The Mexican Revolution was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction of the Federal Army and its replacement by a revolutionary army, and the transformation of Mexican culture and government. The northern Constitutionalist faction prevailed on the battlefield and drafted the present-day Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to create a strong central government. Revolutionary generals held power from 1920 to 1940. The revolutionary conflict was primarily a civil war, but foreign powers, having important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles; the United States involvement was particularly high. The conflict led to the deaths of around two million people, mostly combatants.
José Victoriano Huerta Márquez was a general in the Mexican Federal Army and 39th President of Mexico, who came to power by coup against the democratically elected government of Francisco I. Madero with the aid of other Mexican generals and the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. His violent seizure of power set off a new wave of armed conflict in the Mexican Revolution.
Pascual Orozco Vázquez, Jr. was a Mexican revolutionary leader who rose up to support Francisco I. Madero in late 1910 to depose long-time president Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911). Orozco was a natural military leader whose victory over the Federal Army at Ciudad Juárez was a key factor in forcing Díaz to resign in May 1911. Following Díaz's resignation and the democratic election of Madero in November 1911, Orozco served Madero as leader of the state militia in Chihuahua, a paltry reward for his service in the Mexican Revolution. Orozco revolted against the Madero government 16 months later, issuing the Plan Orozquista in March 1912. It was a serious revolt which the Federal Army struggled to suppress. When Victoriano Huerta led a coup d'état against Madero in February 1913 during which Madero was murdered, Orozco joined the Huerta regime. Orozco's revolt against Madero somewhat tarnished his revolutionary reputation, but his subsequent support of Huerta compounded the repugnance against him.
Francisco León de la Barra y Quijano was a Mexican political figure and diplomat who served as the 36th President of Mexico from May 25 to November 6, 1911, following the resignations of President Porfirio Díaz and Vice President Ramón Corral. He previously served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs for one month during the Díaz administration and again from 1913 to 1914 under President Victoriano Huerta. He was known to conservatives as "The White President" or the "Pure President."
State police, provincial police or regional police are a type of sub-national territorial police force found in nations organized as federations, typically in North America, South Asia, and Oceania. These forces typically have jurisdiction over the relevant sub-national jurisdiction, and may cooperate in law enforcement activities with municipal or national police where either exist.
The Liberation Army of the South was a guerrilla force led for most of its existence by Emiliano Zapata that took part in the Mexican Revolution from 1911 to 1920. During that time, the Zapatistas fought against the national governments of Porfirio Díaz, Francisco Madero, Victoriano Huerta, and Venustiano Carranza. Their goal was rural land reform, specifically reclaiming communal lands stolen by hacendados in the period before the revolution. Although rarely active outside their base in Morelos, they allied with Pancho Villa to support the Conventionists against the Carrancistas. After Villa's defeat, the Zapatistas remained in open rebellion. It was only after Zapata's 1919 assassination and the overthrow of the Carranza government that Zapata's successor, Gildardo Magaña, negotiated peace with President Álvaro Obregón.
In Mexico, the term Rurales (Spanish) is used in respect of two armed government forces. The historic Guardia Rural was a rural mounted police force, founded by President Benito Juárez in 1861 and expanded by President Porfirio Díaz. It served as an effective force of repression and a counterweight to the Mexican Army during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The rurales were dissolved during the Mexican Revolution.
The Mexican Army is the combined land and air branch and is the largest part of the Mexican Armed Forces; it is also known as the National Defense Army.
The military history of Mexico encompasses armed conflicts within that nation's territory, dating from before the arrival of Europeans in 1519 to the present era. Mexican military history is replete with small-scale revolts, foreign invasions, civil wars, indigenous uprisings, and coups d'état by disgruntled military leaders. Mexico's colonial-era military was not established until the eighteenth century. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the early sixteenth century, the Spanish crown did not establish on a standing military, but the crown responded to the external threat of a British invasion by creating a standing military for the first time following the Seven Years' War (1756–63). The regular army units and militias had a short history when in the early 19th century, the unstable situation in Spain with the Napoleonic invasion gave rise to an insurgency for independence, propelled by militarily untrained, darker complected men fighting for the independence of Mexico. The Mexican War of Independence (1810–21) saw royalist and insurgent armies battling to a stalemate in 1820. That stalemate ended with the royalist military officer turned insurgent, Agustín de Iturbide persuading the guerrilla leader of the insurgency, Vicente Guerrero, to join in a unified movement for independence, forming the Army of the Three Guarantees. The royalist military had to decide whether to support newly independent Mexico. With the collapse of the Spanish state and the establishment of first a monarchy under Iturbide and then a republic, the state was a weak institution. The Roman Catholic Church and the military weathered independence better. Military men dominated Mexico's nineteenth-century history, most particularly General Antonio López de Santa Anna, under whom the Mexican military were defeated by Texas insurgents for independence in 1836 and then the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846–48). With the overthrow of Santa Anna in 1855 and the installation of a government of political liberals, Mexico briefly had civilian heads of state. The Liberal Reforms that were instituted by Benito Juárez sought to curtail the power of the military and the church and wrote a new constitution in 1857 enshrining these principles. Conservatives comprised large landowners, the Catholic Church, and most of the regular army revolted against the Liberals, fighting a civil war. The Conservative military lost on the battlefield. But Conservatives sought another solution, supporting the French intervention in Mexico (1862–65). The Mexican army loyal to the liberal republic were unable to stop the French army's invasion, briefly halting it in with a victory at Puebla on 5 May 1862. Mexican Conservatives supported the installation of Maximilian Hapsburg as Emperor of Mexico, propped up by the French and Mexican armies. With the military aid of the U.S. flowing to the republican government in exile of Juárez, the French withdrew its military supporting the monarchy and Maximilian was caught and executed. The Mexican army that emerged in the wake of the French Intervention was young and battle tested, not part of the military tradition dating to the colonial and early independence eras.
The Mexican Federal Army, also known as the Federales in popular culture, was the military of Mexico from 1876 to 1914 during the Porfiriato, the long rule of President Porfirio Díaz, and during the presidencies of Francisco I. Madero and Victoriano Huerta. Under President Díaz, a military hero against the French Intervention in Mexico, the Federal Army was composed of senior officers who had served in long ago conflicts. At the time of the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution most were old men and incapable of leading men on the battlefield. When the rebellions broke out against Díaz following fraudulent elections of 1910, the Federal Army was incapable of responding. Although revolutionary fighters helped bring Francisco I. Madero to power, Madero retained the Federal Army rather than the revolutionaries. Madero used the Federal Army to suppress rebellions against his government by Pascual Orozco and Emiliano Zapata. Madero placed General Victoriano Huerta as interim commander of the military during the Ten Tragic Days of February 1913 to defend his government. Huerta changed sides and ousted Madero's government. Rebellions broke out against Huerta's regime. When revolutionary armies succeeded in ousting Huerta in July 1914, the Federal Army ceased to exist as an entity, with the signing of the Teoloyucan Treaties.
The Ten Tragic Days during the Mexican Revolution is the name given to the multi-day coup d'etat in Mexico City by opponents of Francisco I. Madero, the democratically elected president of Mexico, between 9 - 19 February 1913. It instigated a second phase of the Mexican Revolution, after dictator Porfirio Díaz had been ousted and replaced in elections by Francisco I. Madero. The coup was carried out by general Victoriano Huerta and supporters of the old regime, with support from the United States.
The Federal Police, formerly known as the Policía Federal Preventiva and sometimes referred to in the U.S. as "Federales", was a Mexican national police force formed in 1999. In 2019 it was incorporated into the National Guard and operated under the authority of the Department of Security and Civil Protection.
The Federal Ministerial Police is a Mexican federal agency tasked with fighting corruption and organized crime, through an executive order by President Felipe Calderón. The agency is directed by the Attorney General's Office (FGR) and may have been partly modeled on the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. PFM agents in action often wear masks to prevent themselves from being identified by gang leaders. PFM agents are uniformed when carrying out raids.
The División del Norte was an armed faction formed by Francisco I. Madero and initially led by General José González Salas following Madero's call to arms at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. González Salas served in Francisco I. Madero's cabinet as Minister of War, but at the outbreak of the 1912 rebellion by Pascual Orozco, González Salas organized 6,000 troops of the Federal Army at Torreón. Orozquista forces surprised González Salas at the First Battle of Rellano. They sent an explosives packed train hurtling toward the Federales, killing at least 60 and injuring González Salas. Mutinous troops killed one of his commanders and after seeing the officer's body, González Salas committed suicide.
Law enforcement in Mexico is divided between federal, state, and municipal agencies. There are two federal police forces, 31 state police forces including two for Mexico City, and 1,807 municipal police forces. There are 366 officers per 100,000 people, which equals approximately 500,000 in total.
The Mexican Armed Forces are the military forces of the United Mexican States. The Spanish crown established a standing military in colonial Mexico in the eighteenth century. After Mexican independence in 1821, the military played an important political role, with army generals serving as heads of state. Following the collapse of the Federal Army during the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, former revolutionary generals systematically downsized the size and power of the military. Currently the Mexican military forces are composed of two independent entities: the Mexican Army and the Mexican Navy. The Mexican Army includes the Mexican Air Force, while the Mexican Navy includes the Naval Infantry Force and the Naval Aviation (FAN). The Army and Navy are controlled by two separate government departments, the National Defense Secretariat and the Naval Secretariat, and maintain two independent chains of command, with no joint command except the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Aureliano Blanquet was a general of the Federal Army during the Mexican Revolution. He was a key participant in the coup d'état during the Ten Tragic Days. One historian has identified Blanquet as "one of the major villains of the Mexican Revolution".
The Mexican Border War, or the Border Campaign, refers to the military engagements which took place in the Mexican–American border region of North America during the Mexican Revolution. The period of the war encompassed World War I, and the German Empire attempted to have Mexico attack the United States, as well as engaging in hostilities against American forces there itself.
