Revolutions - 9.11- Not Quite President Madero

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

In the summer of 1911, Francisco Madero was not quite President. And that was a bit of a problem. sponsor: audible.com/revolutions

Hello and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 9.11, not quite yet, President Madero. So thank you for indulging my reading of an old college paper. The book tour went great. We made a lot of new friends, had some laugh, sold some books. But I am not actually home yet, because when this episode publishes, I'll actually be down in a small house we rented in Auverne. Now, mostly the point is to unwind and have.

have a proper little vacation with the family, but the spot was strategically picked because it is near Lafayette's birthplace and boyhood stomping ground in Chavagnac. So I'll be making a little pilgrimage out to the house where he was born, because now that the storm before the storm is in the rearview mirror a bit, it's time to move my full attention to our dear friend Lafayette. Well, not full attention, because the Revolution's podcast is not going to produce itself. So without further ado, let's get back to it. We left the narrative off in May of 1911, with Francisco Medeiros Revolution a success and the key members of the Porfiriato sailing away to exile, most of them winding up in Paris.

But just to wrap up one thing, remember how I've mentioned a number of times that the real thing that drove the revolution forward was not fear of President Diaz so much as fear of President Ramon Corral. That disliked Scientifico Vice President was still a relatively young man, and his ascension to power meant the continuation of autocratic tyranny into the foreseeable future. Well, check this out. Just a year after Corral arrived in Paris, he was stricken with cancer and he died. Old Don Porfiro actually outlived him. Dias himself died in 1915.

So even if the regime had survived the revolution, there still would have been a major succession crisis when it came time to fill the vacancy that would have been left by the late, and very little mourned Ramon Corral. Just one of those interesting little quirks of history that we never found out about because it happened in an alternate timeline. Okay, so remember that when Madero signed off on the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez,

that he did not immediately assume the presidency. Sticking to his liberal democratic principles, he did not want to come to power by naked force alone. He really did want to be elected president. So, as stipulated in the agreement, the foreign minister, Francisco Leon de la Berra, became interim president, who would then preside over a new presidential election scheduled for October 1911. This meant that Madero now held no official position in government.

He was merely a private citizen. Granted, he was a very influential private citizen, but he personally wielded no direct mechanism of state power. And everything that Mexico is going to have to deal with between now and October, Madero will have to manage through only persuasion and influence. And as Madero would discover, there were limits to how far mere persuasion and mere influence were going to get him. Besides, Madero was now stuck in the middle. On one side, there were the victorious rebels, radical Democrats and reformers, who now expected the spoils of war to be doled out and a new world to be born. And on the other

side, there were a lot of conservatives and government functionaries who wanted to salvage their own positions and retain as much of the Porphyriotto as possible. Both sides are going to be dissatisfied with Madero, who tried to please them both, and so, as so often happens, pleased neither. The selection of new members of the cabinet for the interim government was an early bone of contention that showed Madero very quickly retreating into respectable politics. Madero had a notion of what a presidential cabinet minister looked like and dressed like and what his resume ought to be, and he didn't really see it in the ranks of his revolutionary supporters. Madero had never really been comfortable with the ruffian set who had actually won the war for him.

So when Madero and de la Barre conferred over who would serve in the interim government, only one guy was a full-blown, early adopter plan of San Luis rebel. His name was Manuel Borea. The rest were either men who had hopped on the bandwagon at the last minute, or a couple were neutral, leaders who had stood aloof from both sides, or beyond that, there were two who would actually serve in the old regime. This was an aggravating early letdown for many Mataristas, most especially Pasqual Orozco. If anyone could lay claim to being the man who had won the revolution for Madero, it was Orozco. All the skirmishes and battles he had fought since November, up to and

including the capture of Juarez, which he had done over Madero's objections. Now, Rosco now expected to be rewarded for his service. He expected nothing less than to be appointed Minister of War. Now, this is perhaps a bit of a stretch. I mean, six months ago, Orozco was a semi-literate mule tear. But even still, when he found out he had been passed over for the job, Orozco was furious and hurt. And though Minister of War was maybe asking a bit too much, it's hard to say that Madero really did right by Orozco. When all the jobs and offices had been doled out, Orozco was left holding chief of the Rurales, the federal mounted police in the state of Chihuahua. And that is all Madero thought Orozco worthy of, chief of a couple of hundred mounted police in a single state without even any real political power.

Suffice it to say that the breach between Madero and the jilted Orozco has now opened up. Now it's hard to say how much of the burying of Orozco was planned and purposeful. He had, after all, been awfully insubordinate, and how much was just the accidental byproduct of Madero now having to grapple with the tiger he had unleashed. And when Diaz chuckled about this tiger, he wasn't talking in the abstract. He was talking about something very specifically. The management of competing factions in every city and state, and then balancing those factions against the central power of the federal government, was a trick that Diaz had managed to pull off. and basically no other Mexican leader ever had. Now that Porfarian state governors and Hefe's Politicos and mayors needed to be replaced,

local political rivalries that had been dormant for a generation roared back to life. And it was basically up to Madero to try to pick winners and losers in every state, to decide who would be governor and who would not. Would it be former elites who had been kept out of politics during the Porfriato, or new men who had just fought under the revolutionary flag and wanted a reward or old Porphyrians who wanted to keep their jobs. Abraham Gonzalez was obviously going to be made governor of Chihuahua. But as soon as the treaty ending the revolution was signed, the Chihuahua state legislature, mostly conservative Porfirians, asserted that the state legislature

had the right to appoint the governor now that Diaz was out of the picture. It was not until mid-June that Gonzalez was actually accepted and only then after a rogue Porfurian general was finally defeated in the field. neighbor in Kuala, it was the same story. Madero wanted the governor to be Venustiano Carranza, who had been defeated in the rig 1909 election, but the legislature balked, and it took heavy pressure to finally get them to approve Caranza. In Sinaloa, the sitting governor straight up refused to step aside, and it took a small but sharp three-day running battle in the capital until he finally fled. And for every one that was picked for one of these jobs, there were three or more other candidates who

were left out in the cold and who were now just as bitter as they had been under the Porphyriato. So facing a tsunami of requests for guidance and demands for attention, Madero was initially able to do little more than just issue a blanket call for everyone in Mexico to please support the De La Berra interim government as the country prepared for new presidential elections. Then Madero hopped on a train and headed for Mexico City. Departing from the north on June 3rd, 1911, Madero was swamped by huge crowds in every city he passed through. It took four days for the slow-moving victory procession to get to Mexico City, but on June the 7th, Madero was greeted by 100,000 people.

Now, many of them were residents of the city, sure, but many more had descended on the capital from the countryside, and among those standing front and center and ready to greet Madero was Emiliano Zapata. We last left Sapata, having just taken Kwa'u, literally days before the Treaty of Ciudad Juarez was signed. But the victory of the rebels in Morelos was hardly an end to the conflict because the rebels were anything but united. Remember, the Figueroa brothers over in Guerrero still had designs on controlling all of

South Central Mexico. And in a pretty brazen move, one of their officers lured old Gabriel Tapapa, that old-weathered veteran who had been the first man in Morelos to declare himself in rebellion. while Tapapa was lured into a town under false pretenses, he was ambushed and shot. This was extremely provocative. Tapapa had been one of the early inner circle members of the Ayala Committee of Defense, but it did lead to increased solidarity amongst the disparate little armies in Morelos. After Tapapa was shot, Sepata joined forces with other leaders who had been fighting alongside him,

but not necessarily under him, and they jointly moved into his. the capital of Kornavaka, taking control of the city without firing a shot. The increasing solidarity of the Morelos rebels was important not just to secure their own lives from threats of mutual assassination, but also to protect themselves from the troubling hints of what was to come now that the revolution was over. The Figueroa brothers had more or less cast themselves as the defenders of the major ostendatos, and they collectively used their influence across state lines to get a guy named Juan Carillon, named the new governor of Morelos. Carillon was not a land and justice for the people kind of guy.

He too was a socially conservative ally of the Ascendados, so the rebel leaders in Quarovaca pledged cooperation with each other, with Zapata continuing to be the man everyone turned to for the last word on things. And with the Grand Hefe, Madero, finally on his way to Mexico City, Sopata went down to meet him to tell Madero that Moreau, that Morelos was not going to be satisfied with Meet the New Boss, same as the old boss, shenanigans. So, Zapata was there to meet Madero's train on June the 7th.

The two men had never communicated directly with each other. Sapata carried his revolutionary commission by way of his dead comrade, Torres Burgos, and by the acclamation of his own people. But Madero willingly greeted Sapata as the revolutionary leader of Morelos, and he listened intently when Sepata explained why Marilos had risen up in the first place and what they now expected of their ostensible national leader. Madero implored Zapata to demobilize his little army now that the rebellion was over, but Sapata respectfully insisted that they would stand down when the reasons they had gone into revolt were addressed.

So having spent exactly zero time in the region south of Mexico City, Madero promised to make a brief tour through Guerrero and Morelos to grapple with the situation and talk more about what should be done on the issue of land and village rights. So on June the 12th, just a few days after landing in Mexico City, Madero traveled up to Morelos to go on this brief tour. He met again with Zapata and other now hopefully former rebel leaders. Sapata let Madero review his 4,000-man army, who all stood at attention and looked mighty impressive.

I mean, it was a force just about as large as the one Madero had been leading in the north. Now, this was some nice welcome to Morelos pageantry, but it was also a warning. You can't just ignore us or our demands. Madero promised state money to help the villages make official purchases that would give them clear, modern title to their ancient claims. He also offered Zapata the job as head of the Rurales in Morelos, that would give him power to enforce the law, rather than simply the whims of the ascendados.

But Madero did communicate that Juan Carrion would remain governor and also insisted that Sapata demobilize his troops. Madero had decided that now that peace had been restored, that the standing federal army would be allowed to keep functioning as the legitimate army of the state, while his own irregular revolutionary forces would be the ones to stand down. And this again is Madero being caught in the middle. but as was becoming all too typical, he was erring on the side of favoring the old forces of order rather than the new forces of revolution.

Zapata was still reluctant to demobilize, but ultimately was convinced of Madero's personal honesty and intentions, and so Sapata began to slowly, not in any great hurry, mind you, tell his men to hand in their guns and go back to their villages. Returning to Mexico City, Madero's popularity among his own revolutionary supporters was waning. It looked like Madero was running into the arms of the same rich and powerful families who had been running Mexico for years, rather than elevating the men and women who had risked their lives to rebel against those very families. The presidential cabinet, the state governors, the call to demobilize the revolutionary forces rather than the federal forces. I mean, whose side was he on? Adding to this was Madero's inexplicable decision to let Bernardo Reyes back into the country. Reyes, remember, had accepted exile to Europe when his bid for the presidency became intolerable to Dias back in 1909, and Reyes had remained in Europe ever since.

But he had sailed back across the Atlantic when things started to go badly for Dias in the spring of 1911. Not sure of his position, Reyes parked in Havana and reached out to Madero, who told him to remain in Havana until things were settled. But once things were settled, Reyes asked again for permission to return. returned to Mexico, and Madero said okay. This is usually chocked up to naivete on Madero's part, and that's probably right. Reyes swore he had no political ambitions that he just wanted to help put the country back together, which was, to be frank, a huge load of crap, and Madero should have known it. And just after Madero made his grand entrance into Mexico City, Reyes followed with an entrance of his own. He kept a low profile, but many of Madero's supporters

could not believe Reyes had been allowed to return. If there was anyone who could instantly challenge Madero for national control of post-Poferriato Mexico, it was Bernardo Reyes. Meanwhile, back up in Morelos. After Madero departed, Sopata put in a request with the new governor for 500 rifles to equip his forces through the proper channels. But the request was denied, suspecting that the governor wanted to disarm anyone who might actually be in favor of land reform. Sopata just went ahead and requisitioned the rifles himself. This caused a stir through the ranks of the interim government and the respectable presses,

who are now looking to consolidate as anti-revolutionary, a post-revolutionary Mexico as possible. On June the 22nd, a newspaper in Mexico City proclaimed Sopata the modern Attila. Frustrated, but still putting some faith in Madero's ultimately good intentions, Zapata announced that he was done fighting for now. A few days later he retired, he got married, and he went back to private life in his village. But many of the men he had led kept their arms and refused to fully demobilize. By the end of June, Madero was having all kinds of problems. His revolutionary supporters were getting very disenchanted with his weak hesitancy.

While conservatives and ostendatos continued to exert pressure, telling Madero that now that he had won, he needed to be responsible and not risk a full social or economic revolution. He needed to stick to his narrow democratic reforms. In this uncertain environment, Madero got going with preparations for the presidential election, which as I said are now scheduled for October 1911. He did not want to simply revive the anti-relectionist party from 1910. Instead, he wanted to form a new post-revolutionary party called the Partido Constitional progressista. But the platform of this new party was essentially, the platform of his 1910 campaign with some additional elements from the plan of San Luis

thrown in. Most of the organizers and the Central Committee members of the new party were all the same. So why the change? And the suspicion is that Madero's old revolutionary ally, Francisco Vasquez Gomez, was angling to rehitch himself to Madero as the vice presidential candidate. And the Madero's, Francisco and his brother Gustavo, did not want Vasquez Gomez to get the job. Vazquez Gomez had been a thorn in the side of the Medeiros during the revolution. He had kept holding himself aloof from them, while also trying to be the key public spokesman for the revolution, and presumably an alternative figurehead if the Madero's went down. Vasquez Gomez was a conservative-leaning ex-Raeista, who had never been particularly loyal to the

Matarista inner circle. And with Madero campaigning hard on no re-election, he was still going to go with no re-election. The Madero's did not want four years to whizz by, just so Vasquez Gomez could take over as president. And for his part, it really seems like that's exactly what Vasquez Gomez wanted. He wanted to become the vice president, have four years of little Francisco Madero whizzed by, and then President Vasquez Gomez could take over. So by forming a new party, rather than reviving the old party, Madero could drop Vasquez Gomez as his running mate. While these preparations were being made, Madero tried to stay on the move as much as possible and visit as much of what was about to become his country as possible.

And in mid-July, he was planning to go to Puebla, when friends in Puebla City told him that they had heard rumors, a faction of Porfarian officers, planned to assassinate him. So Madero sent a reliable agent up to Puebla to investigate, and after asking around, this guy came away convinced that this was an extreme, credible threat, and he had a list of names of those involved. He recommended Madero call off the trip. But Madero did not want to call off the trip. So his agent did what he thought best to protect his boss. He preemptively arrested a bunch of probable assassins and tossed them in the clink.

When Madero found out, though, he was furious. Here we are not two months removed from toppling an authoritarian dictatorship with no regard for the rule of law, and we've already adopted their tactics. So, Madero ordered his own probable assassins released from jail and ordered his loyal agent to be arrested. Mostly this was to prove to everyone that things really were different now. But again, Madero's supporters were baffled and flummoxed. This is not a game. You're locking up those trying to protect you and letting free those who mean to literally kill you. Get your head out of the clouds, man.

Then, to make things worse, on July the 12th, the day before, Madero was set to arrive in Puebla, a scuffle broke out between members of the revolutionary forces there and the federal army. It erupted into a fighting riot, and a bunch of people got killed. When Madero showed up, though, he scolded his supporters for their unrulyness and declared his support for the federal troops. Frankly, Madero is at this point trying to please those who he could never really please, and very much upsetting those he could not afford to upset. After this little incident, Bernardo Reyes approached Madero in Mexico City and said, look, I meant what I said when I renounced all my political ambitions. But you see, there are a lot of fine patriotic Mexicans

who want me to run for president. They're begging me to run, and golly gee whiz, I just don't feel like I can let them down. This line is lifted word for word from President Diaz's quadrenial tradition of being called to run for re-election despite his own great reluctance. Madero, being Madero, of course, said, yes, Bernardo Reyes, you can run for president. This is a free and fair election after all, that's the point. I won't do anything to hinder your campaign, censor your pamphlets, or harass your supporters. If nothing else, Madero was a man of principle. All his enemies counted on it.

Meanwhile, up in Morelos, Madero's principles and ultimately good intentions were not counting for as the ascendados reconciledated their position. Villagers who could see the walls closing back in approached the now retired Emiliano Zapata and asked him for leadership and for guidance. Initially, Sapata was reluctant to jump back in the fray, but the new interim minister of the interior pushed harder to demobilize the remaining companies of revolutionary troops, and Sapata signaled that he supported them remaining under arms to defend their interests. Madero interceded, and he invited Sapata. to Parley, but Zapata refused, instead sending his brother to speak for the family and for the

people of Marrillos. These negotiations continued through July, but the two sides could not come to an agreement. The government wanted total demobilization, which the Zapatistas would not agree to, unless there was at least some guarantee stronger than Madero's word that the villages would ultimately get their land back. They suspected the government's intentions, and these suspicions were proven correct when, in the first week of August, a large force of regional police under Sipata's rival Ambrosio Figueroa, massed in Hojutla. And even more ominous, a column of 1,000 federal troops were ordered to garrisoned Kornavaka. This column was led by brigadier general Victoriano Huerta. Werta is pretty dang important, so let's bring Victoriano Werta

onto the board. Victoriano Huerta was born in Halisco in 1850. His family was dirt poor. And though there was likely some mestizo in his family, Huerta always personally identified as fully indigenous. He was probably the first person in his family to learn how to read, thanks to tutoring from a local priest. And as has been the case for many poor young men over the long history of civilization,

Huerta identified military service as his ticket out of poverty, and he joined the army as soon as he could. Attached to an influential general as a secretary, young Werta won a recommendation to the National Military Academy in Mexico City, eventually graduating in 1877, with a double specialty in artillery and topography. This dumped him into the Mexican army as a young officer just as Porfirio Diaz was taking over. Werta excelled during the Porfurian era. He survived all of Diaz's slow purges, and he thrived under the autocratic system. Werta had little use for liberalism and democracy. He admired Diaz not in spite of the president's dictatorial tendencies, but because of them.

Werta absolutely believe Mexico needed a strong man to hold the country together. As he rose up the ranks, he bounced around Mexico, assigned to various campaigns of pacification against indigenous uprisings, particularly in Sonora and the Yucatan, or small-time political challenges to Diaz. By the turn of the century, Werta was a general and a well-known part of the military wing of the Porfarian regime. And at just 50 years old, he was still a relatively young member of the officer corps. But Werta's body was quite a bit older than 50 years old. He suffered routinely from bad health. He had terrible teeth and developed cataracts that left him practically blind in the daylight.

To compensate for this, heavy drinking transitioned into full-blown alcoholism. And in 1907, Werta was forced into retirement as a result of his failing and ravaged body, and he took up a teaching position in Mexico City. When the revolution came, Werta applied for reinstatement to the army, though events overtook him, and his signal service to the cause was leading the escort that took Porfirio Dias to Veracruz and to the boat that would take the president away from Mexico forever. So Werta is obviously among those in 1911. who wanted to keep as much of the Porfurian apparatus in place as possible.

And though the General pledged his loyalty to the interim government, it's pretty clear that loyalty was contingent. Contingent on what? Contingent on Werta spied an opportunity to rebel against it. His rank and experience, however, made him the perfect candidate for the job of pacifying Morelos. And so, in early August 1911, General Huerta led 1,000 men up into the mountains. The next two weeks were insanely jam-packed with activity, negotiations and troop movements,

as the crisis in Morelos threatened to re-explode back into open war between the interim government and the Zapatista rebels. The state elections scheduled for August the 13th were abruptly cancelled, and President de la Berra declared martial law in Morelos. This led Francisco Moreno to rush to Quarovaca to negotiate a peace. Emiliano Zapata, now increasingly abandoned. the retirement he had just settled into, said that there could be no demobilization until the land claims were guaranteed and all federal troops withdrew from the state. Madero agreed that the government was being way too provocative. And this here is a perfect example of how Madero's insistent on not yet being president

was making things worse. Both he and Zapata were both merely private citizens at this point. neither had any official authority to settle anything. And so it was left to men who did currently have official authority, like General Huerta, who maybe did not want to settle anything to drive events. Madero departed Morelos on August the 16th, though, believing he had the terms of peace in hand. General Huerta waited one hour after Madero's train left the station,

and then he ordered his column to advance on Guauteu. So Madero arrived in Mexico City and basically had to be a bit of, to turn right around and race back to Morelos. Back in personal negotiations with Zapata, the two men agreed to terms that they believed would resolve the crisis. Madero's brother Raul would be the new head of the Morelos state police, and he would lead 250 loyal men to garrison the state. Federal troops would immediately withdraw. Zapata would then tell his men to demobilize. And Sapata really did seem to trust Madero.

He didn't really trust anyone else. And again, if only Madero had been president at this point, things might not have gotten out of hand. For his part, Zapata did indeed start demobilizing, but Huerta continued to advance. President de la Berra then got into it, and he ordered Huerta to hold for at least 48 hours as Zapata continued to demobilize. But then the governor of Morelos, the new governor, Carrion, sent a message to De La Berra that the rebels were violating the truce, which was somewhere between gross exaggeration and outright lie. Still in Kuwaitla, Madero was furious at these machinations and signed a personal statement absolving Zapata from charges of rebellion. He said the crisis was being pushed forward by the

forces of order, not the forces of revolution. Madero then departed back to Mexico City, but on August the 23rd, Werta's column restarted its march and was soon just 10 miles from Kwautela, with the city now but emptied of armed Zapatistas. With this crisis unfolding in Morelos, the presidential campaign of 1911 continued to chug along. At the end of August, the Partido Constitutional Progressista held a national convention of about 1,500 delegates to approve a platform and nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates. That Madero would be the presidential candidate was undisputed, and he was approved, and he was approved unanimously in the very first session. The platform was also pretty easy to knock out.

As I said, it was mostly a rehash of the platform of 1910 plus the plan of San Luis, electoral and political reform, the supremacy of the written constitution, freedom of the press and speech, free association, more equitable taxation, some education reform. None of this was particularly controversial. What was controversial was the vice presidential nominee. Vasquez Gomez was there and fighting for the spot. But by now, Madero had made it abundantly clear that his own choice was Yucatan journalist turned Matarista revolutionary, Jose Maria Pino-Suarez. After much debate and haggling, a vote was finally called, and Pino-Suarez won by a comfortable majority. Vasquez Gomez by now was pissed and wondering what steps he may have to take now that he had been cut out of the future

government. Meanwhile, Bernardo Reyes had also been formally nominated for president and begun to campaign across Mexico. And whatever he had said about just wanting to rebuild the country, he clearly had no plans to go easy on Madero. Wherever he spoke, he railed against Madero as a bumbling disaster who couldn't possibly be trusted to govern the country. His partisans echoed those sentiments in their own speeches and pamphlets. And what appeared like it was going to be a fairly uncontested coronation for Madero was suddenly being very contested. Madero's supporters continued to be baffled by the chief's willingness to endure this abuse, and frankly, to invite the possibility that what had been won on the battlefield would be

given away at the ballot box. But Madero insisted that they had to adhere to their own liberal and democratic principles, or the revolution would have been merely a violent power grab. Guided by this romantic, idealistic, and mystic belief in his own destiny, Madero went out on campaign, but he did nothing to stop Bernardo Reyes. But not everyone was so romantic and idealistic as Madero. And when Reyes was preparing to give a speech at the end of August, Matarista supporters surrounded Reyes and his entourage, the heral epitettes and abuse that soon turned to pushing and shoving.

Reyes himself was not exactly accosted, but he was forced to quickly, hustle away from the scene, and then he made much of the incident. Reyes' invective only deepened, and he now denounced Madero as a violent, hypocritical tyrant on top of being a bumbling disaster. But the presidential campaign remained merely a war of words, but up in Morelos, the war was about to involve shooting. On August the 27th, 1911, Emiliano Sapata, still in Kwautela, issued a declaration addressed to the people of Morelos denouncing the government's aggressive actions. This declaration was circulated just as Ambrosio Figueroa advanced out of Hujula, arresting Zapatista leaders and having them summarily shot as rebels.

Down in Mexico City, the minister of the interior issued orders to capture Sipata, dead or alive. By the end of August, Kwautele was surrounded by enemy troops, even as Sipata was trying to get the government to stand down, and he sent a telegraph to interim president de la Pere, saying, my forces have demobilized. It's just me here with a few bodyguards. We are not in rebellion. But the interim president merely passed this intelligence on to General Huerta,

who was like, awesome, let's advance on Kuala, knowing that there would be no resistance. So Zapata and his few remaining armed followers slipped out of the city, headed towards the high mountainous border between Morelos and Guerrero. Huerta took Kuala, and then he wielded around and followed Sapata, cutting a swath of merciless destruction through the peasant countryside. Werta sent confident messages to Mexico City saying, I have pacified the state. But really, he was just driving the population into sympathetic solidarity with Sapata,

who was now widely seen as the defender of the people and a victim of the government's aggression. After a month of this, Werta announced on September the 26th that Morelos was totally pacified. But on that very same day from his mountain headquarters, quarters, Zapata issued a list of demands that were signed by himself, his brother, and 12 other leaders. They said, federal troops must be evacuated from the state, a general amnesty must be issued for all prisoners and declared rebels, there must be free and fair elections for governor, and water rights, timber rights, and village rights must all be recognized. All of these were rejected, and Sapata was officially back in rebellion. Meanwhile, that presidential

campaign continued, and by now Bernardo Reyes and his crew decided on a new strategy. Despite their campaigning across the country, they found that Madero still had enormous support and was clearly the frontrunner. But they also recognized that he was less of a frontrunner now than he was a month ago, and he was less a frontrunner a month ago than he had been the month before that. With the election approaching on October the 1st, Madero would probably win. But a month after that, on November the 1st, maybe not. Time was on the side of the Reistas, and both Reyes and Madero knew it. So Reyes started demanding that the election be postponed for a variety of pretexts.

On September the 12th, Reyes formally made a request that Congress take up the issue, which they did. But after some debate, the Congress decided it was better to have the election now and get things settled, then drag it out, and possibly risk more violence, rebellion, and revolution. So the Congress came back and said, nope, the election will proceed on a second. October the 1st. Knowing that he was going to lose, Reyes decided for theatrics. He made a great show of withdrawing from the race in protest, saying that it was a rigged farce, a coronation for Madero, nothing else. He told his supporters, however, to remain organized and vigilant. And to plot his next move, Reyes himself went to, you guessed it, San Antonio, which isn't ominous or anything.

The presidential election of 1911 was held on October 1st, and despite the bleating of Reyes, it was actually as open and fair and democratic an election as had likely ever been held in Mexico, though of course the Reist has raised all kinds of noise about fraud and corruption and ballot stuffing. So despite the shine having come right off of him, Francisco Madero still won the election in a landslide. Now, the October 1st election, though, was only for president, and that election would produce the electors who would go on to vote on October the 15th. There, they would cast the formal vote to make Madero president. At that same time, they would also vote for vice president. So Vasquez Gomez was still running around and stumping for himself, and hard feelings were evident between him and Madero.

In the two weeks between the votes, Madero met with Vasquez Gomez and tried to convince him to drop his can. candidacy and support Pino-Swarres for the good of the unified country. Vavasquez Gomez emerged from this meeting and promptly announced that Madero had tried to bribe him, but that he was far too principled to make such backroom deals with a hypocritical weasel. So on October the 15th, the electors met. Madero was formally elected president, and Pino-Swaraz easily won the vice presidency. Interim president de La Berra actually came in second, while Vasquez Gomez ran a distance

third. So, Baskos Gomez, too, stormed off, headed north, and wondering what kind of support he could find for further potential non-electoral paths to power. Maybe he could sound out some jilted ex-Matteristas who felt betrayed by the chief, like, oh, let's say, Pasqua Orozco. So Francisco Madero would soon be president of Mexico in his own right, thanks not to arms, but to an election. I mean, sure, the arms got him the election, but still, he had put his faith in himself, his principles, and the people of Mexico, and was rewarded. It was an almost unimaginable position he now found himself in. Madero had started campaigning for president nearly two years earlier, and it was an utterly quixotic campaign. Not even he thought he would ever win. Then he got

thrown in jail. Then he ran a bumbling revolution that looked like it was never going to win until it did. And now he was going to be president. But boy, are things in Mexico ever. unstable, the tiger has been unleashed. Madero was scheduled to be inaugurated on December 1st, 1911. But Zapata is now up in the Morelos Mountains and more or less open revolt against the government. Reyes was in San Antonio, clearly plotting to strike at the new regime. Vasquez Gomez was somewhere in Chihuahua taking conspiratorial meetings. So next week, we will see if Francisco Marrero can control the tiger he has unleashed.