naco’s defenses for nearly four months. The protracted conflict claimed heavy losses on both side and property damage to Naco, Arizona, prompting fears of US citizens violating federal neutrality laws. Extra troops were sent to nearby Fort Huachuca to protect U.S. interests, with cavalry regiments placed along the border to make sure the fighting did not spill across it. This resulted in several cavalry soldiers being wounded by stray bullets. U.S. Army Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott was sent to broker a truce, and succeeded with the signing of the Treaty of Naco on 15 January 1915.
Postage stamps and postal history of Mexico
Mexico declared independence from Spain on September 16, 1810. This resulted in the long Mexican War of Independence which ended in 1821, and which eventually led to the creation of the short-lived First Mexican Empire. Agustín de Iturbide was the first and only emperor. Two years later, he was deposed by the republican forces. In 1824, a republican constitution was adopted, creating the United Mexican States with Guadalupe Victoria as its first President.
History of Mexico City
Peace did not last long. Santa Anna's losses to the Americans created great discontent among his political opponents who coalesced to call themselves the Reform movement or the Liberals. Those who supported the dictatorial regime and the power of the Catholic Church were called the Conservatives. The Reform War lasted from 1857 to 1861. For a time, the two factions had parallel governments with the Liberals in Veracruz and the Conservatives in Mexico City. When the Liberals were victorious, Liberal president Benito Juárez moved his government to the capital city. As the Catholic Church was as much a target of the Reform movement as the government was, the city's convents were destroyed or turned to other uses. Since then, Mexico's government has maintained an uneasy relationship with the Vatican. However, Benito Juárez was soon faced with a new threat, the invasion of the French. The captured Mexico City, creating the Second Mexican Empire and placing Emperor Maximilian on the throne in Mexico City.
Women in Mexico
The Mexican revolution began in 1910 with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against the longstanding regime of Porfirio Diaz. The military phase is generally considered to have lasted through 1920. Most often it is the case that women involved in war are overlooked. Although the revolution is attributed to men, it is important to note the dedication and participation women contributed, just as much as their male counterparts. Poor mestiza and indigenous women had a strong presence in the revolutionary conflict becoming camp followers often referred to in Mexico as soldaderas.
Military history of North America
The first half of the 20th century saw two significant civil conflicts in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to 1919, saw a series of successive political rebellions against the government of Mexico. The conflict resulted in the creation of the 1917 Constitution of Mexico. The Cristero War, from 1926 to 1929, was a widespread rebellion against the secularist, anti-Catholic and anti-clerical policies of the incumbent Mexican government. The conflict came to an end following an American-brokered ceasefire in 1929.
History of the Texas Ranger Division
The Mexican Revolution that began in 1910 against Mexican President Díaz changed the relatively peaceful state of affairs along the border. Soon after, violence on both sides of the frontier escalated as bands of Mexicans took over border towns and began crossing the Rio Grande on a near-daily basis. Taking over trade routes in Mexico by establishing themselves as road agents, Mexican banditos turned towards attacking the American communities for kidnapping, extortion, and supplies. As Mexican law enforcement disintegrated with the collapse of the Diaz regime, these gangs grouped themselves under the various caudillos on both sides of the border and took sides in the civil war, most simply to take advantage of the turmoil to loot. Then, as the lack of American military forces for defending the border became clearer, the scope of the activities soon turned to outright genocide with the intention of driving Americans out of the Southwest entirely; this became known as the Plan de San Diego in 1915. In several well-rehearsed attacks, Mexicans rose up and in conjunction with raiding Villista guerrillas, within weeks had killed over 500 Texan women, children, and men.
Mexican Revolution
In 1909, Díaz and U.S. President William Howard Taft conducted a historic summit, held in both El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; it was the first meeting between a U.S. and Mexican president, and the first time a sitting U.S. president crossed the border into Mexico. Díaz requested the meeting to show that he had American support for his planned eighth run as president. Taft agreed to support Diaz in order to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico. After nearly 30 years with Díaz in power, U.S. businesses controlled "nearly 90 percent of Mexico’s mineral resources, its national railroad, its oil industry and, increasingly, its land." At the meeting, Díaz explained his decision to stay in office, "Since I am responsible for bringing several billion dollars in foreign investments into my country, I think I should continue in my position until a competent successor is found."
Mexico
Throughout the 19th century, the population of Mexico had barely doubled. This trend continued during the first two decades of the 20th century, and even in the 1920 census there was a loss of about 2 million inhabitants. The phenomenon can be explained because during the decade from 1910 to 1920 the Mexican Revolution took place.
Diego Archuleta
Archuleta supported Mexico upon the outbreak of the Mexican–American War. The Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution. In 1846 and 1847, Archuleta participated and led two unsuccessful rebellions against the U.S.
Liberal Party (Mexico)
When Mexico achieved its independence in 1821, the Mexican political life was altered by constant struggles between Liberals and Conservatives. The Liberal Party enacted the Federal Constitution of 1857, which along with the Plan of Ayutla (1854) and other liberal reforms polarized Mexican society to lead the Reform War (1857–1861), the Second French Intervention in México (1862–1867) and the Second Mexican Empire (1863–1867).
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Guadalupe Victoria became the first president of the Mexican republic in 1824, following the creation of the Federalist Mexican Constitution of 1824. Guadalupe Victoria came to the presidency with little factional conflict and he served out his entire four-year term. However, the election of 1828 was quite different, with considerable political conflict in which Santa Anna became involved. Even before the election, there was unrest in Mexico, with some conservatives affiliated with the Scottish Rite Masons plotting rebellion. The so-called Montaño rebellion in December 1827 called for the prohibition of secret societies, implicitly meaning liberal York Rite Masons, and the expulsion of the U.S. minister in Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, a promoter of federal republicanism in Mexico. Although Santa Anna was believed to be a supporter of the Scottish Rite conservatives, in the Montaño rebellion eventually he threw his support to the liberals. In his home state of Veracruz, the governor had thrown his support to the rebels, and in the aftermath of the rebellion's failure, Santa Anna as vice-governor stepped into the governorship.
Women in Mexico
The Mexican War of Independence was an armed conflict between the Mexican people and Spain. It began with the Grito de Dolores on September 16 of 1810 and officially ended on September 27 of 1821 when army forces marched into Mexico City. Independence affected women in both positive and negatives ways. Prior to the independence, women were only allowed to act as their children's guardians until the age of seven in cases of separation of widowhood. Post-independence laws allowed women to serve as guardians until the age of majority. Women continued to occupy domestic service positions although economic instability led to many households ending employment of domestic servants.
History of Mexico City
By the early 20th century, Mexico City was becoming a modern city, with gas and electric lighting, streetcars, and other modern amenities. However, the regime concentrated resources and wealth in the hands of a few people. The majority of the nation languished in poverty. Social injustice led to nationwide revolts, and ultimately the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). The city was not untouched by the revolution. Battles were fought on its streets, and thousands of displaced villagers became refugees in the city. During the revolution, the city was briefly taken over by the famous revolutionaries Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Emiliano Zapata. While most of the Mexican Revolution was not fought within the city, one major episode of this era was. La decena trágica ("The Ten Tragic Days") was a series of events leading to a coup d’etat in Mexico City between 9 and 22 February 1913 against President Francisco I. Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez. After deposing President Porfirio Díaz and taking power in 1911, Mexicans expected Madero to make widespread changes in government but were surprised and disappointed to find Madero following many of the same policies and employing the same personnel as the Díaz government. This eventually resulted in revolts against the Madero regime. Madero's fear of these revolts led him to commission Victoriano Huerta as chief general of the Federal Army. Huerta was effective in putting down rebellions, but had ambitions that Madero was blind to. Military success gave Huerta power, and he saw an opportunity to make himself dictator. La decena trágica began when military academy cadets quartered in Tacubaya revolted and began an attack against the National Palace. Madero and Pino Suárez returned to the Palace to address the crisis, calling in reserves from other military academies and the forces of Felipe Ángeles in Cuernavaca to assist in defense. Meanwhile, Huerta convinced Madero to allow him to take over defense of the National Palace. Huerta betrayed Madero and Pino Suárez forcing Madero and Pino Suárez to sign resignations. On the night of 22 February, Huerta ordered Madero and Pino Suárez to be transferred to the Lecumberri prison, supposedly to be held for transfer to exile. Before the car reached the prison, it was pulled over by armed men and Madero and Pino Suárez were shot and killed.
Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution
The Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution () was a Mexican political party that existed from 1955 to 2000. PARM was generally considered a satellite party of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Gun laws in Mexico
It was through the means of armed combat that Mexico achieved its independence from Spain. From then on, the course of history was marked by several armed conflicts, including the American (1846–48) and French (1861–67) conflicts, as well as indigenous struggles due to the several forms of government that ruled over Mexican territory, culminating with the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) and the Cristero War (1926–29).
Pancho Villa
The Mexican Revolution began when Francisco Madero challenged incumbent President Porfirio Díaz in the 1910 elections. Díaz arrested Madero and staged fraudulent elections, but Madero had united a broad base of pro-democracy, anti-reelectionists who sought an end to the Díaz regime. In his Plan de San Luis Potosí, Madero called for revolutionary action against the Díaz regime on November 20, 1910, and declared himself provisional president of Mexico. In Chihuahua, the leader of the anti-re-electionists, Abraham González, reached out to Villa to join the movement. Villa captured a large hacienda, then a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote. Villa met in person with Madero in March 1911, as the struggle to oust Díaz was ongoing.
History of Mexico
The Mexican Revolution is a broad term to describe political and social changes in the early 20th century. Most scholars consider it to span the years 1910–1920, from the fraudulent election of Porfirio Díaz in 1910 until the December 1920 election of northern general Alvaro Obregón. Foreign powers had important economic and strategic interests in the outcome of power struggles in Mexico, with United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution playing an especially significant role.
María Guadalupe García Zavala
In times of dire need she asked her spiritual director for permission to go begging in the streets in order to collect funds needed for the hospital. Zavala did this with her fellow religious and she would seek offerings until the needs of the hospital and patients were met and would ask for no more than was needed. The Mexican Revolution started in 1911 and its effects lasted up until 1936 during which the political-religious situation in Mexico became tense in which the faith underwent severe persecution. Zavala put her own life at risk and hid the priests and the Archbishop of Guadalajara in her hospital; it was the archdiocese who granted diocesan approval to the order on 24 May 1935.
Administrative divisions of Mexico
On September 27, 1821, after three centuries of Spanish rule, Mexico gained independence. The Treaty of Córdoba recognized part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain as an Independent Empire – "monarchist, constitutional and moderate". The new country took the name of Mexican Empire. The morning after the Army of the Three Guarantees entered Mexico City on September 28, 1821, Agustín de Iturbide ordered the Supreme Provisional Governmental Junta (September 1821 – February 1822) to meet to elect a president of the Imperial Regency and to issue a declaration of independence for the new nation. Iturbide was elected president of the Regency, and that afternoon the members of the Regency and the Supreme Junta signed the Declaration.
First Mexican Empire
The Mexican Empire (, ) was a short lived monarchy, and the first independent post-colonial imperial state in Mexico. It was the only former colony of the Spanish Empire to establish a monarchy after independence. Together with the Brazilian Empire, it was one of two European-style empires in the Americas. The Mexican Empire lasted two years.
Mexican–American War campaigns
The Mexican–American War lasted some 26 months from its first engagement through the withdrawal of American occupation troops. Fighting took place over thousands of miles, from northern Mexico to Mexico City, and across New Mexico, California, Baja California and the west coast of Mexico.
Buffalo Soldier
The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 against the long-time rule of President Porfirio Díaz initiated a decade-long period of high-intensity military conflict along the U.S.–Mexico border as different political/military factions in Mexico fought for power. The access to arms and customs duties from Mexican communities along the U.S.–Mexico boundary made border towns like Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and Nogales, Sonora, important strategic assets. As the various factions in Mexico vied for power, the U.S. Army, including the Buffalo Soldier units, was dispatched to the border to maintain security. The Buffalo Soldiers played a key role in U.S.–Mexico relations as the maelstrom that followed the ousting of Díaz and the assassination of his successor Francisco Madero intensified.
Mexican Revolution
The PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party is one of the major lasting legacies of the Mexican Revolution; its first iteration was the Partido Nacional Revolucionario founded in 1929 under Northern revolutionary general and president of Mexico (1924–1928) Plutarco Elías Calles, following the assassination of president-elect (and former president) Álvaro Obregón in 1928. The establishment of the party created an enduring structure that managed not only presidential succession but also groups with competing interests. Initially, Calles remained the power behind the presidency during a period known as the Maximato, but his hand-picked presidential candidate, Lázaro Cárdenas, won a power struggle with Calles, expelling him from the country. Cárdenas reorganized the party that Calles founded, creating formal sectors for interest groups, including one for the Mexican military. The reorganized party was named Party of the Mexican Revolution. In 1946, the party again changed its name to the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The party under its various names held the presidency uninterruptedly from 1929 to 2000, and again from 2012 to 2018 under President Enrique Peña Nieto.
History of Mexico
A new era began in Mexico following the fraudulent 1988 presidential elections. The Institutional Revolutionary Party barely won the presidential election, and President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began implementing sweeping neoliberal reforms in Mexico. These reforms required the amendment of the Constitution, especially curtailing the power of the Mexican state to regulate foreign business enterprises, but also lifted the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. Mexico's economy was further integrated with that of U.S. and also Canada after the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA agreement began lowering trade barriers in 1994. Seven decades of PRI rule ended in the year 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). His successor, Felipe Calderón, also of the PAN, embarked on a war against drug mafias in Mexico, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. In the face of extremely violent drug wars, the PRI returned to power in 2012, under Enrique Peña Nieto, promising that it had reformed itself. Violence and corruption have continued in Mexico, and uncertainty about the fate of the North America Free Trade Agreement, which has brought economic benefits to Mexico, has complicated the situation in Mexico. In July 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency in a landslide victory.
La Reforma
La Reforma () or the Liberal Reform was initiated in Mexico following the ousting of centralist president Antonio López de Santa Anna by a group of liberals under the 1854 Plan de Ayutla. From the liberals' narrow objective to remove a dictator and take power, they expanded their aims to a comprehensive program to remake Mexico governed by liberal principles as embodied by a series of Reform laws and then the Constitution of 1857. The major goals of this movement were to undermine the power of the Catholic Church in Mexico, separate church and state, reduce the power of the Mexican military, and integrate Mexico's large indigenous population as citizens of Mexico and not a protected class. Liberals envisioned secular education as a means to create a Mexican citizenry. The liberals' strategy was to sharply limit the traditional institutional privileges ("fueros") of the Catholic Church and the army. The law prohibiting the ownership of land by corporations targeted the holdings of the Catholic Church and indigenous communities - confiscating Church land. Indigenous community lands were held by the community as a whole, not as individual parcels. Liberals sought to create a class of yeoman farmers that held land individually. No class of individualistic peasants developed with the Liberal program emerged, but many merchants acquired land (and tenant farmers). Many existing landowners expanded their holdings at the expense of peasants, and some upwardly mobile ranch owners, often mestizos, acquired land previously held by communities. Upon the promulgation of the liberal Constitution of 1857, conservatives refused to swear allegiance to it and, instead, formed a conservative government. The result was a civil war known as the Reform War or Three Years' War, waged between conservatives and liberals for three years, ending with the defeat of the conservatives on the battlefield. Victorious liberal president Benito Juárez could not implement the envisioned reforms due to a new political threat. Conservatives had sought another route to regaining power, resulting in their active collaboration with Napoleon III's plans to turn the Mexican Empire into the main American ally of the French empire. Mexican conservatives offered the crown of Mexico to Hapsburg archduke Maximilian. The French invasion and republican resistance to the French Intervention in Mexico lasted from 1862-67. With the defeat of the conservatives and the execution of Maximilian, Juárez again took up his duties as president. In this period from 1867 to 1876, often called the "Restored Republic" liberals had no credible opposition to their implementation of the laws of the Reform embodied in the 1857 Constitution.
Tourism in Mexico
The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) interrupted tourism in Mexico, but by the 1930s, the Mexican government began promoting tourism again with posters of light-skinned young women and lush gardens. In the 1920s and 30s, there was an "enormous vogue of things Mexico" in the United States, resulting in cultural exchanges, temporary and permanent art exhibitions, and patronage of Mexican artists, such as muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.
Mexican Revolution
The Party's name expresses the Mexican state's incorporation of the idea of revolution, and especially a continuous, nationalist, anti-imperialist, Mexican revolution, into political discourse, and its legitimization as a popular, revolutionary party. The Revolution was a powerful memory and its slogans and promises were utilized to bolster the party's power. Latterly, some historians have written of the "myth" of the revolution, namely the memory of the revolution was exploited by the party to legitimatize its rule with one historian Macario Schettino writing: "the twentieth century is for Mexico, the century of the Mexican revolution. But this is a concept, not a fact. The Revolution which marks the twentieth century...never happened. The Mexican Revolution, on which was founded the political regime which ruled from 1928 and for nearly seventy years is a cultural construction". In 1975, the political scientist Rafael Segovia wrote that "the mythification of the Mexican Revolution is an omnipresent and indisputable fact" of Mexican life with the memory of the revolution becoming in the words of the British historian Alan Knight a sort of "secular religion" that justified the Party's rule. In particular, the memory of the revolution was used as justification for the party's policies with regard to economic nationalism, educational policies, labour policies, "indigenismo" and land reform.
Timeline of the Texas Revolution
The first shot of the Texas Revolution was fired at the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. This marked the beginning of the revolution. Over the next three months, the Texan colonists drove all Mexican army troops out of the province. In January 1836, Mexican president and general Antonio López de Santa Anna led Mexican troops into Texas to put down the rebellion. General Jose Urrea marched half of the troops up the Texas coast in the Goliad campaign, while Santa Anna led the rest of the troops to San Antonio de Bexar. After a thirteen-day siege, Santa Anna's army defeated the small group of Texans at the Battle of the Alamo and continued east. Many Texans, including the government, fled their homes in the Runaway Scrape.On March 19 the Texas troops marched into an open prairie outside 
of Goliad during a heavy fog. When they stopped to rest their animals, 
Urrea and his main army surrounded them. The Texas force numbered 
at least 300 soldiers, and the Mexicans had 300 to 500 troops. With no 
choice but battle, Fannin chose to stand and fight near Coleto Creek. .Santa Anna and his troops searched for the Texan government and the Texan army led by Sam Houston. On April 21, 1836, the Texans defeated Santa Anna's army at the Battle of San Jacinto; Santa Anna was captured the following day. The Mexican army retreated back to Mexico City, ending the Texas Revolution. Texas was now an independent colony and later joined the United States.
Benito Juárez
He held power during the tumultuous decade of the Liberal Reform and French invasion. In 1858 as head of the Supreme Court, he became president of Mexico by the succession mandated by the Constitution of 1857 when moderate liberal President Ignacio Comonfort was forced to resign by Mexican conservatives. Juárez remained in the presidential office until his death by natural causes in 1872. He weathered the War of the Reform (1858–60), a civil war between Liberals and Conservatives, and then the French invasion (1862–67), which was supported by Mexican Conservatives. Never relinquishing office although forced into exile in areas of Mexico not controlled by the French, Juárez tied Liberalism to Mexican nationalism and maintained that he was the legitimate head of the Mexican state, rather than Emperor Maximilian. When the French-backed Second Mexican Empire fell in 1867, the Mexican Republic with Juárez as president was restored to full power. In his success in ousting the European incursion, Latin Americans considered his a "second struggle for independence, a second defeat for the European powers, and a second reversal of the Conquest."
Mexico–United States border
The Mexican Revolution, caused at least partially by animosity toward foreign ownership of Mexican properties, began in 1910. The Revolution increased the political instability in Mexico, but did not significantly slow United States investment. It did reduce economic development within Mexico, however, and the border regions reflected this. As the infrastructure of communities on the United States side continued to improve, the Mexican side began to fall behind in the construction and maintenance of important transportation networks and systems necessary to municipal development.
Economic history of Mexico
The seeds of economic modernization were laid under the Restored Republic (1867–76), following the fall of the French-backed empire of Maximilian of Habsburg (1862–67). Mexican conservatives had invited Maximilian to be Mexico's monarch with the expectation that he would implement policies favorable to conservatives. Maximilian held liberal ideas and alienated his Mexican conservative supporters. The withdrawal of French military support for Maximilian, alienation of his conservative patrons, and post-Civil War support for Benito Juárez's republican government by the U.S. government precipitated Maximilian's fall. The conservatives' support for the foreign monarch destroyed their credibility and allowed the liberal republicans to implement economic policy as they saw fit after 1867 until the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.
Spanish Texas
During the Mexican War of Independence of 1810 to 1821 Texas experienced much turmoil. Rebels overthrew the Spanish Governor Manuel María de Salcedo in 1810, but he persuaded his jailer to release him and to assist him in organizing a counter-coup. Three years later the Republican Army of the North, consisting primarily of Indians and of citizens of the United States, overthrew the Spanish government in Tejas and executed Salcedo in 1813. The Spanish responded brutally, and by 1820 fewer than 2000 Hispanic citizens remained in Texas. The Mexican independence movement forced Spain to relinquish its control of New Spain in 1821, with Texas becoming in 1824 part of the state of Coahuila y Tejas within the newly-formed Mexico in the period in Texas history known as Mexican Texas (1821-1836).
United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution
The U.S. recognized the government of Porfirio Díaz in 1878, two years after Díaz's coup d'état brought him to power. Díaz's long rule of Mexico brought close economic cooperation between the two countries, especially since Díaz imposed political order that allowed business to flourish. In 1908, however, Díaz gave an interview to a U.S. journalist, James Creelman, in which Díaz stated he would not run for re-election in 1910; the statement gave rise to politicking of potential candidates. Díaz reversed himself, ran for re-election, and jailed the leading opposition candidate, Francisco I. Madero. Mexican revolutionaries prior to the 1910 events had sought refuge on the U.S. side of the border, a pattern Madero continued. He escaped Mexico and took refuge in San Antonio, Texas and called for nullification of the 1910 elections, himself as provisional president, and revolutionary support from the Mexican people. His Plan of San Luis Potosí did spark revolutionary uprisings, particularly in Mexico's north. The U.S. stayed out of the unfolding events until March 6, 1911, when President William Howard Taft mobilized forces on the U.S.-Mexico border. "In effect this was an intervention in Mexican politics, and to Mexicans it meant the United States had condemned Díaz.
Military history of Mexico
The military history of Mexico consists of several millennia of armed conflicts within what is now that nation's territory and includes activities of the Mexican military in peacekeeping and combat related affairs worldwide. Wars between prehispanic peoples marked the beginning of Mexico's military history, the most notable of these fought in the form of a "flower war". After the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th century, indigenous tribes were defeated by Spain, thus beginning a three century era of Spanish dominance. Mexico's struggle for independence began primarily in the 19th century, and was marked by internal conflict of early rulers after defeating the Spanish in 1821. The Mexican–American War in the mid 19th century ended in the defeat of Mexican forces, and the loss of two-fifths of the national territory. In the remainder of the 19th century, a series of conflicts began in Mexico, as the War of the Reform and the defeat of the French during their intervention in Mexico marked events in that era.
Agriculture in Mexico
The result was the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920. The result afterwards was the breakup of most large private landholdings to be redistributed, especially under a system of common tenancy called ejidos. The lands could be worked individually or collectively by members of the ejido but the land could not be leased or sold. The process of dividing lands and developing ejido organizations continued into the 1930s under President Lázaro Cárdenas . By the end of the 1930s, haciendas almost entirely disappeared from central and southern Mexico with numerous small holdings of ten to twenty acres as well as ejidos becoming dominant.
History of Mexico
The Reforma began with the final overthrow of Santa Anna in the Revolution of Ayutla in 1855. The moderate Liberal Ignacio Comonfort became president. The "Moderados" tried to find a middle ground between the nation's liberals and conservatives. There is less consensus about the ending point of the Reforma.
Mexican muralism
These ideas gained power as a result of the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew the Díaz regime in less than a year. However, there was nearly a decade of fighting among the various factions vying for power. Governments changed frequently with a number of assassinations, including that of Francisco I. Madero who initiated the struggle. It ended in the early 1920s with one-party rule in the hands of the Álvaro Obregón faction, which became the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). During the Revolution, Atl supported the Carranza faction and promoted the work of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, who would later be the founders of the muralism movement. Through the war and until 1921, Atl continued to paint murals among other activities including teaching the Mexico’s next generation of artists and muralists.
Treaty of Córdoba
On September 27, 1821, the Army of the Three Guarantees entered triumphantly into Mexico City and on the following day, the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire was widely known. The Spanish Cortes refused to accept the validity of the Plan of Iguala or the Treaty of Córdoba. Spain did not recognize Mexico's independence until December 1836. Therefore, the Mexican Congress elected a Mexican monarch the following year. Iturbide was proclaimed emperor of Mexico on May 18, 1822. The monarchy lasted three years, and after the republican revolution of Casa Mata, the Congress no longer considered the Plan of Iguala or Treaty of Córdoba in effect.
Mexican–American War
Mexico obtained independence from Spain and the Spanish Empire with the Treaty of Córdoba in 1821. It briefly experimented with monarchy, but became a republic in 1824. This government was characterized by instability, leaving it ill-prepared for international conflict when war broke out only two decades later, in 1846. In the decades preceding the war, Native American raids in Mexico's sparsely settled north prompted the Mexican government to sponsor migration from the United States to the Mexican province of Texas to create a buffer. However, the newly named "Texians" revolted against the Mexican government of President/dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna, who had usurped the Mexican Constitution of 1824, in the subsequent 1836 Texas Revolution, creating a republic not recognized by Mexico, which still claimed it as part of its national territory. In 1845, the Texan Republic agreed to an offer of annexation by the U.S. Congress and became the 28th state in the Union on December 29 that year.
Cinco de Mayo
The Mexican victory, however, was short-lived. A year later, with 30,000 troops, the French were able to defeat the Mexican army, capture Mexico City, and install Emperor Maximilian I as ruler of Mexico. The French victory was itself short-lived, lasting only three years, from 1864 to 1867. By 1865, "with the American Civil War now over, the U.S. began to provide more political and military assistance to Mexico to expel the French". Upon the conclusion of the American Civil War, Napoleon III, facing a persistent Mexican guerilla resistance, the threat of war with Prussia, and "the prospect of a serious scrap with the United States", retreated from Mexico starting in 1866. The Mexicans recaptured Mexico City, and Maximilian I was apprehended and executed, along with his Mexican generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía Camacho in Cerro de las Campanas, Querétaro. "On June 5, 1867, Benito Juárez finally entered Mexico City where he installed a new government and reorganized his administration."
Celebration of Mexican political anniversaries in 2010
The date of 20 November is used to mark the start of the Mexican Revolution, or the uprising and civil war that took place from 1910 to 1920. Presidential contender Francisco I. Madero chose the date in his Plan of San Luis Potosí to begin an uprising against President Porfirio Díaz who had thrown Madero in jail rather than accept his victory in the elections of 1910. Although violence against the Díaz regime had already broken out in the name of this Plan, the date is still considered official.
Mexico
Assassinated in 1920, Carranza was succeeded by another revolutionary hero, Álvaro Obregón, who in turn was succeeded by Plutarco Elías Calles. Obregón was reelected in 1928 but was assassinated before he could assume power. Although this period is usually referred to as the Mexican Revolution, it might also be termed a civil war since president Díaz (1909) narrowly escaped assassination and presidents Francisco I. Madero (1913), Venustiano Carranza (1920), Álvaro Obregón (1928), and former revolutionary leaders Emiliano Zapata (1919) and Pancho Villa (1923) all were assassinated during this period.
Military history of Mexico
The war for independence lasted eleven years until the troops of the liberating army entered Mexico City in 1821. Thus although independence from Spain was first proclaimed in 1810, it was not formalized until 1821, under the Treaty of Córdoba, which was signed on September 16 in Córdoba, Veracruz, by the Spanish viceroy Juan de O'Donojú and Agustín de Iturbide, ratifying the Plan de Iguala.
Politics of Mexico
The Mexican Revolution was followed by the Great Depression, which led to a severely fragmented society and very weak institutions. In 1929, all factions and generals of the Mexican Revolution were united into a single party, the National Revolutionary Party (NRP), with the aim of stabilizing the country and ending internal conflicts. During the following administrations, since 1928, many of the revolutionary ideals were put into effect, among them the free distribution of land to peasants and farmers, the nationalization of the oil companies, the birth and rapid growth of the Social Security Institute as well as that of Labor Unions, and the protection of national industries.
Miguel Pro
Long-time President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz was ousted in 1911 after staging a rigged reelection, and a struggle for power – the Mexican Revolution – began.
Mexican Cession
Considering the seizures, including all of Texas, Mexico lost 54% of its pre-1836 territory in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. For only fifteen years from 1821 (when Mexican independence was secured) and the Texan Revolt in 1836, the Mexican Cession (excluding Texas) formed approximately 42% of the country of Mexico; prior to that, it had been a part of the Spanish colony of New Spain for some three centuries. Beginning in the early seventeenth century, a chain of Roman Catholic missions and settlements extended into the New Mexico region, mostly following the course of the Rio Grande from the El Paso area to Santa Fe.
Caudillo
Mexico began its revolt against Spain in 1810, gaining independence in 1821. Political divisions in the post-independence period were labeled Federalist, seeking a weak central government and often associated with liberalism, and Centralist, who sought a strong central state and defense of traditional institutional structures, particularly the Mexican Army and the Roman Catholic Church. Many regional strongmen were in the Federalist-Liberal camp, which supported local control and the continuation of their power. The quintessential Mexican "caudillo", who gained national power for decades, was Santa Anna, who was initially a Liberal but became a Conservative and sought strengthening of the central government. Following the Mexican–American War, regional caudillos such as Juan Álvarez of the state of Guerrero and Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León-Coahuila ousted Santa Anna in the Revolution of Ayutla, bringing the Liberals to power. General Juan Álvarez follows the pattern of the "folk "caudillo", whom historian François Chevalier calls a "good "cacique", protected the mainly indigenous and mestizo peasants of Guerrero, who in turn gave him their loyalty. Álvarez briefly served as President of Mexico, returning to his home state, leaving ideological liberals to institute the era of the Reform. During the era of the Mexican Reform and the French intervention in Mexico, there were a number of generals who had regional personal followings. Important figures whose local power had consequences nationally included Mariano Escobedo in San Luis Potosí; Ramón Corona in Jalisco and Durango, Porfirio Díaz in parts of Veracruz, Puebla, and Oaxaca. There were other "caudillos" whose power was more local but still important, including Gerónimo Treviño and Francisco Narajo in Nuevo León, Servando Canales and Juan Cortina in Tamaulipas, Florencio Antillón in Guanajuato, Ignacio Pesqueira in Sonora, Luis Terrazas in Chihuahua, and Manuel Lozada in Tepic. Following the defeat of the French in 1867, the government of Benito Juárez and his successor following his death, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada faced opponents who objected to their increasingly Centralist administrations. Those opponents gravitated to supporting Porfirio Díaz, a military hero of the French intervention, who challenged Juárez and Lerdo by attempting rebellions, the second of which was successful in 1876. Juárez and Lerdo removed some "caudillos" from office, but this prompted them to rebel. These included Trinidad García de la Cadena in Zacatecas, Luis Mier y Terán in Veracruz, Juan Haro in Tampico, Juan N. Méndez in Puebla, Vicente Jiménez in Guerrero, and Juan Cortina in Matamoros. Their opposition to Lerdo brought them together. "That they slowly gathered around Porfirio Díaz is the story of the rise of Porfirian Mexico."
Mexican Revolution
This armed conflict is often characterized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century; it resulted in an important program of experimentation and reform in social organization. The revolution committed the resulting political regime with "social justice", until Mexico underwent a neoliberal reform process that started in the 1980s.
History of Mexico
The revolt led to the War of Reform (December 1857 to January 1861), which grew increasingly bloody as it progressed and polarized the nation's politics. Many Moderates, convinced that the Church's political power had to be curbed, came over to the side of the Liberals.
Garza Revolution
The Garza Revolution, or the Garza War, was an armed conflict fought in the Mexican state of Coahuila and the American state of Texas between 1891 and 1893. It began when the revolutionary Catarino Garza launched a campaign into Mexico from Texas to start an uprising against the dictator Porfirio Diaz. Because of this violation of neutrality, the United States Army became involved and assisted the Mexican Army in tracking down Garza's followers. The war was relatively minor compared to other similar conflicts in Mexican history though it has been seen as a precursor to the major Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920.
Mexican Revolution
Rather than First Chief Carranza being named president of Mexico at the convention, General Eulalio Gutiérrez was chosen for a term of 20 days. The convention declared Carranza in rebellion against it. Civil war resumed, this time between revolutionary armies that had fought in a united cause to oust Huerta in 1913–1914. Although during the Convention Constitutionalist general Alvaro Obregón had attempted to be a moderate force and had been the one to convey the Convention's call for Carranza to resign, when the convention forces declared Carranza in rebellion against it, Obregón supported Carranza rather than Villa and Zapata.
Irreligion in Mexico
For most of Mexico's 300 years as the Imperial Spanish colony of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1519–1821), the Roman Catholic Church was an active political actor in colonial politics. In the early period of the Mexican nation, the vast wealth and great political influence of the Church spurred a powerful anti-clerical movement, which found political expression in the Liberal party. Yet, during the middle of the 19th century, there were reforms limiting the political power of the Mexican Catholic Church. In response, the Church supported seditious Conservative rebels to overthrow the anti-clerical Liberal government of President Benito Juárez; and so welcomed the anti-Juárez French intervention in Mexico (1861), which established the military occupation of Mexico by the Second French Empire, of Emperor Napoleon III.
Mexican War of Independence
The reinstatement of the liberal Constitution of Cadiz in 1820 caused a change of mind among the elite groups who had supported Spanish rule. Monarchist Creoles affected by the constitution decided to support the independence of New Spain; they sought an alliance with the former insurgent resistance. Agustín de Iturbide led the military arm of the conspirators and in early 1821 he met Vicente Guerrero. Both proclaimed the Plan of Iguala, which called for the union of all insurgent factions and was supported by both the aristocracy and clergy of New Spain. It called for a monarchy in an independent Mexico. Finally, the independence of Mexico was achieved on September 27, 1821.
Mexico
On September 16, 1810, a "loyalist revolt" against the ruling junta was declared by priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, in the small town of Dolores, Guanajuato. This event, known as the Cry of Dolores (Spanish: "Grito de Dolores") is commemorated each year, on September 16, as Mexico's independence day. The first insurgent group was formed by Hidalgo, the Spanish viceregal army captain Ignacio Allende, the militia captain Juan Aldama and "La Corregidora" Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez. Hidalgo and some of his soldiers were captured and executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, on July 31, 1811. Following his death, the leadership was assumed by priest José María Morelos, who occupied key southern cities.
Mexican Democratic Party
The Mexican Democratic Party (, PDM) was an ultra-Catholic social conservative political party in Mexico that existed between 1979 and 1997.
First Mexican Republic
The Spanish overseas possession of the Viceroyalty of New Spain lasted for 300 years, from 1521 with the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and the foundation of Mexico City until the collapse of the viceroyalty in following years of civil war and military stalemate. An insurgency for independence from Spain lasted from the initial 1810 mass revolt, led by secular cleric Miguel Hidalgo and continued under another secular cleric, José María Morelos, and carried on the hot country of Mexico's south by Vicente Guerrero. Augustin Iturbide, a royalist military officer born in New Spain of Spanish parents, made a strategic alliance with Guerrero under the Plan of Iguala, in which the former foes fought in tandem to oust Spanish rule. The plan proclaimed Mexico a nation-state; Roman Catholicism as the sole religion; the equality of Spaniards and American-born Spaniards and abolished legal racial designations, and was to be a constitutional monarchy. On September 27, 1821, Mexico obtained its sovereignty under the Treaty of Córdoba, which recognized New Spain as an independent empire, which took the name the Mexican Empire.
Guadalupe Victoria
On 2 October 1824, Guadalupe Victoria was declared the first president of the United Mexican States for the period 1825–1829. On 8 October, the president and vice-president Nicolás Bravo swore the constitution.
Guadalupe Victoria took office as interim president from 10 October 1824 to 31 March 1825. His constitutional term in office began on 1 April 1825. The inauguration was solemn and austere as required by his republicanism. That day, Victoria affirmed "¡La Independencia se afianzará con mi sangre y la libertad se perderá con mi vida!" ("Independence will be reinforced with my blood and freedom will be lost with my life").
Institutional Revolutionary Party
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (, PRI) is a Mexican political party founded in 1929 that held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000, first as the National Revolutionary Party (, PNR), then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution (, PRM), and finally renaming itself as the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1946.
Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) which had recently ended was assisted by agents of the Comintern organization (1919–1943) which had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (1922–1991), even though after the fall of the Soviet Union and the organization officially suspended, they had laid the foundation for Marxism-Leninism. They were looking to replace the free and secular education established in the Constitution of 1917 in Mexico, therefore seeking to make socialist education become obligatory in all levels of education in the country. Articles 3 and 24 of the Constitution enshrine respectively secular education and freedom of belief. Subsequent president General Álvaro Obregón Salido continued and the subsequent Maximato, preaching the class struggle, the abolition of private property and socialist education in official circles.
Francisco I. Madero
In February 1911, Madero entered Chihuahua and led 130 men in an attack on Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. Madero was reported wounded in the fighting (although this was later denied) but was saved by his personal bodyguard and Revolutionary general Máximo Castillo. He spent the next several months as the head of the Mexican Revolution. Madero successfully imported arms from the United States, with the American government under William Howard Taft doing little to halt the flow of arms to the Mexican revolutionaries. By April the Revolution had spread to eighteen states, including Morelos where the leader was Emiliano Zapata.
On 1 April 1911, Porfirio Díaz claimed that he had heard the voice of the people of Mexico, replaced his cabinet, and agreed to restitution of the lands of the dispossessed. Madero did not believe this statement and instead demanded the resignation of President Díaz and Vice-President Ramón Corral. Madero then attended a meeting with the other revolutionary leaders – they agreed to a fourteen-point plan which called for pay for revolutionary soldiers; the release of political prisoners; and the right of the revolutionaries to name several members of cabinet. Madero was moderate, however. He believed that the revolutionaries should proceed cautiously so as to minimize bloodshed and should strike a deal with Díaz if possible. In May, Madero wanted a ceasefire, but his fellow revolutionaries Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa disagreed and went ahead with an attack on Ciudad Juárez. The revolutionaries won this battle decisively and on 21 May 1911, the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez was signed.
Latin American wars of independence
Independence in Mexico was a protracted struggle from 1808 until the fall of royal government in 1821 and the establishment of independent Mexico. In the Viceroyalty of New Spain, as elsewhere in Spanish America in 1808, reacted to the unexpected French invasion of the Iberian peninsula and the ouster of the Bourbon king, replaced by Joseph Bonaparte. Local American-born Spaniards saw the opportunity to seize control from Viceroy José de Iturrigaray who may well have been sympathetic to creoles aspirations. Iturrigaray was ousted by pro-royalists. A few from among the creole elites sought independence, including Juan Aldama, and Ignacio Allende, and the secular parish priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Hidalgo made a proclamation in his home parish of Dolores, which was not recorded in writing at the time, but denounced bad government and "gachupines" (pejorative for peninsular-born Spaniards), and declared independence. The unorganized hordes following Hidalgo wrought destruction on property and the lives of whites in the region of the Bajío. Hidalgo was caught, defrocked, and executed in 1811, along with Allende. Their heads remained on display until 1821. His former student José María Morelos continued the rebellion and was himself caught and killed in 1815. The struggle of Mexican insurgents continued under the leadership of Vicente Guerrero and Guadalupe Victoria. From 1815 to 1820 there was a stalemate in New Spain, with royalist forces unable to defeat the insurgents and the insurgents unable to expand beyond their narrow territory in the southern region. Again, events in Spain intervened, with an uprising of military men against Ferdinand VII and the restoration of the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812, which mandated a constitutional monarchy and curtailed the power of the Roman Catholic Church. The monarch had repudiated the constitution once the Spanish monarchy was restored in 1814. For conservatives in New Spain, these changed political circumstances threatened the institutions of church and state. Royal military officer Agustín de Iturbide seized the opportunity to lead, making an alliance with his former enemy Guerrero. Iturbide proclaimed the Plan de Iguala, which called for independence, equality of peninsular and American-born Spaniards, and a monarchy with a prince from Spain as king. He persuaded the insurgent Guerrero to form an alliance with him and creating the Army of the Three Guarantees. Crown rule in New Spain collapsed when the incoming Viceroy Juan O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba recognizing Mexico's sovereignty. With no European monarch presenting himself for the crown of Mexico, Iturbide himself was proclaimed emperor Agustin I in 1822. He was overthrown in 1823 and Mexico was established as a republic. Decades of political and economic instability ensued which resulted in a decline in population.
Mexican Movement of 1968
The Mexican Movement of 1968, the Mexican Student Movement or the Student Movement (in Spanish, Movimiento Estudiantil) was a social movement conducted by students from National Autonomous University of Mexico, National Polytechnic Institute, El Colegio de México, Chapingo Autonomous University, Ibero-American University, Universidad La Salle and Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla, among others grouped in the National Strike Council; and supported by the Mexican civil society as workers, farmers, housewives, merchants, intellectuals, artists and teachers. The movement had a list of claims to the President and Government of Mexico for specific students' actions such as the release of political prisoners and the reduction or elimination of authoritarianism. In the background, the movement was motivated by the global Protests of 1968 and struggled for a democratic change in the country, more political and civil liberties, the reduction of inequality and the resignation of the government of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that they considered authoritarian.
Magonista rebellion of 1911
The Magonista Rebellion of 1911 was an early uprising of the Mexican Revolution organized by the Liberal Party of Mexico (known in Spanish as the "Partido Liberal Mexicano" or PLM), which was only successful in northern Baja California. It is named after Ricardo Flores Magón, one of the leaders of the PLM. The Magonistas controlled Tijuana and Mexicali for about six months, beginning with the "liberation" of Mexicali on January 29, 1911. The rebellion was launched against the rule of Porfirio Díaz but was put down by forces loyal to Francisco I. Madero. Acting on a tip from Madero's agents, leaders of the Magonista movement were arrested in the United States.
Revolution Day (Mexico)
The Mexican Revolution brought the overthrow of liberal Army general Porfirio Díaz after 35 years as president of Mexico (1876-1911). In the 1910 presidential election, wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero opposed Díaz. Díaz jailed Madero, who then escaped, issuing the Plan of San Luis Potosí on October 6, 1910. In that plan, Madero declared the results of the 1910 election fraudulent, nullified them, asserted that he was provisional president, and called for Mexicans to rise up against Díaz on November 20, 1910. He wrote "Throw the usurpers from power, recover your rights as free men, and remember that our ancestors left us a heritage of glory which we are not able to stain. Be as they were: invincible in war, magnanimous in victory."
United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico H.L. Wilson helped to plot the February 1913 coup d'état, during the Ten Tragic Days ("la decena trágica)", which overthrew Francisco I. Madero. However, the Ambassador might have done this without the explicit approval of lame duck President Taft, but Ambassador Wilson had secured the support of the foreign diplomatic corps in Mexico, especially the British, German, and French envoys, for the coup and lobbied for U.S. recognition of the new head of state, General Victoriano Huerta.