Toppling A Dictator
Broadsheet announcing the presidential candidacy of Huerta, the Anahuac/Aztec eagle who “strikes at the Yankee vulture," September 1913.
Victoriano Huerta and his conservative allies—the elite, military, and the Catholic Church—wanted to return to the Porfirian status quo. He considered brute force as the only means to quell the revolution and obtain peace. To this end, he replaced state governors with generals and shuttered Congress in October 1913 only to later reopen it with supporters. He also censored the press and imprisoned, sometimes murdered, journalists who wrote against him. He also funneled government funds and foreign credit into the military, primarily to purchase the loyalty of officers and firearms. Although Huerta had the firepower, he lacked the popular support to grow his army, leading him to force recruitment. Many unwilling soldiers would eventually desert the army and even join the opposition.
1913-08-30
1913-08-30
Revolution 3.0
Huerta’s coup—which most Mexicans did not support—and his authoritarianism revitalized the revolution. Throughout the country, his military government encountered local rebel leaders with militias that mirrored the ongoing Zapatista guerilla warfare. However, its main threat was in the northern states, which harbored a growing coordinated army. Huerta’s replacement and murder of Chihuahua’s governor added fuel to the insurgent fire against the central government in the large northern states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Sonora. The region’s access to U.S. supplies and a railway system to transport them across the area made the borderlands a revolutionary haven.
1914-05-31
The Northern Offensive
Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, and General Álvaro Obregón commanded the Sonoran forces. Resource rich and with no direct railway line to Mexico City, Sonora quickly secured its autonomy from Huerta’s government and became a hotspot for revolutionaries in the north. In contrast, the insurgency in Chihuahua was decentralized with local rebel leaders throughout the state. However, one–Francisco “Pancho” Villa—would eventually emerge as the region’s revolutionary head.
Rebels across northern Mexico joined their effort after Carranza called for the removal of “the usurper” Huerta and the reinstatement of constitutional rule in March 1913. Villa and Obregon’s northern “Constitutionalist” army joined forces with Zapata’s militia to conditionally form a coordinated affront against the Huerta. Railroads and U.S. firearms soon made the northern army a formidable force against Huerta’s military.
The U.S. Intervenes
Up until Huerta’s coup, the United States was a cautious observer of the revolution. American businesses sold most revolutionary leaders resources to further their cause. Huerta’s usurpation of power coincided with the start of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, which favored intervention in diplomacy. A proponent of democracy, Wilson did not recognize Huerta as the legitimate president of Mexico. Huerta’s closure of Congress prompted Wilson to close the border and permit the export of arms to revolutionaries, greatly strengthening the northern Constitutionalist army. In an attempt to undermine “the usurper”, Wilson authorized the occupation of Veracruz from April to November 1914 with the goal to block Huerta’s importation of firearms.
Photographs of the U.S. invasion, destruction, and imprisonment of Mexicans in Veracruz, April 1914.
1914
circa 1916
The Armies’ Backbone
While we remember the “big” revolutionaires, soldaderas are often forgotten, though they are inseparable from the revolutionary effort. Women followed their husbands, providing care by bringing them food, water, and even ammunition. Their labor is doubly hidden, as a lot of it was traditionally “women’s work”, such as cooking, and is not traditionally recognized as important labor. However, it is impossible to tell how soldiers would have survived without soldaderas.
There aren’t a lot of first hand accounts of their experience, but some ballads were published that described the labor of soldaderas. This is one such corrido: Told from the perspective of a soldadera, she talks about going to the camp to see her Juan – her lover – to give him food. She enters the camp at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, enduring the barrack’s captain’s verbal abuse–“They call us, "Wicked old ladies!"” says one of the lines, showing that although they were providing an important service, they were not well regarded.