Mexican Revolution facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mexican Revolution (Revolución mexicana)
Collage of the Mexican Revolution
Date 20 November 1910 – 21 May 1920 (9 years, 6 months and 1 day) Location Mexico Result Revolutionary victory Porfirio Díaz ousted from power and exiled in France, May 1911. Francisco I. Madero elected president of Mexico, 1911, assassinated February 1913. Victoriano Huerta overthrows Madero and assumes the presidency 1913–1914. Venustiano Carranza creates an alliance of Northerners under the Constitutionalist banner 1913. Convention of Aguascalientes between revolutionary leaders, 1914. Carranza's Constitutionalist Army defeats Pancho Villa at the Battle of Celaya 1915 Carranza consolidates his position as president of Mexico 1915 Mexican Constitution of 1917 enacted. Successive assassinations of revolutionary leaders Madero (1913), Zapata (1919), Venustiano Carranza (1920), Pancho Villa (1923), Álvaro Obregón (1928).
Belligerents
Counter-revolutionary forces: 1910–1911: Federal troops led by Porfirio Díaz	Revolutionary forces: 1910–1911: Maderistas Orozquistas Magonistas Zapatistas
1911–1913: Forces led by Bernardo Reyes Forces led by Félix Díaz Orozquistas Magonistas Zapatistas	1911–1913: Maderistas
1913–1914: Forces led by Victoriano Huerta	1913–1914: Carrancistas Villistas Zapatistas
1914–1919: Villistas Zapatistas Forces led by Félix Díaz Forces led by Aureliano Blanquet	1914–1919: Carrancistas Seditionistas
1920: Forces led by Álvaro Obregón Remaining Zapatista forces Supported by  United States (1910–1913)  Germany (c.1913–1918)	1920: Carrancistas Supported by  United States (1913–1918)  British Empire (1916–1918)
Commanders and leaders
1910–1911: Porfirio Díaz Ramón Corral José Yves Limantour Manuel Mondragón 1911–1913: Pascual Orozco (Fought own revolution after Díaz was overthrown and later sided with Huerta after Huerta took power.) Bernardo Reyes  † (Led own revolution until his death in 1913.) Félix Díaz (sided with Reyes and later Huerta after Reyes died in 1913.) Emiliano Zapata (Sided with Orozco until Huerta took power.) Ricardo Flores Magón (POW) 1913–1914: Victoriano Huerta Aureliano Blanquet Pascual Orozco (  † in 1915) Manuel Mondragón (Until June 1913) Francisco León de la Barra Francisco S. Carvajal 1914–1919: Pancho Villa Emiliano Zapata  † Félix Díaz Aureliano Blanquet  † 1920: Álvaro Obregón	1910–1911: Francisco I. Madero Pascual Orozco Bernardo Reyes Pancho Villa Emiliano Zapata Ricardo Flores Magón 1911–1913: Francisco I. Madero  † José María Pino Suárez  † Pancho Villa Venustiano Carranza Victoriano Huerta (Secretly sided with Reyes against Madero until Reyes died in 1913. After Reyes died, Huerta launched his own revolution.) Aureliano Blanquet (Also secretly sided with Reyes until his death.) 1913–1914: Venustiano Carranza Pancho Villa Emiliano Zapata Álvaro Obregón Plutarco Elías Calles 1914–1919: Venustiano Carranza Álvaro Obregón 1920: Venustiano Carranza  †
Strength
Counter-revolutionary forces: 250,000 – 300,000	Revolutionary forces: 255,000 – 290,000
Casualties and losses
2 Germans killed	500 Americans killed
1.3? to 2? million Mexican deaths (civilian and military) 700,000 to 1,375,000 civilian dead (using 2 million figure)

The Mexican Revolution was brought on by a major armed struggle that started in 1911, among other factors, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war.

There was less fighting after 1920, when Álvaro Obregón, the most important revolutionary leader still alive, became President.

During that span, power was concentrated in the hands of a select few; the people had no power to express their opinions or select their public officials. Wealth was likewise concentrated in the hands of the few, and injustice was everywhere, in the cities and the countryside alike.

Overview of the Mexican Revolution

The origins of the conflict were broadly based in opposition to the Díaz regime, with the 1910 election becoming the catalyst for the outbreak of political rebellion. The revolution was begun by elements of the Mexican elite hostile to Díaz, led by Madero and Pancho Villa; it expanded to the middle class, the peasantry in some regions, and organized labor. In October 1911, Madero was overwhelmingly elected in a free and fair election. Opposition to his regime then grew from both the conservatives, who saw him as too weak and too liberal, and from former revolutionary fighters and the dispossessed, who saw him as too conservative.

Madero and his vice president Pino Suárez were forced to resign in February 1913, and were assassinated. The counter-revolutionary regime of General Victoriano Huerta came to power, backed by business interests and other supporters of the old order. Huerta remained in power from February 1913 until July 1914, when he was forced out by a coalition of different regional revolutionary forces. When the revolutionaries' attempt to reach political agreement failed, Mexico plunged into a civil war (1914–1915). The Constitutionalist faction under wealthy landowner Venustiano Carranza emerged as the victor in 1915, defeating the revolutionary forces of former Constitutionalist Pancho Villa and forcing revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata back to guerrilla warfare. Zapata was assassinated in 1919 by agents of President Carranza.

The armed conflict lasted for the better part of a decade, until around 1920, and had several distinct phases. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order under Díaz to a multi-sided civil war in particular regions, with frequently shifting power struggles among factions in the Mexican Revolution. One major result of the revolution was the dissolution of the Federal Army in 1914, which Francisco Madero had kept intact when he was elected in 1911 and General Huerta used to oust Madero. Revolutionary forces unified against Huerta's reactionary regime defeated the Federal forces. Although the conflict was primarily a civil war, foreign powers that had important economic and strategic interests in Mexico figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role. Out of Mexico's population of 15 million, the losses were high, but numerical estimates vary a great deal. Perhaps 1.5 million people died; nearly 200,000 refugees fled abroad, especially to the United States.

Many scholars consider the promulgation of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as the end point of the armed conflict. "Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions", with the constitution providing that framework. The period 1920–1940 is often considered to be a phase of the Revolution, as government power was consolidated, the Catholic clergy and institutions were attacked in the 1920s, and the revolutionary constitution of 1917 was implemented.

This armed conflict is often characterized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century; it resulted in an important program of experimentation and reform in social organization. The revolution committed the resulting political regime with "social justice", until Mexico underwent a neoliberal reform process that started in the 1980s.

Images for kids

• 

  General Porfirio Díaz, President of Mexico

• 

  Ricardo Flores Magón (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right), leaders of the Mexican Liberal Party in jail in the Los Angeles (CA) County Jail, 1917

• 

  General Bernardo Reyes, who later rebelled against President Madero

• 

  Francisco I. Madero campaigns from the back of a railway car in 1910.

• 

  Francisco León de la Barra, interim president of Mexico, May–November 1911.

• 

  Francisco I. Madero, as President of Mexico.

• 

  Madero and northern revolutionary Pascual Orozco, who rebelled against him in 1912.

• 

  General Victoriano Huerta was a Federal Army commander who served President Francisco I. Madero (1911–1913) but joined with anti-Madero conspirators in ousting him.

• 

  Venustiano Carranza, Governor of Coahuila, united northern forces of the Constitutionalist Army, with brilliant generals Obregón and Villa

• 

  Victoriano Huerta (left) and Pascual Orozco (right). Emiliano Zapata disavowed Orozco when he joined with Huerta.

• 

  Constitutionalist Generals Obregón (left) and Pancho Villa (center) with U.S. Army General Pershing, posing after a 1914 meeting at Fort Bliss, Texas. After the ouster of Huerta, Villa split with Carranza, and was defeated by Obregón in 1915. In 1916, Villa attacked the United States and Pershing was dispatched in a failed attempt to capture him.

• 

  Oil portrait of Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila.

• 

  U.S. troops enter Veracruz in April 1914. Both Huerta and Carranza opposed the U.S. intervention

• 

  Map of zones of control during the Mexico Revolution as of early 1915, before Obregón defeated Villa.

• 

  Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata

• 

  Pancho Villa (left), Commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North), and Emiliano Zapata, Commander of the Ejército Libertador del Sur (Liberation Army of the South), joined forces in the Army of the Convention, which fought the Constitutionalist Army of Venustiano Carranza. In practice over the long term, Villa and Zapata fought in different areas, and the Constitutionalists under Álvaro Obregón defeated Villa in 1915

• 

  Uncle Sam entering Mexico in 1916 to punish Pancho Villa.

• 

  The new constitution was approved on 5 February 1917. This picture shows the Constituent Congress of 1917 swearing fealty to the new Constitution

• 

  Emiliano Zapata

• 

  Francisco I. Madero, Emiliano Zapata, in Cuernavaca. Zapata rebelled against Madero in 1911 because of Madero's slowness in implementing land reform

• 

  1920 cartoon published in the U.S. as Carranza was ousted

• 

  Revolutionary General and President of Mexico Álvaro Obregón 1920-1924

• 

  Revolutionary General and President of Mexico Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928)

• 

  Conflict zones of the Cristero War. Map of Mexico showing regions in which Cristero outbreaks occurred      Large-scale outbreaks     Moderate outbreaks     Sporadic outbreaks

• 

  Revolutionary general and President Lázaro Cárdenas, pictured after nationalizing the railway system 1937

• 

  Civilians fleeing the danger zone in Mexico City February 16, 1913.

• 

  Revolutionaries seized trains. Photo by Hugo Brehme

• 

  Soldaderas were participants in the Revolution, as combatants and support of combatants

• 

  Child soldier

• 

  Iconic image of Villa in Ojinaga, a publicity still taken by Mutual Film Corporation photographer John Davidson Wheelan in January 1914

• 

  José Clemente Orozco, The Trench, mural in the San Ildefonso College, Mexico City

• 

  Corrido sheet music celebrating the entry of Francisco I. Madero into Mexico City in 1911.

• 

  The Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City. It was to be the new legislative palace of the Díaz regime, but construction was interrupted by the Revolution

• 

  Equestrian bronze of Villa in Chihuahua, Chihuahua

• 

  Metro Zapata in Mexico City, the icon shows a stylized, eyeless Zapata

• 

  Adelita in the Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution

• 

  Metro Constitución de 1917

See also

In Spanish: Revolución mexicana para niños