Mexico's decade of regional wars wrote the 1917 constitution
The Mexican Revolution, 20 November 1910 to 1 December 1920, is often called modern Mexico's defining event: it destroyed the Federal Army, raised revolutionary forces, and remade culture after Porfirio Díaz's long Porfiriato (1876–1911) failed to manage succession.
Porfirio Díaz seized the presidency in a 1876 coup against the re-election of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, stepped aside for his ally Manuel González from 1880 to 1884, then ruled without a break until 1911 after the constitution was changed in 1887 and 1890 to permit endless re-election. His era brought railways, dams, factories and foreign capital, bought with repression. The Rurales, a mounted police of only about 2,500 men, patrolled some 12,000 miles of track and seized peasant land; by 1900 more than nine-tenths of communal holdings had been sold off, and an estimated 9.5 million peasants laboured for hacienda owners.
The regime looked sturdier than it was. The Federal Army was bloated, with around 9,000 officers over 25,000 listed soldiers, some 7,000 of whom existed only on paper so commanders could pocket subsidies. Drought from 1907 to 1909 and bitter strikes at Cananea and Río Blanco added strain. When Francisco Madero ran against Díaz in 1910 and was jailed, he answered with the Plan of San Luis Potosí, calling for armed revolt.
Madero's presidency proved short. In February 1913 generals from the old regime forced him and Vice President Pino Suárez out, and within days both were killed on the orders of the new president, Victoriano Huerta. A northern coalition then rose against Huerta, opening the bloodiest stretch of the conflict, and the Constitutionalist faction under Venustiano Carranza eventually won.
Carranza's attempt to hand power to a civilian successor in 1920 provoked a rebellion by northern generals, and he was killed while fleeing the capital. Revolutionary generals then held the presidency from 1920 to 1940, the same two decades in which the new state gradually built its authority.
Source: Mexican Revolution
