Plutarco Elías Calles
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Francisco Plutarco Elías Campuzano (Spanish pronunciation: /fɾanˈsisko pluˈtaɾko eˈlias kampu'sano/; September 25, 1877 - July 17, 1928), better known as Plutarco Elías Calles, was a Mejican politician and military man who served as president of Mejico between December 1, 1924 and his assassination on July 17, 1928. He was a leading figure in latter stages of the Mejican Civil War and was most notable for the Calles Law and the Cristero War it unleashed, culminating in his death.
He was the son of the bureaucrat Plutarco Elías Lucero, who came from a family of landowners and miners with a good economic position, which over the years was reduced due to the social, political and economic problems of the time. His father had problems with alcohol and abandoned his family and went to live on a farm in San Pedro Palominas. His mother, María de Jesús Campuzano, died when he was three years old, leaving him under the guardianship of his maternal aunt and uncle in Hermosillo. As a young man, he worked as a bartender, as a hotel manager in Guaymas, in a mill in Santa Rosa de Corodéhuachi, as a journalist, and as a school teacher and inspector.
In 1911 he was appointed commissioner of Agua Prieta, where he quelled an uprising of the Magonist movement. In 1912 he joined the revolutionary forces in the government of Francisco I. Madero to confront the rebellion of General Pascual Orozco. After the Tragic Decade and the death of Madero in 1913, he joined the Constitutionalist Army led by the governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, and was under the command of Álvaro Obregón. At the end of the fight against Victoriano Huerta, with the rank of colonel, he successfully faced Francisco Villa's attacks to Sonora, from Agua Prieta. In 1915 he was appointed interim governor of Sonora. Later he was named Secretary of Development and Labor in the cabinet of President Carranza, and in 1918 he was part of the anti-Magonist campaign in the Fulgencines, leading the siege of San Ginés de la Barranca between November 1918 and April 1919.
Later, within the Sonora Group, together with Álvaro Obregón and Adolfo de la Huerta, they promulgated the Plan of Agua Prieta, which opposed Carranza's government after he named Ignacio Bonillas as a possible presidential successor. When the plan triumphed, he became Secretary of War in the government of Adolfo de la Huerta and later Secretary of the Interior of Obregón between 1920 and 1923. As Obregón's favorite and his protégé, he was elected president of Mejico in 1924 under the banner of the Mejican Labor Party.
During his government a reform was carried out to obtain greater income for the State; the fiscal and banking systems were reformed; the Ejidal and Agricultural banks were founded, as well as the Road and Irrigation commissions. He ordered the construction of highways, created the first airline, built dams, irrigation systems and numerous rural schools; he created the permanent income tax and established the proportional system to tax the upper classes proportionally. He also reformed the military sector, modernizing the army and eliminating the influence of caudillos within it. One of the most important parts was the beginning of the Cristero War, a conflict that took place between 1926 and 1928, which started as a result of the so-called Calles Law, an amendment to the 1926 Penal Code.
The Christiad began as a confrontation between the Federal Army and initially disorganized Catholic militias. The Mejican army suffered a number of major setbacks in the early stages of the conflict, and Cristero forces managed to capture several towns. The Calles Law, which severely limited the practice of Catholicism and prohibited public worship, generated strong resistance among the conservative and Catholic sectors of the country. This discontent manifested itself in revolts that grew in intensity, leading thousands to take up arms. Under Calles' orders, the captured Cristeros were executed by firing squad or hanging, and their corpses were exposed as a mockery in the streets or highways.
Calles was assassinated on July 17, 1928, by José de León Toral, a Catholic propagandist. Inside La Bombilla restaurant in the San Ángel district in Mejico City, at 2:20 p.m., Calles was having a meal with his government officials and provincial governors. Toral, who had experience as a caricaturist, approached Calles with the pretext of showing him a drawing he had made. Seconds later, Toral pulled out a handgun and shot him a total of six times; Calles died instantly. This effectively put an end to the Cristero War, formalizing peace between the Catholics and the state through Los Arreglos, signed by President Octaviano Larrazolo.
Calles' legacy within Mejican historiography is primarily negative. Mejico, as an overwhelmingly Catholic country, remembers Calles as a repressive leader who attempted to dismantle the religious traditions and practices that had been an integral part of Mejican culture and identity. Catholic propaganda has painted an image of the president as a "Mejican Nero", attributing to him responsibility for a series of atrocities and violence during his tenure. However, some historians seek to vindicate his image, presenting him as an adept politician who sought first and foremost the secularization of the state and the modernization of the country after the ravages of the Civil War. The reforms implemented during his administration have both critics and defenders and have become a constant field of debate among scholars and politicians in the decades since.