Mexican Revolution: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Mexican Revolution was a period of instability and civil war in Mexico which began with popular rejection of dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910 and ended with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in control of Mexico in the 1930s.

After Francisco I. Madero lost the 1910 presidential election against dictator Porfirio Diaz in results that were widely considered rigged, Madero and other men belonging to the Liberal Party fled to the United States to make what became known as the San Luis Plan. This document, named for the city of San Luis Potosí, declared the election to be null and void and invited the population to take up arms agaist the Díaz government on November 20 that same year. It ignited many rebellions (each with their own Plans) around the country, involving men like Aquiles Serdán, Pancho Villa, the anarchist inspired Emiliano Zapata and, later, Venustiano Carranza and Álvaro Obregón.

Although Porfirio Díaz was thrown out of office and into exile in less than a year, personal ambitions and lack of a single leadership caused the fighting to extend for many years. Newly elected President Madero enjoyed support from neither his former allies, who claimed the revolution's goals hadn't been met, nor the members of the old regime; in 1913, he was murdered along with his vice-president. Former revolutionary and Chief of Armed Forces Victoriano Huerta then took power, and was quickly accused of plotting Madero's murder in accordance with the United States ambassador, causing the war to continue.

After years of political and military turmoil, characterized by revolutionary heroes assassinating one another (Obregón killed Carranza, who had killed Zapata in an ambush), the country stabilized in the 1930s after the foundation of the Nationalist Mexican Party (PNM, which later became the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) by then President Plutarco Elías Calles, another revolutionary general. The PNM succeeded in convincing most of the remaining generals to dissolve their personal armies and create the Mexican Army, and so the creation of the party is considered by some to be the real end of the Mexican Revolution.

The Revolution also created a political tradition of loyalty (some claim submission) to the current President, a tradition that lasted around sixty years.

See also: History of Mexico, Tampico Affair