Week Eleven
The Mexican Revolution
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The Mexican Revolution was the first of three epic revolutions of the twentieth century (China 1911, Russia 1917).
It was the ONLY ONE in which a multi-class alliance successfully removed a regime dominated by ruling political and economic elites.
I. Origins and immediate causes
A. Economic depression 1907-09 →
less patronage, unemployment, urban workers returning to countryside, middle class resentment
B. Extreme concentration of landed wealth →
Porfiriato had produced a huge landless peasantry + collapse of subsistence farming
C. Succession crisis →
splits in political elite over who will succeed Díaz
II. The Military Phase (1910-17)
1910 –
- Francisco Madero issues Plan de San Luís Potosí
- revolution begins in Chihuahua1911 –
- Díaz resigns and goes into exile
- Madero wins elections to presidency
- Emiliano Zapata (Morelos) issues Plan de Ayala1913 –
- Madero assassinated
- Victoriano Huerta becomes president
- Two fronts against Huerta:in the south: Zapata
in the north: the "Constitutionalists":Pancho Villa (Chihuahua)
Venustiano Carranza (governor of Coahuila)
Alvaro Obregón (Sonora)1914 –
- U.S. invades Veracruz and Tampico, Huerta resigns
- Convention of Aguascalientes1915 –
- Battle of Celaya
- Carranza becomes president
- Villa + Zapata keep fighting
- soldaderas1917 –
- Constitution of 1917
- Carranza elected president
- Zimmerman telegram1918 –
- founding of Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), supporting Carranza
1919 –
- fighting in Morelos
- Zapata assassinated1920 –
- Villa makes peace with Carranza
- Carranza and Obregón split
- Carranza assassinated by Obregón soldiers
- Obregón elected president
Around 2 million people died in the Mexican Revolution