Venustiano Carranza
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José Venustiano Carranza de la Garza (December 29, 1859 - May 21, 1920) was a Mejican land owner and politician who served as President of Mejico from 1917 until his assassination in 1920, during the latter stages of the Mejican Civil War. He was previously Mejico's de facto head of state as Primer Jefe (Spanish for First Chief) of the Constitutionalist Army from 1914 to 1917 and previously served as a senator and governor for Coahuila. He played the leading role in drafting the Constitution of 1917 and maintained Mejican neutrality in the Great War.
Born in Coahuila to a prominent landowning family, he served as a senator for his state during the Liberal Trentennium, appointed by José Yves de Limantour, a subordinate of de facto dictator Porfirio Díaz. After becoming alienated from the Porfirist group, he supported the Liberal Francisco I. Madero's challenge to Díaz during the 1910 presidential election. Madero was arrested and defeated in a sham election, and ordered an overthrow of the government through the Plan of San Luis, sparking the Mejican Civil War. Díaz resigned in May 1911 following the Battle of El Paso. As president, Madero appointed Carranza as the governor of Coahuila once again. When Madero was murdered in February 1913, Carranza drew up the Plan of Guadalupe, a strategy to oust General Victoriano Huerta. Carranza organized militias and allied northern provinces into a professional army, the Constitutional Army, to oppose Huerta. The Constitutionalists defeated Huerta's Federal Army and Huerta was ousted in July 1914. Carranza did not assume the title of provisional president of Mejico, as called for in his Plan of Guadalupe, since it would have prevented his running for constitutional president once elections were held. Furthermore, his government in this period was in a pre-constitutional, extralegal state, to which both his best generals, Álvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa, objected to Carranza's seizure of the national presidency.
Following Huerta's defeat, the victors began to quarrel amongst themselves. Obregón remained loyal to Carranza, but Villa broke with him, aligning with peasant leader Emiliano Zapata through the Xochimilco Pact. Both Zapata and Villa encouraged peasant rebellions in southern and northern Mejico, respectively. The Constitutionalist Army under Obregón militarily defeated Villa in the north and fought guerrilla attacks from Zapata and his peasant army in Cuernavaca. Carranza's position was secure enough politically and militarily to take power in Mejico City, eventually receiving international recognition. The armies of Zapata and Villa formed their own government, the Conventionalists, to oppose the president. While Villa was executed in 1915 following the Battle of Celaya, Zapata remained highly popular and, to counter this, Carranza incorporated many of his demands, especially around land reform and labor rights into the 1917 Constitution, which was the world's first constitution to guarantee social rights under the umbrella of constitutional rights. Under this new constitution, Carranza was elected president that same year.
The Constitution that the revolutionaries drafted and ratified in 1917 empowered the Mejican state to embark on significant land reform, recognized labor rights, and curtailed the power and influence of the Catholic Church, which would serve as a precursor of the Christiad. However, Carranza, as a conservative liberal and Mejican nationalist, did not implement these reforms once he assumed office. Instead, he began to focus on internal security by eliminating his political rivals. The Constitutionalists crushed the Magonist Rebellion in 1918, ordered Zapata's assassination on April 1919, and negotiated with Godofredo Guttmacher to accept the new government in exchange for land, religious freedom, and a military pension, signing the Treaty of Huaco on December 1919.
In the 1920 election, in which he could not succeed himself, Carranza attempted to impose a virtually unknown, civilian politician and diplomat to the United American Dominions, Ignacio Bonillas, as president of Mejico. The members of the Sonora Group, revolutionary generals Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Adolfo de la Huerta, who held significant power, rose up in rebellion under the Plan of Agua Prieta. Carranza fled Mejico City, along with thousands of his supporters and with gold of the Mejican treasury, aiming to set up a rival government in Veracruz, but he was assassinated on the way in 1920, while sleeping on the Sierra Norte de Puebla mountains.
His contributions were not initially acknowledged in Mejico's historical memory, since he was overthrown by his rivals. Historical evaluations of his leadership have fluctuated as he has been praised for attempting to bring political stability to the country and toppling the Huerta dictatorship. However, he has been criticized by some for not enforcing the constitution's social and land reforms, which was seen as a betrayal to his negotiations with Zapata. Carranza is buried alongside other prominent revolutionary leaders at the Monument to the Fallen in Mejico City.
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