Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a violent social and cultural movement, colored by socialist, nationalist, and anarchist tendencies, that began with the popular rejection of dictator Porfirio Díaz Mori in 1910 and continued even after the promulgation of a new constitution seven years later. Violence continued until the late 1920s, ending only when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) sealed its monopoly on political power in and after 1928. Even after that, the idea that the Revolution was "ongoing" was reinforced in party doctrine and national thought with its notional division into an "armed phase" and an "institutional phase". The "institutional phase" meme only began to disappear from official discourse under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the late 1980s.

After Huerta

In an attempt to restrain the slaughter, the governor of the northern state of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, formed the Constitutional Army with an eye towards bringing peace via adoption of the majority of the rebel social demands into a new constitution. He managed to incorporate most of the demands into the Constitution of 1917. The Constitution addressed foreign ownership of resources, an organized labor code, the role of the Roman Catholic Church in education and land reform.

Related Topics:
Coahuila - Venustiano Carranza - Constitutional Army - Constitution of 1917 - Roman Catholic Church - Education

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The Carranza government also did not last or enforce many of the reforms in the Constitution of 1917. In 1920, General Álvaro Obregón, who had served as Minister of War and of the Navy, revolted against him along with two other leading generals — Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta. Carranza was assassinated on May 21, 1920; Carranza had already had Zapata killed in an ambush in 1919.

Related Topics:
1920 - Álvaro Obregón - Plutarco Elías Calles - Adolfo de la Huerta - May 21

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Obregón assumed power and by bringing peace to the country proved himself to be not only a capable military man, but also an able politician. Under Obregón's control, an artistic and creative renaissance took place in Mexico: a style of monolithic official architecture similar to Soviet Socialist realism emerged, and mural and fresco techniques from Pre-Columbian cultures were revived and again honored. He fomented the creation of — and subsequently headed — a number of unions. Obregón sought reelection in 1928, an illegal act under the Constitution of 1917, and was in fact reelected, but was assassinated by a Catholic extremist before taking office.

Related Topics:
Soviet - Socialist realism - Catholic

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He was succeeded by the extremely anticlerical General Plutarco Elías Calles, who would later promote anti-religious laws that provoked the Cristero War. Calles also started the PRI (initially known as the National Revolutionary Party — Partido Nacional Revolucionario, PNR) which would hold the presidency for the next seventy years. The PRN succeeded in convincing most of the remaining generals to dissolve their personal armies and create a single Mexican Army.

Related Topics:
Anticlerical - Plutarco Elías Calles - Cristero War - PRI - Mexican Army

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The triumph of the PNR/PRI marked the beginning of a political tradition of loyalty (some claim submission) to the current president, a tradition that lasted approximately seventy years, as each president distributed patronage and effectively chose the state governors and named his successor, through the PRI's monopoly on power.

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