The Mexican Revolution - Bandits Turned Heroes I THE GREAT WAR 1920

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Oh hell yes, can't wait for this one, hope I get some time today!

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 12 2020 🗫︎ replies
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This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream.   Go to curiositystream.com/thegreatwar and  sign up for CuriosityStream. If you do,   you get access to Nebula too – where you can  watch current Great War episodes and other   creators ad free. You can find out more in the  video description or at the end of this video. It’s December 1920 and General Álvaro  Obregón is sworn in as President of Mexico.   This brings and end to a bloody ten-year conflict  of shifting alliances, assassinations, US   intervention, and bandits turned  heroes – it’s the Mexican Revolution. Hi, I’m Jesse Alexander and welcome to the  Great War. The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920   was a watershed moment in the country’s  history. The decade-long struggle cost   hundreds of thousands of lives, resulted in  new constitutions and governments, and created   heroes and villains that are still talked about  today. So in this episode, we’ll take a look at   all ten years of the Mexican Revolution which came  to an end exactly 100 years ago, in December 1920. The seeds of the Mexican Revolution were sown  in the final years of the rule of dictator   Porfirio Díaz. Although his 31 years in power  had brought economic modernization in Mexico,   this also caused serious  tensions in Mexican society. In the early 20th century, the vast  majority of Mexico’s 13 million people   were rural peasants – and they were unhappy with  Diaz’ rule. This was because the countryside   had become dominated by haciendas, which were big  farming estates owned by a few of rich landowners.   By 1910, about 80% of villages were part of  haciendas, where people worked as unskilled   labourers. That left only 20% of villages where  peasants controlled the land. To the peasants,   the haciendas were swallowing up their  land, especially native communities,   and replacing their independence with  low wages and poor working conditions. In 1910, these tensions boiled over. But the  challenge to Diaz’ power came not directly from   peasants, but from Francisco Madero, who was  himself a landowner. He was supported by much   of the middle class, who wanted political and  electoral reform but not an extreme revolution.   Madero also wanted to get the support of the  unhappy peasants as well, so he announced the   San Luis Plan, which promised to give them  back much of their land. On November 20,   1910 – even though he was still in exile in the US  – he called on Mexicans to rise up against Diaz. After some hesitation, peasants in the state of  Chihuahua did rise up, and managed to defeat the   Federal Army. At first, they followed Madero,  but before long the uprising got out of Madero’s   control. To contain the peasant revolution, Madero  and Diaz got together and signed the Ciudad Juárez   Accords for a transition of power, and after Diaz  resigned Madero won the election in November 1911. So, the peasants had risen in  revolt against the landowners,   which had led to Madero becoming president. For  Madero and the middle class, Diaz was gone and the   revolution had done its job. Madero told the  peasants they had to give up their weapons   before he could enact his plan to give them back  their land. But the peasants refused to disarm. One of the most important peasant leaders  was Emiliano Zapata, a skilled horseman   from the rural state of Morelos. Under his  command, the Southern Liberation Army had   already begun reclaiming and redistributing  land it had seized from the haciendas. When the revolution began  Madero approved of Zapata,   but they moved apart as Zapata became more radical  and refused to disarm. Zapata envisioned a society   in which armed peasants could protect their land  and force the hand of the central government.   When Madero promised Zapata new laws  if he gave up his weapons, he replied: “[It] strikes me, [that] there won’t be  more laws than there are guns.” (Gilly 73) By November 1911, Zapata  was disappointed in Madero,   and suspicious of his goals. So he created his  own manifesto, which he called the Ayala Plan.   The 15 points of the Ayala Plan became an  influential call to arms for Mexican peasants: “We give notice: that [regarding] the fields,  timber, and water which the landlords... have   usurped, the… citizens who have the titles  corresponding to those properties will immediately   enter into possession of that real estate of  which they have been despoiled by the bad faith   of our oppressors [and] maintain at any cost with  arms in hand the mentioned possession.” (Zapata) By early 1912, the split between Zapata and  Madero was complete. In a report to Congress,   Madero was critical of the zapatistas: “Fortunately, this amorphous agrarian  socialism, which for the rude intelligence   of the farmers of Morelos can only  take the form of sinister vandalism,   has found no echo in other regions  of the country.” (Womack 142) So Madero had split from Zapata’s peasants, and  it turned out he was wrong about peasants in the   rest of the country as well, since they  also began to rebel. But Madero’s downfall   would not come at the hands of the peasants,  but from other enemies closer to home. In February, 1913 Generals  Bernardo Reyes and Félix   Díaz, both of whom had served deposed dictator  Porfirio Diaz and rebelled against Madero, were   broken out of prison. They quickly gathered  2,000 men and stormed the National Palace   in Mexico City. Madero ordered General  Victoriano Huerta to crush the rebels,   but Huerta was in no hurry, since he also  had his own aspirations for taking power. Instead Huerta negotiated with Diaz, since  Reyes had been killed in the fighting.   They agreed to overthrow Madero, after which  Huerta would take power. This agreement was signed   at the American embassy, since the US  ambassador supported the arrangement in   the hopes Huerta could bring stability and  protect US business interests in Mexico. But stability was not to be.  Just days later, as Madero   and his vice president were killed by  the troops escorting them to prison.   Their deaths triggered insurrection in the  countryside, and resistance from the middle class,   which was not happy about a democratically elected  president being overthrown and then murdered. Opposition to Huerta now took the form of a group  calling themselves the Constitutionalists. This   group of opponents included politicians,  generals and peasant leaders, and they   were led by politician Venustiano Carranza  and General Álvaro Obregón. In early 1914,   the Constitutionalist Army won a series of  victories against Huerta’s Federal Army. Things got even worse for Huerta when the United  States military showed up. On April 21, 1914,   US Marines occupied the port city of Veracruz  after a dispute involving the arrest of some   US sailors. The port was the main source of  Huerta’s military supplies and was now cut off. Huerta tried to convince the Constitutionalists  that the American imperialists were attacking   both sides in the Mexican conflict, but to no  avail. But US troops remained in Veracruz and   the Constitutionalist Army continued its attacks  against Huerta’s Federal Army, and reached   Mexico City in July. Huerta went into exile, and  Carranza took over the government in August 1914. So, between 1910 and 1914,   power in Mexico had gone from Diaz to Madero  to Huerta and now, to Carranza. But the most   famous figure to emerge from the chaos was some  else: the bandit-turned-general Pancho Villa. By 1914, Francisco Villa, also known as  Pancho, was one of the most important   figures in the Mexican Revolution. He  had been a bandit and a horse thief,   but in 1910 he began to lead peasant guerillas  against the Diaz dictatorship. His army,   the División del Norte - or Northern Division  – played an important role in overthrowing Diaz   and then formed the backbone of  Carranza’s Constitutionalist forces. Villa’s troops won numerous victories  against Huerta’s Federal Army,   which made him an icon to the northern  peasantry. In addition to his military success,   his unique character also drew attention.  Journalist John Reed described him this way: “He is the most natural human being I ever saw,   natural in the sense of being nearest to a  wild animal. He says almost nothing and seems   so quiet as to be almost diffident… If  he isn’t smiling, he’s looking gentle.   All except his eyes, which are never still and  full of energy and brutality.” (McLynn 188) Villa soon allied himself with  fellow peasant revolutionary Zapata,   and part of what united them was a distrust  of Carranza and the middle class. Both groups   had cooperated against Diaz and Huerta, but  there were tensions. Once Huerta was defeated   in 1914, the Constitutionalist leaders met to  discuss the future. Carranza wanted the convention   to confirm his rule and end the violence,  but things soon went in another direction. The more radical peasant delegations,  including the zapatistas and villistas,   adopted Zapata’s land reform plan and demanded  Carranza’s resignation but Carranza refused, and   General Obregon supported him. The alliance  between Carranza and the peasant leaders   against Huerta was now broken, and Carranza and  Obregon fled Mexico City for Córdoba in Veracruz.   Villa and Zapata then attacked Mexico City and  captured it in December 1914. The peasant rebels   now walked the corridors of power, an unusual  situation for most of them. Writer Martín Luis   Guzmán described the scene as Zapata’s brother  Eufemio, gave a tour of the National Palace: “We went up the staircase of honour… as he claimed  each step, with his tight wide-seamed trousers,   his drill-shirt open below the waist,  and his excessively broad sombrero,   he seemed to symbolize the historic  days through which we were living.   For his boorish, not humble, figure contrasted  with the refinement and culture heralded by the   staircase... An ambassador would have  moved respectfully up these stairs.   Eufemio moved like a young stableman who thinks  he will suddenly become president.” (Gilly 150) Peasant revolutionaries had conquered the capital,  but niether Villa nor Zapata claimed power.   Their priority was regional power and land reform,   not running the whole country. Pancho Villa  himself summed it up to Zapata this way: “I am a fighter, not a statesman. I am  not educated enough to be president.   I only learned to read and write properly two  years ago. How could I, who never went to school,   hope to be able to talk to foreign ambassadors  and the cultivated gentlemen of Congress.   It would be bad for Mexico if an uneducated  man were to be president.” (McLynn 275) Villa and Zapata believed that  national power ought to rest with a   representative of the middle class,  and supported Eulalio Gutiérrez   as the interim president – and this  faction became known as the Conventionists. So as 1915 began, there were  two governments in Mexico:   the Constitutionalists under Carranza and Obregón,  and their former allies the Conventionists   under Gutiérrez with the support of the  peasants. The revolution now became a civil war. Villa and Zapata’s forces now held the  advantage, and there were some calls for   marching on Carranza’s stronghold in  Veracruz. But neither peasant leader wanted   to advance too far from their bases in Chihuahua  and Morelos. There were other internal tensions   amongst the Conventionists as well. Many  opposed peasant soldiers attacking rich   residents in Mexico city, and the resulting  clash saw Gutiérrez and many of his ministers   flee the capital and join the Constitutionalist  camp in Veracruz in January 1915. Villa and Zapata’s refusal to attack Veracruz gave  General Obregon the time he needed to rebuild his   forces into the new Operational Army. He launched  an offensive and recaptured Mexico City. There,   Carranza was able to gain 9000 recruits  from trade unions for his new Red Brigades. Villa and Zapata now fell  back to their home states,   and their armies separated. Obregon’s  Operational Army struck against Villa first,   resulting in battles at Celaya in April and  Aguascalientes in July. As Obregon’s forces   approached Aguascalientes, he reported on  the severe difficulties they were facing: “We have supplies only for tomorrow, and our  limited ammunition is only enough to take a   town by assault. Four leagues from Aguascalientes;  impossible to retreat because there is not enough   ammunition or provisions, and because it would  be very irksome; perfectly aware of the risks I   am taking, all our men will begin the advance on  Aguascalientes at dawn tomorrow, with hopes but   little assurance (given our ammunition shortages)  of occupying the town.” (Gilly 200/201) The all-or-nothing attack paid off. Obregón won a  decisive victory, and Villa’s forces fled into the   mountains. The victorious Constitutionalists  offered Villa an amnesty, but he refused and   returned to guerilla war. Obregon famously  lost an arm in the fighting as well. Meanwhile, Zapata was isolated in Morelos. He  did manage to briefly re-occupy Mexico City,   but for the most part he was left  alone as Obregon concentrated on Villa.   Zapata used this time to develop  his concept of the Morelos Commune,   which planned for widespread  redistribution of land and industry. So the Mexican Revolution’s winners  had fallen out and begun a civil war.   Across the border in the United States, President  Woodrow Wilson was beginning to worry about how   the trouble in Mexico might affect US interests  and international politics, so he took action.  US policy in Mexico during the revolution had  been inconsistent, and the Americans had supported   various factions at different times, and even  sold weapons to Pancho Villa. Now that Villa   had been defeated, Wilson wanted stability and  trade, and recognized Carranza’s government. Villa was outraged. When he heard  of the US decision, he stated: “I emphatically declare that there is much I have  to thank Mr. Wilson for, because he relieves me   from the obligation of giving guarantees  to foreigners and especially to those who   had at one time been free citizens and are today  vassals of an evangelical professor of philosophy…   I take no responsibility for  future events.” (McLynn 319) Some observers have argued that  after his defeat at Aguascalientes,   Villa began to behave more recklessly – and  his men certainly did so in January 1916.   Villistas stopped a train carrying 17  American engineers in Chihuahua, and   executed them. Villa denied he gave the  order for the killings, but this is debated. In February, Villa led 140 fighters on a  two-week expedition across the US border,   arriving at Columbus New Mexico on March 8. His  forces attacked, but accidentally shot into a   horse stable they had mistaken for a barracks, and  killed many of the horses they’d planned to steal.   Nearly 300 men of the US Cavalry were based  in the town and returned fire, but Villa’s men   managed to raid the town centre before  they were beaten back. This was the first   invasion of US soil since 1812, and left  17 Americans and up to 100 villistas dead. Now there is a lively debate about why Villa  launched the raid on Columbus. Some have   said it was to avenge Wilson’s recognition of  Carranza, others that it was a vendetta against   an arms dealer who lived in the town, and still  others theorize that Villa wanted to trigger a   Mexican-American War in which Mexicans would  unite around his anti-imperialist leadership. Whatever Villa’s reasons, the raid  put pressure on Wilson to retaliate,   but he didn’t want to risk  full-scale war with Mexico.   So Wilson ordered a cross-border Punitive  Expedition led by General Jack Pershing and   supported by the First Aero Squadron. The goal  of the 10,000 man expedition was to capture Villa   dead or alive – and at first it even had  clandestine logistical help from Carranza. Turns out the expedition was poorly planned and  supplied, did not know the terrain, and did not   get the support of the local population. They  did defeat and wound Villa at Guerrero on March   29, but he managed to escape. Pershing’s force  marched more than 500km into Mexico, but could   not corner the peasant fighters – and Villa’s  reputation amongst the peasants grew even more. And the longer the Americans were in  Mexico, the more tensions there were   between them and Carranza. By June, he  ordered Pershing to leave the country,   and small-scale skirmishes broke out between  US troops and Mexican Constitutionalist forces. Eventually, the American expedition returned  home in January 1917 without achieving its goal.   Wilson’s desire to end the expedition  received a boost from the Zimmermann   telegramme, in which Germany had proposed  an alliance with Mexico against the US.   The Germans hoped that if the Mexico attacked  the US, the Americans would be less able to   supply Germany’s enemies in the Great War,  France and Britain, with arms and supplies,   as they had been doing since 1914. In the  end Mexico remained neutral in the Great War. So, by 1917, the Americans had come and gone,  the civil war was ongoing but less intense.   Villa had been weakened, and Zapata  was busy with regional concerns.   Carranza now sought to  reinforce his hold on power. In early 1917, Carranza announced a  new constitution designed to end the   conflict. The Mexican Constitution of 1917  was one of the most progressive of the time,   including land reform, equality of pay,  maternity leave, and a minimum wage. But the new constitution was opposed by the  wealthy upper classes. Jorge Vera Estanol,   a minister under Diaz, called it “the  bastard offspring of a coup d’etat”.   He and others criticized  the new document’s approach   to religion, education, and especially  private property and foreign investment. Despite such opposition, Carranza was  elected president in March - although he   had no serious opposition. General Obregón was  relieved of his military command and retreated   into the background of Mexican politics.  Carranza now decided to eliminate Zapata,   and he sent General Pablo González to Morelos to  break up the Commune. The Zapatistas fought well   but by late 1918 the constant pressure  led to defections among the peasants. Zapata was desperate for allies, and even  contacted the Bolsheviks. He also learned of   a dispute between General González and one of his  officers, Colonel Jesus Guajardo, and Zapata tried   to convince Guajardo to join him. But González  learned of the plan, and blackmailed Guajardo   into agreeing to gain Zapata’s trust,  before executing him. On April 10, 1919,   Zapata arrived for a meeting with the Colonel,  and was promptly gunned down by Guajardo’s men. By spring 1919, Zapata was dead, and Morelos  was now reunited with the rest of Mexico   under Carranza. It seemed that Carranza had  triumphed, but the revolution was not over yet. The 1917 constitution had certainly promised  a lot, but in the eyes of many left-leaning   politicians and army officers, Carranza hadn’t  delivered much by 1920. The economy was weak   thanks to years of war, and his Carranza’s  opponents called for him to step down. Carranza   proposed a successor, but the military wanted  Carranza’s old ally, General Obregon to take over. Government authorities then tried to arrest  – and possibly assassinate – Obregon,   but he survived. Obregon fled the capital and  called openly for Carranza’s removal, with   the approval of many Mexican  state governors. Carranza once   again tried to run to his old safe haven in  Veracruz, but he never made it. On May 21,   1920 one of his escorts had had enough of running  from Obregon’s troops, and shot Carranza while   he was asleep – though it is possible, but  unlikely, that Carranza committed suicide. In the north, Pancho Villa felt that Obregon  was an improvement over Carranza, but soon   fighting broke out between  villistas and government troops.   But after years of fighting, neither side wanted  a war, and in July Villa agreed to lay down his   arms in exchange for a military  pension and 25,000 acre estate. Obregon was now in control of the country,  and appointed an interim president before   he himself won the election and was sworn in  as President of Mexico on December 1, 1920. For many historians, Obregón’s election  marks the end of the Mexican Revolution,   though some argue it didn’t end until the 1940s.   Although he did continue to ruthlessly suppress  his internal enemies, Obregon’s time as president   is considered a period of relative stability. The  peasants received some concessions, a delicate   balance was struck between revolutionary  and more conservative groups in society,   and many former Zapatistas even joined his  government. On the other hand, Obregon’s   term also saw renewed rebellions, and it is  likely that he ordered the murder of Pancho Villa   in 1923 – just 5 years before Obregon himself  was shot by a disgruntled Catholic assassin. We want to thank Mark Newton for his help  with this episode. As usual, you can find   all our sources for this episode in the video  description. If you want to support our channel,   you can support us on Patreon - the links  are in the video description below as well.   I’m Jesse Alexander and this is The Great  War 1920, a production of Real Time History   and the only Youtube history channel  whose allegiance you can rely on.
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Channel: The Great War
Views: 573,281
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Keywords: History, World War 1, WW1, First World War, Documentary, Documentary Series, The Great War, Indy Neidell, 1919, Interwar Period, 1920s, Educational, Russian Civil War, Revolution, Interbelum
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Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)
Published: Sat Dec 12 2020
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