Francisco I. Madero

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Francisco I. Madero bigraphy, stories - President of Mexico (1911–1913)

Francisco I. Madero : biography

30 October 1873 – 22 February 1913

Francisco Ignacio Madero GonzálezKrauze, p.250Rangel, Juan José Flores. Historia de Mexico 2, p.86. Cengage Learning Editores, 2003, ISBN 970-686-185-8Schneider, Ronald M. Latin American Political History, p.168. Westview Press, 2006, ISBN 0-8133-4341-0 (30 October 1873 – 22 February 1913) was a Mexican statesman, writer and revolutionary who served as 33rd President of Mexico from 1911 until his assassination in 1913. A campaigner for social justice and democracy, he was instrumental in creating the revolutionary movement in 1910, which led to the fall of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Born into a very wealthy landowning family in the north of Mexico, he was the proto-type of the respectable upper-class politician; a background which supplied the centre around which opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz could coalesce. Writing the book The Presidential Succession in 1910 (1908), he called on voters to prevent the sixth re-election of Porfirio Díaz, which he considered anti-democratic. His vision was to lay the foundation for a democratic 20th Century Mexico, but without polarizing the social classes. To that effect, he founded the Anti-Reelectionist Party (later the Progressive Constitutional Party) and incited the Mexican people to rise up against General Díaz, which ignited the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Arrested by the dictatorship shortly after being declared Presidential candidate by his party, the opposition leader escaped from prison and launched the Plan of San Luis Potosí from the United States, in this manner beginning the Mexican Revolution.

Maderistas caudillo de la revolución maderista

Beginning of the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1911

Francisco I. Madero campaigns from the back of a railway car in 1910. Madero set out campaigning across the country and everywhere he was met by numerous supporters. Finally, in June 1910, the Porfirian regime had him arrested in Monterrey and sent to a prison in San Luis Potosí. Approximately 5,000 other members of the Anti-Re-electionist movement were also jailed. Francisco Vázquez Gómez took over the nomination, but during Madero’s time in jail, Díaz was "elected" as president with an electoral vote of 196 to 187.

Madero’s father used his influence with the state governor and posted a bond to gain Madero the right to move about the city on horseback during the day. On October 4, 1910, Madero galloped away from his guards and took refuge with sympathizers in a nearby village. He was then smuggled across the U.S. border, hidden in a baggage car by sympathetic railway workers.

Madero set up shop in San Antonio, Texas, and quickly issued his Plan of San Luis Potosí, which had been written during his time in prison, partly with the help of Ramón López Velarde. The Plan proclaimed the elections of 1910 null and void, and called for an armed revolution to begin at 6 pm on November 20, 1910, against the "illegitimate presidency/dictatorship of Díaz". At that point, Madero would declare himself provisional President of Mexico, and called for a general refusal to acknowledge the central government, restitution of land to villages and Indian communities, and freedom for political prisoners.

On November 20, 1910, Madero arrived at the border and planned to meet up with 400 men raised by his uncle Catarino to launch an attack on Ciudad Porfirio Díaz (modern-day Piedras Negras, Coahuila). However, his uncle showed up late and brought only ten men. As such, Madero decided to postpone the revolution. Instead he and his brother Raúl (who had been given the same name as his late brother) traveled incognito to New Orleans, Louisiana.

In February 1911 he entered Chihuahua and led 130 men in an attack on Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. He spent the next several months as the head of the Mexican Revolution. Madero successfully imported arms from the United States, with the American government under William Howard Taft doing little to halt the flow of arms to the Mexican revolutionaries. By April, the Revolution had spread to eighteen states, including Morelos where the leader was Emiliano Zapata.