Mexican Revolution: The Constitutionalist Years

Charles C. Cumberland

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780292789630
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: History

"The seven years with which this book concerns itself... must be thoroughly examined if one is to have a grasp of modern Mexican history." — Military History of Texas and the Southwest The years 1913-1920 were the most critical years of the Mexican Revolution. This study of the period, a sequel to the author's Mexican Revolution: Genesis under Madero, traces Mexico's course through the anguish of civil war to the establishment of a tenuous new government, the codification of revolutionary aspirations in a remarkable constitution, and the emergence of an activist leadership determined to propel Mexico into the select company of developed nations. The narrative begins with Huerta's overthrow of Madero in 1913 and the rise of Carranza's Constitutionalist counterchallenge. It concludes with a summary of Carranza's stormy term as constitutional president climaxed by his ouster and overthrow in a revolt spearheaded by Alvaro Obregón. Basing his study on a wide range of Mexican and US primary sources as well as pertinent secondary studies, Cumberland brings a mature and sophisticated analysis to his material; the result is a major contribution to the understanding of one of the twentieth century's most significant revolutionary movements.

1. PRELUDE TO CONFLICT

When Charles Flandrau once inquired of a Mexican lady whether it rained more in the summer than in the winter, she replied: “No hay reglas fijas, señor.”¹ And, said the young reporter writing during the Díaz dictatorship, the lady’s statement epitomized the Mexico of the period. Certain it is that the rules were fluid—applied one way for some groups and another way for others—and just as certainly one of the issues in the 1910 Madero revolution was the correction of this condition. But fixed rules are difficult to impose upon a people accustomed to freewheeling, as Madero soon found.²

In both Mexico and the United States the Madero period was seldom recognized for what it actually was, and Madero himself was the subject of violent differences of opinion. A relatively insignificant man with limited intellectual endowments, Francisco Madero probably would have lived, in a society with “reglas fijas,” the full and peaceful life of a Mexican landowner, untroubled by economic problems and unconcerned with politics. But in the Mexican milieu of the early twentieth century no thoughtful man with social consciousness could stand idly by and watch the continuation of a dangerous anachronism. Díaz’s Mexico was an anachronism because the Western world found itself engaged in a kind of political and social experimentation that Mexico could not seal out, because early twentieth-century Mexico was living under eighteenth-century value systems, and because—in an industrial world dedicated to technological progress with concomitant social and political change—the dominant pattern of Mexican life revolved around the retention of a social and an economic system feudal in philosophy. And danger existed—in the potential explosiveness of the Mexican masses, in the bitterness expressed by young intellectuals, in the burning demands from an unorganized, suppressed, but ever-growing labor group.

Anachronism though it might have been, the Díaz period died hard. And Díaz’s resignation (in the face of Madero’s capture of Ciudad Juárez in early 1911) failed to render to the era the coup de grâce. The famous remark attributed to Díaz that Madero had “unleashed a tiger” came closer to the truth than even the aged dictator realized. But the tiger that Díaz feared and the tiger that did the ultimate damage were different animals. To be sure, Madero unleashed desires and ambitions among the population at large, and the presumably apathetic submerged groups suddenly lost their docility and gave to the ensuing revolution a distinctive stamp. This was the group which Díaz feared, while the real “tiger” freed by Madero was the violent reaction to reform on the part of certain vested-interest groups.

All classes of society, and virtually all members, have “vested interests” of one kind or another, and here the term is used in no pejorative sense. Certainly the landholding segment of Mexican society had what it considered a legitimate interest in retaining the basic characteristics of its civilization, and just as certainly it looked with fear and suspicion upon any attempt to introduce fundamental land reform. Whether the land-reform program that the moderate Madero envisaged posed an actual threat is a moot point, but the hacendados interpreted any reform program, no matter how tentative or tenuous, as a step in a dangerous direction. Their insistence that no land problem existed may well have been an expression of conviction; from the hacendados’ point of view there was no problem. But whether from conviction or selfishness, such expression could not erase the irrefutable fact that the vast majority of those whose livelihood was intimately attached to the soil did not own land, that credit and banking facilities rendered impossible private purchase by small proprietors, that compared to other agricultural nations Mexican agriculture was grossly inefficient, and that many communities on the Central Plateau demanding land were determined to seize it if necessary. When the hacendados rejected Madero’s first hesitant steps toward reform (through purchase of private holdings for resale on easy terms in small plots) as visionary, unrealistic, and needless, even administration moderates began to question the hacendados’ motives. Since it was apparent that the hacendado class had no intention of cooperating freely, and equally apparent that some action was both socially and politically mandatory, the administration began to move in the direction of more radical change through the application of force. Hacienda expropriation and ejidal restoration, actively debated in the Chamber of Deputies in late 1912, was the answer to the hacendado challenge.

By late 1912 land reform was obviously inevitable, if the prevailing administrative mentality continued, and the nature of the reform would seriously undermine the social, economic, and political position enjoyed by the hacendado class. The hacienda system, and all that it meant to Mexican society, was confronted with ultimate extinction. Justifiably or unjustifiably, to the threatened group Madero became a symbol of destruction; the Coahuila visionary, for whom the hacendados had previously held disdain rather than fear, had become a malevolent force that simply had to be removed. Even before that late date many hacendados vigorously, albeit surreptitiously, opposed the Madero administration; they, or their paid hacks, reported banditry or corruption or favoritism even when the charges lacked base—and of course they capitalized upon actual weaknesses and any evidence of corruption. These charges undermined public confidence in the administration, but at least some members of the class decided on more direct action. The Chihuahua hacendados supported the 1912 Orozco rebellion in that state; Pascual Orozco became their tool and remained such until his death in 1915. Again, they supported Félix Díaz’s abortive 1912 revolt. The fact that neither rebellion succeeded was discouraging, but not killing, to hacendado hopes; like the tiger, the hacendado could be patient if his existence depended upon patience, but he was ready to pounce should the opportunity present itself.

The army-officer class constituted a second powerful vested-interest group, one that had been made to look utterly ridiculous and helpless during the successful anti-Díaz revolution. During the long paz porfiriana the officer corps had grown fat and indolent; except for a somewhat leisurely and constant campaign against Sonora Yaquis, the Mexican army for a full generation had scarcely justified its existence. During those years the real profession of the officer corps was political rather than military, and this lack of attention to purely military matters became brutally clear with Madero’s victory. To the injury of defeat was added the insult of preterition when Madero assumed the presidency. He was a civilian in every sense of the word; not only had he no military pretension, but also in his scheme of things the military had no political niche to occupy. The professional army officer suddenly found himself in a new and an unattractive role; he was now an observer and not a leader of the passing political parade. Even more devastating to his self-esteem and to his future, nothing in the Madero administration or in the prevailing philosophy of the president’s closest advisors pointed to any improvement in the army officer’s political status. But his cup of misery was filled to overflowing when the Madero administration elevated, as members of the regular line officer group, officers who had served the revolution against Díaz. To the alumnus of the military academy, appointment to line officer positions of individuals whose only training was encompassed in revolutionary service appeared to be a denigration of officer status—as indeed it was. Furthermore, regular officer corps morale was scarcely improved by the campaign against Orozco, during which the “irregulars” and the state forces under such men as Francisco Villa, Pablo González, and the president’s younger brothers Emilio and Raúl not only carried the brunt of the fighting but also often gained the laurels of victory. It was this complex of factors which so infuriated the officer corps and which Félix Díaz insisted constituted an insult to the army (although he lacked the temerity to specify the nature of the insults). And it was to avenge the insult that Don Porfirio’s nephew rebelled in October, 1912. Unfortunately for the pretensions of the officers, the younger Díaz was a “handsome, gallant but dull and indolent army officer … with such slight qualifications and such lack of enterprise that he … always failed,”³ and his venture into vengeance scarcely added luster to his cause. But his failure, ignominious as it was, did not discourage the officers; it merely strengthened their determination to return to a position of prestige as soon as opportunity arose.

Even those officers who did not actively, or consciously, resent Madero’s relegation of the army to a political cipher had little interest in perpetuating the regime; not eager to revolt against the constitutional government, they had no deep animosity to others who might do so. When the “moment of truth” arrived, they found philosophical justification for supporting the spurious government emanating from Madero’s overthrow.

The entrepreneurial class, both national and foreign, also had a strong vested interest in the porfirian system. Mexican nonagricultural economy prior to 1911 was essentially monopolistic, with a tightly intertwined group controlling most financial and industrial institutions; the foreigners were spiritually, even if not physically, a part of the group. Díaz was devoted to the principle of industrial modernization at whatever cost, and the price demanded—and paid—included tax rebates, special concessions of a monopolistic nature, favoritism, guaranteed profits, a docile labor force kept in check by criminal syndicalist laws and similar devices, rights of eminent domain, and a host of related concepts. Whether the need for economic development justified such a price is moot, but that the entrepreneurial class in general was convinced of the justification can not be debated seriously. Implicit in the Madero policy—and often explicit—was a rejection of most of the fundamental tenets accepted as gospel by the entrepreneurs. Madero, too, was devoted to the principle of economic development or economic change, but with considerably different emphasis, an emphasis perfectly demonstrated by his support of organized labor (banned during the Díaz period) and by his insistence that Mexican railroads use the Spanish language in publishing orders for the workers. In supporting—even sponsoring—labor organization, the Madero administration gave notice to the entrepreneurs that the Mexican laborer had a stake in economic d...