From the Porfiriato to the Madero Presidency: Coalitions Build and Dissolve
Francisco Madero’s presidency was marked with uneasy tension from the onset. Backlash against Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorial regime resulted in the creation of a multi-class coalition against the Porfiriato. On the surface it would seem as though Díaz, no stranger to allying with elite Mexican families, might’ve been in cahoots with the Maderos, a wealthy family with smelters across Mexico. In reality, Díaz held a personal grudge against the family as they did not support the regime. Tensions would come to a head in 1910 when Francisco I. Madero would run against Díaz.
The Madero family amassed wealth by operating smelters across the country. They, as did other wealthy Mexican families, resented Díaz’s favoring of foreign corporations and individuals over Mexican-owned and operated ones. The American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) was an example of a foreign smelting company competing against the Maderos. Growing up in El Paso, I lived by one of ASARCO’s most famous plants. The El Paso smelter was next to the Rio Grande and contaminated the air and soil of both El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico for over a century. I remember when the stacks were demolished by the city in 2013. They served a relic of the past, an exemplar of industrialization of both Mexico and the United States.
C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections, University of Texas at El Paso Library, Historical records of the former ASARCO El Paso smelter site.
The Maderos’ disdain for Díaz’s favoring of foreign-owned smelters aligned them with other classes that also held animosity against the dictator. Elites disillusioned by the Porfiriato, the middle-class, and laborers and peasants in Mexico briefly joined forces to oust the regime. The 1910 election proved fraudulent as Díaz manipulated the results and won by a supposed landslide. Madero was imprisoned and later fled to Texas where he wrote The Plan of San Luis Potosí in 1910. Seven key points were established in Madero’s Plan. He declared Díaz’s election void and the removal of the present administration from office. Although The Plan of San Luis Potosí united the different classes in Mexico, it would do so only briefly as Madero’s action on land redistribution proved divisive.
Emiliano Zapata’s 1911 Plan of Ayala highlights just how short-lived the coalition would be. Zapata, leader of the Morelos peasants, declared “Francisco I. Madero unfit to realize the promises of the Revolution of which he is the author, because he is a traitor to the principles… which enabled him to climb to power.” Zapata realized that Madero seemed more interested in protecting the private property interests of the middle and upper classes and less so in redistributing land possessed by foreign interests and hacendados. The differing interests of all of the key figures within the beginning stages of the Revolution show how nuanced the conflict was. Coalitions were created and dissolved just as quickly as regional interests in Mexico proved differing.
Sources:
Gonzales, Michael J. 2002. The Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Wasserman, Mark. 2012. The Mexican Revolution: A Brief History with Documents. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections, University of Texas at El Paso Library. Former ASARCO El Paso smelter site.
