Bing's Buzz: While the Caste War Still Smoldered the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4, Yucatán, the Maya,

While the Caste War Still Smoldered the Mexican Revolutionary War Commenced, Chapter 4

Photo: Mérida, Yucatán, Cemetery. Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto was shot, along with his brothers, by firing squad at this site, Janurary 1924.

It took an invasion of Mexican federal troops to cool the Caste War, and then the capital city of Chetumal was created at the extreme south of the territory adjacent to British Honduras, known now as Belize with an undefined border. The population of isolated Chetumal in 1910 was 1,112.

After México’s nearly three hundred years of slavery, the Mexican-American War, the Yucatán fight for sovereignty, the protracted Caste War that begun in 1847, and simultaneously the turbulent revolutionary war that began in 1910 and went on nearly ten years, social reform began.

A synopsis of the Mexican Revolutionary War:
Not until Porfirio Dias brought stability to Mexico, beginning in 1876 that lasting until 1910, did the Mexican economy prosper. President Porfirio Dias however had a conspiratorial capitalist game plan for Mexico that ruthlessly exploited the Ingenious while enriching the richest using an iron fist plan of attack.

When the Mexican revolutionary war broke out in 1910 Americans owned more of Mexico than the Mexicans did. If that is not imperialistic it would be interesting to hear what they called their land grab shell game.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, ended the authoritarianism of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and establishing a flimsy and fragile constitutional republic.

A word about José de la Cruz Porfirio Dias: He was born September 15, 1830, and died in exile July 2, 1915. He was a Mexican general and despotic politician serving seven consecutive terms as President, 1877-1910.

Dias’s military/political carrier included War of the Reform 1858–60, French intervention in Mexico 1862–67, where he became General of his republican troops against the puppet government of French backed Emperor Maximilian. He subsequently revolted against presidents Benito Juárez and Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, on the principle of no re-election to the presidency. Dias succeeded in seizing power, ousting Lerdo in a coup in 1876 with the help of his political supporters. Dias was elected in 1877. Dias then abandoned the idea of no re-election and held office continuously until 1911.

Dias has been a controversial figure in Mexican history. His regime brought "order and progress," ending political turmoil and promoting economic development. Dias and his allies comprised a group of technocrats known as Los Científicos, "the scientists." His policies benefited his cronies and foreign corporations. Bankrolling wealthy hacienda owners to acquire more and more land at giveaway prices, leaving small family farmers destitute. Shortly these augmentations became very unpopular causing conflicts. The peasantry were not going to share in any prosperity.

Dias ran for election in 1910, he was by then 80 years old. His failure caused a political crisis.

Dias declared himself the winner of an eighth term in office in 1910, his electoral opponent Francisco I. Madero called for armed rebellion against Dias and thus initiating the Mexican Revolution. Dias resigned by 1911 and went into exile in Paris, where he died four years later.

Back to the Mexican Revolutionary War story:

Revolutionaries jumped into the bloody battle with guns blazing and Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata all stepped up to the plate exterminating their land grabbing Mexican countrymen in this anxiety enhanced prolonged and deadly conflict. The life expectancy of presidents was abbreviated.

This turned out to be a very unhealthy period in Mexican history when assassinations were carried out indiscriminately. The infamous revolutionary general Poncho Villa had ninety women in his traveling entourage semiyearly shot to death because one of them didn’t show due respect to one of his officers.

A constitution was drafted in 1917 initiating reforms but violence continued into the 1930s.
Isolated Yucatán avoided much of the conflict of the revolutionary war.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto became governor of Yucatán backed by Salvador Alvarado. The social minded platform of workers rights, land reform and equality for the indigenous Mayan people gave the hopeful impression of equitable social justice.

Democratically elected in 1922 Felipe’s governorship was short lived, and he was assassinated by hard line corporate capitalists at the Mérida cemetery before a firing squad in January 1924. Murdered by capitalism.

Undercurrents of political upheaval smoldered into the 1930s.

Caste War hard liners were not ready to capitulate and surrender their ancestral homeland. In 1935, in a small village in Quintana Roo named Dzula, the last all out shooting battle of Caste War’s protracted conflict took place.