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Francisco I. Madero was a wealthy landowner and intellectual, educated in Europe and the United States. His call for revolution was answered by local strongmen and peasant leaders from all over Mexico. Many of the cabecillas who rose in revolt had no idea who Madero was, or what his revolution was about. The majority rose to redress local grievances and to abolish the Díaz stranglehold on Mexico. Madero cobbled together an army of cabecillas in northern Mexico. In late May 1911, with the capture of the city of Juárez, Chihuahua, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, Madero won his revolution. |
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On May 26, 1911, Porfirio Díaz resigned the presidency and fled into exile in France. A number of his cronies went with him, as well as a good portion of the Mexican national treasury.
Idealistic and incredibly naïve, both politically and militarily, Madero refused to assume the presidency or to disband the defeated federal army. In accordance with the constitution, and the terms of the Treaty of Juárez, Francisco León de la Barra, assumed the post of Interim President until an election could be called. The Díaz legislature and bureaucracy were allowed to remain in place under de la Barra. As the hated federales began to oversee the disbandment of victorious rebel units, new rebellions began to break out across Mexico. From June through October, Madero traveled back and forth across Mexico, politicking and meeting with rebellious cabecillas in attempts to convince them to keep the peace. Although usually well received, Madero found it impossible to satisfy the demands of most of the cabecillas, and rebellion became characteristic of his early administration. To add to the unhappiness of his victorious rebel army, virtually none of his military leaders were appointed to political posts. Instead Madero appointed educated middle- and upper-class supporters, most of whom had not fought for the revolution at all.
By 1912, Madero was forced into the position of using the same methods as the hated Porfirio Díaz had to keep the peace. Repression of local rebellion by the federales and the rurales painfully recalled the “bad old days”. |
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Successful Rebellion / Failed Revolution 1910 – 1913 |
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Three cabecillas had risen to national prominence during the Madero revolution. Pascual Orozco led the Army of Chihuahua, that brought Madero victory over Díaz at Ciudad Juárez. Orozco was a teamster and local leader from Ciudad Guerrero, Chihuahua. He had commanded Madero’s army and been the instrument of his success. When Madero disbanded his army, Orozco longed to be named to the president’s cabinet. Instead, he was shunted off to Sonora to take command of the rurales in that state. Embittered by the neglect of his president, and flattered by Porfirian elites remaining in Chihuahua, Orozco resigned his post and returned to Chihuahua to organize a rebellion against Madero. |
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Installed as the constitutionally elected President of Mexico on November 6, 1911, Madero continued his program of disbanding his revolutionary forces. The federal army was employed to garrison towns near where rebel units refused to lay down their arms. Being forced to disarm by the army that they had defeated was more than many rebel leaders could stomach. Although Madero convinced large numbers of his veterans to accept positions in the rurales, this move did little to relieve the animosity he had generated by retaining the federal army.
As for Zapata, Madero refused to institute land redistribution and ordered the federal army to continue its operations against the zapatistas. Two weeks after Madero assumed office, Zapata issued his Plan de Ayala, calling for war to obtain land redistribution and denouncing Madero as a traitor to the revolution.
With the national treasury seriously depleted by the departure of General Díaz, and a major guerilla war in progress in south-central Mexico, Madero was hard pressed to keep the government fiscally afloat. Foreign loans relieved the pressure to some extent, but in March 1912, Pascual Orozco rebelled with a significant sized force and Madero’s government and military costs soared once more. |
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Orozco’s second-in-command had been Colonel Francisco “Pancho” Villa. Colorful and charismatic, Villa made “good copy” for the journalists covering the revolution in Chihuahua. He made no bones about having been a bandit before he “saw the light” of the Madero Revolution. His personal bravery and habit of leading his fighters from the front made him a hero to the Mexican poor and to many North Americans as well. Colonel Villa “retired” to Chihuahua to open a butcher shop at the end of the Madero revolution. When Orozco rebelled, Villa remained faithful to Madero and joined with the hated federales to fight Orozco.
In the south, a charismatic local leader named Emiliano Zapata had gathered a peasant army with the sole aim of reclaiming lands taken from them by the wealthy hacendados, the hacienda owners. His Southern Liberation Army fought guerrilla-style rather than in the large formations of a conventional army. With the successful conclusion of the Madero Revolution, Zapata withheld his army to wait and see what Madero would do about the question of peasant lands. Madero’s revolutionary plan had not address land redistribution, and he was reluctant to include such a program following his victory. Difficult negotiations with Zapata were made almost impossible when in August 1911, President de la Barra sent General Victoriano Huerta with federal army reinforcements into the State of Morelos with specific orders to put down Zapata’s rebellion. |
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The campaign against Orozco was led by General Victoriano Huerta. A professional soldier from the Territory of Tepic, and veteran of the wars against the Yaqui and Maya Indians, he had earned a reputation for pitiless brutality. To augment the federal army, President Madero called for the assistance of the cabecillas who had fought for his revolution in northern Mexico. The Madero rebels who joined the federal army as Irregulars included Colonel Francisco Villa. Huerta’s disdain for the Irregulars was plain from the beginning, and he made no secret of the fact as he assigned them the most hazardous tasks to conserve his federal soldiers. In spite of the difficulties in dealing with Huerta, Villa performed in such an exceptional manner that he received a field promotion to Brigadier General of Irregulars. |
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His new rank gave Villa a false sense of security, for in early June, Huerta had him arrested for insubordination and theft and summarily sentenced him to be executed by a firing squad. Only the personal intervention of President Madero’s family saved Villa’s life.
Sent to prison in Mexico City, Villa constantly attempted to communicate with the president, but Madero ignored him. When Villa learned of a counter-revolutionary plan for a coup by the federal army in Mexico City, he became frantic to warn the president. Madero continued to ignore him. Aware that a successful coup would mean that his life would be forfeit, Villa escaped from prison in late December 1912 and made his way to El Paso, Texas.
After little more than one ineffectual year in office, Madero and his administration fell victim to a federal army coup. On February 9, 1913, the army rose against him. Madero named General Victoriano Huerta to command the forces loyal to him, unaware that Huerta was one of the primary plotters. Huerta put on a show of loyal resistance to the rebels. For ten tragic days, he and the rebels bombarded each other with artillery. Casualties were light among the contending forces, but heavy among the civilian population of Mexico City. Using troops loyal to President Madero, Huerta also staged infantry assaults on the heavily fortified rebel headquarters, which thinned the ranks of Madero’s loyal soldiers. When it finally dawned on Madero that Huerta was a leader of the coup, it was too late. He attempted to replace him with General Aureliano Blanquet, only to be arrested by Blanquet and taken into custody at the National Palace.
On February 19th, Madero and his Vice-President were forced to resign their offices. In a cynical display of constitutional nicety, the Mexican Chamber of Deputies appointed the Secretary for Foreign Relations, Pedro Lascuráin, Interim President. President Lascuráin’s first appointment was of General Huerta as Minister of Governance. After serving for all of forty-five minutes, President Lascuráin resigned his office and, in accordance with the rules of constitutional succession, the Chamber of Deputies appointed General Victoriano Huerta to the presidency of the Republic! This perversion of the constitution fooled only those who wished to be fooled.
President Victoriano Huerta immediately demanded oaths of allegiance from the governors of the states of Mexico. Most of these men had been elected along with President Madero and represented his party in their state. Even so, the majority knuckled under to Huerta.
Four days after the successful coup, on the night of February 22nd, President Madero and Vice-President Pino Suárez were taken from the National Palace by car. There had been a great deal of discussion about their fate. They undoubtedly believed that they were on their way into exile, perhaps in Cuba. Instead, they were driven to the back of the Federal Penitentiary at Mexico City, taken from their vehicles, and murdered in cold blood.
Madero’s Revolution of 1910 – 1911, had caused silver coins to begin to disappear from circulation into personal and corporate hoards. The war’s short duration minimized the impact of hoarding, and coins soon reappeared in circulation. Coinage amounts were drastically reduced in 1911 and 1912 and gold coinage remained suspended. These reductions in output were not a direct result of the 1910 – 1911 revolution only, but also of the turmoil of counter-revolution and the ineffectiveness of the Madero administration during those years. The banking system was in shaky condition as early as 1910. Banks-of-issue were exceeding the limits of paper money production provided for by their charters. Throughout the entire system, bad loans and problems with reserves had pushed a number of banks to the edge of failure. The Madero Revolution had no positive impact on the problems in the banking system. Madero was so distracted by constant counter-revolutionary plots and rebellions that he did nothing to address the problems, allowing the system to decay further.
Resistance to the usurpation of the presidency flamed immediately in northern Mexico. Attacks of federal garrisons began by the 23rd of February. Resistance groups were organizing all over Mexico, but the politicians were, for the most part, more cautious in taking a position for or against the new regime. A few resigned. Only three, all from northern Mexico, were determined to resist Huerta and take their states into rebellion, if necessary. |
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Abraham Gonzáles, Governor of Chihuahua, a close friend and confidant of President Madero, when informed of the murder, immediately denounced Huerta as a usurper and refused to recognize him. As a result, he was arrested on February 23, 1913, by the commander of the federal garrison at Chihuahua, General Antonio Rábago. The general assumed duties as Military Governor of Chihuahua. Early in March, President Huerta ordered that Gonzáles be brought to Mexico City for trial. A public hearing was the last thing that Huerta wanted, and on March 6th, while traveling toward Mexico City, Gonzáles was taken from the train by his escort, shot to death, and his body thrown on the tracks to be run over by the locomotive. The official report of the incident stated that Gonzáles was shot “while trying to escape“. |
