page_title: Mexican Revolution
section_title: Strong central government
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican Revolution / Legacies / Strong central government
caption_attribution_description: Español: cementeriogp
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: Although the ignominious end of Venustiano Carranza's presidency in 1920 cast a shadow over his legacy in the Revolution, sometimes viewed as a conservative revolutionary, he and his northern allies laid "the foundation of a more ambitious, centralizing state dedicated to national integration and national self-assertion."  In the assessment of historian Alan Knight, "a victory of Villa and Zapata would probably have resulted in a weak, fragmented state, a collage of revolutionary fiefs of varied political hues presided over by a feeble central government." Porfirio Díaz had successfully centralized power during his long presidency.  Carranza was an old politico of the Díaz regime, considered a kind of bridge between the old Porfirian order and the new revolutionary. The northern generals seized power in 1920, with the "Sonoran hegemony prov[ing] complete and long lasting." The Sonorans, particularly Alvaro Obregón, were battle-tested leaders and pragmatic politicians able to consolidate centralized power immediately after the military phase ended.  The revolutionary struggle created a new regime that comprised the regional faction of northwest Mexico, willing to make deals with other regions and factions. In the assessment of historian John Womack, "The new state itself would therefore serve as the nation's bourgeois party. Its function forecast its programme, a long series of reforms from above... [from] threats to Mexican sovereignty and capitalism from abroad and from below." The Constitution of 1917 gave the government tremendous power to address issues that brought many into revolutionary struggle. Of key importance is Plutarco Elías Calles's creation of the political party in 1929, which became the means to manage competing groups' demands and to centralize power in the hands of the "Revolutionary family." It is "impossible to separate ... the creation of the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) from the formation of a powerful state."
caption: Remains of the first revolutionaries who rose in arms, located in the old cemetery Gómez Palacio, Durango
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