The victorious revolution, after settling its internal differences, created a dominant party system that resulted in a new authoritarianism, which was very careful to preserve the democratic forms while emptying them of content.
Lorenzo Meyer, 199153
Calles was born in Guaymas, Sonora in 1877 and became a school teacher at age seventeen. Later he worked as a journalist and hotel manager and served as police chief in Agua Prieta, Sonora. He reflected the restlessness of northern Mexico in that he had worked at nine different occupations before entering the military.
In 1915, Carranza appointed him as interim governor of Sonora. While serving as governor (1915—1916, 1917—1919), Calles opened 127 primary schools, organized a Congress on education, and inaugurated a teachers’ training school. He introduced a minimum wage and compelled industries and mining companies to establish schools for the children of their employees.54
Although Calles was an army general, Obregon described him as “the least militaristic of all the generals.” The key to his rapid advancement was his early loyalty to Carranza and his switching to Obregon when his fellow Sonorans challenged Carranza. He served as Carranza’s secretary of industry, commerce, and labor and later as Obregon’s interior secretary.55
Calles campaigned for the 1924 presidential election affirming support for Article 27 and other reformist provisions of the 1917 constitution. He also portrayed himself as an advocate for the “landless classes.” In October 1924, as president-elect, Calles muted his populism when he spoke at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He declared the goal of the Revolution was “to secure the social and economic elevation of 12 million submerged Mexicans, but at the same time invite the cooperation of capitalists and industrialists of good will.”56
Obregon had administered as if the Revolution had ended. Calles, however, resurrected the concept of “the Revolution” and used it as a political tool. He alone would decide what constituted the “Revolution.” Calles defined himself and his followers as true “revolutionaries” and labeled opponents as “conservatives” and “counterrevolutionaries.”
Calles, who took office with a radical reputation, was most progressive with regard to land reform. From 1924 to 1928, he distributed 7.34 million acres of land. This was more than twice the amount distributed between 1915 and 1924. Early in his term he used the land reform to build a power base among those who received land. Once he had consolidated his power, land distribution slowed dramatically.
Even though Calles substantially increased the amount of land distributed, he viewed the ejido (the communal farm formed by those receiving land) as a transitory institution incapable of meeting Mexico’s agricultural needs. Land reform was viewed as a means to correct past injustices or simply as a political necessity in regions where peasants were militant and mobilized. The Sonorans placed their faith in privately owned farms—the dominant agricultural model in their home state. They increasingly turned their attention to making the land more productive, not distributing it. To bolster private agriculture, most of the funds from the National Agricultural Credit Bank, established in 1926, were absorbed by large farms in northern Mexico.57
By the end of his term, Calles had become quite conservative. In 1927, he announced, “The Government will do everything in its power to safeguard the interests of foreign capitalists who invest in Mexico.” This conservative shift reflected not only the increasing wealth of Calles and his followers but also the close ties the president had developed with U. S. Ambassador Dwight
Morrow. The “ham-and-egg” breakfasts Calles regularly shared with Morrow became a prominent feature of the political landscape. A fall in oil and silver prices and in the volume of oil exports also caused Calles to scale down his attempts to effect change. Efforts to suppress a religious-based revolt known as the Cristiada sapped further energy for reform. Finally, low levels of production on land already transferred to peasants as part of the land reform led Calles to bring the program to a near halt.58
Many provisions of the 1917 Constitution remained only as good intentions. On the government-owned rail system workers put in a twelve-hour day, despite the constitution guaranteeing them an eight-hour day. In 1928, Porfirian economic and social structures remained largely intact.59
The members of the Sonoran dynasty—De la Huerta, Obregon, and Calles—rebuilt the government bureaucracy and returned power to Mexico City. During this recentralization, revolutionary leaders gained power, the military lost it, and peasants became marginalized. Many supported this recentralization of power since they felt it would lessen anarchy and political violence. Between 1921 and 1930, government employment increased from 1.4 percent of the labor force to 2.9 percent.60
When viewed from the top, the political system appeared to have stabilized, with both Obregon and Calles finishing their terms and leaving office as scheduled. However, at lower levels of government the diverse political forces seeking political control produced tumult. Between 1920 and 1930, Puebla had nineteen governors. In June 1930, after a two-hour gun battle in which one legislator and the chief of police were killed, discontented members of the Chihuahua legislature overthrew the provisional governor. The federal government refused to recognize the coup and reimposed the provisional governor. During his term, Calles deposed twenty-five state governors and replaced them with those whose loyalty he could count on. Similar instability existed at the local level. In the two decades after 1920, forty-two men served as mayor of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.61
The generals forming the Sonoran dynasty brought to the presidency a set of values alien to central Mexico. The north never had a village-oriented society. The Catholic Church in Sonora was not the major institution it was in central Mexico. Agricultural development in northern Mexico was the forerunner of today’s agribusiness and often involved irrigation and other government-financed projects. While Zapata had looked to the Indian village with its communal lands as his model, the Sonorans, who were largely removed from the radical ideological influences of central Mexico, saw Californian agriculture as their model. They felt that the Mexican government had to assume an active role in promoting economic development.62
As the end of Calles’s term approached, it became clear that Obregon wished to return to the presidency. Calles backed Obregon’s reelection, likely feeling that Obregon would return the favor at the end of the 1928—1934 term. The constitution was amended to permit non-consecutive reelection. Another amendment extended the presidential term from four to six years—its current length. (The amendment permitting reelection was repealed in 1933.)63
General Arnulfo Gomez and General Francisco Serrano, who had served as Obregon’s secretary of war, had each hoped to serve as president. When they learned Calles was backing Obregon, they concluded the election would be stacked against them and rebelled. However, before the rebellion began, plans for the revolt were discovered. In October 1927, Serrano and thirteen of his followers were shot without trial in Huitzilac, just south of Mexico City. A month later, Gomez was shot. A total of twenty-seven generals were placed before firing squads for their participation in the uprising.64
Some of the rebellious generals of this period, such as Francisco Serrano, had impeccable democratic credentials dating back to Madero’s struggle against Diaz. However, it was military strength, not commitment to democracy, that determined presidential succession during this
Period.65
Obregon campaigned on a platform of fulfilling revolutionary promises and uniting the forces of the Revolution. He faced no opposition candidate, even though labor leader Luis Morones and a broad range of public opinion opposed Obregon—or anyone else—being reelected president. Those who objected to reelection as a matter of principle were denounced as conservatives. On election day, Obregon received all of the 1,670,453 votes cast.66
Before Obregon’s reelection, labor leader Luis Morones, whose own presidential aspirations were apparent, had launched a virulent anti-Obregon campaign. Serrano and Gomez had also inflamed anti-Obregon passions, denouncing the Sonoran for violating the political taboo against reelection. In addition, during Calles’s term, Catholics had taken up arms in opposition to his anticlericalism. In this atmosphere, just after his election president-elect Obregon was assassinated by Jose de Leon Toral, a person generally described as a Catholic fanatic.67
The assassination placed Calles in a difficult position. Some of his backers wanted him to extend his term to prevent the chaos resulting from not having a president. Others wanted him to leave the presidency on schedule, since they feared members of the Obregon faction would revolt if denied power.
Calles’s political ability prevented frustrated Obregon backers from taking up arms to gain the power they considered rightfully theirs. His first step was to appoint well known Obregon supporter General Juan Jose Rios Zertuche to investigate the murder of the president-elect.68
On September 1, 1928, in his last annual address, Calles announced not only that he would leave the presidency as scheduled but that it was time to make presidential succession an orderly process. He declared:
Perhaps, for the first time in its history, Mexico faces a situation whose outstanding characteristic
Is the lack of caudillos. This should, and will, permit us, once and for all, to direct the national
Political process toward institutional rule. Mexico will forever cease to be, as it has been historically, a nation led by a “strongman,” and will become a nation of institutions and laws.69
With Calles’s blessing, Congress designated his Interior Minister, Emilio Portes Gil, as provisional president. Portes Gil was ideal for defusing the political crisis generated by Obregon’s assassination. He had close ties to both Obregon and Calles, and as a civilian, his temporary presence in the seat of power ameliorated rivalries between numerous generals, each of whom felt they should replace Obregon. Portes Gil took office at the end of Calles’s term and remained until a special election could be called to fill the remainder of the 1928—1934 term to which Obregon had been
Elected.70
The choice of Portes Gil made Obregon loyalists feel that the way was still open for them to assume power. The new president had a progressive reputation, since as governor of Tamaulipas he had distributed more than 494,000 acres of land to peasants on his own initiative. On December 1, 1928, given his acceptability to all major factions, Portes Gil peacefully assumed the presidency.
Shortly before the end of his term, Calles called for the creation of a national political party. This party, the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), served to dominate ambitious caudillos, each striving for national power. The PNR differed from conventional political parties in that it was created to conserve power, not contest it. The creation of the party ten years after the Constitutionalists’ victory in the armed struggle highlights the differences between the Mexican Revolution and the revolutions in Russia and China, where preexisting parties guided the post-triumph course of development.71
There was no grass-roots participation in choosing representatives to the party’s 1929 founding convention in Queretaro. If its founding had occurred in the United States, its organizers would have been referred to as a bunch of good old boys in a smoke-filled room. As political scientist Luis Javier Garrido observed, “The reason that a record of the public debates occurring at the founding cannot be located is simply that no debate occurred.”72
The regionally based caudillos who formed the initial base of the party were guaranteed control over their local fiefdoms if they backed the party’s presidential nominees. Most of these caudillos, aging and quite wealthy, were more than ready to accept mediation by the new party, since they had too much personal wealth to risk losing it in an unsuccessful coup attempt.
In addition to bringing together generals and caciques, the PNR incorporated all the political parties claiming their origins in the Revolution. In 1929, these parties, which numbered more than
1,000, were mostly regional and generally were linked to one political figure. Existing parties were allowed to preserve their local and regional autonomy if they adhered to decisions of the PNR executive committee on national matters. to its building on existing parties, within a few months the PNR had a functioning nationwide network in place.73
Calles selected officials to lead the PNR, which remained an extension of his personal power. Both state and federal governments provided funds to the party, while opposition parties were forced to rely on private funds. The rough-and-tumble battles to decide who would exercise power at the local level soon shifted from independent groups to struggles for power within the PNR. In 1933 Calles pushed through a constitutional amendment to prohibit immediate congressional reelection. This made those wishing to serve in Congress dependent not on constituents they had served but on Calles approving their nomination. Left outside the party were workers, peasants, and members of the middle class. Politics became a game played exclusively by the closed circle around Calles.74
As political scientist Judith Hellman noted, “Few people observing the motley conglomeration of semi-independent parties, movements, interest groups, and political cliques that was the PNR in 1929 could have believed that it would develop into a unified and enormously powerful organization.”75
World History
