Revolutions - 9.26- The Last Caudillo

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

It's time to bring the Mexican Revolution to a close Sponsor: audible.com/revolutions

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.26, the last caudio. Welcome to the penultimate episode of series nine, the episode that will take us to the quote-unquote end of the Mexican Revolution. And the man who will take us to that final end point is Alvaro Obrugan, who serves as the living bridge between the revolution and the post-revolution. He was the last revolutionary Caudillo who led the last successful revolt and used that victory to secure and entrench a stable civilian government that institutionalized a confusing and oftentimes contradictory memory of the revolution rooted in equal parts fact and fiction, reality, and propaganda. In the spring of 1919, Obrgon had been in retirement for close to two years, peacefully biding his time.

The principle of no re-election had been embedded into the Constitution of 1917, and so President Caronza would have no choice but to finally retire himself in 1920. So should Obrugan choose to run for president, his victory was practically a foregone conclusion, and he very much planned to run. And so, though he was in retirement, Obrigon kept touch with groups who might support him. Land reformers who couldn't believe Carranza was letting the Ossendados retrench themselves, middle-class liberal constitutional. constitutionalists who chafed at Caranza's high-handed authoritarian streak, labor leaders who were still furious at Caronza's betrayal in 1916 after they had supplied him with the red battalions. In 1919, these groups were in just sort of a holding pattern, waiting for Caronza to leave the stage. Though he had been the Premier Hefe, the first chief of the revolution,

Karanza had never really embodied the revolution. And so everyone turned to Obrgon to finish what the revolution had started. But there was a bit of a hitch to this natural and seemingly inevitable transfer of power from Caranza to Obrgon. Karanza decided he didn't want to transfer power to Obrugan. Sure, he publicly supported the constitutionalist principle of no re-election, but that didn't mean Karanza wanted to give up power. His plan was to find some puppet and get him elected president so that Karanza could continue to rule from behind the scenes. And Obergoen was a lot of things, but he was no man's puppet. So even before the 1920 elections were scheduled, Caronza started taking shots at Obergoen publicly and privately, trying to undermine his former general's reputation.

Carranza implied Obergoen wasn't up for the job, that he didn't understand national issues or responsibilities, that he was merely a corrupt influence peddler. And one wonders if Caronza's not doing a bit of projection here. With this whisper campaign underway, Obergoen concluded he wouldn't play the part of Gentleman Farmer any longer. Though he would always lean hard on the Washington-esque, oh, I'm being reluctantly called to my duty, he also needed to state forthrightly that he was the man for the job, and if Mexico would have him as their president, that he would serve. On June 1, 1919, Obergonne formally announced his candidacy. The theme of his campaign would be peace, reunification, and reconciliation. He said that those who had supported the revolution had been abused and alienated by men whose only ideology

was personal power. This is a barely disguised shot at Caranza. And that, in contrast, Obergoen would bring everyone together. He would end all the rebellions. He would fulfill the yet unfulfilled promise of the revolution. Obergoen presented himself as a man of no faction and with no ambition but the glorious revival of Mexico. And as a part of this project of peace and reconciliation, Obergoen actually played down his military career. He made it plain that he had retired from the army. The new Mexico should be a civilian Mexico. It was right and proper. And so he presented himself to the voters as a civilian in a suit, not a general in a uniform. And he promised to win this campaign at the ballot box, not on the battlefield. And I think that here in June of 1919, this was

utterly sincere, especially because given the coalition he was going to be able to muster and the national fame he enjoyed, there was no reason to think that Opregone would lose the 1920 election. There was, however, in June of 1919, another man in Mexico who had similar fame and name recognition and who believed that he could be the one to unify the country in a post-revolutionary period of reconciliation and reconstruction, Felipe Anhalis. But rather than embracing a civilian posture, when Anhalis rejoined Pancho Villa in northern Mexico, he redawned his uniform. Via and Anhalis hoped that 1919 would be like 1913 and 1914 all over a

again. And in many ways, the political landscape, at least in Chihuahua, looked the same. There was an unpopular authoritarian in Mexico City whose corrupt lackeys and brutal thugs were garrisoning the state. The federal army was now lazy, despised by the inhabitants. The men were demoralized and drunk. The officers were cross-purposes and engaged in their own bitter personal rivalries. Meanwhile, Pancho Villa and Felipe Anhalis were leading a sturdy band of a few thousand dedicated rebels. And as the spring of 1919 dawn, one had to wonder if what had happened before would happen again. But it does not. Because though there were similarities, there were also critical differences. For one, the economy of Chihuahua was wrecked. They simply could not arm,

supply, feed, or provide horses for a new division del Norte. And more importantly, despite some early recruiting successes, the state was not exactly rallying to their banner. people were tired of fighting. When Via's little army came through, the young men of a village would go off and hide in the hills. So Anhalis would give his political speeches to women and children and old folks, but those who might fight stayed out of sight. But even still, Via and Anhalis launched their first strike on April the 12th, targeting the relatively lightly garrisoned city of Paral. The fight there was intense and bloody, but eventually the Federal Army unit garrisoning the city broke and fled. Via's men then raided the city for supplies and departed.

Over the next two months, they would continue to march around, onylus giving speeches, officers trying to get more volunteers, but they found very little enthusiasm. At best, they invoked a sort of sullen neutrality. This one last great campaign sputtered quickly and came to an ignoble end. About two weeks after Obergonne announced his candidacy for president, Via Anhalis and their little army of a few thousand rode for Warren. Aungales did not want to attack Juarez. Remember, his whole plan was to get back in good with the Americans to forestall an American invasion of Mexico. And riding right up to the border and then firing guns into the air seemed like a really good way to trigger the very invasion Anhalis wanted to avoid. But Via was determined. Partly it was because they needed supplies. Partly it was because the Juarez garrison was pretty small and they might actually defeat them. But one also starts to get the feeling like Via is maybe just asking for trouble.

On June the 15th, 1919, Via ordered his men to go take Juarez. After a short and confusing battle, Via's men took the city and forced the federal army units into a nearby army fort. On June the 16th, Via planned to storm the fort, but the bullets flying into El Paso had brought down the worst-case scenario on his head. The U.S. Army received permission to cross the border and drive Via off. facing the full force of the U.S. Army, Via ordered a retreat. He couldn't beat them, and he would never again threaten a major city. This did not, however, turn out to be the American invasion, Anhalis and so many other Mexicans dreaded, and once their mission was complete, the U.S. Army went home. But the fact that they had even joined in the hostilities was the death of Anhalis's dreams. There could be no reconciliation between Via and the Americans.

Via hated the gringoes as much as ever. The Americans thought via a bandit and a criminal, not a potential ally. In the aftermath of the debacle at Juarez, Via and Anhalis did not even have the food or supplies necessary to all stay together. So Via once again scattered his forces into small bands. Anhalis despondent told Via, I am going to leave, and Via said okay. They departed as friends and comrades with no hard feelings. Via gave Anhalis a small bodyguard to escort him around. Both men could not have known that this would be the last time that they would see each other, but they likely suspect as much, and it was.

The partnership of Via and Anhalis was one of the most successful partnerships of the whole Mexican Revolution, but that was a lifetime ago. It was all over now. Meanwhile, the real actual movement towards a unified post-revolutionary peace was getting going just next door in Sonora. with Obergoen's campaign for president. And he was building up a base of support out there. Though he took his oblique shots at Caranza,

Obergoen didn't want to be too provocative. Unlike Anhalis, for example, who kept pitching the abandonment of the Constitution of 1917, Obergoen believed it legitimate and believed that it should be kept. And being a pretty skilled politician, Obergoen said that he was happy to implement Article 27 as much as possible and that some land redistribution was necessary, but he also let it be known through private back channels that he wasn't going to upend the world here.

There would be no more confiscation of property. And to the Americans, he said, look, I'm not going to go crazy nationalizing everything. As for the labor rights that would be guaranteed by Article 123, Obergon was a free market capitalist, but he believed that there could be no peace unless some labor demands were recognized. This can't be owners and bosses exploiting poor workers. I mean, that's how we got into this mess. So in April of 1919, Obergonne signed a secret pact of mutual support with the leaders of the union that had succeeded the CASA. Obergoen said that he would implement laws that would make the promise of Article 123 a reality, and exchange,

they would support his candidacy for president with organization, money, and votes. Obrugone could also, of course, count on support from the middle-class liberal constitutionalists who were aiming at something more like a parliamentary democracy for Mexico. and certainly wanted more radical social reforms. Carranza had left them frustrated and dissatisfied. But Carranza's strongest support came from the click of Sonoran leaders who had been together since the first shots of the revolution. I've only mentioned them in passing and haven't gone into detail on them, but this is Benjamin Hill, a guy named Adolfo de la Huerta, and most especially Plutarcho Elias Kayas.

These were the men who had organized and led the revolution that put Coranza in power in the first place, and they were now almost to a man ready to pitch him overboard. Obergoen was also going to get critical support from one group that had battled him in the original conflict between the constitutionalist and the conventionists, and that is the Zapatistas. It is remarkable that the Zapatista movement held together after the death of the man who had given them their name, but hold together they did, because though there was always rivalries and infighting, jealousy and bickering. It turns out that there was a lot more holding the

leaders of Morelos together than just mutual loyalty and respect for the man, Sappata. So the death of Zapata was shocking, but it was not the end of the line for the movement he had started. In fact, even as General Pablo Gonzalez once again believed that he could declare victory, the assassination of Sapata, such an act of dishonest treachery, hardened public opinion against Carranza and General Gonzalez and softened it towards the guerrillas who were still out there fighting. In the weeks and then months that followed Sopata's assassination, the fighters retreated into the hills and now numbered no more than 2,500 active soldiers. But those small, out of power and with only limited military capacity, the Zapatis fought

on. Much of the credit for this goes to Ildardo Magagna, whose own skill as a political leader, now fully revealed itself. Magagna spent those weeks and months after Sapata's death, continuing his unceasing efforts to link the Zapatistas to a wider national cause, but also to solidify his own leadership in Morelos. If the various Zapatista chiefs splintered, that really would be the end of them. And the fact that Maganya managed to talk them all into letting him be their leader was pretty remarkable,

especially because Maganya wasn't even a fighting man. He was on the intellectual side, the political and diplomatic side. But Maganya wrote and met with and talked various Sapatista generals, and in early September, he called a junta of all the recognized chiefs, many of whom, like De La O, had been fighting from the very beginning, and they had been there when they all got together for the first time and elected Zapata to be their leader. In another small vote of 32 assembled leaders or their surrogates, Maganya secured votes from 18 of them. His next closest rival got just 11. So with Magagna now officially head of the Liberating Army of the South, he proceeded to

republish manifestos, reiterate their commitment to land and justice and the plan of Ayala. And six months after Sepata's death, the Zapatistas were all mostly working together towards the same goal under a single leader. It's amazing how much they held together. But like I said, they believed in the movement enough to subordinate their own individual egos. With his new mandate for command, Maganya continued his courtship of other potential national leaders and rebels. He talked to Felix Diaz, Poncho Villa, again in Palais, who had opened up his own little rebellion around Tempico. And then, of course, when Obrugon announced his candidacy for

president in June of 1919, he automatically became the leader of anti-coranza anything, anywhere. Obrigonista agents and Magania began their first tentative talks with each other. But though, both sides were wary. Maganya certainly saw in Obrugan a more trustworthy potential ally than practically anywhere else, and also one that was almost sure to be sitting in the presidential palace by the end of the next year. One guy who was about to be taken out of the running for future leader of Mexico was Felipe Anhalis. On November the 15th, 1919, agents of the Federal Army captured Anhalis. Since leaving Via back in June, Anhalis spent seven months just sort of wandering around northern Mexico with a couple of aides and bodyguards. What he was doing, or why he was doing,

it is kind of a mystery. He could have gone back to the United States, maybe return to politics as a respected exile. There's not really a good explanation for why he didn't. Maybe he was ashamed or embarrassed at his failure. Maybe he was depressed. It's been suggested that he was trying to make a martyr of himself, but wannabe martyrs don't spend seven months camping out and sleeping in caves and dodging enemy patrols. If you want to martyr yourself, you present yourself and dare them to take you alive. Even when Anhalis's location was finally betrayed, it was only after a shootout at the cave in Chihuahua where he had been sleeping that he surrendered his gun and agreed to go peacefully. When Carranza found out that Anhalis had been

captured, he was not exactly happy about it. Carranza wanted Anhalus dead. Dead, dead. They were deep personal enemies. But the ambush and murder of Zapata had been surprisingly unpopular out there. And Anhalis was famous both at home and abroad, and he was known to be a respected and honorable man, so we can't just kill him. Instead, Carranza ordered the one big show trial of the Mexican Revolution. As you know, show trials in kangaroo courts have a long history in revolutionary and post-revolutionary upheavals. But the Mexican Revolution was pretty free of them. Mexican revolutionaries figured it was just easier to line you up against the wall, shoot you, and then claim you had been trying to escape.

But this time there would be a trial. Anhalis was brought to Chihuahua City, where he would be court-martialed for insubordination and treason, which, you know, fair enough. Much to the chagrin of the authorities, though, when Anhalis arrived in the city he was greeted as a popular hero. The people flocked to see him, the ladies of society undertook to make sure that he was comfortable and well-fellus. fed. When the trial began, the theater was packed and clearly sympathetic to the defendant. What made this a show trial, though, is that the fix was in from the beginning. The five judges assigned to the court-martial were all vehemently anti-viesta, and the verdict

was decreed from the beginning. Anhalis likely recognized this, and so as his lawyers attempted to mount some legal arguments about the court's standing and the right to appeal, Anhalis delivered political speeches. He reiterated that the time had come for peace and reconciliation. He did not denounce Caranza or insist that Mexico fight on. In fact, it was time to lay the guns down. But his biggest applause line came when he said that he believed that Mexico would never be peaceful until it had socialism and social justice,

and that the revolution had been started because of unjust abuses by the bosses and the oligarchs and the hefe's politicos. The people had been right to rise up against all that. But like I said, this was not a trial. This was a show trial. And after this brief two-day spectacle and some speeches by Anhalas, the predetermined verdict was handed down. Death. On November the 26th, 1919, Felipe Anhalis was led to the wall. He was lined up against it, and he was executed by a firing squad. Five thousand people attended his funeral procession. Felipe Anhalis is mostly a footnote these days.

He's overshadowed by larger figures and by the fact that he never really won. He contributed to this because he willingly put himself under Pancho Villa, whose personality is big enough to blot out the sun. But there are other worlds where Felipe Angelis became president of Mexico. Not much would have needed to change to make that happen. And I think he would have been a good president. He was honest. He was well-educated in literature, economics, politics, and science.

And as I said when I first introduce him, he did not just read books and papers. He wrote them as well. He also cared about the people of Mexico, even if it was in his own kind of condescending patrician way. He cared about them. He wanted to oversee reforms that would make everyone's life a little bit better. He wanted to purge the government of corruption and injustice. He wanted to make Mexico a respected power on the world stage. And if Poncho Villa had listened to him, maybe this series ends with Philippe

Anhalis being elected president. I mean, who knows? But I can't say this for sure. There is no single turning point in the Mexican Revolution that turns harder than the events of the ten tragic days. What if Francisco Madero had insisted that the loyal and honest and skilled General Anhalis be put in charge of his forces in Mexico City instead of bowing to pressure and keeping the treacherous Huerta? Maybe the Mexican Revolution would have been reduced to 18 months of sporadic skirmishing to bring down the Porfirio and install democracy. Instead, it was 10 years of destructive violence. But none of those turning points ever turned in Anhalis's direction, and he was never strong enough to make them turn in his direction.

And so, instead of going down in history as one of the greatest leaders in Mexican history, he is a footnote. After dispatching with Anhalis, Carranza turned his attention back to the main problem of Obrigon, who was campaigning to cheering crowds across the country. To stand against Obrigon, Carranza plucked his ambassador to the United States, a guy named Ignacio Bonius, to come home and run for president as the quasi-official candidate. And though he was a respectable enough guy, decent diplomat, decent record, Bonius had no national name recognition and had no party or clique or group of independent supporters. He would be entirely dependent on Karanza's political.

machine, and that was the whole point. Bonius would be a puppet to get Caranza around the no re-election rule. Bonnius also happened to be a Sonoran, which Caranza hope might help split the vote in Overgone's home state. The nomination of Bonius was the signal to Obrugone and his friends that Caron was really going to contest the election and try to halt Obron's ascendancy, and they were worried he might not even accept the results if Obrugone won. In one of those, tragic ironies that we have seen so often in both the history of Rome and revolutions, it was Caranza's attempt to stay in power that led to his downfall. Sensing that Bonilla's might not win, and that the Sonorans were sure to organize a resistance

if Caranza tried to use force or fraud to install his man in office. Caranza started to make preemptive moves. Exercising dubious executive authority, Carranza replaced generals in Sonora with men who were loyal to him. He reorganized the military zone. and transferred more troops into the state. And it was really super obvious that these moves were in preparation for maybe needing to strangle a revolt. Carranza did not understand that these moves were probably going to provoke that very revolt.

And they did. There were a flurry of moves in the first week of April 1920. Caranza ordered Obrugon to come testify in a trial in Mexico City involving some conspirators who had worked with Felix Dias, without mentioning that Obrugan was not being called as a witness but as a defendant. So Obrugan went and faced a judge on April the 6th, where he discovered that they were coming after him on trumped-up charges of conspiring with Felix Diaz. In the meantime, Carranza unilaterally dissolved the power of the Sonoran state government and assume political and military control of the state, which was, of course, vehemently opposed,

and on April the 10th, the entire government of Sonora, from Governor De La Jolla on down, announced that they no longer recognized Carranza's authority. Here, finally, it was 1913 all over again. A state, as a sovereign unit, was now in revolt against an executive that they did not recognize. In Mexico City, Obrugan was not happy at all about how this was playing out. He really did want to win at the ballot box, and he was furious that Caranza had forced this crisis and furious that his own supporters in Sonora had embraced such an extreme response so quickly.

But what was done was done. Obrugone had a quick dinner conference with General Pablo Gonzalez, who agreed that Caranza had finally gone too far, and the time had come to overthrow him. Correctly believing he was on the verge of being arrested, and maybe winding up like Felipe Anhalis, Obrugone got help from some railroad workers, and on April the 13th, they snuck him out of the city

on a train bound for Iguala, the capital of Guerrero. Over the next few days, Sonora was joined by other Mexican, states who denounced Carranza and withdrew their recognition from his government. Sinaloa and Zacatechus joined in solidarity. Then the leaders of the state of Guerrero, where Obergoen was right there with them, also signed up. But what were they signing up for? This was all being improvised.

And that's when we get the last plan of the Mexican Revolution. We've had a lot of plans in the Mexican Revolution, right? There was Madero's plan of San Luis Potosi, Sepata's plan of Ayala, Carranza's plan of Guadalupe. There were others, but this would be the last. It was dubbed the Plan of Agua Prieta, promulgated on April the 23rd, 1920 from that far northern Sonoran border town. The authors of the plan denounced Caranza, accused him of betraying the Constitution, and declared their intention to remove him from power. The plan of Agua Prieta, however, did not put overgone in charge of this movement. Instead, for political reasons, that role went a

officially to the governor of Sonora, Adolfo de la Huerta. De La Huerta was now given military authority and the ability to appoint interim governors to states who signed on to the plan. For Obrugone personally, the plan of Agua Prieta was also a declaration that he was abandoning the presidential campaign because Caranza had betrayed the constitution and he could not in good conscience continue. And though he wanted to win at the ballot box, it was the battlefield to which Obrigon would have to return. The plan of Agua Prieta was signed by 107 senior military officers, and it created a new liberal constitutionalist army. Pablo Gonzalez signaled his support while holding personal authority over 22,000 troops in the vicinity of the federal district. The bulk of the political and military leadership of Mexico was lining up against Caranza. In Morelos, the Carranza appointed governor

called for an assembly of municipal leaders, and they were supposed to vote a show of support for Caranza, but instead they voted to back Obrugone and the plan of Aguaprieta. Magagna and the Zapatistas were overjoyed by this shockingly widespread and immediate rejection of President Caranza. It only confirmed that he had done the right thing by working to align the Zapatistas with Obrugone. So up in the hills, the Zapatista rebels applauded this vote by the official state authorities, the very state authorities they had just been fighting. Suddenly, they were on the same side. On May 2nd, Obrugone departed Agualla, headed north towards Mexico City.

And to get there, he had to pass through Morelos, where he was met by a mixed group of civilian officials and Zapatista chiefs, including De La O, though Magana himself was elsewhere. This group then moved as one towards the capital, with Obergone being escorted by De La O's little Zapatista guerrilla army, which is a crazy turn of events. The implacable rebel now providing the personal bodyguard for the future president of Mexico. Recognizing that he could not hold Mexico City, Caranza decided to reestablish himself at Veracruz, which had served so successfully as his base of operations in 1914 and 1915. He still had a core of supporters with him, and they spent the first week of May 1920, loading up every rail car they could find with every valuable thing they could find from food to gold to bullets and ammunition. When it was all lined up, this convoy stretched out over eight miles.

On May the 7th, the convoy departed the capital. But the trains never made it to Veracruz. Under sustained guerrilla attacks the whole way, the train eventually had to stop when the lines were cut in the state of Puebla. Facing certain capture, Carranza and a small group of AIDS took off on horseback into the mountains heading north, probably with half a notion to make it to his old home state of Kualila, where he might muster some last well of support.

But he never made it there either. And while Caranza took off for the hills, Obrugone and his entourage entered Mexico City on May 9th. And if there was one thing Obrugan knew how to do, it was enter Mexico City as a conquering hero. Caronza managed to stay on the run for the next two weeks. Eventually, he was contacted by General Rodolfo Herrera, a regional federal army commander who offered Carranza refuge in a small town. Accommodations were a mere rough hut, but at least they'd be safe. Caranza accepted this offer, but he was not safe at all. Herrero had already gone over to Obrugan, and now took it upon himself to solve the great problem of what to do about Caranza.

In the small hours of the morning of May the 21st, 1920, still night really. A group of gunmen surrounded the hut where Caranza slept, and they opened fire. Then they burst in and they fired some more. When the smoke cleared, Venusiano Caronza, first chief, of the Constitutional's Revolution and then President of Mexico, lay dead on the floor. What can you say about Cranza? His career is inexplicable. In times of rebellion and revolution, it is to charismatic leaders that people turn, because you have to forge new centers of authority and power where none have existed before. Practically everybody we've talked about so far on the

podcast, from Cromwell to Belivir, to San Lovature, to now Via and Sepata, had some kind of charismatic spark. But so far as I can tell, there's really nobody who walked away from a personal meeting with Carranza without thinking, God, what a cold, dead fish of a man. He had anti-charisma. And yet from 1913 to 1920, Caranza held together a revolutionary coalition that eventually put him into power, almost through sheer perseverance of determined, unstoppable ego. Carranza had pushed through it all. At some point, everyone had tried to get rid of him, Obrigon, the Americans, via Annalis, there was a good two years where the starting point of any peaceful reconciliation in Mexico was an agreement that Caranza had to go.

But he had built up just enough of a machine, secured just enough loyalty, though mostly through mercenary politicking, that he stayed and he stayed. The crazy old wizard-looking dude from Kwala had gotten what he wanted. He had been elected president of Mexico. But in the end, nobody actually wanted him to be president of Mexico. No one actually liked him. And when he died, no one really mourned his death. Mostly, they were just happy he was finally gone.

With the death of Caranza, the authors of the plan of Agua Prieta found themselves in a much easier position. The national mood, military and civilian alike, was with them. The National Congress formally appointed Adolfo de la Huerta provisional president to oversee new elections, which would be scheduled for September. December. De La Huerta would not himself be a candidate. He was just there to hold the line until Obrugan could be elected and sworn in. De La Huerta's brief term as provisional president was mostly about doing whatever it took to bring peace and stability after the latest round of armed rebellion, to have a sort of grand reset and re-found a new post-revolutionary Mexico. So, for example,

De La Huerta's emissaries went out and tracked down Felix Diaz, who was still out in the vicinity of Veracruz, and arranged safe passage for him out of the country in exchange for quitting the field. And this was a pretty okay deal for Diaz. Fighting against the unpopular Carranza, there was hope he might one day win. Fighting the popular Obrigon, who the whole nation had just rallied to? Not so much. So Diaz took the deal and he left for exile. He would remain in exile until he was finally allowed back into the country in 1937,

and he would die in Veracruz in 1945. De La Huerta was also able to affect the end of the Zapatista rebellion. In an abrupt change of fortunes for the Zapatistas, Magagna's support for Obrugone had paid off, and in a deal to bring peace finally to the tiny troubled state of Morelos, various Zapatista chiefs were given commands in police or militia forces, while the soldiers were formally incorporated into the federal army as the Division of the South. Magagna and De La O were both made divisional judges. generals. After 10 years out in the cold, the Zapatistas would finally be working in concert with

and under the auspices of a national government who was making more or less sincere promises. Now, Obrugan was no radical land reformer, but he wanted peace, and the people of Monterelos rejoiced that they now had the opportunity to do what they had always wanted to do, which was just peacefully tend to their villages and families. In late June 1920, one of the greatest obstacles to peace for all those same long 10 years came calling. Pancho Villa sent a message to De La Huerta. He said, I'd like to negotiate a peaceful retirement for myself and my men. Via had waited long enough.

The despised Caranza was now in the ground. It was time to lay down his arms and retire. Via was lucky that it was De La Juerta in the president's chair at that moment because De La Huerta was one of the few Senoran leaders, Via had not clashed with directly and who bore him no personal grudge. But it would still be a difficult negotiation because Obrugone had a deeply personal grudge against Via. He believed Via needed to be shot or imprisoned or exiled, certainly not allowed to retire in peace. But De La Huerre to exercise some independence, with the suspicion being that he had his own future career to think about, and he wanted the prestige of being the one

to tame Pancho Villa, and possibly to be the one who. who could call on Via down the road. So what De La Huerta offered was that Villa could have an ascienda for himself and for his remaining men to settle on. Via requested maybe a command in the local Ruralas to assist, as he said, in the curbing of banditry in the region. De La Huerta refused to allow Via to hold any kind of military command, but after a few weeks of back and forth, they finally came to an acceptable agreement.

Via would get a large and secluded assyenda in Northern Drango. Ultimately, 800 of VIA's men would be granted a year's salary and given land to settle on near Via. The himself would be granted a large pension and allowed to keep 50 armed men as a bodyguard, and that bodyguard would be paid for by the government. Obrugan was furious when he heard these terms, and when a formal written agreement was drawn up at the end of July, he refused to sign it. But the other leaders of the Agua Prieta Coalition, eh, this was a price they could pay. If it would get Via to retire and make no more trouble, I mean, let's do it. And Via seemed sincere.

Carranza was dead. What would he even be fighting for if he kept fighting? The brief De La Huerta administration thus succeeded in corraling and pacifying the most violently rebellious parts of Mexico and get them to accept the legitimacy of the coming post-revolution. regime. De La Horta and his administration did not enjoy the same recognition from the United States, then in the throes of their own presidential election and seriously ticked off there was yet another rebellion-slashed armed coup and that a democratically elected president of Mexico had once again been assassinated. So the United States refused to recognize De La Huerta's legitimacy. Though it was indicated through channels that the United States might overcome their democratic

scruples if, say, De La Huerre to annulled the offending Article 27 of the Constitution that so threatened American business interests in Mexico? De La Horta refused. So Mexico braced again for an invasion, but that invasion did not come. And a nationwide Democratic election

was about to give Obrugone an unignorable mandate. On September 5th, 1920, Mexico once again went back to the polls for the Democratic coronation of Alvara Obrugon. He secured 1.1 million votes. His next closest rival secured all of 47,000. President-elect Obrugan then wrote a note to Pancho Villa, saying that his administration would honor its side of the bargain if Via honored his side.

It was time to end the Mexican Revolution, to end the cycles of violence and revenge, to bury all hatchets, to now rebuild and reform Mexico. The revolution had made both of them, but it was time to leave that in the past, and like Mexico, become something new. On December 1st, 1920, Alvar Obrugan was sworn in as president of Mexico, and that is where we will arbitrarily mark the end of the Mexican Revolution. It had begun almost exactly 10 years earlier with the publication of Francisco Barrio's plant of San Luis Potosi. The elevation of Obron begins a new era.

It marks the end of the revolution and the beginning of the so-called Sonoran dynasty, which would control national politics for the next 14 years. And that is why this is such a convenient place to mark the end of the revolution proper. Obrugone and the Sonorans would pick through the rubble and stabilize Mexico using a mix of pragmatism, improvisation, and not a small amount of corrupt hypocrisy, which is what we will be talking about next week in our final, final episode. What had the Mexican Revolution meant? What would it mean in the future? What does it still mean today?