page_title: Mexican Revolution
section_title: The 1917 Constitution, and the last successful coup
hierarchical_section_title: Mexican Revolution / The 1917 Constitution, and the last successful coup
caption_attribution_description: Español: Congreso Constituyente de 1917 jurando la Constitucion Politica de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos el 5 de febrero de 1917.
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: Carranza's 1913 Plan of Guadalupe was narrowly political, but he sought to consolidate his position with support of the masses by policies of social and agrarian reform. As revolutionary violence subsided in 1916, leaders met to draw up a new constitution, thus making principles for which many of the revolutionaries had fought into law. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 was strongly nationalist, giving the government the power to expropriate foreign ownership of resources and enabling land reform (Article 27). It also had a strong code protecting organized labor (Article 123) and extended state power over the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico in its role in education (Article 3).
  Although villistas and zapatistas were excluded from the Constituent Congress, their political challenge pushed the delegates to radicalize the Constitution, which in turn was far more radical than Carranza himself. While he was elected constitutional president in 1917, he did not implement its most radical elements. He was not in a position to do so in any case, since there were still threats to his regime regionally, despite the relative subsiding of violence nationally.
  Carranza had consolidated enough power to go forward with the drafting of a new constitution in 1917.  Carranza was acting president and called for a constituent congress to draft a new document based on liberal and revolutionary principles. Labor had supported the Constitutionalists and Red Battalions had fought against the Zapatistas. Radical reforms were embedded in the constitution, in particular labor rights, agrarian reform, anticlericalism, and economic nationalism. The Mexican state asserted dominion over the nation's territory and resources (Article 27), which enabled land reform and expropriation of  Labor was rewarded with a strong article in the 1917 constitution protecting labor rights (Article 123). Following the ratification of the constitution, Carranza was elected to the presidency of Mexico.
  After all the bloodshed of the revolution concerning the principle of "no re-election", it was politically impossible for Carranza to run again in the election due to be held in 1920. He chose to back Ignacio Bonillas, a civilian and political unknown. For Northern generals Alvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta, who had fought successfully for the revolution, the candidacy of a civilian and potential Carranza puppet was untenable. They led a revolt against Carranza under the Plan of Agua Prieta. Carranza attempted to flee the country and died on the way to the Gulf Coast.
  Prior to the elections, General Obregón had returned to Sonora and became a political threat to the civilian Carranza. The Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM) supported Obregón.  Carranza was increasingly unpopular, with his minimal implementation of land reform and his return of confiscated haciendas in the north to their owners alienated peasants seeking land. He crushed a strike of workers in Mexico City, alienating labor. Even as his political authority was waning, Carranza attempted to impose a political nobody, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., Ignacio Bonillas, as his successor. Under the Plan of Agua Prieta, a triumvirate of Sonoran generals, Alvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Adolfo de la Huerta, with elements from the military and labor supporters in the CROM, rose in successful rebellion against Carranza, the last successful coup of the revolution.  Carranza fled to Guerrero but was killed or committed suicide fleeing from Mexico City to Veracruz.  Carranza's attempt to impose his choice was considered a betrayal of the Revolution and his remains were not placed in the Monument to the Revolution until 1942.
  "Obregón and the Sonorans, the architects of Carranza's rise and fall, shared his hard headed opportunism, but they displayed a better grasp of the mechanisms of popular mobilization, allied to social reform, that would form the bases of a durable revolutionary regime after 1920." The interim government of Adolfo de la Huerta negotiated Pancho Villa'
caption: The new constitution was approved on 5 February 1917. This picture shows the Constituent Congress of 1917 swearing fealty to the new Constitution
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