Revolución
It is difficult to comprehend the slaughter involved in the Mexican Revolution. A comparison to the United States’ Civil War may help. More soldiers died in the four-year “War Between the States” than in all the other nation’s wars (before or since) combined: approximately 600,000 men out of a total population of 181 million at the time, or about .33 percent. In the seven-year Mexican Revolution, however, as many as 1.5 million died out of a total population of only 15 million, or an appalling 10%. It was a bloodbath.
Even so, just as the American Civil War ultimately accomplished momentous things – the nominal end of slavery as well as the triumph of the federal government over the states – the Mexican Revolution led to the phenomenal Constitución of 1917.
The Revolution was actually a series of three civil wars. The first began on November 20 (20 de Noviembre, Revolution Day), 1910, when Porfirio Díaz, after a 34-year reign known as El Porfiriato, reneged on his promise to finally step down. Francisco Madero called for revolution, the response was as swift as it was widespread, and soon Madero was president, Díaz in exile.
If only Madero had been a good leader! Unfortunately, he implemented little change and disappointed everyone. Although he survived several brief counter uprisings, he was finally assassinated by the general entrusted with his protection, Victoriano Huerta, who became a drunken, brutal dictator.
And so began the second civil war, with the former revolutionaries rising up again, this time against Huerta. Pancho Villa led the forces in the north and Emiliano Zapata in the South, all supposedly under the leadership of Venustiano Carranza but each pretty much acted independently until Huerta surrendered and fled the country.
The major revolutionaries met at Aguascalientes to plan a way forward, but immediately discovered that, other than their hatred of Huerta, they shared only their distrust for each other. Their infighting soon devolved into the third, most chaotic and bloody civil war.
“It is a cold-blooded traffic in men’s lives, and nothing more,” commented U.S. Consul William O. Jenkins. “If the war was for a cause, or a reason, if there was any solution in sight, if it was for men’s liberty, or a heritage for their children, we would all of us, who know Mexico so thoroughly, say that was for the best, but it has degenerated now into a war of pillage and destruction and the greatest evils which it started out to cure and the reforms it was to establish have been lost….”
Carranza was the last man standing. He did much to rebuild a ruined country. His greatest achievement, though, was an inadvertent one: He called for a constitutional convention and, although he was relatively conservative, the resulting Constitution of 1917 was one of the most progressive and impressive documents of the century. It would transform Mexico.
But its text was drenched in blood.
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