The Mexican Revolution: Legacy of Courage

By Neftalí G. García

This book narrates the story of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. It was a period of rebellion and ruthless violence. It reports the major events that shaped a nation’s character. It follows the lives of the major players of Heliosian power who led the revolution and sacrificed their lives for it. Parts of the book are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. These are in italics. Finally the story raises the moral question “How is it that ordinary men find the courage to put their lives on the line for an idea?”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781456809461

Neftalí G. García

Neftali Garcia was born in Monterrey, Mexico a son of a United States born father and a Mexico born mother. The family immigrated to the U.S. at the end of World War II and chose residence in San Antonio, Texas. Reared in San Antonio’s low-income southside neighborhoods, Neftali and his brother Richard experienced severe privation in a hostile ethnic environment. Determined to escape from poverty, Neftali set his goals to optimize his education and prepare for a career. He earned a doctorate in political science from the University of North Texas. In the years that followed, Dr. Garcia taught politics and constitutional law at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, raised a family, was active in local and state politics, ran for public office, served as administrator for Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, and finally retired to pursue his passion to write. His life-long interest in ethnic and class conflicts ultimately led him to the intensive study of his native country’s turbulent 1910 Revolution. This book is the product of that commitment to pursue a passion.

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Copyright © 2010 by Neftalí G. García.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/22/2021

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LIKE ROLLING STONES

CHAPTER ONE

TIES TO THE LAND

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees

CHAPTER TWO

DIAZ RULES

The Coup

Restoring Law and Order

On Governing

Diaz and the Ruling Coalition

The Military and the General

President Diaz and the Church

Foreign Investors and Diaz

Diaz Makes Promises

The Terrenos Balidos Law of 1886

Railroads and Diaz Largess

Trouble Brews in Labor

Cananea

CHAPTER THREE

FAMILY MADERO

The Interview

The Campaign

Francisco Madero: Fugitive

The Plan de San Luis

Madero’s Little War

Attack on Ciudad Juarez

The Treaty of Ciudad Juarez

CHAPTER FOUR

WHERE RIVERS MEET

Election to Defense Committee

Madero’s Call to Arms

’Miliano and Francisco Madero

The Plan de Ayala

The Liberation Army of the South

CHAPTER FIVE

ZAPATA’S PEOPLE

CHAPTER SIX

FIESTAS VILLISTAS

Madero Recruits Villa

Taking Juarez for Madero

Orozco Rebels

General Huerta Orders Villa Executed

CHAPTER SEVEN

OUT OF THE SHITHOLE

The Breakout

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEY KILLED PANCHITO MADERO

The Coup

CHAPTER NINE

VILLA DEMANDS VENGEANCE

Taking Torreon from the Usurper

Taking of Ciudad Juarez a Second Time

The Battle of Torreon

Venustiano Carranza Fumes

Torreon to Zacatecas

The Battle for Zacatecas

Carranza Halts Villa’s March

CHAPTER TEN

ZACATECAS and BEYOND

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AGUASCALIENTES

CHAPTER TWELVE

VERACRUZ

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FROM CELAYA TO COLUMBUS

The Mother of all Battles

Celaya, Guanajuato, April 1915

Agua Prieta

Massacre at Santa Isabel

Attack on U.S. Soil

The Raid on Columbus, New Mexico

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE PUNITIVE EXPEDITION

On the Columbus Raid

Converge on Dublan

"The Incident at Parral"

The Incident at Carrizal

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

COLONEL JESUS GUAJARDO

CHAPTER Sixteen

MATARON A ’MILIANO

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY KILLED PANCHO VILLA

CONCLUSIONS

RELEVANCE and RAMIFICATIONS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

For

Javi Blue Eyes, Allie Kat, Anna Banana, and Bella Marie

INTRODUCTION

LIKE ROLLING STONES

The story you are about to read is inspired by authentic events. This is the story of the 1910 Mexican Revolution explored and interpreted through the eyes of one of its heirs. It is a story of a turbulent decade of rebellion, of government overthrows, of political assassinations, of foreign interventions, of fratricide, and of nation building. That episode of Mexico’s history has left an indelible imprint on subsequent generations, particularly Latinos of Mexican heritage. Mexicans who reside in Mexico continue to be affected by the events that are called the revolution. For Latinos of Mexican heritage who are natural-born citizens of the United States or whose descendants immigrated to the United States, the aftermath of the Mexican revolution continues to subtly influence their sense of identity and their place in American society. It is surprising to discover that there is a great number of Latinos who have relatives that courageously fought in the rebellion. They know of them through oral family histories. Unfortunately, the family stories are rarely documented, so little is known with certainty. Perhaps this project will encourage the inquisitive mind to begin the treasure hunt for familial links to their past. The author has exercised his prerogative to selectively embellish the story for dramatic impact.

Although much has transpired in the intervening one hundred years since its start, the revolution’s final chapter has yet to be written. The outcomes have undeniably transformed the nation. It has no resemblance to the dictatorships that characterize the country for over three centuries. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Mexico is a pluralistic, democratically governed, free market nation. Mexicans enjoy the fruits of freedom more than at any time in the nation’s history. It is a nation of energetic and creative peoples pursuing their dreams to improve their quantity and quality of lives for themselves and their children against formidable institutional, structural, and systemic barriers.

The 1910 Mexican Revolution’s goals were to tear down the walls of privilege, of corruption, of concentrations of wealth, of abuse and oppression, of tyranny, and of foreign intervention. There can be no question that many of those goals were achieved. More Mexicans have more freedom and opportunity than ever before. Yet for the majority of Mexicans, much of the promise of the revolution has remained frustratingly elusive. There are too many poor, too many hungry, too many jobless, too many disappointments. For these marginalized groups, the changes promised through the hemorrhaging of blood and futile sacrifices of their antecedents have come about too slowly or not at all. Among those who have not realized their dreams of freedom, of opportunity, and of legal equality, the revolution continues in their hearts and minds. Until that happens, the revolution cannot come to a successful conclusion. Azuela in Los de Abajo poetically compared revolutions and revolutionaries to rolling stones in a stream’s current. They just keep going forever.

The 1910 Mexican Revolution was an extreme episode of Mexico’s turbulent history. No other period in Mexican history has left a more profound impact on the contemporary political nation-state and the character of its people. The revolution ended, once and for all, a long tradition of militarism. There has not been one successful military coup d’état since. That alone would justify any rebellion. It made possible the emergence of political parties despite their anemic conditions and the seven-decade one-party monopoly. Most significant of all, it was the impetus for the adoption of the 1917 Constitution that institutionalized the fundamental freedoms first expressed in the 1824 and 1857 constitutions.

Socially, the revolution was the catalyst that has legitimated marginalized groups. Social stratifications based on class and ethnicities persist, but they have been ameliorated by time and circumstance. Mexicans have come to terms with their ethnic diversity and with the fact that with few exceptions, we are all mestizos, an amalgam of ethnicities and races. Every discreet ethnic or racial group, domestic and foreign, that has interacted with every other group has contributed its genetic composition to the population. After over five hundred years of social entanglements among diverse groups, Mexico has evolved a unique culture distinguished by tolerance, generosity, and peace. The revolution of 1910 tore down the most overt barriers to freedom, to justice, and to opportunity. Other more subtle and covert barriers continue to deny equality under the law.

No one escaped the pain and suffering of the protracted armed rebellion in which hundreds of thousands perished. Many more were physically and psychologically traumatized. Families were destroyed or torn apart. Entire villages and towns were burned to the ground. Institutions were broken. More people fell victims to famine, to disease, and to domestic violence than to combat. Innumerable refugees fled across the northern border to escape the violence. Those refugees who migrated north between 1910 and 1920 are almost all gone, but their descendants have joined the great American family that carries an immigrant legacy. It is estimated that one in eight Mexicans died during the violence. The number is estimated to be between five hundred thousand and two million. Because the violence was widespread and involved many disparate and independent groups, it was impossible to maintain accurate records of the dead, the wounded, and the missing. It was common for a fallen soldier or rebel to rot where he fell. Fortunate were the dead who had a wife, a companion, or a comrade to bury them in shallow unmarked graves—graves sufficiently deep to keep the buzzards and the coyotes from getting to the corpse. In large battles involving thousands of combatants resulting in many hundreds of casualties, it was customary to dump the corpses into mass graves or stack them, douse them with kerosene, and set them on fire. Who they were or how many is lost to history.

The 1910 Mexican Revolution was the first class war of the twentieth century primarily fought by poor dirt farmers who wanted their lands returned, by indebted peons who wanted revenge from their masters, by small ranchers squeezed out by large landowners, by workers who were denied labor rights, by professionals who were locked out of economic opportunities, and by outlaws for the chance to plunder and to settle scores. The rebellion was against an entrenched oligarchy of ethnic elites who owned or controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s wealth, held all the political power, and maintained themselves through intimidation of the people and assassination of the opposition. The upheaval fit the classic concept of revolution.

Revolutions are inherently class based and violent. They are cataclysmic social upheavals engineered by social reformers and carried out by economically discontented groups who harbor deep resentments for those who oppress them. Exaggerating the resentment is the ferocity of their retribution for those who have subjugated and abused them. The Mexican revolution was, at a fundamental level, a class-based rebellion. Lower-class groups did the fighting and the dying. They were, without question, ferocious in their lust for retribution against their oppressors. The violence and the atrocities exceeded every measure of humanity and decency. But it would be a mistake to assume that was the whole story. In fact, that which is called the revolution was actually a series of discreet but interrelated chronological episodes possessing distinct goals and objectives with only the thinnest thread tying them together. The taxonomy is simply a convenient tool that serves to give coherency to the separate episodes. Understanding the distinctions among the episodes mitigates the confusion associated with trying to make sense of the phenomena.

The first episode was the 1910 revolt against Pres. Porfirio Diaz’s thirty-four-year dictatorial reign. He was the defender of the ruling elites who, in return for privilege and prestige, supported him financially, socially, and politically. Don Porfirio’s rule was authoritarian, ruthless, and in violation of inalienable human rights. He was commander in chief of the military and sole boss of the police. He micromanaged national, state, and local government. He controlled the court system, the elections, the press, the economy, and the financial system. The revolt was led by a reformer who sought political change but not change of the political system. Economic and class reforms were not central to the rebellion. There was a concession that social and economic reforms were necessary, but they would be the product of political reform.

The first episode against Porfirio Diaz’s dictatorship was led by Francisco I. Madero who believed the solution to the country’s problems was in political reform. Madero wanted to change the government but keep the system. He wanted to form a democracy with commensurate political freedoms. Madero became the cause célèbre around which the discontented farmers, workers, ranchers, ideologues, small businessmen, regional bosses, governors, and outlaws coalesced. To everyone’s surprise and Don Porfirio’s chagrin, the dictatorship was easily overthrown. Diaz resigned and Madero became president. The revolution had been won, or so it seemed. Within two years, Madero was overthrown and dictatorship was restored.

The second episode was the military coup d’état that deposed Francisco I. Madero’s democratically elected government. The coup’s objectives were to reinstate military rule, terminate the experiment with democracy, and return the country to a dictatorship. The coup was led by a military junta headed by Gen. Felix Diaz (Don Porfirio’s nephew), Gen. Bernardo Reyes, and Gen. Victoriano the Jackal Huerta. In the shadows of the coup lurked the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson who offered encouragement and moral support for the coup leaders. The cabal deposed Francisco Madero and his vice president, Jose Maria Pino Suarez, and ordered their murders.

The third episode began immediately after Madero’s murder. The people considered the murders of Madero and Pino Suarez vile acts for which General Huerta was responsible. Constitutionalist forces in the north and campesinos in the south combined their efforts to overthrow the usurper and restore constitutional government. President Woodrow Wilson, who was morally outraged at General Huerta’s usurpation, ordered U.S. Marines to occupy Veracruz to halt arms shipments to the usurper. After some devastating defeats at the hands of Gen. Francisco Pancho Villa, the government collapsed. General Huerta fled the country, never to return, making his dictatorship the last one to rule Mexico. The rebellion had ended in triumph, and hostilities came to an end, at least for the moment.

The fourth episode was an internal war between rebel factional forces competing for supreme power. It was a civil war between the Constitutionalist forces led by Gov. Venustiano Carranza and the Conventionalist force led by Gen. Francisco Pancho Villa. Failing to peacefully settle their differences, Carransistas and Villistas faced off in a series of battles to decide who would be left standing. The internal war pitted the dirt farmers and the other lower classes with Villa and Zapata as their leaders against the middle class with Carranza, Obregon, and Gonzalez as its leaders.

The class divisions were nuanced to avoid the crass reality of class war. Neither side attacked the other using class as the weapon given that elements of all economic classes fought on both sides. Peons and laborers fought in Carranza’s army as they did in Villa’s armies. Licensed professionals split allegiances. Brother turned against brother. The disagreement turned on political differences. Constitutionalists advocated a strong centralized government, a strong chief executive model, a weak congress, and a weak form of federalism. The Conventionalists advocated strong regional governments, broad political freedoms, workers’ rights, and the Plan de Ayala, Emiliano Zapata’s plan for agrarian reform. The debate between the factions also had much to do with the two dominant personalities leading each faction. The Constitutionalists were led by Gov. Venustiano Carranza, a politician-landowner who was a proponent of a strong chief executive. He was a proponent of private property and for restoring all lands confiscated from the landowners. He rejected the Plan de Ayala, referring to it as a ludicrous idea. As a hacendado, he held negative views toward the abilities of the rural poor. He was authoritarian and paternalistic. He saw himself as the nation’s defender against anarchy and socialism. He disrespected Villa and Zapata as a couple of illiterate dirt farmers and outlaws. The Conventionalists dominated by Villistas and Zapatistas clearly identified with lower-class laborers, the campesinos, the small ranchers, and the fledgling lower middle class. They were led by Gen. Francisco Villa, an illiterate sharecropper-outlaw who reinvented himself into a revolutionary hero. General Villa was the face of the lower classes. He inspired loyalty because he never denied his origins and was immersed in classism, disparaging the urban middle class as perfumed wimps. His political attitudes were fuzzy although he favored policy proposals benefitting the poor, such as universal education, agrarian reform, and workers’ rights. He acknowledged his limitations thus did not actively seek political office. He preferred to be a kingmaker rather than the king.

The rivalry between Carranza and Villa plunged the country into a three-year internal war more costly in blood and treasure than the previous seven years of violence. The internal war provoked a second American intervention in the shape of the Punitive Expedition. Competing armies of fifty thousand men faced off in the field of battle with horrendous casualty rates. Betrayal and treachery were commonplace. Entire villages and towns were left in ruins. Economic activity was paralyzed, and people sought refuge in the United States.

The civil war ended with the defeat of Gen. Francisco Villa’s famous Division del Norte by the Constitutionalist forces commanded by Gen. Alvaro Obregon in the farm fields of Celaya and Leon, Guanajuato. In April 1919, Gen. Emiliano Zapata’s assassination at Chinameca brought hostilities to an end in the south. First Chief Venustiano Carranza was assassinated one year after Zapata’s murder. Gen. Alvaro Obregon was elected president, and hostilities abated. On July 23, 1923, Gen. Francisco Villa was ambushed and killed in Hidalgo del Parral. One year later, Pres. Alvaro Obregon was shot to death by a religious zealot while attending a banquet in the nation’s capital.

The debate whether the Mexican revolution ended with Obregon’s ascendency to the presidency in 1920 is the subject of continued debate. By one measure, the end of hostilities is sufficient evidence of the revolution’s end. By another measure, the Constitution of 1917, an amazing document granting broad national powers and enumerating inalienable individual rights, is evidence of the triumph of liberalism over reactionary forces.

In the intervening one hundred years, Mexico has become transformed from a fractionalized country into a nation-state. A national identity has evolved with the pride and patriotism of a sovereign nation. Inarguably, Mexico is more stable and prosperous than its tumultuous past. It had enacted political reforms on its journey toward freedom and democracy. It had endured severe economic hardship and embarrassing fiscal crises. Its pride has been damaged by the threats to personal security and uncontrolled drug wars. Social reforms have extended limited opportunities to previously neglected social segments although its poverty levels are immorally high. The doors of opportunity have swung open for qualified skilled workers and ambitious entrepreneurs although too much wealth is concentrated in too few hands. Education is inexpensive and widely available although there are no sufficient jobs. There is universal medical care although access to it is limited. Economic reform has focused on globalization of the marketplace, elimination of tariffs, and increased production although there is evidence the benefits have not been sufficient or have percolated to lower classes. In short, reforms have not been enough or have gone far enough to guarantee stability.

There is growing resentment of the concentrations of wealth among a relatively small number of elites. There is disappointment that the middle class has not prospered as expected. Over half of the nation’s population lives in poverty. Thousands of the desperate rural poor people slog across the desert into the United States in search of work. Political reforms have yet to create a politically pluralistic nation. The fundamental problems that gave rise to the 1910 revolution have reemerged to baffle policymakers. Mexico cannot find viable solutions to its myriad of economic, social, and political problems. There are still too many poor, too many disappointed, and too many broken promises. Even though interclass hostilities have abated, it does not mean people are content. For a large segment of the population, the promise of the revolution has not been fulfilled. For these social segments, the revolution has only been interrupted. It lives in the mysticism of the two most venerated revolutionary heroes, Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa. Their spirits live in the hearts of the wretched and the dispossessed. Among the rural poor and the disaffected, there is the enduring metaphor of Emiliano Zapata astride a white stallion, riding down from the mountains to answer the people’s cry for justice.

CHAPTER ONE

TIES TO THE LAND

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

_Unknown

The blood and guts of the Mexican revolution were the southern dirt farmers / campesinos and peons that stood up against the theft of their lands and the enslavement of their souls. They rebelled for the chance to strike back at their oppressors and the regime that violated them. More than any other rebel group, it was the dirt farmers who symbolize the 1910 revolution. Portrayals of the revolutionary fighters invariably depict them as little brown men dressed in rough white linen pants and shirts, wearing huge sombreros, leather thong sandals, and carrying machetes. Unquestionably, the campesinos of the south did most of the fighting and the dying. They put a face on the revolution in the likeness of Emiliano Zapata. Thousands of ragtag, poorly armed small farmers of central Mexico from the states of Morelos, Guerrero, and Puebla flocked to Gen. Emiliano Zapata’s ranks. They enthusiastically responded to Zapata’s call to arms and to prepare to take back their lands and their dignity. They had had enough of oppression and misery and were not going to take it anymore. The popular refrain became It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. Of such steadfastness are revolutions made.

There were many causes for the revolution, but it was the fight for land reform that gave the rebellion its legacy. There were other conflicts over politics, workers’ rights, separation of church and state, foreign intervention, and monetary and fiscal policy. As critical as those issues were, the 1910 revolution is fundamentally the story about the conflict over land and the existential character of an agrarian society. The campesinos made a popular movement of a large loosely organized group with a single clear objective-agrarian reform.

For the dirt farmers and the dispossessed peons, the land and its waters were not commodities whose worth was assessed by its market value. The land and all it provided were the adhesives that bonded mankind and nature into a holistic organic entity. The farmers believed that natural law decreed that the land provided its bountiful resources for life and that mankind was the land’s steward. Natural law decreed that the land sustained mankind with all its abundance so long as mankind saw to its protection. To understand the southern rebellion is to know the land’s spiritual value for mankind’s very existence.

Everything that was important to human purpose stemmed from the bond between mankind and the land. Community emerged from the instinct to survive and perpetuate the tribe. It gave birth to values, norms, and cultures that gave the tribe its identity and, more importantly, gave the individual a sense of belonging and of family. A common refrain among dirt farmers was Take my money, take my children, take my wife, but don’t take my land.

The Contours

At the turn of the century, Mexico was a socially and economically fractured country without a national identity. It was a country forged from autonomous indigenous communities subordinated by three centuries of European colonial rule, War of Independence, humiliating loss of territory, foreign occupation, liberal reform, and dictatorship. Throughout the five centuries that began with the Europeans’ first footprints on Mexican beaches, the country was in continuous turmoil over questions of legitimate rule, overexploitation of natural and human resources, and internal factional and ideological strife. Chronic political and social instability profoundly hindered Mexico’s economic development right through the end of the nineteenth century. With the dawn of the twentieth century, long-standing, festering problems ripened to the point that they could no longer be ignored. The stresses brought about by the demands of the new industrial age coupled with neglected issues ultimately percolated to the surface and erupted in an explosion that demolished the country’s foundation and collapsed its institutions.

At the turn of the twentieth century, 80 percent of the population lived in the countryside in hundreds of ancient autonomous villages with names the Western tongue found difficult to pronounce. The great majority were indigenous native peoples who lived by subsistence farming, raised their families, practiced ancient rituals, spoke their languages, and preferred to live in isolation. Other rural folk were mestizos who farmed and ranched on their own parcels of land or as tenant farmers. A third group consisted of indentured peons who lived and worked on haciendas or plantations as slaves without being called slaves. Less than 1 percent of the population controlled over 90 percent of the country’s wealth. It was of European ancestry, and none was indigenous. In between the native populations and the European rich was an emergent urban mestizo bourgeoisie comprised of merchants, skilled workers, tradesmen, and licensed professionals. They made their living offering their goods and services to the shameless rich. At the apex of the hierarchy were the elites who dominated every aspect of life, controlled the government and the military, and held the wealth.

Mexico’s ruling elites fully understood that the new millennium would create unlimited opportunities for economic development and personal enrichment. The ruling elites started on the road to modernity with exceptional assets. Mexico had huge quantities of untapped natural resources including ores, precious metals, timber, teeming seas, fertile soils, and enormous oil and gas reserves. The country’s vast natural reserves and expanses of desolate lands did not escape the attention of the world’s business and commercial interests, particularly the Americans who were eager for the opportunity to exploit them. Mexican elites preferred to exploit the country’s natural assets themselves, but they lacked capitalization. Their only viable option was to partner with foreign venture capitalists at least for a brief period until Mexico could become financially independent and monetarily secure.

Besides the need for foreign capital investment, other problems obstructed the road to modernity. The country was perpetually on the brink of fiscal collapse due to recurrent regime changes. One consequence of regime change was the inevitable plunder of the national treasury by the outgoing regime. Deposed rulers made off with the exchequer as payback to the incoming junta. Lacking the funds to conduct government affairs, to maintain an army and navy, to pay government employee salaries, to provide services, and to build a modern infrastructure, ruling elites turned to foreign banks for financial assistance. Foreign banks and financiers were more than willing to extend credit at exorbitant interest rates, security guarantees, and collateral. In addition, foreign capital investors received preferential consideration for government contracts and concessions. Government officials at the highest level of government agreed to extend such consideration in return