An aspect that has generated great confusion about what was the Mexican Revolution is the over valuation of the role that Francisco Madero and the Anti-reelection Party really played in the revolutionary process. Forgetting the class contradictions that had been raised, converting him into a martyr, at the same time hiding his refusal to champion the reforms that hundreds had died for in battle.
The revolution of 1910
Madero became one of the most relevant figures of the opposition to Díaz’ regime, as much for the thesis elaborated by him in his book The Presidential Succession as for the Anti-Reelection Party that organized for the 1910 electoral campaign. In this context, once Díaz was once again declared President of the Republic in a clearly fraudulent manner, Madero summoned an armed uprising on November 20, 1910 at 6 in the evening by way of the Plan of San Luis. Although there were a few groups who echoed the call, those who particularly stick out are the siblings Carmen, Natalia, Aquiles and Maximino Serdán who were known anti-reelectionists who prepared for the armed uprising by storing arms and munitions in their house in Puebla City. Being warned of a planned search of their house by the Porfiriato police forces, the Serdán siblings, commanded by Aquiles, decided to enter into battle. So, on November 18th, in a clash with the Federal Police in their own home, the youngest of the siblings, Maximino Serdán, died. Aquiles hid himself for a few hours, but he was discovered attempting to leave his cover in the early morning of November 19, 1910. Carmen and Natalia escaped alive from the confrontation and reincorporated into the armed struggle. Thus, one day before November 20th at 6 pm, following the call of the Plan of San Luis, two Maderistas had already been killed.
Above is a clear demonstration of the unorganized character of the armed uprising, driven more by the will of some sectors than by a clear strategy for action. More important still, is the political character of the Plan of San Luis that, even though it recognized the grievances suffered by the immense majority of the farmworkers and laborers, especially the indigenous people whose land was expropriated during the Porfiriato, this Plan was centered exclusively along the theme of presidential succession. In fact, the Plan of San Luis raised the continuation of the laws and agreements of the Porfiriato and the restitution of land only once individual cases had been reviewed. That is to say, the Plan raised the call to an armed struggle in order to maintain the legality of the property relations of the Porfiriato. Regarding this, Ricardo Flores Magón pointed out the following in an article published a few days after the convocation of arms by Madero:
“The situation of the Mexican people is very special. Working against the public power in these moments are the poor, represented by the Liberal Party, and the bourgeoisie, represented by the Nationalist Democratic and the National Anti-reelectionist Parties. This situation will be forced to be resolved by an armed conflict. The bourgeoisie want businesses that the technocratic minority do not want to give them. The proletariat, for their part, want economic well-being and social dignity by means of taking possession of the land and union organizations, which is equally opposed by the Government and the bourgeois parties. I think I laid out the problem with sufficient clarity. A fight to the death will be prepared in these moments in order to modify the means by which the Mexican people, the poor people, struggle in an agony of centuries. If the poor people triumph, that is, if they follow the banners of the Liberal Party, which is the party of the workers and the classes who do not possess good fortune, Mexico will be the first nation in the world that will give an opening step to the path of the people of the whole world, a powerful aspiration that agitates all of humanity, thirsty for liberty, anxious for justice, hungry for material well-being; inspiration that becomes more acute as the evident failure of the bourgeois republic to ensure the freedom and happiness of the peoples is more clearly seen.”
Although with a somewhat confusing prose, and without putting forward a clear program for what to do, the words of Ricardo Flores Magón turned out to not only be prophetic regarding the development of events and the prolongation of the armed struggle but also clarifying regarding the incapacity of Maderismo to resolve the fundamental problems of the hundreds of farmworkers who would take up arms in the months following November 20th.
Madero’s own ties as well as those of some of the Anti-reelecionists to the large landowners impeded posing the problem of resolving the demands of the farmworkers and workers.
Madero’s own ties as well as those of some of the Anti-reelecionists to the large landowners impeded posing the problem of resolving the demands of the farmworkers and workers.
Madero was not interested in reverting the damage caused by the Diaz regime, which he, his family, and his class had and kept benefiting from. The Plan of San Luis itself questioned the validity of the laws and agreements of the Díaz government even recognizing the plundering of properties, especially indigenous, by means of these laws with the reservation of waiting for the reforms once each case is reviewed. That is to say, deep down it was established and carried out a change of government without substantial changes. Like this, despite the fall of the Díaz dictatorship and the establishment of a provisional government in February of 1911, the situation was not substantially modified for the farmworkers and laborers of the country. But the revolution had detonated the eruption of the masses into politics and they would not wait until the institutions recognized their demands, but they will begin to conquer by means of their own action.
The preceding, it is to say the delay of Madero to carry out the changes of those who had started the armed struggle, and fundamentally of the thousands of farmworkers and laborers who had added themselves to the revolutionary cause, is precisely what explains the rupture between Zapata and Madero, in November 1911, and the later isolation of the Madero government which ended with the coup of Victoriano Huerta in February 1913. To that respect, below is cited the first point of the Plan of Ayala with which the Liberating Army of the South lead by Emiliano Zapata, Otilio Montaño and other Zapatista generals denounced Madero in order to lay clear this situation.
“1. Taking into consideration that the Mexican people led by Don Francisco I. Madero went to shed their blood to reconquer liberties and recover their rights which had been trampled on, and for a man to take possession of power, violating the sacred principles which he took an oath to defend under the slogan “Effective Suffrage and No Reelection,” outraging thus the faith, the cause, the justice, and the liberties of the people: taking into consideration that that man to whom we refer is Don Francisco I. Madero, the same who initiated the above-cited revolution, who imposed his will and influence as a governing norm on the Provisional Government of the ex-President of the Republic Attorney Francisco L. de Barra [sic], causing with this deed repeated sheddings of blood and multiplicate misfortunes for the fatherland in a manner deceitful and ridiculous, having no intentions other than satisfying his personal ambitions, his boundless instincts as a tyrant, and his profound disrespect for the fulfillment of the preexisting laws emanating from the immortal code of ‘57 [Constitution of 1857], written with the revolutionary blood of Ayutla; Taking into account that the so-called Chief of the Liberating Revolution of Mexico, Don Francisco I. Madero, through lack of integrity and the highest weakness, did not carry to a happy end the revolution which gloriously he initiated with the help of God and the people, since he left standing most of the governing powers and corrupted elements of oppression of the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz, which are not nor can in any way be the representation of National Sovereignty, and which, for being most bitter adversaries of ours and of the principles which even now we defend, are provoking the discomfort of the country and opening new wounds in the bosom of the fatherland, to give it its own blood to drink; taking also into account that the aforementioned Sr. Francisco I. Madero, present President of the Republic, tries to avoid the fulfillment of the promises which he made to the Nation in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, being [sic, restricting] the above-cited promises to the agreements of Ciudad Juárez, by means of false promises and numerous intrigues against the Nation nullifying, pursuing, jailing, or killing revolutionary elements who helped him to occupy the high post of President of the Republic; Taking into consideration that the so-often-repeated Francisco I. Madero has tried with the brute force of bayonets to shut up and to drown in blood the pueblos who ask, solicit, or demand from him the fulfillment of the promises of the revolution, calling them bandits and rebels, condemning them to a war of extermination without conceding or granting a single one of the guarantees which reason, justice, and the law prescribe…”
In the above quote, that is to say in the Plan of Ayala itself, the position of Zapata and the Liberation Army of the South is clear regarding the Maderista government that not only did it not complete any of the promises of the revolution, but also it includes that the Maderista government had begun a battle without quarter against the revolutionary sectors that demanded fulfillment of their demands. Of course, this was not a result but rather of the class character of Madero’s government: a bourgeois democratic government that attempted to end the dictatorship of Diaz and implement some democratic reforms without breaking with capitalism. By their very nature, these democratic demands were opposed to the class interests of the bourgeoisie and thus their attainment was incompatible without an open fight against the capitalist system. Precisely these are the characteristics that Trotsky explained about regarding the permanent character of the revolution in Russia in 1905 and what would resume in 1917. In this vein, in 1912, the Madero government undermined the social base that it had built so that through the end of the year and the beginning of 1913 it found itself isolated.
