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.

United States involvement

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, was involved in plotting the February 1913 coup d'état that overthrew Francisco I. Madero and installed Victoriano Huerta.

Related Topics:
Henry Lane Wilson - Victoriano Huerta

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On April 9 1914, officials in the port of Tampico, Tamaulipas, arrested a group of U.S. sailors — including, crucially, at least one taken from on board his ship, and thus from U.S. territory. Mexico's failure to apologize in the terms demanded led to the U.S. navy's bombardment of the port of Veracruz and the occupation of that city for seven months; see Tampico Affair.

Related Topics:
April 9 - 1914 - Tampico, Tamaulipas - Veracruz - Tampico Affair

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In 1916, Pancho Villa crossed the U.S. border and attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico; this was the sole invasion by a foreign armed corps of the continental U.S. in the 20th century. This raid led the U.S. to send a force under General John Pershing into Mexico, which spent 11 months unsuccessfully chasing him in the punitive Pancho Villa Expedition (March 1916 – February 1917).

Related Topics:
Pancho Villa - Columbus, New Mexico - John Pershing - Pancho Villa Expedition

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The Zimmermann Telegram affair of January 1917, while it did not lead to direct U.S. intervention, also took place against the backdrop of the Constitutional Convention and exacerbated tensions between the USA and Mexico.

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