Revolutions - 9.12- No Peace

Episode Date: November 4, 2018

After being elected President of Mexico, Francisco Madero enjoyed no peace.   

Hello, and welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.12, no peace. So as you may have noticed, if you look at the runtime, this week's episode is shorter than usual. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that this is thanks to a series of disasters that befell my family as we attempted to leave Overn on Monday. Not only did we get blasted by a massive snowstorm, but our rental car broke down. It broke down in the middle of a blizzard. This left us stranded for three days in the little village of Mese-San-Vois. Since I produced this show in real time, that pretty much crushed my ability to pull out a full episode this week,

so here we are with a much shorter episode. But before we get going, I do want to say that the people of Mesey Saint-Vois were wonderful to us, especially after we were more or less abandoned by our rental car company. So, for example, if you were ever in Mizeet, please go to the Oberge du Soleil, the owners there took care of us with generous warmth, and, in the end, got one of their friends, just one of their friends, to drive us to Saint-Eetienne to catch a train because we literally had no other means of transportation. So I won't bore you with all the stressful details, but suffice it to say we got screwed, and the Ubers de Soleil in Mese-San-Bois was quite literally our shelter from the storm.

Okay, so getting back to the Mexican Revolution, here in this truncated episode, we are going to address the situation Francisco Madero inherited when he finally became president of Mexico. Specifically, we are going to focus on the array of revolts and rebellions that continued to flare up across the country, because as much as Madero was trying to put the revolution behind him and behind Mexico, the Mexican revolution is nowhere near its end, or barely even halfway through this series. The situation was in fact so seamlessly volatile that after Madero's election in October of 1911, it was decided the country could not wait for his scheduled inauguration on December 1st. Instead, interim president de la Berra resigned on November the 6th, and Madero was officially sworn

in. So, he was finally President Madero, but from the minute he took up his office, he dealt with a rash of insurrections and conspiratorial challenges to his rule, from random local uprisings led by ambitious bandits now styling themselves from revolutionary caudios, to reactionary coup plots hatched in the inner circles of the old Porphyriato, the Madero administration never enjoyed a moment's peace. Now, of course, the most famous and most important of these ongoing insurrections is the one led by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos. But I will be putting off our discussion of Sapata until next week, because it requires more time and attention than I will be able to give it this week. But please just remember that Sapata has been driven into

rebellion by the aggressive conduct of General Werta and the Figueroa brothers, and will soon be issuing the famous, bordering on legendary, plan of Ayala at the end of November 1911. We will talk all about that in detail next week. Now, in terms of physical proximity, the rebellion in Morelos was very close to the presidential palace in Mexico City, but even closer were disgruntled former Perfurians. After Madero's election, credible evidence. was passed along to American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson that a plot was being hatched among conservative army officers to prevent Madero from ever taking office, even if that meant

assassinating him. Subsequent investigations led to the arrest of two generals who confessed to everything at the end of December, which led to the subsequent discovery of a huge explosives cash, proving that this was no pack of paranoid rumors. In fact, the plan may have been executed had General Huerta not been fired from his job for driving Morelos back into insurrectionary chaos. Again, we'll talk about that next week. But though Madero did not want to confront this very dire and very persistent threat of a reactionary military coup, he really did seem to want to put his head in the sand about it, that threat is not going to go away. And U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, a conservative Republican who thought Madero was quite literally a lunatic

and represented the thin end of the wedge of like anarcho-communism in North America is going to be far less interested in passing along evidence of such coups in the future. In fact, he might even signal that the United States would not look unkindly on such a coup. At the end of 1911, though, these kinds of barracks plots were not considered by the Mataristas to be the chief threat to Madero, because, just like President Diaz, they focused their attention on the threat posed by Bernardo Rehn. Reyes. Reyes, remember, had withdrawn from the presidential race on a theatrical hoff declaring it corrupt and rigged. He went up to San Antonio and seemed to make very little effort to hide the fact that he was now organizing a counter-revolution to overthrow Madero, who Reyes denounced as an

incompetent, treacherous hypocrite. But unlike many of his supporters and advisors, Madero himself was apparently quite serene about the threat posed by Reyes and confidently asserted that Reyes would not get anywhere with his counter-revolution. And unlike his serene disbelief about the threat of a military coup, Madero was proven 100% correct about Reyes. The hype of Bernardo Reyes never ever lived up to his actual performance, as would be shown again over the course of November and December 1911. For one thing, as I just said, Reyes was not being very subtle about what he was up to. So, again, following a bit in the footsteps of President Diaz, President Madero demanded the United States take action.

Except this time, instead of dragging their feet, the Americans took action. The Taft administration's official policy had always been that everyone needed to adhere to America's neutrality laws. Foreign nationals were not allowed to use the United States as a staging ground for revolution in their home countries. Now, of course, Madero had gotten like a six-month free pass and he was just able to act freely. but I need to make a couple points about this. First, he moved around enough and had enough support, especially among the Tejano population, that it was legitimately difficult to keep track of him. And then also, despite President Dias's huffing and puffing, it took a long time for his agents to produce the kind of legal proof that was going to move the very lawyerly and by the book President Taft.

Meanwhile, the Mataristas, having just staged a revolution from Texas themselves, knew exactly what to look for. and they were able to put together a pile of evidence that Reyes was gathering arms and men for an invasion of Mexico. Probably prodded further along by a desire to not let Mexico re-descend into civil war, the American authorities actually acted quickly. Reyes and his entourage were arrested in late November 1911, and the army was ordered to the border to prevent illegal crossings in either direction. Released on bail, Reyes concluded it would only be a matter of time before he was arrested. it again. With his plan for an invasion going nowhere, Reyes, practically all by himself,

crossed the border back into Mexico near Eagle Pass on December 4th. But the thing is, this whole time, Reyes has been deluding himself. He may have once been the popular governor of Nuevo Lyon and the best possible candidate to inherit the Porphyriotto, but there was no widespread, popular clamoring to go back to the Porfariato now that it was over. Reyes was trying to pitch counter-revolution to a population in northern Mexico that is just not interested. And the one place where he might have been able to garner personal support, which was his old home base in Nuevo Leone, was now under the military command of General Trevino. Remember General Trevino, the old guy who had been recalled by Dias to take over the third military district of Mexico, specifically to prevent Reyes from being able to raise a military insurrection there? well Trevino did his job very well and was continuing to do his job very well.

Reyes had no friends in high places. He had no friends in the military. Certainly he had no friends with guns. There was simply no possibility of a Reista uprising in Nuevo Leone. The state was on lockdown. For two weeks after his escape across the border, though, Bernardo Reyes was off the grid, sending both American and Mexican officials hunting down rumors that put him anywhere from Mexico City to New York. York City. In reality, he was up in the rugged northern country moving south and trying to build an army. But the people were not into it. As Reyes himself later complained, whenever he arrived in some town, men did not flock to his banner. They ran to the nearest telegraph office to report to the government on his whereabouts. So after a couple of weeks of this, going nowhere with absolutely no one, Reyes gave up. He quit. On Christmas Day 1911, he turned himself into a local garrison. Once he was

in custody, he asked the government for blanket amnesty for himself and anyone who had supported him, which, you know, not that many people, but Madero was not interested. He had magnanimously let Reyes return to Mexico, and Reyes had thanked him by trying to overthrow him. So any low-level supporters who had been caught up in the Reyes scheme were pardoned, but Reyes himself was going to be tried for sedition and treason. And so he was subsequently transferred to an army brig in Mexico city to await trial. And there, Reyes would sit, once again proving that he simply did not have what it took to live up to his hype. But even though he now sat in jail after running an even more pathetic revolution than Madero had originally run, we are not done with Bernardo Reyes

quite yet. Now, one of Reyes's big problems is that he was trying to run a popular counter-revolution in an area that had just been the theater of a popular revolution. But just because Reyes was making the wrong anti-Madero pitch, that doesn't mean there was not a pitch to be made. As we discussed last time, after quote-unquote his victory, Madero very quickly pivoted away from the ruffians who had actually won the war for him, and he tried to graduate into respectable politics. This left many of those who had joined him feeling abandoned and betrayed. If they had any real political bent at all, they were also grousing about Madero's concerns. turn, and they wanted the points of the Plan of San Luis, more forthrightly asserted.

But plenty of them were all but apolitical, adventurous swords who grouse not about high ideals, but about being shafted out of the spoils of war. They wanted power, they wanted offices, the just rewards for the risks that they had taken, the just rewards for the war that they had won. These types of jilted ex-rebels and ex-Matteristas all across central and northern Mexico were cultivated not by Reyes, but by the Vasquez-Gomez brothers. Last time, we saw Francisco Vasquez-Gomez maneuvered out of the vice-presidency following a very public and acrimonious break with Madero. Well, Francisco has a brother named Emilio, who, even though we haven't talked about him yet,

had been tapped to be the minister of the interior in the interim government. Well, Emilio Vasquez-Gomez had been forced out of that office just around the same time Madero was forcing Franciscan. Francisco Vasquez Gomez off his presidential ticket. So both brothers now had bitter axes to grind. And in the next stage, Francisco would actually take a backseat to his younger brother, Emilio, who stepped up to lead the family attack on Madero. Making a base for themselves in Texas, just like Reyes was doing,

Emilio Vasquez Gomez wrote a report that he sent to all the state governors of Mexico, denouncing Madero for not having gone far enough in implementing the plan of and Luis. In effect, Madero had betrayed his own revolution. Vazquez Gomez was now portraying himself as the real leader of the revolutionary movement, saying he was more materista than Madero himself. So, like Reyes, Vasquez Gomez denounced the recent election as a farce and declared the result illegitimate. He said that if asked, he might consider serving as provisional president to see new free and fair elections held. The circular, though, did not. have much impact on the state governors. After all, most of them had just become state governors,

thanks to Madero's approval. I mean, why bite the hand that feeds you? But out among the rustic northern ex-rebels said, it became generally known that Vasquez Gomez was offering to make himself the figurehead of a movement that might still be worth supporting. I mean, Madero had gone off to Mexico City and was now not even returning their phone calls. I mean, what the heck is up with that? but just to get this out of the way right now, Emilio Vasquez Gomez, whatever he's setting himself up to be, was never going to create some Vasquista rebel army. He and his brother were simply not charismatic enough or well-connected enough or trusted enough to be anything more than a name vaguely connected to vague anti-Madero sentiment. But there was a guy among that disaffected, jilted northern ex-rebel set

who was charismatic enough and well-connected enough and trusted enough to be more than just a name. And that was Pasqual Orozco. Orozco was at this moment being recruited, flattered, and cultivated by every single enemy Francisco Madero ever had. Everyone recognized how important Orozco had been to the original revolution. Everyone knew that he was pissed at Madero. The Vesquistas had been trying to recruit him to the cause, knowing that he could prove hugely decisive. But Orozco mostly resisted their appeals, not that he didn't appreciate their effort or remain angry at his treatment by Madero. After being appointed governor of Chihuahua, Abraham Gonzalez had then run in an open election later in 1911 to secure a true democratic mandate,

and a group of anti-Modero interests, including some Baskistas, tried to put Orozco forward as a rival candidate for the governorship. But a judge ruled him ineligible because he was not yet 30 years. old, which was just another obnoxious slight. I mean, I'm old enough to win the war for you, but now I'm too young to serve in government. Then, after Madera won his election, the new president tapped his old faithful friend Abraham Gonzalez to serve as minister of the interior, and Orozco once again held out some hope he would be named governor of Chihuahua when Gonzalez left for Mexico City. But Gonzalez merely took a leave of absence from his office without resigning, and the caretaker governorship went to some dude no one had had to.

ever heard of. And so a smoldering Orozco continued to be courted by Madero's enemies. In late January and early February 1912, the dissatisfaction among Madero's former soldiers finally broke into open revolt in the north. A close revolutionary comrade of Orozco's named Braulio Hernandez, a former college professor and journalist turned rebel officer, decided that he had had enough of Madero embracing their old enemies and crapping on his old friends. Hernandez issued a manifesto in the first week of February, demanding Madero resign the presidency, and at least ostensibly, announced his support for Emilio Vasquez Gomez to become provisional president. And though this was technically an anti-Matterista revolt, Alan Knight points out that it is much better

described as a neo-Matterista revolt. This is not a counter-revolution. This was a continuation of the revolution. The chief has betrayed the cause. Hernandez, lobbied his old comrade Orozco to join the rebellion, but as late as the end of February 1912, Orozco was still defending the Matarista government from rebellion, even as Hernandez secured the defection of garrisons in Chihuahua City and Casas Grandes, and then occupied Juarez. But at some crucial moment between the last week of February and the first week of March, Orozco changed his mind. When federal forces attempt to reassert control of Juarez on March the 3rd, Orozco

rode out at the head of a rebel army to repel them. But crucially, Orozco had failed in his own attempt to coax a critical ally over to the renewed rebellion, because leading those federal forces attempting to retake Juarez was Orozco's former lieutenant, Poncho Villa, who had concluded that his fortunes were better served by defending Madero than attacking him. And boy, was Via ever right. with instincts that remind me of no one so much as Tucson Louvichure. Via chose wisely and was now on his way to becoming the man of the north. But that story is going to wait until next week, because, friends, I have no more time this week.

So we'll pick this all back up again next time when our regularly scheduled programming resumes. We will see Pasquale Arosco and Emiliano Zapata trying to keep the Mexican Revolution going, and men like Bernard Arreus and General Huerta trying to keep. kill the Mexican Revolution dead. And Francisco Madero, as is his tragic lot in life, will continue to be stuck right in the middle.