The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución Mexicana, 1910–1920) was a major revolution that included a sequence of armed struggles that transformed Mexican culture and government. Although the regime of President Porfirio Díaz was increasingly unpopular after 31 years, there was no foreboding that a revolution was about to break out in 1910. The regime failed to find a controlled solution to the issue of presidential succession, resulting in a power struggle among competing elites, and elites and the middle classes that sometimes involved the "masses". This provided the opportunity in some places for agrarian insurrection. Although often studied as an event solely of Mexican history, "From the beginning to the end, foreign activities figured crucially in the Revolution's course, not simple antagonism from the U.S. government, but complicated Euro-American imperialist rivalries, extremely intricate during the first world war."
Díaz had initially said he would not run again for election, setting off a flurry of political activity, but he then reneged. Wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election, and gained considerable popular support, causing Díaz to jail him. Following rigged election that Díaz won, Madero called for a revolt 1910 in his October Plan of San Luis Potosí. Armed conflict broke out in earnest in November 1910 starting in northern Mexico, led by Madero, Pascual Orozco and Pancho Villa. These Maderista forces received support from portions of the middle class, the peasantry, and organized labor, enabling them to pursue a military campaign in the north, ending with Orozco's capture of Ciudad Juárez in May 1911. Díaz was forced out of office by the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez in which he resigned and went into exile, new elections were scheduled for the fall, and Francisco León de la Barra became the interim president. Madero's advisers Venustiano Carranza and Luis Cabrera warned against allowing the old regime to linger in power, since the revolutionaries had won the contest against the regime in armed combat. Madero ignored them and the elections took place in October 1911 in a free and fair vote. Madero overwhelmingly won the presidential contest and took office in November. He won a political victory, but did not make revolutionary changes.
Once in power (November 1911-February 1913), Madero's opposition rapidly grew, from old supporters of the Díaz regime, foreign governments and investors; revolutionaries who had brought about Díaz's ouster but whom Madero dismissed in favor of the Federal Army they had defeated; peasants who felt betrayed that Madero did not implement agrarian reform; urban workers who did not see Madero helping their interests. Peasants revolted, urban worker' strikes grew in number, and the press newly freed from Díaz's censorship chronicled Madero's failings. Madero kept his hold on power with the aid of the Federal Army, but in February 1913, the army in a conspiracy with political opponents to Madero and the support of the U.S. Ambassador, staged a successful coup d'etat. The Ten Tragic Days (Spanish: La Decena Trágica), Madero and Vice President Pino Suárez were forced to resign and were assassinated.
The counterrevolutionary regime of General Victoriano Huerta (February 1913-July 1914) came to power moved by his own interests, and other supporters of the old regime. Huerta remained in power until July 1914, when he was forced out by a coalition of different regional revolutionary forces under the leadership of wealthy land owner and civilian Governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, with the Constitutionalist Army led by two brilliant generals in the north, Álvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa. Peasant forces led by Emiliano Zapata had continuously opposed the regimes of Díaz, Madero, and Huerta, none of whom had been responsive to their demands for land reform. Although Huerta's Federal Army had more men than the revolutionary forces, the revolutionaries in northern Mexico were increasingly successful, particularly as the U.S. policy tilted toward them, allowing arms sales. Huerta resigned and went into exile in July 1914.
The winners met, attempting to reach political agreement about power. The Constitutionalist faction led by Carranza split, with Villa allying with Zapata and Obregón remaining loyal to Carranza. Mexico plunged into a civil war between the factions (1914–15). Carranza, with Obregón's military leadership, the support of the urban working class emerged as the victor in 1915. Obregón's army defeated Villa's in the Battle of Celaya in April, ending Villa as an effective opponent to the Constitutionalist. Zapata's armies were defeated as well, and they resumed guerrilla warfare in Morelos.
The sequence of armed conflicts saw an evolution of military technology from Villa's old style cavalry charges to Obregón's use of machine-gun nests protected by barbed wire. One major result of the revolution was the dissolution in 1914 of Mexico's Federal Army, which Madero had kept intact when elected in 1911 and Huerta had used to oust Madero. Although the conflict was primarily a civil war, foreign powers, which had important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role. The losses amongst Mexico's population of 15 million were high, but numerical estimates vary a great deal. Perhaps 1.5 million people died, and nearly 200,000 refugees fled abroad, especially to the United States.
The constitutional convention was called in late 1916. One historian calls it "the most important single event in the history of the Revolution." The promulgation of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 (Spanish: Constitución de 1917) set new nationalist, social, and economic goals for Mexico, curtailed the power of some foreign interests, and enhanced the power of the central state. "Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions," with the constitution providing that framework. Capitalism was retained and bourgeois reform enacted, not dissimilar to what happened in Peru, Chile and Argentina without civil war.
The death toll and displacement of population due to the Revolution is difficult to calculate. and the economic damage it caused lasted for years. All the major leaders of the Revolution were later assassinated (Madero in 1913, Zapata in 1919, Carranza in 1920, Villa in 1923, and Obregón in 1928). The nation would not regain the level of development reached in 1910 for another twenty years.
The period 1920–40 is generally considered to be one of revolutionary consolidation, with the leaders seeking to return Mexico to the level of development it had reached in 1910, but under new parameters of state control. Authoritarian tendencies rather than Liberal democratic principles characterized the period, with generals of the revolution holding the presidency and designating their successors. In the late 1920s, anticlerical provisions of the 1917 Constitution were stringently enforced, leading to a major grassroots uprising against the government, the bloody Cristero War.
There is a vast historiography on the Mexican Revolution, with many different interpretations, and over time it has become more fragmented. There is consensus as to when the revolution began, that is in 1910, but there is no consensus when it ended. The Constitutionalists defeated their major rivals and called the constitutional convention that drafted the 1917 Constitution, but did not effectively control all regions. The year 1920 was the last successful military rebellion, bringing the northern revolutionary generals to power. According to Álvaro Matute, "By the time Obregón was sworn in as president on December 1, 1920, the armed stage of the Mexican Revolution was effectively over." The year 1940 saw revolutionary general and President Lázaro Cárdenas choose Manuel Avila Camacho, a moderate, to succeed him. A 1966 anthology by scholars of the revolution was entitled Is the Mexican Revolution Dead?. Historian Alan Knight has identified "orthodox" interpretation of the revolution as a monolithic, popular, nationalist revolution, while revisionism has focused on regional differences, and challenges its credentials revolution. One scholar classifies the conflict as a "great rebellion" rather than a revolution. Although social movements emerged during the revolution, "their defeat or subordination mattered more." At the very least, it was a decade-long civil war, bringing to power a new political elite that ruled Mexico through a single political party until the presidential election of 2000
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