Venustiano Carranza

Venustiano Carranza was born on the 29 of December in Cuatro Cienegas, Coahuila. He studied in Saltillo and Mexico City. In 1887 he was elected president for his hometown and started his participation in Mexico’s political life. He was later deputy and senator for the State of Coahuila.

In 1908 he joined Francisco I. Madero for overthrowing Porfirio Diaz. When Madero was assassinated, Carranza developed the Plan de Guadalupe that failed to recognize Victoriano Huerta as president and formed the Constitutionalist Army, of which he was First Chief and directed his campaign through the states of Sonora and Chihuahua on his path to the south.

In July 1914, Huerta resigned to the presidency and Carranza victoriously entered Mexico City.

His political proposal was obedience to the Constitution and restoring order. He had many allies against Victoriano Huerta, such as Alvaro Obregon and Francisco Villa in the North; while Emiliano Zapata started his own independent battle in the South.

With the goal of reconciling the interest of the different revolutionary factions, mainly between the followers of Villa and Zapata, Carranza called for a National Convention that initially gathered on the 1st of October, 1914. The convention named General Eulalio Gutierrez as interim president but Carranza disapproved and installed his own government in Veracruz. From there, he planned the offensive against Zapata and Villa. He published dispositions regarding agrarian, fiscal, labor, judicial issues, including oil and mining resources. He decreed the free municipalities, legalized divorce and established maximum work hours and minimum wages.

Venustiano Carranza returned to the country’s capital and gathered the Congress for creating the new Constitution of 1917. On the 1st of May 1917 he was named President of Mexico. His administration was characterized by the struggle for the nation’s peace. In 1920, General Álvaro Obregón ignored his presidential authority, threatening Carranza which made him flee from the capital but ambushed at Tlaxcalaltongo, Puebla and assassinated during the first hours of May 21, 1920.

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