Revolutions - 9.09- The Tiger

Episode Date: October 14, 2018

In the spring of 1911, Francisco Madero unleashed the tiger. Let's see if he can control it.  Choose Your Own Adventure Game: Can You Save The Republic? Tour Dates! Oct 15 -- Toronto -- Ben McNally's Oct 16 -- NYC -- The Strand  Oct 17 -- Nashville -- Parnassus Books Oct 18 -- Atlanta -- The Carter Library (hosted by A Capella Books)  

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.9, The Tiger. Before we get started this week, I need to issue a pronunciation Miaculpa of the highest order. Remember when I wondered at the beginning of this series what adventures in mispronunciation I would get up to trying to wrangle Spanish now that I am saturated in French? Well, even I didn't expect this one. It is the plan of San Luis. Luis. Luis. with an S. I 100% blame the fact that since moving to Paris, I have trained my eyes and my tongue

to just ignore the S. It's San Luis, not San Luis. I apologize. I get that sometimes it's like I'm a caricature of myself, but really this was just an honest, totally oblivious, and totally unintentional mistake. Sorry about that. Now, while I am here not getting started on this week's episode, I may as well cram in that when this episode posts, it will be Sunday, October the 14th, I will be sitting in a hotel room in Toronto, having landed on a plane from Paris just a few hours earlier. Hopefully I'm eating room service and watching like house hunters or something. Then I begin a little whirlwind. On October the 15th, I will be at Ben McNally Books at 6 p.m. in Toronto. Then Tuesday, October the 16th in New York City at the Strand. That one is at 7 p.m.

And Wednesday, October the 17th in Nashville at Parnassus Books. That one begins at 6.30. then finally October the 18th in Atlanta at an event at the Carter Center at 7 p.m. All the details are at Revolutionspodcast.com and The Storm Before the Storm.com. And if you're some kind of sadist, you can follow me on Twitter.com. I am at Mike Duncan. So we must turn our attention now to Francisco Madero's Revolution. As we discussed last week, Madero had not exactly shot out of the gates. The plan to launch coordinated urban uprisings on November the 20th, 1910, had fizzled into pathetic nothingness.

Madero himself had been forced to flee back to the United States. Out of sheer luck, more than anything else, rural insurrectionaries in northern Mexico had taken up the banner of the plan of San Luis. Luis, Luis, most importantly, remember, the forces fighting for Pasquo Rosco in Chihuahua. Things were going well enough that Madero had planned to return to Mexico in February. 1911 in triumph after Orozco captured Juarez. But then Orozco did not capture Juarez. And despite this latest in a long line of setbacks, Madero went ahead and re-entered Mexico on February the 14th, 1911. Now, despite this phenomenally inauspicious beginning, when Madero entered Mexico, he was actually just about three months, three months only, from toppling Porfirio Dias and ending the 35-year-old Porfriotto. How he gets from here to

there is the subject of today's episode. When he returned to Mexico, the forces of the Matarista Revolution remained fixed on Juarez, and the former idea to capture Ciudad Porfirio Diaz was abandoned. The plan now was to let Pasquale Orozco continue to lead the couple thousand men he had organized around Juarez, while Madero took a smaller force around capturing smaller towns and tiny isolated garrisons. Hopefully, they would be able to cut off communication and supply lines to Juarez. Madero and his advisors identified the city of Casas Grandes as a ripe target, and in early March, about two weeks after returning to the country, Madero set out to attack the city

with 500 men. Now, they were supposed to outnumber the garrison, and they did, but as was happening quite a bit lately, the city was reinforced at the last minute, and Madero's 500 men were unsupported by artillery or newfangled machine guns, and they launched themselves into a hopeless barrage, of fire on March 6th, 1911. Forced to retreat, the Little Matarista Army suffered 51 killed and probably twice that number wounded, plus the loss of most of their baggage. Now, this was a defeat, and it was bad news, but it was not all bad news. Since the beginning of the revolution, Madero had been developing a reputation for cowardly

aloofness from his own revolution, that he let others do his fighting for him. Well, Casas Grandes, though a failure, Madero was personally wounded in the arm during the fighting. That arm was now in a sling, which was a potent image that earned him credibility for having now covered himself in some blood and some dirt. The hefe really was a hefe and worthy now of respect. Okay, so on that very day, literally that same day, March the 6th, 1911, the Americans gave Madero's insurrection even more credibility. On advice from his ambassador in Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, President Taft ordered regular army brigades to San Antonio, Galveston, and various points in Southern California.

At the same time, he ordered the American Pacific Fleet to sail down and hang out off the coast of Mexico. Now, officially, this was all just maneuvers and training exercises, but the truth was lost on exactly no one. Both sides in Mexico read it exactly the same way. Americans, long-time supporters of the Porfirio, now clearly doubted Don Porfirio's ability to contain the situation and protect American lives and property. Dias and his advisors were enraged. You are making us look weaker than we actually are. Madero and his advisors were thrilled.

You are making us look even stronger than we probably are. Hibartly in response to this move by the Americans, Dias more or less suspended the Constitution on March the 17th. Now, the Constitution had always been a meaningless. piece of paper, but even still, henceforth, if you were caught messing with telegraphs, railroads, assyendas, power stations, mines, or oil fields, you could be dealt with summarily. No lawyers, no courtrooms, just lined up against the wall and shot. So at this same time, we start to see the first discussions between the two sides, between the Mataristas and the Perferians, about how to bring the conflict to a peaceful end.

And looking back, I have not mentioned this yet, but when the revolution, broke out in November of 1910. Finance Minister Liemintour was actually back in Europe negotiating a further reduction in the interest rate on government-backed bonds, a reward, basically, for all the hard work he had done over the past 20 years to balance the budget and prioritize such government debt repayment, even in the face of severe recession in 1907, 1908, and 2009. When Mexico blew up at the end of 1910, Lehman Tour boarded a boat for home that took him first from France to New York City. After arriving in New York, Lema Tour took the opportunity to meet with some Matarista representatives in the hopes of finding some compromise that would allow the

situation to be resolved peacefully. Present for these meetings representing the Mataristas were Francisco Madero's father, who everyone called Don Francisco, who was not at all happy about his son's revolution and who wanted it ended, but on terms that would protect both his son and his family. Also present was Gustavo Madero, who was Madero's brother, and of all the members of the family, his closest confidant, and really the one member of the family who would be pushing for revolutionary victory, real victory, not just a compromise. But to make sure that this was not just a Madero family affair, also present was Francisco Vasquez Gomez.

A Vasquez Gomez was the physician and former Rayista, who had joined Madero as the vice-presidential nominee of the anti-relectionist ticket in 1910. Gustavo Madero did not like or trust Vasquez Gomez at all. He believed the doctor far too conservative and far too eager to settle with the regime. Gustavo also suspected the doctor was angling to be the man who emerged as the post-settlement power broker at Francisco Madero's expense. Lehman Tour and this group of Mataristas met over the course of two days in early March 1911. Lehman Tour refused to even discuss the possibility of Dias resigning, but there was some progress

on at least outlining the points that might serve as the basis of some potential future settlement. For one, Ramon Corral was going to have to abdicate the vice presidency. There had to be a general amnesty for all the rebels. A bunch of state governors were going to have to be replaced by men approved by the Mataristas. There needed to be reform of the electoral laws and changes in the presidential cabinet. Now, Lehman Tour said he could work with all this, but nothing concrete or binding came of the talks. And at the conclusion of these meetings, Lehman Tour headed for Mexico City to sound out his boss about what could and what should be done. When Lehman Tour arrived in Mexico City, he was dismayed by the state of affairs. President Diaz was not really grappling

with reality, and not really in physical shape to do any such grappling. Now, 80 years old, Dias was very much already in physical and mental decline. But the old president was further hobbled by a horrible tooth infection. He had an abscess of the jaw that often confined him to bed. And even when he wasn't in bed, it ensured that he was physically and mentally distracted. But despite this obvious handicap, Dias refused to delegate any responsibility and was in fact personally directing the Federal Army campaigns in the north. He was trying to micromanage a war from the president.

presidential palace, and that would have been hard enough, even with the best of information and intelligence. But stories later came out that Dias was directing these campaigns, where, remember, terrain is playing an important role from a postal map that took no notice of geology. When Lemauntour arrived, he was seen by many in the inner circles of power in Mexico City as the last best hope for the regime, and many straight up implored him to take power. A Leman tour would not go that far, but he did lean on Don Porfiro a national. enough to get the president to agree that some concessions were going to have to be made. Lehman Tour engineered, for example, a mass resignation of the cabinet, himself excluded, of course,

and the appointment of new faces, including, for Shadow Alert, former ambassador to the United States, Francisco Leon de la Pera. Then, on April 1st, Dias delivered a speech where he tried to co-opt a large chunk of Madero's own platform. President Diaz said, of course, we will investigate abuses of power at the local and state level. There will be electoral reform, and we will re-implement the principle of no re-election. He even said the government would look into complaints about land theft and correct abuses there, too. Much of this is what Madero had campaigned for in 1910, and it was clearly a last-ditch effort to take the wind out of Madero's revolutionary sales. But it was too late.

Instead of making the regime look strong and benevolent, it made them look desperate and weak. When Madero heard about the speech, he issued a response. President Diaz must resign. Outside of Mexico City, the president's attempted concessions landed with a pathetic thud. And throughout Mexico, rebel forces only continued to make advances through March and April 1911. Madero himself set up shop in the little town of Bustios, which is west of Chihuahua City, where he gathered an army and supplies and ammunition. But it was now no longer just northern Mexico that was in revolt.

Revolutionary wildfires broke out on the central plateau, along the coast, and deep in south-central Mexico. The Flores Magone brothers were coincidentally released from their American prisons on the eve of the revolution, and they organized a little force of about a hundred men to raid south into northern Baja, much to the general discomfort of the Mataristas, who wanted no part of anarcho-socialism. And though there was some accompanying riots and demonstrations in the urban centers in the cities of Mexico, the revolt and the revolution remained defined by rural armies operating

in the hills and mountains and raiding around, attacking telegraphs, railroads, and isolated federal army garrisons. Now, the revolution never consumed all of Mexico, and for the whole length of the conflict, some areas never saw a shot fired in anger. But about half the states could now point to... army somewhere fighting under the banner of the plant of San Luis. It was a nationwide movement. But critically, thanks to their own communication problems, Madero was not directing any of this from his base in Bustillos. Local leaders were taking their own local initiative.

And here, we will seamlessly transition into the most famous local leader who took his own local initiative under the auspices of Madero and the plan of San Luis. That is Emiliano Sapata in Morelos. So, let us now head back to Morelos. When we left off in Morelos, recently elected Governor Pablo Escandon and the planters who supported him were supposedly completely in charge. Emiliano Zapata had gone into hiding after his showdown with the Asienda in May of 1910, and he was still bouncing around when the Madero presidential campaign got itself,

well, arrested on mass in the summer of 1910. Sapata had no particular love or hate for Madero, but the failure of this opposition campaign was not exactly a harbinger of good things to come. So Sapata got together with some other leaders in neighboring villages, and they formed a little local defense committee centered around the village of Ayala, usually rivals. The leaders pledged themselves to mutual defense. Then the November 20 revolution came and went without so much as a puff in Marlilos, If your plan is to launch a bunch of coordinated urban uprising,

Morelos is not exactly the place you spend a lot of time recruiting. But the meetings continued in Ayala, usually at the home of a local leader named Pablo Torres Burgos. Zapata was always there, as were a few others, including this weathered old man, 73-year-old Gabriel Tapapa, who was an old veteran of the French war and who had fought for Dias in the original rebellion in 1876. He was now manager of an Ascienda. Most of the plan of San Luis was not of much interest to this group, but the bit about redressing land claims very much was, and they studied that section of the plan carefully. When the Northern Rebellion started and did not just flame out, these guys started inching towards an uprising of their own. And Torres Burgos went north in mid-December to track down Madero and make contact.

It took Torres Burgos forever to come back, though, and by February he had still not returned to Morelos. So, to Papa, unilaterally gathered some men and declared himself in revolt. Zapata, however, chose to wait, and he was rewarded for his patience. Torres Burgos eventually did come back shortly after Madero himself crossed back into Mexico, and he carried with him the news that Madero was sincere about backing up village land claims. Torres Burgos also said that he had been designated as Madero's official representative in Morelos, and he carried with him a handful of blank commissions. Zapata was made a colonel in the Revolutionary Army.

So on March the 11th, 1911, a small group, led by Torres Burgos and Zapata, cleared the town square of Ayala. They disarmed the police, and they read aloud from the plan of San Luis. And in this mix, they also shouted, down with the asciendas, long. live the Pueblos. The revolution had come to Morelos. The rebellions spread quickly among the angry population of the state, and soon Governor Eskendon, who never wanted the governorship of Morelos in the first place, showed what he was made of. He fled the state completely, and he took with him a party of friends, advisors, and soldiers. He then petitioned for a six-month leave of absence so he could go to England and celebrate the coronation of King George V, and it was understood that he

was never coming back. The complete power vacuum now left in Morelos was deadly. Torres Burgos quote-unquote led a force in the capture of a critical town with the help of General Topapa, but he was unable to control their passions in the aftermath. And after the victorious rebels ransacked the town, Torres Burgos said, this is not what I want, and I will not be a part of it. He called his officers together, including Zapata, and announced that he was stepping down. But while he was walking back to Ayala, he was captured by the federal police.

He and his two sons were identified, and they were executed on the spot. The death of Torres Burgos led to a minor succession crisis as a bunch of guys had equal commissions in the Matarista Revolutionary Army. But by force of reputation, charisma, and insistence, Emiliano Zapata soon had the pledge of most of the other rebel leaders, and he was elected by acclamation, the supreme hefe of the revolutionary movement of the South. Sapata's reputation was further enhanced by moves from President Dias himself. Hoping to settle things in Marelos, Dias offered a senior military post to old General Laba, who, remember from our episode on Marelos, had been the guy the opposition had asked to run for governor in 1909. When Laba accepted this offer, he was hoping he would be able to settle down

events in Morelos. But unfortunately what he did was undercut his family's prestige with the opposition and enhanced the prestige of Zapata because it was Zapata who Lever sought out as the man he needed to dicker with to ensure peace. While he built up his authority and reputation in Morales, Zapata had to deal with challenges from his fellow revolutionaries. In the neighboring state of Guerrero, The Figueroa brothers had risen to the top of the revolutionary hierarchy, and they claimed to control something like 12,000 men. They had used these forces, though, to first force local ascendados and landowners to cut deals with them to protect their estates, basically making them the subsidized agents of the very landowners who had been gobbling up all the land. So the Figueroa brothers were representing quite a different version of revolution from what Zapata represented.

Near the end of April 1911, Sepata cut a deal with the Figueroa brothers, though. He would support their claims to leadership in Guerrero if they supported his claims in Morelos. To consummate the deal, they agreed to jointly attack Hojutla at the end of April. But as the day of the attack approached, Sepata was told that the brothers planned to leave him hanging out to dry, to eliminate their one rival for control of all of South Central Mexico. So Sapata listened to a little voice in his head, and he did not advance, and he did not walk into the trap that so far as I can tell, most historians agree, was the point of the operation all along. Now, though this action was unfolding in the south and posing a real threat to Mexico City, the central focus of the Matarista Revolution remained in the north, with the city of Juarez becoming the critical linchpin of everything. Madero had by now gathered a couple thousand men at Bustillos, and though he was the official leader of the army and would be giving the orders, the real leader was Pasquo Orozco, who had emerged from obscurity as a small-time, semi-literate, militaire, and transformed himself into the most successful rebel general in the northern theater.

A helping Orozco help Madero, though, was another young officer who was emerging from provincial obscurity to discover that he had a knack for revolutionary leadership. He too had been recruited to the cause by Abraham Gonzalez and now served under Arosco with a commission as a colonel in the Revolutionary Army. His given name at birth was Jose Doroteo Arango Arambula. But by this point in his life, everybody knew him as Francisco Villa, and informally, by the name that history remembers him as, Poncho Villa. So, let us now introduce Poncho Villa. Jose Dorotheo Arango Arambula was born in June of 1878.

At least that's the general historical consensus. Via was pretty loose with stories that he told about his childhood and background, and it kind of feels like he never told the same story twice. Via's paternity was amongst these loosely told tales, and eventually Villa took to claiming that he was the son of a famous local bandit. His parents, however, were sharecroppers on a large assyenda in central Durango. and as a boy, Via got a basic education, though he dropped out of school to support his mother after the death of the man who was legally, if maybe not actually, his father.

As he entered the rough economy of the booming north in the high Porfariato, he took all manner of jobs. He was at various times a bricklayer, a railroad foreman, a sharecropper, a butcher, and a mule skinner. But despite this basic instability in his life, there was a constant. that whatever his odd job was at the moment, Via always supplemented his income with various forms of thieving and banditry and smuggling. In 1902, he was finally arrested along with other members of a bandit gang he was riding with, and he likely only escaped being executed because a local Asandado intervened on his behalf, likely because said Ascendato was a frequent buyer of Via's ill-gotten goods. This would not be the last time Francisco Via slipped the noose.

Instead of being killed, Via was conscripted into the army, though he deserted just a few months later. And it was after this desertion that he started styling himself Francisco Via and then Poncho Via, though his close friends called him La Cucaracha, the cockroach. He spent the next few years bouncing around between legitimate work and banditry until he was approached in late 1910 by Abraham Gonzalez. Via had a well-earned, and often embellished, reputation in Chihuahua, and Gonzalez convinced Via to put his skills to use in favor of Madero's revolution. Intrigued by this opportunity, Via signed up and suddenly discovered his true calling. Poncho Via had been a lot of things in his

life, but he was born to be a revolutionary. He was brash, he was brave, he was charismatic. He was the almost perfectly drawn platonic ideal of the men's. Mexican Revolutionary. Over the winter of 1910, 1911, he was among those northern rural rebels saving Madero's revolution. And he was good at it. He took control of towns and assyendas once he captured a trainload of federal soldiers. When Madero finally came back into the country, Via followed Orozco to meet the hefe at Bustios to plan a campaign for final victory. With Orozco and Via now in Bustios with Madero, they devised a strategy to take Juarez. First, a column of rebel troops was to advance towards Chihuahua City.

To make it look like that was the planned target, they were supposed to make sure they were seen by the federal forces who would duly relay that information to Mexico City. President Diaz helpfully took this bait, and he ordered garrisons throughout Chihuahua to concentrate on the state capital, pulling troops out of the already thinly garrisoned border cities, including Juarez. The rebels then charged north, and on April the 19th, they arrived at the outskirts of Vastly outnumbering the remaining federal garrison. It would have been a relatively simple matter for the rebels to take the city. But Madero held off ordering the final attack. Having placed

President Dias in check, but not yet checkmate, Madero wanted the end game to play out as peacefully and with as little bloodshed as possible. He hoped that the pressure he now placed on Juarez would be enough to leverage concessions, maybe even end the war and the Dias regime. Now, partly, this was coming from his own character, but Madero had logistical issues to consider. He still faced money and ammunition shortages. The war couldn't be prolonged too much longer, and they couldn't just fire all their bullets taking Juarez. He also worried that if bullets started flying, that some of them might fly into El Paso, and that if Americans were killed or injured, that the American government might be tempted to intervene,

and that would upend everything. Just recently, fighting in the border town of Agua Prieta had led to bullets flying into Douglas, Texas, and two Americans were killed and another 11 wounded. Another such incident might wake the sleeping Americans. So Manero arranged a ceasefire, and then he got down to what he hoped would be the final negotiations of peace. At the end of April 1911, close to a dozen men converged on El Paso, Texas, to try to work out a settlement. For the regime, a handful of men came bearing the blessing of Finance Minister Lehman Tour, if not truly official credentials.

On behalf of the Mataristas was Madero's own father again, Don Francisco, as well as Abraham Gonzalez, who was called in from his service elsewhere in Chihuahua. Francisco Vasquez Gomez was also recalled from his mission in Washington, D.C., and then also showing up as a guy who will play more of a role once the revolution is won. That's Jose Maria Pino-Swaras. a Yucatan journalist turned Matarista, currently serving the cause in New Orleans. Now, Madero initially insisted on the resignation of Dias, but after just a couple of days of talking, he suddenly dropped that demand. The departure of Dias, either by resignation or death,

was an inevitability. It was coming sooner rather than later. So, as I said last week, the real point of this was ousting Ramon Corral from the vice presidency, and on that point, Madero would not budge. His agents also insisted on many of the other points that had first been hammered out in New York City a month earlier. The elevation of men approved my Madero to positions in the cabinet and in the state houses, a general amnesty for everyone involved in the fighting, and then of course electoral reform and a new, free and fair presidential election. The negotiations proceeded in the last week of April, and they continued into early May, with Madero continuously renewing the ceasefire. First, he agreed to extend it six more days, then five more days,

then three more days. All the while, his army just sat outside of Juarez, wondering why in the fork Madero did not give the order to attack. They could take the city easily. I mean, why don't we just do it? And it wasn't just the rank and file. Erosco and Via were both pacing around the camp like angry bulls. The first week of May was now drawing to a close, and still they just sat there. They had arrived outside of Juarez on April the 19th and were now approaching the end of their third week of idleness. The only thing holding them back was that Madero's father and some of the regime's unofficial negotiators had taken it upon themselves to take out loans that they passed along to Madero so he could keep his army fed and supplied, so as not to risk them all crashing down on Juarez to loot the city for provisions.

As the negotiations dragged on, the rebels continued to make gains across Mexico, and Madero went back to insisting that Diaz was an illegal usurper who had to resign. This led negotiations to break down on May the 6th. But the very next day in Mexico City, a marathon cabinet meeting of the new cabinet, led Diaz to finally move his foot ever so slightly out the door. He admitted that retirement might be coming, but he would not go until his conscience determined that he would not be leaving Mexico to anarchy, which for all of his increasingly senile selfishness, Dias really did have some reason to believe that he personally was the reason Mexico had been stable for so long, and that his departure really would be a national disaster.

Back outside Juarez, Madero took the president's statement as enough of a move in the right direction that he not only planned to resume talks, he also now planned to break off the siege of Juarez, without ever attacking. Madero told his senior commanders that they were instead to prepare to head south to Chihuahua City. His officers, Orozco and Via chief, among them, were absolutely incredulous. What are you talking about? We can't just leave. Now, Madero had made up his mind, but he hesitated to actually give the order to depart,

afraid that the order would not be followed. And he was right to worry about that. He was right to worry that his men would not follow his. his orders. On May 8th, 1911, Madero was meeting with some of the representatives of the regime to work out terms of a further armistice when the sound of gunshots sort of preempted the armistice. Without Madero's approval, Orozco ordered a full frontal assault on Juarez. Hasteily concluding that he needed to hop back on board the boat he was supposedly the captain of, Madero broke off negotiations and sent out a general order for everyone to attack. He needed to keep up to

the pretence that he was actually in charge. And there was no way to stop the attack anyway. For his part, Orozcoe later said that no matter what Madero did or said that he was going to attack Juarez, after another day of sometimes heavy fighting, the rebels captured Juarez on May the 10th. The capture of Juarez was the great victory that ensured Madero's revolution would, after so many setbacks, be successful. And like the initial rebellions back in November and December of 1910, not only did Madero have nothing to do with the capture of Juarez, but it was actually staged against his explicit instructions. But Madero still got to take credit, and both his power and prestige increased dramatically as soon as the city was captured. He now controlled

a good-sized city on the American border that guaranteed unhindered access to supplies, weapons, ammunition, and money. He also now had access to banks, both in Juarez and El Paso, that would make funding his rebellion that much easier. He also now controlled telegraph offices that would allow the Mataristas for the first time to actually communicate with those out there fighting for them. It is estimated that in May of 2011, perhaps 60,000 men and women were under arms fighting for Madero, and Madero was now for the first time able to contact, quote-unquote, his armies. The capture of Juarez also led to a general withdrawal of other federal army units from the area, and long-contested towns like Agua Prieta and Casas Grandes fell into rebel hands.

But most especially, though he had not been able to stop Arosco and his other officers from attacking, Madera was able to impress upon them that they must be lawful and restrained in victory. So the capture of Juarez did not lead to the sack of Juarez. Homes, property, citizens, they were all respected. The rebels police the streets now, and municipal services continued. It was proof to the world that a revolutionary victory did not mean lawless anarchy. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Mexico, it was a similar story, with rebels capturing towns and that not necessarily being the end of the world for the inhabitants of those towns. Down in Morelos, which, FYI, were just going to be coming back to Morelos time and time again,

Zapata had decided to call off that joint attack on Hootla at the end of April, only to have another go with the city at the beginning of May. this time without it being like a terrible ambush design to get him killed. He surrounded the heavily guarded city with his men, and he sent some boys into the town who could pass by the guards without causing suspicion. The boys carried dynamite, camouflaged as toys, and the kids threw that dynamite at the guardhouses. This created a literal explosion of confusion. Zapata ordered his men in, and they took the city. Not quite a week later, Zapata led his forces, which were now numbered.

at least 4,000 in their most important campaign yet, and that was to capture the city of Kwautla. The federal garrison of this all-important city numbered maybe 400, but they were better trained and had better artillery. Sepada opened the attack on May the 13th, 1911, and though he endured heavy casualties, maybe 300 more killed and wounded in the initial assault, Zapata had determined that he was going to capture the city. In the face of heavy, artillery and machine gun fire, the Mareloh rebels just kept attacking. By May the 15th, they had pushed into the city and were now fighting it out street by street. By May the 19th, nearly every federal soldier had been killed, but Zapata had lost a thousand or more of his own men along the

way. But by May the 20th, Sapata and his rebels held the city outright. It was a major personal victory for Sapata, because it left him in control, not just of Kuwait. but almost all of Morelos. We do not know what Sopanta's next move would have been, though, because word soon came down that Francisco Madero, for whom they were all ostensibly fighting, had cut a deal to end the revolution. After the capture of Juarez,

all of the regime's representatives in El Paso urged Jose Leman Tour to cut a deal to pay whatever price Madero was demanding, because the longer they waited, the higher that price would be. and Liemann Tour tended to agree, especially now that Morelos and Guerrero were all but rebel-occupied bases. It took a few days to convince the president that his goose was cooked once and for all. But on May the 17th, Dias caved.

He let it be known that he and Ramon Carrow would resign as part of an agreement to end the rebellion. The terms that Madero finally secured were surprisingly light and narrow in scope. They did not even encompass all that had been agreed to in New York City. But the basic points were this. Dias and Corral would resign by the end of the month. There would be indemnification against property damage and a general amnesty for all rebels under arms. Public opinion in the states would be satisfied, whatever that vague point is about. And then at Madero's insistence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco Leon de la Berra,

who had only just joined the cabinet, would be named. named interim president, and he would oversee a new national election. Madero did not want to move immediately to being president, because he did not want to make it look like he had seized power by force. Now, this was an admirable bit of public relations, and likely it came from honest intentions. But as we will see next week, the five months after Madero won his revolution, but before he was sworn in as president of Mexico, were pretty critical months.

and he just ensured that he would have no official power during this critical period. The final settlement, known to history as the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez, was signed on May the 21st, 1911. Ramon Carrault resigned the vice-presidency on May the 25th, and soon departed for exile in France. President Dias then followed, and on May the 31st, boarded a ship that took him first to Spain before he too moved on to exile in Paris, where he would spend the rest of his life. Jose Liemontour soon followed both of them, taking a train to New York City and then a ship to France. After 35 years, the Porfuriato was over. But as he departed the country he had held together for so long, Dias famously said,

Madero has unleashed the tiger. Let's see if he can control it. Now, for all of next week, I will be running around between Toronto and New York and Nashville and Atlanta, and so I will not have time to write a new episode. But to serve as a coda for the Perfuriato, I am going to publish a reading of a paper I wrote back in 2012 for a grad school class that I actually took on the Mexican Revolution. It analyzes how Porfarian politics eventually destroyed the Perfriato. It's called Chickens Coming Home to Roost. So next week will be a little forensic obituary for the Perfariato, and then in two weeks we will be back to pick up with not quite yet President Madero, as Mexico slip slowly back into chaos.