Plutarco Elías Calles, (born September 25, 1877, Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico—died October 19, 1945, Mexico City), Mexican military and political leader who modernized the revolutionary armies and later became president of Mexico. He was the founder of the National Revolutionary Party (Partido Nacional Revolucionario; PNR), which became the major Mexican political party (renamed in 1938 the Mexican Revolutionary Party [Partido de la Revolución Mexicana] and in 1946 the Institutional Revolutionary Party [Partido Revolucionario Institucional; PRI]).
Calles
See all media
Born: September 25, 1877 Guaymas Mexico
Died: October 19, 1945 (aged 68) Mexico City Mexico
Title / Office: president (1924-1928), Mexico
Founder: Institutional Revolutionary Party
Political Affiliation: Institutional Revolutionary Party
He began his career as an elementary schoolteacher but joined the struggle of Francisco Madero against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in 1910. Calles was an extremely gifted organizer and leader and was a general in the battles, first against Victoriano Huerta and then against Pancho Villa and his rebel forces.
Mexico
READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC
Mexico: The northern dynasty: Obregón and Calles
When Carranza failed to move toward immediate social reforms, General Obregón enlisted two other powerful...
In 1917 Calles became governor of Sonora. Appointed secretary of commerce, labour, and industry in the cabinet of Pres. Venustiano Carranza, he resigned to support the candidacy of Alvaro Obregón and was instrumental in overthrowing Carranza in 1920. Calles served as secretary of foreign relations in the provisional government of Adolfo de la Huerta (1920) and then as secretary of the interior under President Obregón (1920–24).
In 1924 Calles was elected president. Though he was becoming increasingly conservative, he sponsored agrarian, labour, and educational reforms. Recognizing the dangers of military coups, he curtailed the influence of the army in Mexico's political life. Calles was vehemently anticlerical and introduced a series of oppressive laws aimed at eliminating the pervasive influence of the Roman Catholic Church. He applied the constitutional provisions that limited the number of clergy and prohibited church schools. The church, as a consequence, held no public religious services for three years until the dispute was arbitrated in 1929. He approved legislation that restricted alien ownership of land and regulated the petroleum industry; both of these actions angered the United States.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
President-elect Obregón was assassinated in 1928, and for the next six years Calles was the real power behind three puppet presidents. His base was the PNR, which he had organized in 1929; its support of a candidate was tantamount to election. In those six years the more radical aspects of the revolution were methodically curbed. By 1934, however, when left-wing groups had begun to control the PNR, Calles was forced to support their candidate for president, Lázaro Cárdenas. This misalliance deteriorated into an open break, and Calles was forced into exile. He lived in California until 1941, when he was permitted to return to Mexico.
Calles, Plutarco Elías (1877–1945)
Plutarco Elías Calles (b. 25 September 1877; d. 19 October 1945), president of Mexico (1924–1928). The poor relation of a notable family in the northwestern state of Sonora, Calles was an aspiring young professional and entrepreneur who had met with only limited success before the Mexican Revolution. Initially on the periphery of Francisco Maderos movement against the Porfirio Díaz regime, from a minor appointment in the new state government he rose steadily in the ranks of what became the constitutionalist army, becoming Alvaro Obregóns principal political associate. As president, and then as jefe máximo (supreme chief) in the wake of the assassination of president-elect Obregón (1928), Calles dominated the national government for more than a decade and initiated the institutionalization of the Revolution.
Until the Revolution, Calless life had been punctuated with misfortune and disappointments. He was the illegitimate son of Plutarco Elías, scion of one of the most prominent families in northeast Sonora in the nineteenth century. Following the death of his mother when he was four, he was raised by his stepfather, Juan B. Calles, who owned a small cantina in Hermosillo (and from whom he took his second family name). After being educated in Hermosillo, Calles became a schoolteacher. The death of his first wife, Francisca Bernal, in 1899 prompted him to move to the port of Guaymas, where he began a decade-long search for economic success and social mobility. To do so, he relied on his connections with, and the support of, his fathers family, the Elíases. First a school inspector and newspaper editor in the port, Calles next was appointed municipal treasurer (he lost the post when funds were discovered missing), followed by a stint as manager of his half brothers hotel until it burned. He moved in 1906 to Fronteras, where he managed his fathers modest hacienda, was bookkeeper for and shareholder in a small flour mill, and served as municipal secretary—at last achieving modest success and some local prominence. But he then became embroiled in the Elíases conflict with the local cacique (boss) and in a dispute with farmers over water rights. As a result he returned to Guaymas in 1910 to manage a hotel and open a commission business in partnership.
Though not an active participant in the local Maderista movement, Calles lent it some support—his store as a meeting place. He used this connection to run unsuccessfully for the state legislature in 1911. Again he returned to northeast Sonora, opening a general store (in partnership) in the border town of Agua Prieta, a most fortunate choice. The railroad running through the town connected Arizona with important mining districts in the interior of Sonora; and the new governor, José M. Maytorena, was looking for a loyal follower who, as the towns police chief, would secure customs revenues, quiet disgruntled former insurgents, and forestall a rumored invasion from Arizona by the radical Magonista revolutionaries. His choice of Calles proved to be the turning point of the latters life. Calles proved to be a capable, diligent local official, against the Orozquista rebels (1912) and the Huerta coup a year later (being among the first to proclaim armed resistance in the state).
Calles soon developed a working relationship with Obregón, who was emerging as the leader of the revolutionary jefes in the northwest. While Obregón carried the constitutionalist movement beyond the state, Calles remained to manage the military and political affairs of Sonora. As governor of Sonora (1915–1916, 1917–1919) and working with Obregóns other principal Sonoran associate, Adolfo De La Huerta (governor, 1917, 1919–1920), Calles set forth a radical program to promote education on a broad scale; break up monopolies (including the cancellation of all prior government concessions which had tax exemptions) and support small entrepreneurs; extend secularization (including the legalization of divorce and the expulsion of all priests); establish an agrarian commission to distribute the expropriated land of those deemed enemies of the Revolution; foster government patronage of workers, assisting in their organization and legislating rights and benefits; and limit foreign influence (principally, severe economic and social restrictions on Chinese immigrants, and cancelling contracts with some large foreign investors). This radical program put Calle at loggerheads with President Venustiano Carranza. Obregón sought to moderate these concepts, but failed in his efforts to establish singular control over the state. He was forced to work with Calles and de la Huerta, forming a triumvirate.
When Obregón announced his presidential candidacy, Calles resigned as secretary of industry, commerce, and labor (1919–1920). Soon after, he led the military forces and proclaimed the Plan of Agua Prieta against Carranzas attempt to impose his successor, and then served as Obregóns interior secretary (1920–1923). When Obregón chose to support Calles over de la Huerta as his successor, and de la Huerta led a revolt, Calles commanded the troops in the northwest. As president, Calles pressed his radical anticlericalism in the face of the Catholic Churchs challenge to the restrictions of the 1917 Constitution and then of the Cristero Rebellion (1926–1929). But his support of agrarian reform and the workers movement ebbed as he moderated his policies and concentrated on the development of the nations infrastructure (especially irrigation, roads, air and postal service, a telephone network, national banking and investment institutions) and on the promotion of enterprise, even to the point of supporting large-scale domestic and foreign investors.
To retain control over the national government in the wake of the assassination of president-elect Obregón, Calles and his followers pursued a limited and expedient institutionalization of the hierarchical, personalist system that had bound the ruling coalition of revolutionary jefes together: the National Revolutionary Party. However, the Maximato (the oligarchic rule of the Callista political machine) increasingly lost a popular base, as it turned away from the Revolutions promises of reform and as the Great Depression deepened. Reformers in the party used its structure to institute a radical program and mobilize popular support, coalescing around Lázaro Cárdenas. Again employing expediency, Calles responded by acceding to some of the reformist demands and settling on Cárdenas for the 1934 presidential elections, as the best option to contain growing party dissidence and rising popular alienation. This time, however, his expedient adjustments set in motion forces he could not control. Cárdenas mobilized popular support and employed the institutional prerogatives of the party and the presidency to the fullest. When Calles resisted, he was deported (April 1936). He remained in California until Cárdenass successor, Manuel Ávila Camacho, permitted his return in 1941 and accorded him full honors at his funeral four years later.
Calles, Plutarco Elías, 18771945, Mexican statesman, president (192428). In 1913 he left schoolteaching to fight with Álvaro Obregón and Venustiano Carranza against Victoriano Huerta. In 1920 he joined Obregón and Adolfo de la Huerta in the rebellion against Carranza. After Obregóns term as president, Calles, who had been a cabinet member, became the presidential nominee. Adolfo de la Huerta, claiming election fraud, revolted (Dec., 1923), but Obregón and Calles established their supremacy by force (1924); Calles became president.
Calless administration was noted for its revolutionary zeal, which often precipitated violence. At the outset agrarian reform was pursued vigorously but recklessly. Many rural schools were built, although teachers were still scarce and underpaid. Material improvements were given special attention; vast road-building and irrigation projects were undertaken. The struggle between church and state reached a new level of bitterness. In 1926 the enforcement of anticlerical legislation provoked violence; in 192627 the cristeros, terrorists whose slogan was “Viva Cristo Rey” [long live Christ the King] took up arms in the states of Colima, Jalisco, and Michoacán. Military chieftains reciprocated by victimizing innocent Roman Catholics, and government officials used the strife to political advantage. At the same time legislation over land and petroleum rights brought about a serious dispute with the United States; relations between the two countries improved when Dwight W. Morrow was appointed (1927) ambassador, and the oil question was temporarily settled.
Calles created and directed a powerful national army and dissolved the private militia that threatened internal peace. He unified the government and molded the National Revolutionary party into the dominant force in Mexican politics. Calles rapidly lost his radicalism when he gained power and became a landowner and financier; he moved toward dictatorship. Already in control of the labor movement, he made himself the force behind the Callistas, a circle of financiers and industrialists who dominated the countrys economy and politics. Thus he became undisputed Jefe Máximo, or political chieftain, of Mexico.
When Obregón was assassinated (1928) after his reelection to the presidency, Callas appointed Emilio Portes Gil. In 1930 he declared the agrarian reform program a failure. In the same year he engineered the election of Pascual Ortiz Rubio. Two years later he removed him to appoint Gen. Abelardo Luján Rodríguez. The mighty labor union, CROM, was smashed. The conflict with the church, temporarily subdued (1929) by Morrow, was resumed; priests were openly persecuted. Communist unions, previously used by Calles in his campaign against the CROM, were ruthlessly suppressed, and a Callista-backed fascist organization, the Gold Shirts, harassed minority groups. As the new champion of conservatism, Calles in 1935 openly opposed the policies of his former protegé, Lázaro Cárdenas, but was defeated in the contest; in 1936 he was exiled. He was allowed to return under an amnesty in 1941.
Mexico is a land of intense faith. The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the saints on automobile dashboards, the vast crowds making pilgrimages on their knees — all attest to the depth of religious feeling in a land where the culture of the Spanish conquistadores clashed and then melded with that of terrifying Aztec and Maya deities.
But strong religious faith has a way of generating its opposite. The political power and vast wealth of the Church succeeded in engendering within Mexico an anticlericalism of unmatched ferocity. Mexico may officiel be the land where barefoot Indian women burn candles and offer gifts to figures of the Dark Virgin — it is also the land where red-shirted militiamen burned churches, where priests hid for their lives and where a powerful, half-crazed state governor had cards printed describing him as “the personal enemy of God.”
Though this governor — Tomás Garrido Canabal of Tabasco — was an extreme example of the clerophobe in politics, it should be taken into account that he was supported and his activities legitimized by an even more powerful man: his president. That president was Plutarco Elias Calles, who held the office between 1924-28 and then ruled through puppet presidents until 1934, when he was succeeded by an independent-minded man he incorrectly believed would be the next in a succession of stooges. Calles was the leader and symbol of the anti-Catholic movement that emanated from the 1910 Revolution and proved such a powerful force in the 1920s and 1930s.
He was born in Guaymas, Sonora, in 1877. But not as Calles. His origins are obscure and his enemies would later claim that he was a Turk or a Jew. Actually, he was neither. Near as can be ascertained, he was the natural son of a woman named Maria de Jesús Campuzano and Plutarco Elias, member of a prominent local family of Lebanese descent. The boy grew up in poverty as Plutarco Elias and according to Fernando Torreblanca, who was both his secretary and son-in-law, took the name Calles from his maternal uncle, who befriended and raised him after his mother's death. Historians suggest that this background of illegitimacy and deprivation had much to do with shaping Calles's morose nature and fanatic hostility toward his enemies.
Before the 1910 Revolution he worked at a number of occupations — small businessman, schoolteacher, bartender (though he later became an ardent prohibitionist), and flour mill manager. But his real talent was for politics. With an instinct for picking a winner, he supported Madero against Diaz, Carranza against Huerta and Obregón against Carranza. After Madero's victory he became police commissioner in the border town of Agua Prieta. As a military man, he helped Madero and Huerta in their campaign against Pascual Orozco and then joined the obregonista General Benjamin Hill in the struggle to oust Huerta. Though not particularly gifted as a commander, his political skills propelled him to the rank of general.
Under Carranza, he served as governor and military commander of Sonora in 1915-16. Then he took a cabinet post, as Carranza's secretary of industry, commerce and labor. In February 1920 Calles resigned and returned to Sonora to aid Obregón in his presidential campaign. Carranza, fearful of the able and ambitious Obregón, had chosen a man named Ignacio Bonillas to succeed him. Bonillas, formerly Mexican ambassador to Washington, had spent so much of his life outside Mexico that political enemies claimed he had difficulty speaking Spanish. They called him “Meester” Bonillas and on one occasion derailed his campaign train, causing him to miss an engagement. Then they spread rumors that Bonillas had cancelled – the engagement to take a Spanish lesson.
Carranza retaliated by terrorizing Obregón campaign workers and Obregón went into rebellion. Calles supported him by issuing the Plan de Agua Prieta, a manifesto disavowing Carranza as president. The Obregón-Calles forces triumphed and Carranza was treacherously murdered while attempting to flee to Veracruz.
To fill out Carranza's unexpired term, Sonora Governor Adolfo de la Huerta became interim president in May 1920. On November 30 of the same year Obregón was formally inaugurated to serve a regular term. Calles was by now Obregón's right-hand man. He had been secretary of war and marine during de la Huerta's interregnum and Obregón named him to head the all-powerful interior ministry (gobernación), from which post he launched his campaign for the presidency.
Calles showed his loyalty to Obregón during a brief but bloody rebellion mounted in December 1923 by de la Huerta, the former interim president. Though 60 percent of the federal army supported de la Huerta, Obregón and Calles won out because they had a broad base of labor-farmer support. In addition, Obregón was able to procure arms and aircraft from the United States. De la Huerta fled to Key West in March 1924 and Fortunato Maycotte, the last of the rebel generals, was captured and shot on May 14.
Though Obregón had a sense of humor, he could be ruthless when the occasion demanded. Determined not to make Madero's mistake when he retained Huerta (who turned on him), he shot every officer over the rank of major who supported the de la Huerta rebellion. This meant that the remainder of the army, organized labor and the agrarian groups would be united in support of his heir apparent, Plutarco Elias Calles.
Calles was inaugurated on November 30, 1924, and lost no time plunging Mexico into the most severe religious crisis of her history. The 1917 Constitution contained articles which practicing Catholics considered intolerable — among them were provisions outlawing monastic orders, prohibiting religious organizations to own property and reducing clergy to the status of second-class citizens by taking away their right to vote. Obregón disliked Catholicism but was a practical man who followed a policy of applying the articles selectively — with rigor in areas where the Church was weak, leniently or not at all in regions where the Church was strong.
Calles, by contrast, was a fanatic determined to extirpate every trace of Catholicism from Mexico. On June 14, 1926, he signed a decree known officially as “The Law Reforming the Penal Code” and unofficially as the “Calles Law.” Designed to put teeth into the constitutional articles, it spelled out in specific terms the penalties for violations — 500 pesos for wearing clerical garb, five years imprisonment for criticizing the laws or inducing a minor to join a monastic order, etc.
The trouble came when Calles mulishly attempted to enforce the laws in strongly Catholic west-central Mexico, particularly the states of Jalisco, Colima, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and Michoacán and even more particularly the Los Altos ranch country of northeast Jalisco, focal point of what would turn out to be the terrible 1926-29 Cristero War. Shouting their battle cry of Viva Cristo Rey! (“Long live Christ the King!”), a motley assortment of ranchers, Catholic students and workers from Guadalajara and Indians from Jalisco's northern sierra held off the cream of the federal army for three years.
In the end, the issue was never decided by force of arms. Calles completed his term in 1928 and his successor, Emilio Portes Gil, was flexible enough to cooperate with the able American ambassador, Dwight Morrow, in arriving at a settlement which in fact granted little to the Catholics. The Portes Gil-Morrow efforts were aided by an appeasement-minded majority in the Catholic hierarchy that betrayed the Cristeros in the field.
Though no longer president, Calles continued to run Mexico. When a military rebellion broke out in March 1929, he took over as minister of war and marine and energetically stamped it out. Two presidents that succeeded Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo Rodríguez, were pretty much in his pocket, though Rodríguez showed flashes of independence from time to time.
In 1934 Calles made the mistake of backing the candidacy of Lázaro Cárdenas, who proved to be both the most honest and the most radical president in Mexican history. Now rich and increasingly corrupt, Calles was moving steadily to the right as Cárdenas implemented his radical reforms. Calles soured on land reform, called the Revolution a “political failure” and, after a trip to Europe, seemed to be moving in the direction of fascism. Guessing — probably correctly — that Calles wanted to remove him, Cárdenas struck first. On April 9, 1936, he had Calles arrested and dumped over the border. When a picked detachment of soldiers and police burst into Calles's bedroom, they found him reading a Spanish edition of Mein Kampf.
Calles was allowed to return to Mexico by Manuel Avila Camacho, Cárdenas's moderate successor. As if to symbolize the decline of rabid anticlericalism that had gripped Mexico in the heyday of Calles and Garrido, the “personal enemy of God,” Avila Camacho publicly announced that he was a religious believer. Calles took up residence in Mexico City and there lived quietly until his death in 1945, at the age of 68.
The only substantive study of Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution, this book traces the remarkable life story of a complex and little-understood, yet key figure in Mexicos history. Jürgen Buchenau draws on a rich array of archival evidence from Mexico, the United States, and Europe to explore Calless origins and political trajectory. He hailed from Sonora, a border state marked by fundamental social and economic change at the turn of the twentieth century. After dabbling in various careers, Calles found the early years of the revolution (1910-1920) afforded him the chance to rise to local and ultimately national prominence. As president from 1924 to 1928, Calles embarked on an ambitious reform program, modernized the financial system, and defended national sovereignty against an interventionist U.S. government. Yet these reforms failed to eradicate underdevelopment, corruption, and social injustice. Moreover, his unyielding campaigns against the Catholic Church and his political enemies earned him a reputation as a repressive strongman.
After his term as president, Calles continued to exert broad influence as his countrys foremost political figure while three weaker presidents succeeded each other in an atmosphere of constant political crisis. He played a significant role in founding a ruling party that reined in the destructive ambitions of leading army officers and promised to help campesinos and workers attain better living conditions. This dynastic party and its successors, including the present-day Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, or Party of the Institutional Revolution), remained in power until 2000. Many of the institutions and laws forged during the Calles era survived into the present. Through this comprehensive assessment of a quintessential politician in an era dominated by generals, entrepreneurs, and educated professionals, Buchenau opens an illuminating window into the Mexican Revolution and contemporary Mexico
Plutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican military general and politician, and a freemason. He was the powerful interior minister under President Álvaro Obregón, who chose Calles as his successor, he was violently anticlerical and fought against the Catholic Church. The 1924 Calles presidential campaign was the first populist presidential campaign in Mexicos history, as he called for land redistribution and promised equal justice, more education, additional labour rights, and democratic governance. After Calles populist phase he ushered in a state atheism phase, ushering a period of persecution against Catholics. After leaving office he continued to be the dominant leader from 1928 to 1935, a period known as the Maximato, after a title Calles awarded to himself, Jefe Máximo of the Revolution. Calles is most noted for his implementation of anti-Catholic laws in the Mexican constitution. This led to the Cristero War, a civil war involving Catholics opposed to the administration. Calles also founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1929. The party had ensured political stability in the wake of the assassination of president-elect Alvaro Obregón in 1928.
Plutarco Elías Calles was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, taking over from Alvaro Obregón. He was the founder of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party), which in 1946 would become the Institutional Revolutionary Party and dominate Mexican politics until 1988.
Plutarco Calles was born on September 25, 1877, the son of Plutarco Elías Lucero, a Lebanese man hired by the U.S. Army to test the use of camels in the southwestern United States. He was orphaned when he was three and went to live with his fathers sister, Josefa Campuzano, and her husband, Juan Bautista Calles.
They looked after him well, and he took his uncles surname as his own. Young Calles became one of the earliest teachers at the Colegio Sonora and also contributed some articles on problems in the Mexican educational system of the time. However, he left teaching, as he found the strictures too great for his independent thought.
During the Mexican Revolution, Calles became a supporter of Francisco Madero and became mayor of Agua Prieta, a town on the Mexican side of the Mexican-U.S. border. When Madero was deposed and killed, Calles was involved in the resistance to the new government and rallied supporters of the revolution in Sonora.
He was involved in a battle in 1915 against Maytorena, an ally of Pancho Villa, defeating him. However, he was a politician rather than a military strategist and became the interim and later the constitutional governor of Sonora.
There he introduced some of the educational reforms that he had advocated as a teacher. He was also affected by the anticlerical traditions of the period, expelling all Roman Catholic priests from Sonora. He also introduced laws prohibiting the production and consumption of alcohol.
In 1914 President Venustiano Carranza offered Calles a cabinet position on two occasions, with Calles finally accepting the post of minister of industry, trade, and labor in 1919. By this time Calles was seen as a clear supporter of Alvaro Obregón, who was emerging as a major rival to Carranza. Both came from Sonora, and as the alliance between Carranza and Obregón began to falter Calles resigned from the cabinet and in April 1920 published his Plan de Agua Prieta calling on Sonorans to overthrow Carranza.
After the death of Carranza, Adolfo de la Huerta became president, and during his short presidency Calles became minister of war. He was then minister of the interior for three years during Obregóns period as president. It was not long before Obregón and de la Huerta were arguing, and very soon the latter was getting army support for a revolt. Calles sided with Obregón and quickly defeated the de la Huerta rebellion. When Obregón retired as president on December 1, 1924, Calles became the new president.
One of his most controversial political decisions was the Law Reforming the Penal Code. Published on July 2, 1926, this law reinforced the anticlerical provisions of the 1917 constitution by fining people who wore church decorations and even threatening five years in prison for anybody who questioned the law. Some Roman Catholics were involved in the Cristero revolt, which caused much trouble in central and western Mexico from 1926 until 1929.
Although Calles was a revolutionary, his enemies in the United States denounced him as a communist and even as a Bolshevik. On September 29, 1927, he established a direct telephone link with Calvin Coolidge.
He also managed to get the new U.S. ambassador, Dwight Morrow, who had worked for banker J. P. Morgan, to get the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh to visit Mexico City. There Lindbergh met Morrows daughter Anne, whom he later married. Morrow was, however, critical of many of the measures that Calles had introduced.
Calles drew much of his support from the poor farmers, and his plan was to improve their lot as small businessmen. To help them, on February 1, 1926, he established the National Bank of Agricultural Credit, having overhauled the banking system and established the Bank of Mexico, modeled on the American Federal Reserve, five months earlier. He also introduced a new system of running the government finance ministry.
On November 30, 1928, Calles stood down as president, and with Obregón having been killed Emilio Portes Gil became provisional president. In 1934 Calles supported Lázaro Cárdenas, who was elected president. In the following year the press became extremely critical of Calles, who returned from retirement to defend the decisions he had made in office.
However, in 1936 Cárdenas had Calles deported after he was accused of trying to establish his own political party. After some years in exile in San Diego, where he reflected on his time in office and played golf, in 1944 President Manuel Ávila Camacho invited him to return to the country to provide more unity during World War II. He died on October 19, 1945, in Mexico City.
Plutarco Elías Calles (25 September 1877 – 19 October 1945) was a Mexican military general and politician, and a freemason.[1][2] He was the powerful interior minister under President Álvaro Obregón, who chose Calles as his successor, he was violently anticlerical and fought against the Catholic Church.[3] The 1924 Calles presidential campaign was the first populist presidential campaign in Mexicos history, as he called for land redistribution and promised equal justice, more education, additional labour rights, and democratic governance. After Calles populist phase (1924–1926) he ushered in a state atheism phase (1926–1928), ushering a period of persecution against Catholics. After leaving office he continued to be the dominant leader from 1928 to 1935, a period known as the Maximato, after a title Calles awarded to himself, Jefe Máximo (Maximum Chief) of the Revolution. Calles is most noted for his implementation of anti-Catholic laws in the Mexican constitution. This led to the Cristero War, a civil war involving Catholics opposed to the administration. Calles also founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1929. The party had ensured political stability in the wake of the assassination of president-elect Alvaro Obregón in 1928. In its two subsequent incarnations, it held power continuously from 1929 to 2000.
Contents
1Early life and career
2Before the presidency
2.1Participation in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1917
2.2Governor of Sonora
2.3Service in the Carranza administration
2.4Revolt of the Sonoran generals, 1920
2.5Obregón administration, De la Huerta revolt, election of 1924
3Presidency, 1924–1928
3.1Labor
3.2Finance
3.3Military
3.4Infrastructure
3.5Education
3.6Public health
3.7Civil law
3.8Petroleum and U.S.-Mexico relations
3.9Church-state conflict
41928 Election
5Post Presidency
5.1Founding a new party and the Maximato 1929–1934
5.2End of the Maximato and exile
5.3Return from exile and final years
6Personal life
7Legacies
8See also
9References
10Further reading
11External links
Early life and career
The colonel José Juan Elías. His paternal grandfather.
Francisco Plutarco Elías Campuzano one of two natural children of his alcoholic bureaucrat father, Plutarco Elías Lucero, and his mother, María Jesús Campuzano Noriega. He adopted the Calles surname from his mothers sisters husband, Juan Bautista Calles, as he and his wife, María Josefa Campuzano, raised Plutarco after the death of his mother.[4] His uncle was from a family of school teachers, but was himself small-scale dealer in groceries and alcoholic beverages.[5] Plutarcos uncle was an atheist, and he instilled in his nephew a strong commitment to secular education and an attitude of disdain toward the Roman Catholic Church. This was later reflected in his social agenda, which included expansion of public education and the removal of church influence from education, politics, and unions.[6]
Plutarcos fathers family was descended from a prominent family in the Provincias Internas, most often recorded as Elías González.[citation needed] The first of this line to settle in Mexico was Francisco Elías González (1707–1790), who emigrated from La Rioja, Spain, to Zacatecas, Mexico in 1729.[citation needed] Eventually, Francisco Elías González moved north to Chihuahua, where, as commander of the presidio of Terrenate, he played a role in the wars against the Yaqui and Apache.[citation needed] Plutarco Elías Calless father, Plutarco Elías Lucero, lost his own father, José Juan Elías Pérez, in 1865 to battle wounds sustained during the resistance to the French Intervention, leaving his widow with eight children, of which Plutarco was the oldest.[7] The familys fortunes declined precipitously; it lost or sold much of its land, some of it to the Cananea Copper Company, whose labor practices resulted in a major strike at the turn of the twentieth century.[7]
Calles became a committed anticlerical. Some scholars[who?] attribute this to his social status as a natural or "illegitimate" child. "To society at large, Plutarco Elías Calles was illegitimate because his parents never married, but he was even more so in the eyes of religion. Denying the authority of religion would at least in part be an attempt to negate his own illegitimacy."[8]
As a young man, Calles worked in many different jobs, from bartender to schoolteacher, and always had an affinity for political opportunities.[9] Calles was an atheist.[10][11]
Before the presidency
Participation in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1917
Plutarco Elías Calles
Calles was a supporter of Francisco I. Madero, under whom he became a police commissioner, and his ability to align himself with the Constitutionalists led by Venustiano Carranza (the political winners of the Mexican Revolution) allowed him to move up the ranks quickly, allowing him to attain the rank of general by 1915. He led the Constitutional Army in his home state of Sonora from this point on. In 1915 his forces repelled the Conventionalist faction in Sonora under José María Maytorena and Pancho Villa in the Battle of Agua Prieta.[12]
Governor of Sonora
Calles was elected as governor of his home state of Sonora, building a pragmatic political record. In 1915, Calles became governor of Sonora, known as one of the most reformist politicians of his generation. His radical rhetoric tended to conceal the pragmatic essence of his policy, which was to promote the rapid growth of the Mexican national economy, the infrastructure of which he helped to establish. In particular he attempted to make Sonora a dry state (a state in which alcohol is heavily regulated),[12] promoted legislation giving social security and collective bargaining to workers, and expelled all Catholic priests.
Service in the Carranza administration
In 1919, Calles travelled to Mexico City to take up the post of Secretary of Industry, Commerce, and Labor in the government of President Venustiano Carranza, the leader of the Constitutionalist faction that had won the Mexican Revolution. Calless position put him in charge of the Mexican economy, which had been devastated by the fighting during the civil war. The two main sources of production, mining and agriculture, had been severely affected by the fighting. The key infrastructure of Mexican railways, which had linked many cities and production sites in Mexico to the national market and to the United States, had been damaged. The national currency in Mexico had been replaced by paper money issued by revolutionary factions without backing by specie. In response to this, many people used the more stable U.S. paper dollars. The lack of currency meant that in agriculture there was no incentive to produce for the market, which led to food shortages. In addition, malnourished populations are more vulnerable to disease, and Mexico had suffered from the influenza pandemic of 1918. Although Calles was in the halls of power, Carranza appears to have brought him to Mexico City to put him in a holding pen with no impact on Carranzas policies, aimed at dividing the triumvirate of Sonoran generals, Alvaro Obregón, Adolfo de la Huerta, and Calles himself. Calles did gain political experience in his months serving in Carranzas government, and his attempt to settle a labor dispute in Orizaba gained him the support of workers there.[13]
Revolt of the Sonoran generals, 1920
In 1920, he aligned himself with fellow Sonoran revolutionary generals Adolfo de la Huerta and Álvaro Obregón to overthrow Carranza under the Plan of Agua Prieta. Carranza had attempted to choose an unknown civilian, Ignacio Bonillas, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. as his successor. Carranza was forced out of power and died escaping, leaving De la Huerta as interim president. De la Huerta then named Calles to the important post of Minister of War.[14]
Obregón administration, De la Huerta revolt, election of 1924
Obregón was elected president in 1920 and he named Calles as Secretary of the Interior.[15] During the Obregón presidency (1920–24), Calles aligned himself with organized labor, particularly the Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM), headed by Luis N. Morones and the Laborist Party, as well as agraristas, radical agrarians. In 1923, Obregón tapped Calles to be his successor in the presidency, but Adolfo de la Huerta and others in the Mexican army opposed to Calles as the presidential choice revolted.
President Obregón, fellow Sonoran revolutionary general, who tapped Calles to succeed him
The serious military conflict was resolved in favor of Obregón when the U.S. threw its support to him. Obregóns government had acceded to concessions to U.S. business interests, particularly oil, in the August 1923 Bucareli Treaty. Obregón pushed through ratification in the Mexican congress, and the U.S. then moved decisively. President Calvin Coolidge sent naval ships to blockade the Gulf Coast to both prevent the rebels from obtaining arms and deliver arms to Obregóns government. Obregón went to war once again and won a decisive victory against his former comrades-in-arms, 14 of whom were summarily executed. Obregóns support of Calles for the presidency was sealed by force of arms against those opposing his choice. That steely resolve set the precedent that the incumbents choice of successor "had to be accepted by the revolutionary family" or be crushed.[16]
Plutarco Elías Calles at the American Federation of Labor Building, 1924.
Calless candidacy was supported by labor and peasant unions. The Laborist Party which supported his government in reality functioned as the political-electoral branch of the powerful Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM), led by Luis N. Morones. Morones had a national reputation as a labor leader and had forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, a moderate craft union organization. In 1916 Gompers and Morones put pressure on the Mexican and U.S. governments, which were heading toward war. In Mexico, Morones was credited with aiding the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Mexico sent by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. CROMs support for Calles was important for his election.[17] Although the labor movement in Mexico was factionalized, CROM was a staunch supporter of Obregón and Calles.
In 1924, following these events, "Calles won the pre-arranged elections before the eyes of an indifferent nation."[18] He defeated the agrarianist candidate Ángel Flores and the eccentric perennial candidate Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda.
Shortly before his inauguration, Calles had traveled to Germany and France to study social democracy and the labor movement, and he drew comparisons to Mexico. His international travel gave him a perspective beyond the Mexican context. He particularly admired the infrastructure and industry in Germany, as well as strides that a strong organized labor movement had made. He also observed the power of populist rhetoric to build support, and early in his presidency such rhetoric served him to distance himself from Obregón.[19]
Presidency, 1924–1928
Plutarco Elías Calles.
Calless inauguration was a great state occasion, with some 50,000 spectators. His predecessor, Obregón, was present for the first peaceful transfer of presidential power since 1884, when Porfirio Díaz succeeded Manuel González. Workers from the CROM, headed by Luis Morones and the Laborist Party of Mexico displayed banners. The release of balloons and doves figured in the spectacle. The De la Huerta rebellion had thinned the ranks of the military.[20]
Although Calles was president, he remained in the shadow of the powerful Obregón, who had powerful allies in the military and among state governors and the Congress. The contrast between Calles and Obregón was of personality and level of power. "To many, Calles appeared Obregóns creation, a caretaker president who would return power to the caudillo upon the conclusion of his term."[citation needed] Calles sought to build his own power base. He launched a reform program that was modeled on the one in Sonora. Its intent was to promote economic development, professionalize the army, and promote social and educational welfare. He relied on worker and peasant organizations to support his consolidation of power, particularly Luis N. Morones of the CROM.[21]
Labor
Luis N. Morones
Morones was appointed to a cabinet position as Secretary of Industry, Commerce, and Labor at the same time that he retained leadership in the CROM. In that position Morones was able to advance his organization at the expense of rivals. Some independent unions and more radical were forced into the umbrella of the moderate CROM. Wage increases and betterment of working conditions were evidence that Calles sought to implement Article 123 of the Mexican Constitution, embedding labor rights. The number of labor strikes decreased precipitously in the Calles administration. When railway workers struck in 1926, Morones sent scabs to break the strike.[22]
Finance
During the Calles presidency, he relied on the financial acumen of his Secretary of the Treasury, Alberto J. Pani, who was a loyalist of Obregón and served in his cabinet. Panis classical liberal policies of a balanced budget and stable currency helped restore foreign investors confidence in Mexico. Pani advised the founding of several banks in support of campesinos, but more importantly the Banco de México, Mexicos national bank. Pani also managed to achieve relief of part of Mexicos foreign debt. After coming into conflict with Calles, Pani resigned in 1927.[23][24][25][26]
Military
General Joaquín Amaro, who implemented military reforms
The military continued to be very top heavy with revolutionary generals and army was allocated a third of the national budget. Generals had participated in the De la Huerta rebellion in 1923, which cleared the way for Calless candidacy. Obregón awarded loyalists following that revolt. The military continued to be a potential interventionist force in Mexican politics, with generals presuming that they could rise to the presidency. Calles sought to professionalize the army and decrease its share of the national budget, putting Joaquín Amaro in charge of implementing major changes. Many generals had achieved their status as battlefield promotions. The Calles administration called for a change in the law regulating the military, mandating that officers must have professional training to rise in rank. The administration also aimed at decreasing corruption by severely penalizing it. A further control was a mandatory retirement age for officers. The most powerful generals were not reined in by such provisions, but Amaro managed to get some cooperation with their enforcement of regulations on subordinates. The Colegio Militar was reformed under Amaro and remained a hope for improvement of officers in the future.[27]
Infrastructure
1933 map of the Mexican portion of the Pan-American Highway.
Since the Porfiriato, railroads had been important to economic development and exerting political control over more remote areas. Fighting during the Revolution damaged railways, so rebuilding had been on going since the end of the military phase. Calles privatized the railways and a line was built to establish a connection between Sonora, Calless home state, and Mexico City.[28] Even more important during his presidency, Calles began what became a major infrastructure project to build a road network in Mexico that linked major cities as well as small villages to the network. He established the National Road Commission as a government agency, envisioning it as a way to increase economic activity by getting crops to market more efficiently, but also as means to increase the presence of the state in remote communities. Unlike the nineteenth-century railway network, funded by foreign capital and foreign firms, Mexican road construction depended on federal government support and had limited dependence on foreign technology. Mexicans formed road building companies, most prominently in northern Mexico with revolutionary general Juan Andreu Almazán, in 1920s charge of the military in Nuevo León, forming the Anáhuac Construction Company, making him a wealthy man. This extensive infrastructure project "connected the country, increasingly linking people from different regions and towns to national political, economic, and cultural life."[29] Work began on the Mexican section of the Pan American Highway, linking Nuevo Laredo at the U.S.-Mexico border to Tapachula on the Mexico-Guatemala border. Road building was financed internally with a gasoline tax.[28]
Education
Education had been an important part of Obregóns administration, particularly under José Vasconcelos. Calles was able to devote more government funding to rural education, added two thousand schools to the thousand that his predecessor had established. A key aim of rural education was to integrate Mexicos indigenous population into the nation-state, so Spanish-language instruction was an integral aspect of public education. Along with turning rural indigenous into Spanish speakers, the aim of education was to create a loyal and patriotic citizenry. Secretary of Education José Manuel Puig Cassauranc developed education materials lauding the accomplishments of Sonorans Obregón and Calles as heirs to the Revolution.[30] The Secretariat of Public Education, based in the capital and controlled by urban intellectuals, could not command rural residents and public school teachers to adhere to the program, so on site there was a kind of negotiation about how education was shaped.[31]
Public health
After the Revolution public health in Mexico was not in a good state, but it had not been particularly good even during the Porfiriato. The Calles administration sought to improve health and hygiene, since the health of citizens was considered important to economic development. He gave the issue prominence by creating a cabinet-level position of public health. The ministry was in charge of promoting vaccination against communicable diseases, improving potable water access, sewage and drainage systems, and inspecting restaurants, markets, and other food providers. A new 1926 sanitary code ordered mandatory vaccination and empowered the government to implement other measures for sanitation and hygiene.[32] Also part of the program was the mandatory registration of prostitutes.[33]
Civil law
Calles changed Mexicos civil code to give natural (illegitimate) children the same rights as those born of married parents, partly as a reaction against the problems he himself often had encountered being a child of unmarried parents. According to false rumors,[34] his parents had been Syrians or Turks, giving him the nickname El Turco (The Turk). His detractors drew comparisons between Calles and the "Grand Turk", the anti-Christian leaders from the era of the Crusades. In order not to draw too much attention to his unhappy childhood, Calles chose to ignore those rumors rather than to fight them.[35][36]
Another important legal innovation in Calless presidency was the Law of Electrical Communications (1926), which asserted the radio airwaves as being under government regulation. Radio stations had to comply with government regulations, which included constraints on religious or political messages, But stations had to broadcast government announcements without cost. Although in the 1920s, there were relatively few people owning radios, nonetheless, the regulations were an important assertion of state power. During the Lázaro Cárdenas presidency (1934–40), state control over broadcasts expanded further.[37]
Petroleum and U.S.-Mexico relations
Dwight Morrow, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
One of the major points of contention with the U.S. was oil. Calles quickly rejected the Bucareli Agreements of 1923 between the U.S. and Mexico, when Álvaro Obregón was president, and began drafting a new oil law that would strictly enforce article 27 of the Mexican constitution. The oil problem stemmed from article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which re-stated a law from Spanish origin that made everything under the soil property of the state. The language of article 27 threatened the oil possession of U.S. and European oil companies, especially if the article was applied retroactively. A Mexican Supreme Court decision had ruled that foreign-owned fields could not be seized as long as they were already in operation before the constitution went into effect. The Bucareli Agreements stated that Mexico would agree to respect the Mexican Supreme Court decision in exchange for official recognition from Washington of the presidency of Álvaro Obregón.[38]
The reaction of the U.S. government to Calless intention to enforce article 27 was swift. The American ambassador to Mexico branded Calles a communist, and Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg issued a threat against Mexico on 12 June 1925.[39] Calles never considered himself a communist; he considered revolution a way of governing rather than an ideological position.[citation needed] Public opinion in the United States turned particularly anti-Mexican when the first embassy of the Soviet Union in any country was opened in Mexico, on which occasion the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico."[40] After this, some in the United States government, considering Calless regime Bolshevik, started to refer to Mexico as "Soviet Mexico".[41]
The debate on the new oil law occurred in 1925, with U.S. interests opposing all initiatives. By 1926, the new law was enacted. In January 1927 the Mexican government canceled the permits of oil companies that would not comply with the law. Talks of war circulated by the U.S. president and in the editorial pages of the New York Times. Mexico managed to avoid war through a series of diplomatic maneuvers. Soon afterward, a direct telephone link was established between Calles and President Calvin Coolidge, and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, James R. Sheffield, was replaced with Dwight Morrow. Morrow won the Calles government over to the United States position and helped negotiate an agreement between the government and the oil companies.[42]
Another source of conflict with the United States was Mexicos support for the liberals in the civil war in Nicaragua, as the United States supported the conservatives. This conflict ended when both countries signed a treaty in which they allowed each other to support the side they considered to be the most democratic.
Church-state conflict
Main article: Cristero War
Government forces publicly hanged Cristeros on main thoroughfares throughout Mexico, including in the Pacific states of Colima and Jalisco, where bodies would often remain hanging for extended lengths of time.
Officiel PHOTO ORIGINALE 1929 PRÉSIDENT MEXIQUE CALLES VINTAGE GÉNÉRAL MEXICAIN
