We Mexicans celebrate our Revolution on November 20. Caudillos like Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata are known worldwide and are a symbol of Mexicanity. A foreigner may not know that the Mexican Constitution of 1917 was the world’s first social constitution, but they are familiar with Villa and Zapata. Do you remember Marlon Brando playing Zapata, or Antonio Banderas playing the role of Pancho Villa? How did the Revolution start?
President Porfirio Díaz had been in power for thirty years and, in order not to lose his habit, he was a candidate in the 1910 election, despite having said that he would not run. The opposition candidate was Francisco I. Madero, a very wealthy businessman from Coahuila, dreamer and democratic in spirit, but naive to a considerable degree. Porfirio Díaz won the election and Madero alleged fraud. In the “Plan de San Luis”, Madero called on the people to rise up in arms for November 20 and ignored the institutions and authorities. “Effective suffrage, no re-election”, his motto.
Diaz’s thirty years in power had concentrated wealth in very few hands. The vast majority of Mexicans lived in the most extreme and inhuman poverty, humiliated, hurt and oppressed. The oligarchy was not willing to lose its privileges before the people who, from time to time, rose up and protested, but were always brutally repressed: here are the massacres in the strikes in Rio Blanco and Cananea, or the exile of the Flores brothers Magón, or – already on the eve of the uprising of November 20 – the murder of the Serdán brothers.
Tempers were hot, so Madero’s call was heard: Pancho Villa, Abraham González and Pascual Orozco rebelled from the north against the federal government. Shortly after, Emiliano Zapata would do it from the south. The revolution began.
The aging dictator could not contain this armed protest, which exploded like a pressure cooker in his face after decades of the most heinous injustice. The federal army was defeated time and time again. The situation became so critical that the dictator, at the end of May 1911, had to resign and flee to France. Madero took control and called elections, which, of course, he won. He took office as president on November 6, 1911.
Madero did not understand that a strong and energetic government was necessary at that time. He was so democratic and innocent that he was unable to understand that only an iron government could consolidate the democratic revolution that he had started. Indeed, both the revolutionary leaders, who yearned for power, and the oligarchs, retreating and plotting all kinds of baseness against Madero from the United States Embassy, were ready for anything. The management of the new government was a disappointment for everyone, including his supporters. It was a matter of time before the world fell on Madero. Even Emiliano Zapata rose up against him.
Madero was not a malicious man, so he got into the wolf’s mouth and slept with the enemy. He put Victoriano Huerta in command of the army, who, shortly after, would betray him in complicity with the US ambassador, and would assassinate him along with Vice President Pino Suárez in the so-called “tragic ten”, days of confusion that passed between 9 and 19 February 1913: first the coup d’état of General Manuel Mondragón, then the betrayal of Victoriano Huerta, the arrest and murder of Madero and Pino Suárez and the usurpation of the presidency by Huerta. All in ten days. And then… chaos. The revolutionaries, gathered around Venustiano Carranza, would not rest until they deposited the usurper. They succeeded, but it did not bring stability. On the contrary, the revolutionary leaders killed each other and the country was bathed in blood for several years. It was like Goya’s painting in which Saturn (in this case, the Revolution) devours his children.
In this fratricidal war, more than a million Mexicans would find death, which is a tremendous figure if we consider that the population of Mexico at that time did not exceed 15 million.
111 years have passed since that November 20, 1910. It is hard to admit it, but if we start from the terrible fact that more than half of Mexicans live in excruciating poverty, it should be argued that the Revolution did not bring justice, equality and the well-being that everyone expected.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx