Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a general in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, he joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate authority.
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 Venustiano Carranza de la Garza was a wealthy land owner and politician who served as President of Mexico from 1914 until his assassination in 1920, during the Mexican Revolution. He was previously Mexico's de facto head of state as First Chief of the Constitutional Army from 1914 to 1917, and previously served as a senator and governor for Coahuila. As First Chief, he waged a civil war against Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, drove the creation of the Constitution of 1917, and won the election that year. As president, he was recognized as Mexico's leader by the United States, maintained Mexican neutrality in World War I, and defeated Zapata. He was assassinated in 1920 when General Álvaro Obregón switched sides.
Álvaro Obregón Salido was a Sonoran-born general in the Mexican Revolution. A pragmatic centrist, natural soldier, and able politician, he became the 46th President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924 and was assassinated in 1928 as President-elect. In the popular image of the Revolution, "Alvaro Obregón stood out as the organizer, the peacemaker, the unifier."
Plutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican soldier and politician who served as President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928. After the assassination of Álvaro Obregón, Elías Calles founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party and held unofficial power as Mexico's de facto leader from 1929 to 1934, a period known as the Maximato. Previously, he served as a general in the Constitutional Army, as Governor of Sonora, Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Interior. During the Maximato, he served as Secretariat of Public Education, Secretary of War again, and Secretary of the Economy. During his presidency, he implemented many populist and secularist reforms, opposition to which sparked the Cristero War.
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.
Luis Morones Negrete, also known as Luis Napoleón Morones, was a Mexican major union leader, politician, and government official. He was a pragmatic politician who experienced a rapid rise to prominence from modest roots and made strategic alliances. He served as Secretary General of the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers and as secretary of economy under President Plutarco Elías Calles, 1924-1928. He is considered the "most important union leader of the 1920s...and undoubtedly decisive in Mexico's post-Revolutionary reconstruction." He was criticized for tying the labor movement closely to the national government and his displays of wealth were unseemly. He fell from power following the successful 1928 presidential run by Alvaro Obregón, who was assassinated before being inaugurated.
Felipe Adolfo de la Huerta Marcor was a Mexican politician, the 45th President of Mexico from 1 June to 30 November 1920, following the overthrow of Mexican president Venustiano Carranza, with Sonoran generals Alvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles under the Plan of Agua Prieta. He is considered "an important figure among Constitutionalists during the Mexican Revolution."
In the history of Mexico, the Plan of Agua Prieta was a manifesto, or plan, that articulated the reasons for rebellion against the government of Venustiano Carranza. Three revolutionary generals from Sonora, Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Adolfo de la Huerta, often called the Sonoran Triumvirate, or the Sonoran Dynasty, rose in revolt against the civilian government of Carranza. It was proclaimed by Obregón on 22 April 1920, in English and 23 April in Spanish in the northern border city of Agua Prieta, Sonora.
General Jacinto Blas Treviño González was a Mexican military officer, noteworthy for his participation in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1921.
The following events occurred in January 1920:
The following events occurred in March 1920:
The following events occurred in April 1920:
The following events happened in December 1920
The following events happened in February 1921:
The following events occurred in March 1921:
