The Start of a Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a long and chaotic process. It lasted 10 years, or I should say there were 10 years of active fighting. After that, there were 20 more years of the country being ruled by revolutionary generals (and then the son of a revolutionary general.) Even when a firm democracy was established, the government was dominated by a political party formed by the military. That domination lasted another 60 years.

When we talk about the American Revolution, we refer to the War for Independence from our imperial power, England. The Mexican Revolution isn't that. It is well after their fight for independence from Spain. It would be better described as a Mexican Civil War, a war fought with the hope of a democracy that was truly democratic. The Mexican Revolution was scheduled to begin on November 20, 1910. Scheduled to begin? Yes, literally it was scheduled. I will explain.

The President of Mexico leading up to the revolution was Porfirio Diaz. He'd been the president about 44 years at that time. (That's a bit misleading. For four of those years, he let one of his buddies be the elected president. But he was still the power behind the presidency.) Diaz and his party controlling the government believed in "reelection." Basically, there were no term limit. And elections during his reign were all for show, but the vote didn't really matter. Diaz was always going to win.

Now, he'd been doing this for 40 years, and in the early twentieth century, Mexico was having a lot of problems. Diaz is very old at this point (80 years), there are labor disputes in the country, and plenty of income inequality. Access to education and opportunity is limited to very few people. And there's a drought from 1907 to 1909 that hurts agriculture greatly. Diaz told an American journalist that he wouldn't run for reelection in 1910. When this was published in America, Spanish translations flooded Mexico. A lot of people had hope for a change.

Among those was a man named Franciso Madero. He thought the idea of "reelection" was terrible, there needed to be term limits. When Diaz changed his mind and decided he would run again in 1910, Madero announced he would run against Diaz. Madero was popular, things looked bad for Diaz. So what did he do? He put Madero in jail. And Diaz won the election (though whether it was a fair election or not is an open question.)

While Madero was imprisoned he wrote a letter called the Plan de San Luis Potosi. It called for real elections, no more continual reelection, and most aggressively, it called upon Mexican to start a revolt against Diaz beginning on November 20, 1910. That's what I mean about the revolution being scheduled to start.

Alrica and I visited the Regional Museum of the Revolution of Puebla. The museum is housed in the former home of Aquiles Serdán Alatriste. This house saw action, technically not in the revolution itself, but in the two days before. When I say the house saw action, I mean fighting, violence, and death. You can see the bullet holes in the facade.

It's not just a few bullet holes

Aquiles Serdán was a revolutionary, opposed to reelection, opposed to Diaz, and definitely planning to start fighting on Novmeber 20. He, his brother Miximo, and his sisters, Carmen and Natalia, had been purchasing weapons, shipping them in from Mexico City, and were prepared to distribute them to their followers for the fighting on November 20. But the authorities found out and learned that Aquiles was keeping the weapons at his home, and also learned that Aquiles met with revolutionaries there.

The four siblings

On November 18, a force of armed police laid siege to the house. They mounted the roof of the Church of Santa Clara across the street and began firing. The Serdáns and their followers who were in the house at the time fought back. During the battle, Maximo was killed. Carmen was captured. Natalia wasn't present. And Aquiles hid in a hole beneath the floorboards after his group was mostly dead. The authorities found him there and killed him.

They still have the mirror that was hit by bullets from outside

While this all took place before the official beginning of the revolution, word of the Serdáns spread. They were considered martyrs for and heroes of the revolution. To some, the battle at the Serdán home was an unofficial first fight of the revolution.

Did Madero's call to revolution work? Well, yes and no. The revolutionary armies that formed had a lot of success. I say armies on purpose. There were many, each headed by their own leader with various levels of attachment to Madero and his goals. But they did deal many defeats to the Federal Army, and eventually Diaz renounced the presidency and accepted an exile to France. There was an interim government until elections could be held in October 1911. That government tried to undermind Madero, but Madero still won the election. And then there was the classic problem.

Madero instituted some reforms. But many of the revolutionary leaders who had supported Madero wanted more more sweeping and immediate reforms. And perhaps in the biggest blow to the desires of these revolutionaries, Madero signed a treaty that kept a lot of the system in place that had existed under Diaz. This included the Federal Army. So it was only a matter of time until the civil war restarted. In fact, Madero was overthrown by his defense minister (with a strong assist from the United States) in February of 1913, arrested, and assassinated before he could ever be tried.

That's just the first few chapters of the story. As I mentioned before, the active fighting would continue for another 7 years. The lesson, I suppose, is that pursuing and establishing a real democracy is a pretty chaotic, violent, and bloody process.