page_title: Mexican Revolution
section_title: Huerta Regime, Feb. 1913–July 1914 and civil war
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican Revolution / Huerta Regime, Feb. 1913–July 1914 and civil war
caption_attribution_description: Español: Fotografía de es:Victoriano Huerta (izquierda) y es:Pascual Orozco (derecha) tomada de Latino Studies Resources - Indiana University at Bloomington. Dado que Orozco falleció en es:1915 esta imagen se considera en el es:dominio público en los es:Estados Unidos.
context_page_description: The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle, lasting roughly from 1910 to 1920, that transformed Mexican culture and government. Although recent research has focused on local and regional aspects of the revolution, it was a genuinely national revolution. Its outbreak in 1910 resulted from the failure of the 31-year-long regime of Porfirio Díaz to find a managed solution to presidential succession. This meant there was a political crisis among competing elites and the opportunity for agrarian insurrection. Wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election, and following the rigged results, revolted under the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Armed conflict broke out in northern Mexico and Díaz was forced out. In the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, Díaz resigned and went into exile, new elections were to occur in the fall, and an interim presidency under Francisco León de la Barra was installed. A new election was held in 1911, bringing Madero to the presidency.
  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.
context_section_description: Huerta's presidency is usually characterized as a dictatorship. From the point of view of revolutionaries at the time and the construction of historical memory of the Revolution, it is without any positive aspects. "Despite recent attempts to portray Victoriano Huerta as a reformer, there is little question that he was a self-serving dictator." There are few biographies of Huerta, but one strongly asserts that Huerta should not be labeled simply as a counter-revolutionary, arguing that his regime consisted of two distinct periods: from the coup in February 1913 up to October 1913. During that time he attempted to legitimize his regime and demonstrate its legality by pursuing reformist policies; and after October 1913, when he dropped all attempts to rule within a legal framework and began murdering political opponents while battling revolutionary forces that had united in opposition to his regime.
  Supporting the Huerta regime initially were business interests in Mexico, both foreign and domestic; landed elites; the Roman Catholic Church; as well as the German and British governments. The United States President Woodrow Wilson, did not recognize the Huerta regime. Huerta and Venustiano Carranza were in contact for two weeks immediately after the coup, but they did not come to an agreement. Carranza then declared himself opposed to Huerta and became the leader of the anti-Huerta forces in the north.   Huerta gained the support of revolutionary general Pascual Orozco, who had helped topple the Diaz regime, then became disillusioned with Madero. Huerta's first cabinet was composed of men who had supported the February 1913 Pact of the [U.S.] Embassy, among them some who had supported Madero, such as Jesús Flores Magón; supporters of General Bernardo Reyes; supporters of Félix Díaz; and former Interim President Francisco León de la Barra.
  During the counter-revolutionary regime of Huerta (1913–1914), the Catholic Church initially supported him. "The Church represented a force for reaction, especially in the countryside." However, when Huerta cracked down on political parties and conservative opposition, he had "Gabriel Somellera, president of the [National] Catholic Party arrested; La Nación, which, like other Catholic papers, had protested Congress's dissolution and the rigged elections [of October 1913], locked horns with the official press and was finally closed down. El País, the main Catholic newspaper, survived for a time."
  Initially, Huerta was even able to muster the support of Andrés Molina Enríquez, author of The Great National Problems (Los grandes problemas nacionales), a key work urging land reform in Mexico. Huerta was deeply concerned with the issue of land reform, since it was a persistent spur of peasant unrest. Specifically, he moved to restore "ejido lands to the Yaquis and Mayos of Sonora and [advanced] proposals for distribution of government lands to small-scale farmers." When Huerta refused to move faster on land reform, Molina Enríquez disavowed the regime in June 1913, later going on to advise the 1917 constitutional convention on land reform.
  Within a month of the coup, rebellion began to spread throughout Mexico, most prominently led by the governor of the state of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, along with Pablo González and old revolutionaries demobilized by Madero, such as Pancho Villa. Carranza issued a narrowly political statement, the Plan of Guadalupe. Upon taking power, Huerta had moved swiftly to consolidate his hold in the North. Carranza might have counted on Chihuahua Gov. Abraham González, but Huerta had him arrested and murdered for fear he would foment rebellion. The Northern revolutionaries fought under the name of the Constitutionalist Army, with Carranza as the "First Chief" (primer jefe). When northern General Pancho Villa became governor of Chihuahua in 1914, following the ousting of Huerta, he located González's bones and had them reburied with full honors.
  In Morelos, Emiliano Zapata continued his rebellion under the Plan of Ayala (while expunging the name of counter-revolutiona
caption: Victoriano Huerta (left) and Pascual Orozco (right).
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