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Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It borders the United States of America to the north and Guatemala to the south.

History[]

The Mexican Revolution[]

Overthrow of the Porfiriato[]

After almost 35 years of continuous rule, President Porfirio Díaz announced in a 1908 interview with Pearson’s Magazine that he would not seek reelection but quickly reversed himself, setting off a flurry of political activity among opposition groups. In 1910 wealthy landowning reformer Francisco I. Madero announced his intention to challenge Díaz for the presidency and campaigned for open, fair, and free elections, growing his profile through writing a critique book called The Presidential Succession Of 1910. Díaz had Madero jailed to ensure his victory, but he escaped and fled to San Antonio, Texas, where he drafted the Plan of San Luis Potosí, with its slogan Sufragio Efectivo, No Reelección (effective voting, no reelection). He declared the Díaz presidency illegal and called for a revolt against him beginning on 20 November 1910, attracting the forces of rebel leaders such as Pascual Orozco, Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata. After Madero’s forces won a series of victories in May 1911, Díaz abdicated the presidency and sailed for exile in Paris, where he died in 1915.

After a brief interim presidency under Francisco León de la Barra, Madero handily won the 1911 presidential election and was inaugurated on 9 November. Politically inexperienced, Madero immediately faced opposition when he demanded the guerilla forces that had helped him into power disarm in favor of the old Federal Army. After he refused to implement promised land reforms, Zapata issued the Plan of Ayala on 28 November and resumed his rebellion in Morelos. Orozco rose up in Chihuahua on 25 March 1912 after he was passed over for the governorship of the state in favor of Abraham González. Madero’s legalization of labor unions and inability to control the revolts alienated Mexican conservatives of his administration, as well as the US Ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson. On 9 February 1913, rebels led by General Félix Díaz, nephew of the ex-president, and General Bernardo Reyes escaped from jail and rallied their forces to overthrow Madero and restore the old political order. General Victoriano Huerta, formally in charge of the defense of Madero’s government, defected to the rebels in return for the office of the presidency and forced Madero and his vice president to resign on 19 February, after which they were murdered while in custody on 22 February.

Civil War: Huerta vs. Revolutionaries[]

Huerta faced immediate intense opposition upon his elevation to the presidency, and within a month rebellion had spread throughout Mexico, most prominently led by Governor Of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza. Carranza issued the Plan of Guadalupe on 26 March 1913 which rejected the legitimacy of the Huerta government and called all the revolutionaries to arms, a call answered by a swath of revolutionaries including future important actors such as Pancho Villa, Pablo González and Álvaro Obregón, to create the Constitutionalist Army. Initially supporting the Huerta regime were foreign and domestic business interests, landed elites, the Roman Catholic Church, and the German and British governments. US President Woodrow Wilson did not recognize the Huerta government despite the fact that the US Ambassador had helped him come to power, and in April 1914 American opposition to Huerta culminated in the seizure and occupation of the port of Veracruz by US marines and sailors.

In the south, Zapata took the city of Chilpancingo, Guerrero in mid-March, followed by the successive captures of several ports along the Pacific Coast. After federal garrisons in Morelos defected to him with their weapons, Zapata moved against the capital by sending his subordinates into Mexico state. In the northwest, Federal forces put a stern resistance and managed to bog down the campaign of Pablo González, but in the north, Constitutionalist forces made significant gains as Pancho Villa moved against the Federal Army in early 1914 near the border town of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, sending federal forces fleeing to Fort Bliss in New Mexico. On 3 April Villa’s forces took the city of Torreón after bitter fighting in the hills surrounding the city. Meanwhile, Obregón moved south from Sonora along the Pacific Coast and defeated federal troops at Orendain, Jalisco in early July, threatening Mexico City. Beaten at every angle, Huerta was forced to resign on 15 July and subsequently fled into exile, dying a year later.

Civil War: Constitutionalists vs. Conventionists[]

The victorious revolutionaries met at the Convention of Aguascalientes in October 1914 to reconcile the various factions that had ousted Huerta from power. Carranza had expected to be named president of Mexico at the convention, but faced opposition from revolutionary generals Villa and Zapata. The Convention elected a new president for a limited term of 20 days and appointed Villa as head of the Conventionist Army, which subsequently took up arms against Carranza’s Constitutionalists. Villa and Zapata’s forces occupied Mexico City in December after Carranza and Obregón evacuated to Veracruz, where they received munitions from occupying US forces. The rival armies of Villa and Obregón fought from 6 to 15 April at the decisive Battles of Celaya, where the antiquated frontal cavalry charges of Villa’s Division del Norte were met by the shrewd, modern military tactics of Obregón. Smarting from his wounds Villa retreated to the north, where he was defeated in the border-town of Agua Prieta while trying to move towards the northeast. Badly defeated and reduced to a mere 200 loyal men, Villa retreated into the mountains of Chihuahua and turned to guerilla tactics to survive. On 9 March Villa ordered a cross-border attack on Columbus, New Mexico after the United States recognized Carranza’s government, and in response President Wilson authorized the Punitive Expedition under General John J. Pershing into Chihuahua to find and capture Villa. The expedition was unsuccessful in its mission, elevating Villa’s prestige and allowing him to revitalize his forces while significantly worsening American-Mexican relations.

In November 1916, Carranza was persuaded to convene a congress in Querétaro to revise the liberal constitution of 1857. Carranza’s original draft constitution was rejected by the delegates as being too conservative, and the delegates embedded radical reforms such as labor rights, agrarian reform, anticlericalism, and economic nationalization into the final document. After the Constitution was ratified in February 1917, Carranza was subsequently elected president but he still faced a large soft-opposition in the Congress and from local strongmen, and in some cases he was heavily undermined by its more radical elements. Meanwhile in the south, Zapata continued his rebellion under the Plan of Ayala as he had since the beginning of the revolution in 1910. Colonel Jesús Guajardo was tasked by Carranza with the mission of killing Zapata after Constitutionalist forces under Pablo González failed to eliminate Zapata's army, but disagreements between the many Carranzist factions allowed Zapata to offer Guajardo the option of switching sides. In the famous Deception of Chinameca, Guajardo defected to Zapata and took weapons, supplies, and men with him, allowing Zapata and his ideology to remain in fighting form for the remainder of the Carranza administration, a fact that greatly affected his legitimacy.

End of the Revolution[]

In early 1919, General Álvaro Obregón decided to use his immense popularity to run in the 1920 presidential election. Carranza announced that he would not participate in the elections and instead endorsed an obscure diplomat, Ignacio Bonillas, whom he planned to use as a puppet. Near election day, Carranza attempted to arrest Obregón and he fled to the state of Guerrero. Together with Governor of Sonoro Adolfo de la Huerta and General Plutarco Elías Calles, they announced the Plan of Agua Prieta, which attempted to form a coalition of military and labor supporters in order to depose Carranza. The rebellion was a success, with over three-quarters of the Mexican Army rejecting Carranza and joining the Sonoran generals. Carranza attempted to flee to Veracruz, but he was ultimately betrayed and assassinated on the 21 May 1920 in the mountainous north of the state of Puebla.

Emiliano Zapata con Obregon

"Victorious" 'Pancho Villa' (right) in his ranch of Canutillo (1920).

Despite the superiority of Obregón and De La Huerta’s forces over those of Zapata, they agreed to form a national government in order to avoid a new bloody campaign, putting an end to the armed phase of the Revolution. Obregón became the new president of Mexico and Zapata was confirmed as Secretary of Agriculture and Development in order to carry out his planned land reform project, while Villa was left to develop his ranch in Chihuahua.

Post-Revolution[]

Upon coming into office President Obregón offered his old rival Villa the post of Ambassador to the newly-formed Commune of France, where he came into contact with several socialist leaders such as Raymond Molinier, Pierre Frank and Alfred Rosmer. Obregón initiated major reconstruction plans intended to rebuild damaged infrastructure, instituted new labour laws, and gave support to the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM: Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers), which often clashed with the syndicalist Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT: General Confederation of Workers), although ultimately both unions supported Obregón’s industrialization efforts. Meanwhile, the right-wing formed the Catholic Action in the wake of Pius XI's 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, and supporters of the Young Mexican Catholic Action soon found themselves in violent conflict with members of the CGT and CROM. Zapata's land reform project redistributed nearly 9 million acres of arable land to the peasantry, but only through the ejido system of communal ownership of land, with many states seeing very little land reform. In his position as Finance Secretary, De La Huerta negotiated the recognition of the Mexican government by the United States.

ADLH sworn in 1920

Adolfo De La Huerta being sworn in the Congress of the Union Building (1924).

Obregón was succeeded as president by Adolfo de la Huerta in 1924, who continued his program of reform. After the 1925 Stock Market Crash and subsequent onset of the Great Depression, the anarchist economic program of the Magón brothers was adopted by the government in order to pull Mexico out of the economic peril. On the order of Obregón, De La Huerta amended the constitution to allow for non-consecutive reelection, which struck at the core tenet of Madero’s original Plan of San Luis Potosí: Sufragio Efectivo, No Reelección. Nevertheless, Obregón was closely reelected in 1928 and focused mainly on economic recovery during his second term. In 1929, Zapata and his men traveled to Nicaragua to assist Augusto César Sandino's syndicalist guerillas against US marines stationed there. Obregón and Huerta officially denied any involvement, but Zapata’s expedition worsened the already-strained relations between the United States and Mexico. By 1931 the US would be forced to pull out of Nicaragua due to the continuing economic crisis, and the revolution would be declared victorious.

Zapata and his men returned to Mexico and he decided to run in the 1932 presidential election. He campaigned on a policy of bringing the revolution to all of Mexico and fully recovering the economic crash, and subsequently won the election with one of the largest landslides in Mexican history. His program of land redistribution helped to reorganize 45,000,000 acres (180,000 km2) of land, which caused conflict with the US when the expropriation expanded to include 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km2) of American-owned land. Zapata’s government supported the right of indigenous Mexicans to learn their native language in school and recognized the numerous indigenous languages, overturning centuries of established law. His appointment of Pancho Villa and Vicente Lombardo Toledano marked a further shift to the left for Mexico socially, economically, and politically. On the international stage, Zapata aligned Mexico with the Nicaraguan Revolution and made trade overtures to the Syndicalist International, although he did not officially join the organization. In this climate a number of conservative political organizations have formed, such as the National League for the Defense of Religious Liberty founded to protect the rights of Catholics, from which radical members would form the counterrevolutionary Partido Fuerza Popular (PFP: Popular Force Party) which draws inspiration from european National Populists.

Current Politics[]

Mexico/Parties

Title Name Party Portrait
President Emiliano Zapata Salazar (born 1879) PPM
Emiliano Zapata4
Vice-President Vicente Lombardo Toledano (born 1894) PMT
9789004410008 i0001
Secretary of Agriculture and Development (?) (?) (?)
Secretary of Exterior Relations 'Pancho Villa' Doroteo Arango Arambula (born 1877) PPM
Pancho-villa-16-e1592332293315
Secretary of War and Navy (?) (?) (?)
Chief of Military Intelligence Plutarco Elías Calles (born 1877) PNR
PECalles
Secretary of Industry and Commerce (?) (?) (?)
Secretary of Communications and Public Works (?) (?) (?)
Finance Secretary Enrique Estrada Reynoso (born 1890) unaffiliated
Estradagordo


Zapata's government is marked by an even greater investment in agriculture, allowing the ejidos to become productive enough to grow cash crops such as henequen. Despite not being on the best of terms with Villa, Zapata made him Secretary of Exterior Relations, which helped create stronger diplomatic bonds with the Commune of France. Regardless of the great progress so far, the presidential elections remain a mystery. Pancho Villa, supported by both Zapata and Lombardo Toledano, is expected to be elected as the new president, while totalitarian socialist Plutarco Elías Calles may cause some surprises. In addition, the United States of America had recently become more unstable in the last couple of years. Some fear a plot to cut Zapata's reign short. Lastly, the question of the 27th constitutional article still needs an answer, in the matter of taking over the mineral and oil resources of the nation out of foreign hands.

Military[]

Ejército Mexicano (Army)[]

Propaganda de guerra sindicalista Mexicana

Mexican Army propaganda showing the unity of the four pillars of Mexico: the peasants, the soldiers, the teachers and the workers.

Recently established in 1920, the Mexican Army is still young and pretty weak, with an estimated 32,000 active personnel deployed throughout the country. Cavalry is still quite common and the army has yet to modernize.

The generals are divided in how to modernise the army. Those that served in the Constitutional Army believe that a professional army similar to the Europeans is the way to modernise Mexico’s army. On the other hand those that served with Zapata in his Liberation Army of the South believe in a more tailored guerrilla warfare doctrine accredited to the Mexican environment supported by a service record mainly of domestic deployment.

Armada de México (Navy)[]

Being small, the Mexican Navy is intended for defensive purposes only, even though naval reformers informally united through the "Junta (or Council) of Admirals" agree that Mexico has a huge potential in the naval scope constituting potentially vying traditional USN supremacy in the Gulf of Mexico a general consensus of neglect and alternative focus by the Zapata Administration, who have applied focus on a traditional land doctrine, has seen very little progress

Fuerza Aérea Mexicana (Air Force)[]

In spite of the Mexican Air Force playing a critical role in repressing insurrection in the 1920s coalescing around dissident right wing military commanders and business interests recent query has discovered that it remains persistently outdated, with the vast majority of its planes being jaded imported biplanes from the United States or French Commune. Despite this erstwhile vulnerability the Air Force is supported by a promising aircraft backbone of industry and empowered intellectual prowess that has set the groundworks for domestic construction provided necessary capital is provided. Currently, the only active squadron is the Defence Aerial Squadron 201.

Foreign Relations[]

Mexico has friendly relations with the Union of Britain and the Commune of France given a common ideological bedrock of revolutionary syndicalism that has dominated organised Mexican labour since the Revolution, as well as other socialist governments in the Americas such as Nicaragua and Chile.

It has unfriendly relations with the United States and the West Indies Federation due to early administrative decisions to forfeit American oil licenses in favour of nationalisation and refusal to compensate American business interests for damage accrued in the Revolution. There are also stark ideological differences which has driven a fraught stigma between Washington and Mexico City, further exacerbated by Zapata's covert support of Augusto César Sandino's syndicalist guerrillas in Nicaragua forcing a general withdrawal of American forces in 1931 causing political upheaval for incumbent Hebert Hoover.

See also[]

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