Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946; Mexico -- History -- Revolution, 1910-1920
When the Treaty of Peace was signed in Juarez which ended the Revolution
of 1910, Francisco Madero proceeded south toward Mexico City.
Everywhere he spoke to enthusiastic and triumphant throngs of peons, who
acclaimed him The Liberator.
In Chihuahua he addressed the people from the balcony of the Governor’s
palace. As he told of the hardships endured and the sacrifices made by
the little band of men who had overthrown the dictatorship of Diaz
forever, he was overcome with emotion. Reaching inside the room he
pulled out a tall, bearded man of commanding presence, and, throwing his
arm about his shoulder, he said, in a voice choked with tears:
"This is a good man! Love and honor him always."
It was Venustiano Carranza, a man of upright life and high ideals; an
aristocrat, descended from the dominant Spanish race; a great
land-owner, as his family had always been great land-owners; and one of
those Mexican nobles who, like a few French nobles such as Lafayette in
the French Revolution, threw themselves heart and soul into the struggle
for liberty. When the Madero Revolution broke out Carranza took the
field in truly medieval fashion. He armed the peons who worked upon his
great estates, and led them to war like any feudal overlord; and, when
the Revolution was done, Madero made him Governor of Coahuila.
There he was when Madero was murdered at the Capital, and Huerta,
seizing the Presidency, sent a circular letter to the Governors of the
different States, ordering them to acknowledge the new dictatorship.
Carranza refused even to answer the letter, declaring that he would have
no dealings with a murderer and a usurper. He issued a proclamation
calling the Mexican people to arms, proclaiming himself First Chief of
the Revolution, and inviting the friends of liberty to rally around him.
Then he marched out from his capital and took the field, where he
assisted in the early fighting around Torreon.
After a short time Carranza marched his force from Coahuila, where
things were happening, straight across the Republic into the State of
Sonora, where nothing was happening. Villa had begun heavy fighting in
Chihuahua State, Urbina and Herrera in Durango, Blanco and others in
Coahuila, and Gonzales near Tampico. In times of upheaval like these it
is inevitable that there shall be some preliminary squabbling over the
ultimate spoils of war. Among the military leaders, however, there was
no such dissension; Villa having just been unanimously elected General
Chief of the Constitutionalist Army by a remarkable gathering of all the
independent guerrilla leaders before Torreon,—an unheard-of event in
Mexican history. But over in Sonora, Maytorena and Pesquiera were
already squabbling over who should be Governor of the State, and
threatening revolutions against each other. Carranza’s reported purpose
in crossing to the West with his army was to settle this dispute. But
that doesn’t seem possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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