Chapter 27: Revolts and Dictatorship PDF

# Chapter 27: Revolts and Dictatorship Obstruct the Democratic Overture ## Revolts Against the New Government - Emiliano Zapata was the first to pronounce against Madero's regime. - In November 1911 the Zapatistas promulgated their famous Plan de Ayala. - Otilio Montaño, a schoolteacher from Ayala...

# Chapter 27: Revolts and Dictatorship Obstruct the Democratic Overture ## Revolts Against the New Government - Emiliano Zapata was the first to pronounce against Madero's regime. - In November 1911 the Zapatistas promulgated their famous Plan de Ayala. - Otilio Montaño, a schoolteacher from Ayala, further developed and articulated Zapata's goals. - After withdrawing recognition of Madero and recognizing Chihuahuan Pascual Orozco as the titular head of the rebellion, the plan spelled out its program of agrarian reform. - The lands, woods and water that the landlords, científicos or bosses have usurped ... will be immediately restored to the villages or citizens who hold the corresponding titles to them. - The usurpers who believe they have a right to those properties may present their claims to special courts that will be established on the triumph of the Revolution. - Because the great majority of Mexicans own nothing more than the land they walk on, and are unable to improve their social condition in any way ... because lands, woods, and water are monopolized in a few hands ... one-third of these properties will be expropriated, with prior indemnification, so that the villages and citizens of Mexico may obtain ejidos, townsites, and fields. - The armed conflict began immediately and quickly spread from Morelos to neighboring Guerrero, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Mexico, and even into the Federal District. - Madero's federal commanders could not contain the rebellion as the Zapatista army continued to grow. - By early 1912, Zapata had disrupted railroad and telegraph service, taken over a number of towns, repeatedly defeated the federals and had the government on the run. - At approximately the same time, General Bernardo Reyes launched a second movement in the north in December 1911. - Madero feared that General Reyes still enjoyed wide base of support but few northern Mexicans wanted a return to the past. - Realizing that his sluggish revolution was not garnering sufficient support, on Christmas Day, Reyes surrendered to a detachment of rurales. - The commander of Mexico's third military zone, General Jerónimo Treviño, sent Reyes first to prison in Monterrey and then transferred him to the Prisión Militar de Santiago Tlaltelolco in Mexico City to await trial for treason. - At the end of the year, a third revolt broke out against Madero in Chihuahua. - Emilio Vásquez Gómez, believing that he and his brother Francisco had been unfairly treated in the last elections, launched his movement calling for Madero's ouster from office. - At the end of January, Madero was shocked to learn that the Vasquistas had captured Ciudad Juárez. - The president knew full well the significance of this border city, the location of his own successful revolt. - Madero commissioned the Chihuahua commander to take charge of the government campaigns. - For the rank and file of the Vásquez Gómez army, Orozco, not Madero, had been responsible for the overthrow of Díaz. - Orozco had recruited the troops and led them in battle. - He was a symbol of Chihuahua manhood and living proof that a poor, indifferently educated northerner could humble a professional army trained in the big city. - The Vasquistas, not wishing to fight Orozco, agreed to meet with him. - In the simple, folksy idiom of the north, Orozco made an impassioned speech calling for national unity and persuaded the rebel army to lay down arms without firing another shot. - A few months later the most serious antigovernment movement broke out in the north, by the same man who had just called for national unity and saved Madero from the Vasquista offensive. - Pascual Orozco drew on a mixed base of rebel support, including many who called for social change. - It also enjoyed the conservative financial support of the Terrazas clique in Chihuahua, who believed they could control the movement once it triumphed. - The Plan Orozquista, dated March 25, 1912, was the most comprehensive call for reform yet voiced from Mexican soil. - It caustically attacked Madero for failing to abide by his own principles as set forth in the Plan de San Luis Potosí, citing state and local government corruption, nepotism, and favoritism. - Not only had Madero's cousin, Rafael Hernández, been awarded the critical cabinet position of secretary of development, but his uncle, Ernesto Madero, had been made secretary of the treasury; a relative by marriage, José González Salas, served as secretary of war; brother Gustavo Madero and four other members of the family were in congress; brother Raúl Madero received a series of government-supported military assignments; another relative was on the Supreme Court; two were in the postal service, and yet another was an undersecretary in the cabinet. - Government army uniforms came from cotton cloth manufactured in Madero mills, while ammunition was purchased from cousin José Aguilar's munitions plant in Monterrey. - The Plan Orozquista embraced social reform, drawing its inspiration from the Liberal Plan of 1906. - It called for a ten-hour workday, restrictions on child labor, improved working conditions, higher wages, and the immediate suppression of the tiendas de raya. - Anticipating the surge of economic nationalism that would sweep over Mexico in the next two decades, it proposed the immediate nationalization of the railroads. - Agrarian reform also figured prominently. - Persons who had resided on their land for twenty years were to be given title to it, while all lands illegally seized from the peasantry were to be returned. - All lands owned by the government were to be distributed, and, most important, land owned by the hacendados, but not regularly cultivated, would be expropriated. - With alarming speed, Orozco amassed a large army — some eight thousand strong — and began marching south to Mexico City. - Capturing federally held towns along the way, the rebels prepared themselves for a major showdown. - The anticipated battle occurred at Rellano, close to the Chihuahua-Durango border. - Madero's secretary of war, José González Salas, opted to command the government forces personally, only to be humiliated by Orozco's untrained rebels. - As the federals retreated in disarray, González Salas, fearful of public rebuke, committed suicide. - With panic growing in Mexico City, Madero named Victoriano Huerta to head a new government offensive which he launched in late May 1912. - By sheer chance, the artillery duel once again occurred on the fields of Rellano, but with different results on this occasion. - Not only was Huerta a better field commander than his predecessor, but the Orozquistas were handicapped by a lack of ammunition. - Huerta pushed them back to the north and in the process temporarily saved the teetering Madero government. - Madero had no time for rejoicing — by early October 1912 a fifth serious rebellion broke out against him. - This time, Félix Díaz, the nephew of Don Porfirio, called an army together in Veracruz. - The Felicista movement comprised many disgruntled supporters of the former dictator. - Félix Díaz appealed to the army and suggested that Madero had trampled on its honor by passing over many competent career officers and placing self-made revolutionary generals in charge of key garrisons. - Only the troops stationed in Veracruz came to Díaz's support; other army units isolated the rebels in Veracruz, forcing them to surrender. - A hastily conceived court-martial found Díaz guilty of treason and sentenced him to death, but a compassionate Madero commuted the sentence to imprisonment. - Díaz was taken under arms to the capital and placed in the Federal District penitentiary. - Madero’s generosity was in now way reciprocated. - Within two months, Félix Díaz in one Mexico City prison had established contact with Bernardo Reyes in another, and the two were plotting to overthrow the government. - This sixth rebellion would succeed, and Madero would lose not only his office but, a victim of his own ideals, his life as well. ## The Overthrow of Madero - The coup that began in Mexico City on February 9, 1913, drastically altered the course of the Mexican revolution. - The capital had thus far been spared the ravages of the war that had engulfed much of the nation since November 1910. - Now Mexico City residents would be given practical instruction the full destructive significance of civil war. - Early in the morning of February 9, General Manuel Mondragón, supported by several artillery regiments and military cadets, released Bernardo Reyes and Félix Díaz from their respective prisons and marched on the National Palace. - Reyes, sporting a fancy military uniform and mounted on a white horse, led the charge, and was felled by one of the first machine gun blasts. - The rebel leadership then devolved on Félix Díaz. - When loyal government troops repulsed the assault on the National Palace, Díaz led his troops westward across the city and installed his army in the Ciudadela, an old and well-fortified army arsenal. - Madero, disregarding the advice of several confidants, named General Victoriano Huerta to command his troops. - It proved to be a momentous decision. - For the next 10 days — the Decena Trágica — Mexico City became a labyrinth of barricades, improvised fortifications, and trenches. - Artillery fire exchanged between the rebels in the Ciudadela and the government troops in the National Palace destroyed buildings and set fires. - As commercial establishments closed their doors for the duration, consumer goods became scarce and people panicked. - Downtown streets were strewn with burning cars, runaway horses, and abandoned artillery pieces. - Live electric wires dangled precariously from their poles. - Looters broke store windows and carried off wares with complete impunity. - On one occasion, an artillery barrage opened a breach in the wall of the Belén prison, and hundreds of inmates scurried through the opening to freedom, while a few decided to remain. - With neither side able to gain a clear military advantage, civilian casualties mounted into the thousands and bodies began to bloat in the streets. - Foreign residents sought the sanctuary of embassies, but not all made it in time. - Most traffic came to a halt, as only ambulances, military vehicles, and diplomatic automobiles, identified by special flags, moved on the streets. - On February 17, after nine days of constant fighting, Madero summoned Huerta and asked when the fighting could be expected to cease. - Huerta assured him that peace would be restored to the beleaguered city the following day. - The residents of the capital were awakened early on the morning of February 18 by the sounds of artillery and machine gun fire, just as they had been for the previous nine days, but in the afternoon the clamor of war stopped. - Huerta had decided to change sides. - He withdrew recognition of the federal government and dispatched General Aureliano Blanquet to the National Palace to arrest the president. - Blanquet encountered Madero in one of the patios and, with revolver in hand, proclaimed, "You are my prisoner, Mr. President." - Madero retorted, "You are a traitor." - Blanquet simply reaffirmed, "You are my prisoner." - Within a half-hour, Vice President Pino Suárez, Madero's brother Gustavo, and most of the cabinet had been arrested as well. - The agreement according to which Huerta joined the rebels is known as the Pact of the Embassy because the final negotiations were conducted under the aegis of the American ambassador to Mexico City, Henry Lane Wilson. - A typical diplomat of the age of dollar diplomacy, Wilson saw his role as protector of US business interests. - Throughout the Madero presidency, he had meddled shamelessly in Mexico’s internal affairs, and during the Decena Trágica he played an active part in charting the course of events. - The German ambassador to Mexico, Admiral Paul von Hintz, recorded the daily events of the 1912-1914 period, along with the activities of Wilson and other schemers. - On one occasion, in concert with the British, German, and Spanish ministers, the American ambassador even demanded Madero's resignation, alleging as his reason the tremendous damage to foreign property in Mexico City. - After being rebuffed by the Mexican president, Wilson changed his tactics and worked actively to bring Huerta and Díaz to an accord. - On the evening of February 18, the two generals met with Wilson at the American embassy and hammered out the pact that justified the coup and made Victoriano Huerta provisional president. ## Huerta - Victoriano Huerta was born of a Huichol Indian mother and a mestizo father in a small Jalisco village. - Attending a poor local school run by the parish priest, he learned to read and write and showed some natural talent for science and mathematics. - As a teenager, he served as an aide to a career general who used his influence in Mexico City to have Huerta accepted at the National Military Academy. - Despite his mediocre educational background, he did well as a cadet and received his commission in 1876 as a second lieutenant assigned to the army corps of engineers. - Huerta's prerevolutionary career coincided almost exactly with the Díaz dictatorship, and he became an effective agent of Don Porfirio's system of enforced peace. - During the thirty-four-year Porfiriato, Huerta fought in the north against the Yaqui, in the south against the Maya, and in the central part of the country against other Mexicans unhappy with the autocratic regime. - Encountering much success on the field of battle, he rose rapidly in the ranks and by the turn of the century became a brigadier-general. - National prominence and some notoriety engulfed him for the first time in the summer of 1911 when interim President León de la Barra dispatched him to Morelos to enforce the demobilization of the Zapatista troops. - When Bernardo Reyes and Félix Díaz planned the military coup of February 1913, their emissaries approached Huerta and solicited his support. - He refused the invitation, however, not out of loyalty to the Madero administration but rather because he wanted the leadership for himself. - When Bernardo Reyes died during the first major encounter, the situation changed. - Huerta dallied for a week, and having determined that he would be able to control Félix Díaz, made his decision to change sides. - Within a few days, federal generals and state governors began to pledge support for the new regime. - A group of talented statesmen and intellectuals accepted cabinet portfolios. - Sanitation workers started to scour the bloodstained streets of the capital and to attack a 10-day backlog of garbage. - Red Cross units tried to identify hundreds of decaying corpses, and electricians repaired wires dangling dangerously from their poles. - Restoring order, however, did not proceed well everywhere. ## Rebellion and Militarization - The first genuinely ominous sign came from the northeast where Coahuila governor Venustiano Carranza, an ardent Madero supporter, announced his decision not to recognize the new regime. - Carranza issued a circular telegram to other state governors exhorting them to follow his good example. - Within a few weeks, he found support in Chihuahua and Sonora. - Pancho Villa assumed military leadership of the anti-Huerta movement in Chihuahua, while Alvaro Obregón, a man of considerable military talent, took charge of the antigovernment operations in neighboring Sonora. - The alliance of the northern revolutionaries and their formal pronouncement of defection, was sealed in late march when representatives from the three states affixed their signatures to the Plan de Guadalupe. - After withdrawing recognition of the Huerta government, the plan named Venustiano Carranza as "First Chief” of the Constitutionalist Army and provided that he, or someone designated by him, would occupy the interim presidency upon Huerta's defeat. - An exclusively political document, the plan embodied no program of social reform. - In southern Mexico, Huerta encountered an implacable enemy of a different sort. - Emiliano Zapata angrily rejected Huerta’s invitation to pledge support of the government. - In fact, the southern rebel arrested and subsequently executed the federal peace commissioners sent to garner his allegiance. - Zapata declared himself in rebellion because he saw no hope that the federal government under Huerta would begin to restore the village lands in Morelos. - Not trusting the Constitutionalist dedication to agrarian reform either, Zapata never allied himself with the anti-Huerta movement in the north. - But by forcing the government to divert some of its war effort from the north to the south, Zapata placed additional military pressure on the new regime. - Facing rebellion in the north and in Morelos, Huerta announced brazenly to the congress that he would reestablish peace with the federal army of fifty thousand troops, at any cost. - Nonetheless, in March and April, the Constitucionalists scored impressive victories in Sonora and Chihuahua, while in the south Emiliano Zapata had done the same. - The psychology of the civil war changed drastically in May when First Chief Carranza, in a singularly intemperate decree, announced that federal soldiers who fell into rebel hands would be executed summarily. - Huerta responded that he would militarize Mexico to the teeth. - Factories and stores not related to the war effort were required to close on Sundays so that civilian employees could be given military training. - Railroads left civilian passengers and freight standing in the stations so that military personnel and hardware could be shipped to where it was needed. - The National Arms Factory, the National Artillery Workshops, and the National Power Factory received new equipment to increase their productive capacities. ­ - Scarcely a week passed without a showy military parade or public display of the latest military equipment, along with Huerta sporting his favorite dress uniforms replete with ribbons covering the left side of his jacket and medals draped from his neck. - In the late summer of 1913, school after school found its governing regulations changed to provide for the mandatory wearing of military uniforms. - Training in the military arts and sciences was added to the curricula. - Most importantly, the president decreed constant increases in the size of the federal army — from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand and finally to two hundred fifty thousand, or about twelve times the number of troops available to Porfirio Díaz when the revolution broke out. ## Domestic Reforms - Amazingly, despite the military, economic, and diplomatic pressures the regime faced, Huerta and his advisors found some time for domestic programs. - The enemies of the dictatorship labeled them counterrevolutionary, an attempt to reincarnate the age of Díaz. - But examination of the regime’s social programs reveals that they were anything but that. - While Porfirio Díaz had never allocated over 7.2 percent of his budget for education and Madero had raised the percentage slightly to 7.8 percent, Huerta projected a 9.9 percent allocation for educational services. - Still inadequate, Huerta did manage the constuction of one hundred thirty-one new rural schools with seats for some ten thousand new students. - Secretary of Education Nemesio García Naranjo initiated new curriculum at the National Preparatory School. - Breaking sharply with the positivist tradition of Gabino Barreda, García Naranjo made more room for the study of literature, history, and philosophy. - He did not abandon the sciences but argued persuasively that the other branches of learning should not be sacrificed to them. - By creating a reasonable balance between the arts and the sciences, the secretary struck an important first blow at the científico philosophy of education. - The anticientífico posture of the regime manifested itself in Indian policy as well. - Administration spokesman Jorge Vera Estañol early championed indigenismo arguing that national unity was impossible when millions of Indians were estranged from the rest of the population by language, customs, diet, and life expectancy. - He advocated, without sufficient funding, a rural education program intended to bring the Indian into the mainstream of national life. - The regime initiated a modest agrarian reform program by distributing free seed to anyone who asked for it and by expanding the activities of the agricultural school in Mexico City. - Of greater practical significance, Huerta authorized the restoration of 78 ejidos to the Yaqui and Mayo Indians of Sonora. - He instructed Eduardo Tamariz, Mexico’s secretary of agriculture, to begin studying the problem of land redistribution. - Tamariz could find nothing in the Constitution of 1857 that authorized the expropriation of land, so he found his solution in the taxation provisions of the constitution. If taxes were increased on the large haciendas, the land would be less valuable for speculative purposes, and hacendados would have to consider sale. - Without congressional authorization, Huerta went ahead on his own and decreed an increase in land taxes. - In the areas of labor, church policy, and foreign relations the Huerta regime also departed from the models of the Porfiriato. - Not a social revolution, Huerta’s programs were not counterrevolutionary either, according to Huerta’s principal biographer, Michael Meyer. - While it is true that Huerta’s abuse of political power can justifiably be likened to Don Porfirio’s authoritarianism, nevertheless, in the larger social sense both Huerta and his advisers recognized that the days of Díaz had passed. ## US Intervention and the Fall of Huerta - By the spring of 1914, Huerta, losing his wars on both the military and the economic fronts, faced a steadily deteriorating relationship with the United States. - Early in 1914, President Wilson beefed up the American fleet stationed off Mexican waters. - In April, a seemingly insignificant event augured the most serious US-Mexico dispute since the war of the mid-nineteenth century. - Captain Ralph T. Earle of the USS Dolphin, stationed off the coast of Tampico, ordered a small landing party to go ashore, ostensibly for supplies. - Still in government hands, Tampico had been attacked by Constitutionalists several days before, and the federal forces awaited a more concerted assault. - When US sailors wandered into a restricted dock area, the government ordered their arrest on the spot. - Within an hour, orders came for the sailors' release, accompanied by an official apology. - But Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander of the naval forces off Tampico, considered the apology insufficient and demanded more. - Since the boat carrying the sailors to shore allegedly flew the American flag, Mayo insisted that the Mexican government hoist the American flag at some prominent place on shore and present a twenty-one-gun salute to it. - President Wilson considered the demands reasonable and prepared himself to make the incident a casus belli should Huerta not publicly recant in exactly the manner prescribed. - Huerta’s secretary of foreign relations insisted that the small landing craft had not carried the flag but agreed to the salute on the condition that the United States return the salute to the Mexican flag. - The White House considered the rejoinder impertinent, for both President Wilson and Secretary of State Bryan realized that a US salute to the Mexican flag could be considered tantamount to recognizing the Huerta regime. - With neither side knowing exactly what to do next, the stalemate broke when the US consul in Veracruz wired Washington that a German ship, the Ypiranga, would arrive in that port on April 21 with a large shipment of arms for Huerta. - President Wilson gave immediate orders for a naval occupation of Veracruz. - The marines took the city, but Mexican casualties mounted into the hundreds, including many noncombatants of both sexes. - An indignant public outcry arose from Mexico City. - Congressmen denounced the United States, and mobs looted American-owned businesses, tore down the statue of George Washington, and threatened tourists. - Mexican newspapers urged retaliation against the “Pigs of Yanquilandia.” - In Monterrey, the US flag was ripped from the consulate and burned on the spot. - But in the capital, the Stars and Stripes flag was tied to the tail of a donkey and used to sweep clean the streets of the central plaza. - President Wilson’s attempt to rid Mexico of a dictator almost backfired. - Venustiano Carranza and the majority of his Constitucionalists, the supposed beneficiaries of the Veracruz intervention, expressed their strong disapproval of the blatant violation of Mexican sovereignty. - Huerta; however; could not capitalize upon their displeasure, and his call for all Mexicans to lay aside internal differences and present a united front went unheeded. - Even the initial indignation expressed in Mexico City soon dissipated as the US troops, despite rumors to the contrary, did not march on Mexico City as they had in 1847. - As Huerta called in his troops to make a show of force against the Americans, the Constitutionalists in the north and the Zapatistas in the south quickly moved into the military vacuums. - By the early summer, with Pancho Villa’s capture of Zacatecas, Huerta’s military position had become untenable. - The continued occupation of Veracruz meant that revenues from the customhouse were stopped before they reached the federal treasury. - Recognizing that the diplomatic, economic, and military pressures had all conspired to his disadvantage , Huerta resigned on July 8, 1914. In his statement of resignation, he placed the prime responsibility for what had happened to Mexico on the Puritan who resided in the White House. - Woodrow Wilson bears much of the responsibility for Huerta’s overthrow. He meddled shamelessly in Mexico’s internal affairs and, without the semblance of a threat to US security, shed innocent Mexican blood to effectuate the foreign policy objectives he deemed opportune. - Nonetheless, Wilson cannot be held accountable for the larger calamity that had struck the Mexican nation. - Not all Mexico’s domestic ills were orphans of US bullets as Mexicans had not yet agreed on the meaning of their revolution. - Francisco Madero's well-meaning but ineffectual experiment with democracy had failed when he had urged caution and moderation on the burning social issues of the day. - Huerta’s dictatorship failed as well. - While he was not unwilling to give the social reformers the chance to institute change, many Mexicans could no longer bring themselves to accommodate another brutal dictatorship that exacted order at the expense of liberty. ­ - The number of options still open was being reduced, but he better day had not yet dawned.