Enrique Creel

**José Enrique Clay Ramón de Jesús Creel Cuilty**, sometimes known as **Henry Clay Creel**, (August 30, 1854 – August 18, 1931) was a Mexican statesman and diplomat who briefly served as prime minister of Mexico and acting general secretary of the Restoration Party from September 4, 1916 until his resignation on June 19, 1917. Prior to his premiership, Creel held numerous government positions, serving as deputy prime minister, treasury secretary, and twice as foreign secretary. Additionally, Creel served continuously as a member of the Congress of Mexico between January 1878 and September 1919.

Born in August 1854 as the child of an American military veteran, Enrique Creel came of age during the First Mexican Revolution and joined the Mexican diplomatic service in 1873, becoming an envoy at the Mexican embassy in the Republic of Spain and then later serving as an envoy to the United States of America. In 1877, Creel was elected as a member of the Congress of Mexico for the Restoration Party, beginning a forty one year congressional career. During the government of Ignacio Mariscal, Enrique Creel served as secretary for foreign affairs from 1885-1893 and 1898-1901, and was a senior member of the Restoration Party throughout much of his later career. Following the electoral wipe-out of the 1901 general election, Enrique Creel attempted to challenge Mariscal for the leadership of the Restoration Party in 1904 but ultimately lost the eventual leadership competition to Francisco León de la Barra, who later appointed Creel as part of his opposition frontbench.

Following the 1910 general election, Enrique Creel was appointed as deputy prime minister and as secretary of the treasury, becoming the second in command to prime minister Francisco León de la Barra. During the León de la Barra administration, Creel played a major role in the constitutional conflict between the government and Emperor Juan I, and was the author of the highly controversial 1915 government budget that caused the snap 1915 general election. After Francisco León de la Barra introduced legislation to strip the royal House of Iturbide of its government funding, León de la Barra was dismissed as prime minister and general secretary of the Restoration Party in September 1916, leaving Enrique Creel to assume the role of head of government and acting secretary of the Restoration Party.

During his tenure as prime minister, Enrique Creel struggled to impose his authority on the Congress of Mexico, the Restoration Party, and for the most part his own government. Subsequently, the Creel ministry was dominated by conflicts with congress over legislation and government budgets, whilst factions within his party actively sided with the congressional opposition to block his legislative agenda. At the same time, Emperor Juan I sidelined Creel within government and became the *de-facto* head of the cabinet, meaning that Creel was reduced to a powerless figurehead. In June 1917, Enrique Creel resigned as prime minister after a series of legislative failures and personal humiliations.

Historical evaluation of Creel's premiership rank him poorly, noting his legislative failures and lack of power within his own government. At the same time, the radical policy attempts under the Creel administration meant that he is popularly remembered as a weak politician with aspirations of being a tyrant. Creel's short tenure, the shortest since Félix María Zuloaga's 151 day premiership during the First Mexican Revolution, was a source of contemporary ridicule.

## History

Enrique Creel was born on August 30, 1854 and was the eldest son of Reuben Creel, an American-born military veteran from Greensburg, Kentucky who at the time served as Abraham Lincoln's US Consul in Chihuahua. Creel was born in Ciudad Chihuahua and became son-in-law of Don Luis Terrazas by virtue of marriage to his daughter Angela (Reuben Creel and Luis Terrazas were married to sisters of the wealthy Cuilty family, whose ancestry was English and was related to Sir Thomas More).

During his childhood, the First Mexican Revolution upended social life in the Chihuahua and Enrique Creel's father Reuben was arrested by Conservative Party forces in January 1870, before being freed by the Restoration Party forces in March 1871. Amid the revolution, Creel graduated from Ciudad Chihuahua University in September 1872 and entered the civil service as a junior diplomat in February 1873. During his early diplomatic career, Creel was deployed to the Republic of Spain to meet and assist newly elected Spanish president Estanislao Figueras. Following the inauguration of Pedro de Iturbide as president in 1874, the diplomatic staff of the Mexican government were reshuffled and Creel was deployed to the United States of America to serve in the embassy in Washington D.C. in March 1874. In December 1876, Creel retired from active service and attempted to begin a political career.

## Political Career

### Member of the Congress of Mexico

In November 1877, Enrique Creel was elected as a member of the Congress of Mexico in the constituency of Chihuahua as a member of the Restoration Party. On January 1, 1878, Creel was sworn into office as a first-term congressman and made his maiden speech on March 19, 1878 during a debate on the new government budget. During the snap 1881 general election, Creel was re-elected with an increased majority and was appointed as a deputy undersecretary for foreign affairs in the government of prime minister Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada in February 1882.

Enrique Creel would be consecutively re-elected to congress in the 1887, 1893, 1898, 1901, 1907, 1910, and 1915 general elections, and served in congress for forty one years and nine months.

### Secretary of Foreign Affairs

#### First Term: 1885 - 1893

Following the resignation of prime minister Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada in September 1885, foreign secretary Ignacio Mariscal assumed the premiership and conducted a minor reshuffle of government. On September 13, 1885, Enrique Creel was appointed as Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the first Mariscal Ministry and remained in post following the 1887 general election. During his first period in office, Enrique Creel presided over the continued deepening of diplomatic relations with both the United States of America and the Spanish Republic, which prime minister Ignacio Mariscal perceived to be the two natural diplomatic partners of Mexico. In 1888, Ignacio Mariscal and Enrique Creel hosted a Latin America diplomatic meeting in Mexico City, attended by representatives of twenty different state and provincial level governments in the region.

#### Second Term: 1898 - 1901

After the 1893 general election produced a hung congress, prime minister Ignacio Mariscal formed a coalition government with the Mexican Radical Party and the Progressive Party. As part of the new coalition, Mexican Radical Party leader Benito Juárez was appointed as foreign secretary, leaving Creel to return to the government backbenches. However, after the coalition collapsed in the runup to the 1898 general election, Enrique Creel was reappointed as secretary of foreign affairs on October 23, 1898 and remained in office for just over two years, before the Restoration Party was removed from power in the 1901 general election.

### Opposition Years

Despite personally being re-elected as a member of the Congress of Mexico in the 1901 general election, Enrique Creel's Restoration Party suffered major defeats in the election and party leader Ignacio Mariscal was removed from power as prime minister after the Mexican Radical Party's leader Bernardo Reyes was sworn into office in March 1901. In the immediate aftermath of the party's electoral defeat, Enrique Creel attempted to lead a campaign to remove general secretary Mariscal from office but was sacked from the frontbench opposition, effectively temporarily ending Creel's political career.

In 1904, Ignacio Mariscal resigned as general secretary of the Restoration Party and was succeeded by the political novice Francisco León de la Barra, who had the backing of Emperor Pedro II. Subsequently, León de la Barra sought to assemble an experienced political team - on May 14, 1904, Enrique Creel was appointed as deputy secretary of the Restoration Party and became León de la Barra's second in command. In this capacity, Creel helped oversee the 1907 general election election campaign, but was demoted from electoral responsibilities after the party failed to win as many seats as it was projected to.

### León de la Barra Ministry

Following the 1910 general election, the Restoration Party won a majority of seats in the Congress of Mexico in a landslide victory that allowed Francisco León de la Barra to become prime minister at the head of a new majority administration. In the new government, Enrique Creel was appointed as deputy prime minister and secretary of the treasury, becoming the second most senior figure in the new cabinet, only behind the prime minister. Against the backdrop of support from the Mexican economy, treasury secretary Enrique Creel announced an emergency government budget on March 18, 1910, which saw large cuts to the budgets of the Secretariat of the Interior's worker's rights division, and large tax cuts for industrialists. The two moves combined helped re-energise the stagnating economy and in 1911, Mexico had record high output levels. In February 1911, the opposition Mexican Radical Party re-introduced their National Workers Contract Bill of 1909, since renamed to the Economic Rights Bill of 1911, in a bid to raise public awareness of the government's crackdown on worker's rights - in response, treasury secretary Enrique Creel introduced the Labour Market Regulations Act in October 1911, which allowed major firms to ignore union demands and cracked down on the influence of union groups by raising the requirements for strike action.

In March 1915, treasury secretary Enrique Creel unveiled a snap budget and announced a series of support packages for rural land owners, as well as a reduction in the allowance granted for the maintenance of the imperial House of Iturbide. However, Emperor Juan I formally vetoed the budget on April 11, 1914, sparking a government crisis as different factions attempted to implement their proposals - senior figures in the Restoration Party, such as treasury secretary and deputy prime minister Enrique Creel, wanted to remove the sections relating the the imperial family to promote reconciliation with the emperor, whilst more confrontational figures in government, such as interior secretary Eliseo Arredondo, sought to bring the issue to the general public by calling a snap general election. Ultimately, in June 1915, prime minister Francisco León de la Barra called for fresh elections on the single issue of the budget and was resoundingly re-elected.

### 1916 Constitutional Crisis

 Main article: 1916 Mexican Constitutional Crisis
In July 1916, prime minister Francisco León de la Barra announced a series of new legislation which would entirely strip the imperial House of Iturbide of its taxpayer funding and downgrade the security detail awarded to the emperor. The following month, the government announced that the Secretariat of Justice would be seeking to take Juan I to the supreme court over allegations of the emperor violating the constitutional clause of neutrality, and that until a ruling by the court was made, the emperor's veto powers would be nullified, effectively allowing the government to pass its legislation without fear of imperial impediment.

On Monday September 4, 1916, Emperor Juan I issued an imperial decree formally removing Francisco León de la Barra from his office as prime minister and ordering his arrest under charges of treason, as well as the arrests of justice secretary Francisco Vázquez Gómez and defence secretary Francisco Mena. Within hours of the decree's issuing, the national executive of the Restoration Party voted to dismiss León de la Barra as general secretary and appointed Enrique Creel as acting general secretary. Subsequently, Juan I appointed Creel as prime minister at the head of a cabinet personally selected by the emperor.

## Premiership

 Emperor
 Election

Following the dismissal of Francisco León de la Barra during the 1916 Mexican constitutional crisis, Enrique Creel was appointed as president of the Council of Ministers and prime minister of Mexico by Emperor Juan I on September 4, 1916 at the Imperial Palace in Mexico City.

### Government

Due to the circumstances of Enrique Creel's rise to power, his government was appointed on his behalf by Emperor Juan I, who packed the Creel Administration with imperial loyalists and generals - most notably, Manuel Plata was appointed as deputy prime minister with the intention of keeping an eye on Creel's handling of the government. Despite the Restoration Party's majority in congress, some elements of the party rejected Creel's appointment and broke from the government, whilst Creel's position as acting general secretary meant that he could not fully utilise the powers of the party executive to impose order on the party.

### Domestic Policy

Upon assuming office as prime minister, Enrique Creel sought to clear the legislative slate by ordering a prorogation of congress on September 5, 1916, which lasted until October 16, 1916. Following congress' return to session in October, the government abandoned all of the economic, social, and constitutional policies of the prior ministry. This move was met with considerable internal opposition within the Restoration Party, and some elements within the party openly threatened to vote down the change in policy or remove Creel from office via no-confidence vote.

In May 1917, the government attempted to pass legislation which would diminish the independence of political parties by appointing crown supervisors to the governing boards of every national party. However, the proposal was met with resistance from both the official opposition and members of the ruling Restoration Party, which feared a monarchical self coup.

### Economic Policy

In November 1916, treasury secretary Eliseo Arredondo held a snap budget to announce a reversal of the budget passed earlier in the year, and implemented a series of tax changes designed to weaken the independent fundraising power of political parties. A further package of tax breaks and spending reductions was announced in February 1917 by secretary Arredondo, but were rejected in a 260-220 vote in the Congress of Mexico, forcing the government to have to pass a smaller finance bill in March 1917, which only narrowly passed in a congressional vote.

### Resignation

In the spring of 1917, prime minister Enrique Creel faced several legislative defeats in the Congress of Mexico after a successful coalition of opposition parties and factions within the Restoration Party sought to undermine the government in protest against Juan I's deposition of Francisco León de la Barra the year prior. In March 1917, Creel offered his resignation to Emperor Juan I in response, but this was rejected and Creel remained in office.

Over the course of his premiership, Enrique Creel began to grow increasingly ideologically separate from the policy directives issued by Emperor Juan I, having originally been a political opponent of the emperor. In May 1917, Creel's administration began to function almost entirely independently of the prime minister's office, meaning that he was often not informed of government actions until they had already occurred. Subsequently, on June 19, 1917, Enrique Creel resigned as prime minister in protest both against the emperor's policy platform but also the sidelining of democratically elected politicians - Creel's resignation letter also argued that the dismissal of Francisco León de la Barra had been a "fundamental error" which had undermined the stability of government in Mexico.

## Styles and Titles

* 1854 - 1882: **José Enrique Clay Ramón de Jesús Creel Cuilty**
* 1882 - 1916: **José Enrique Clay Ramón de Jesús Creel Cuilty** MC
* 1916 - 1919: *Excelentísimo Señor* **José Enrique Clay Ramón de Jesús Creel Cuilty** MC
* 1919 - 1931: *Excelentísimo Señor* **José Enrique Clay Ramón de Jesús Creel Cuilty**