The Revolution, as a mural
The muralists painted this era as one long band across a wall. Here it is the same way: 8 chapters from the Porfiriato to the oil expropriation, with every figure the exam actually asks about standing along it.
Everyone here is on the wall because the question bank asks about them. Open “Asked on the exam” on any figure to see the real questions, in the wording candidates reported.
Everyone on the mural
The Porfiriato
From 1876 to 1911 one man governed: Porfirio Díaz. The Porfiriato brought railroads and foreign investment, and also repression and deep inequality — the discontent that broke out as the Revolution of 1910.
Porfirio Díaz 1830–1915
A military hero of the fight against the French intervention — he distinguished himself at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862 — who took power in 1876 through the Plan of Tuxtepec and ruled almost without interruption until 1911. His full name was José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori; he was born in Oaxaca in 1830 and died in exile in Paris in 1915.
Said it Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States
The railroad
Railroad expansion was the hallmark of Porfirian modernization: track grew from about 640 kilometers in 1876 to nearly 19,000 by 1910, connecting mines, ports and cities and attracting foreign investment, mostly American and British. It mainly benefited elites and export companies, which fed the discontent that led to the Revolution.
The ley fuga
Not a written law but an extrajudicial practice: a prisoner’s escape was staged so he could be shot in the back, and he was reported as “killed while trying to escape”. It was used to eliminate opponents and prisoners without trial, and became a symbol of the repression of Díaz’s regime.
El Hijo del Ahuizote
A satirical opposition weekly founded in 1885 that mocked Díaz’s regime with biting cartoons. The Flores Magón brothers later ran it, and its offices produced the famous 1903 photograph of journalists under the banner “The Constitution has died”. Many of its writers suffered persecution and imprisonment for their criticism.
Justo Sierra
Known as the “Teacher of the Americas”, he headed the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts at the end of the Porfiriato and was the great champion of education of the era, promoting the founding of the National University of Mexico in 1910. Don’t confuse him with José Vasconcelos, the first secretary of the present-day SEP, created in 1921.
Jorge Láscar · CC BY 2.0 The Postal Palace
The ornate main post office in the historic center of Mexico City, designed by the Italian architect Adamo Boari and inaugurated in 1907 by President Porfirio Díaz, during the building boom of the late Porfiriato. It still operates as a post office today. Don’t confuse it with the Palacio de Bellas Artes across the street, also begun under Boari but not inaugurated until 1934.
The Cananea strike
Cananea’s copper miners demanded pay equal to that of American workers and better conditions; the protest was violently repressed. Together with the Río Blanco textile strike of 1907 it exposed workers’ discontent under the Porfiriato, which is why Cananea, in Sonora, is called the “cradle of the Revolution”.
The first film shot in Mexico
The cinematograph reached Mexico in 1896, just months after its Paris debut, brought by Gabriel Veyre and Claude Ferdinand Bon Bernard, envoys of the Lumière brothers. Their first “views” were brief scenes of real life, the most famous an 1896 short showing President Porfirio Díaz riding a horse in Chapultepec Forest.
Madero and the Plan of San Luis
Madero’s book of 1908 asked for free elections; his Plan of San Luis, two years later, asked for rifles. It declared Díaz’s reelection fraudulent and called Mexicans to rise on November 20, 1910 — the date the Revolution is counted from.
Francisco I. Madero
“Effective suffrage, no reelection” was the slogan with which Madero challenged Porfirio Díaz, who had held power for decades through repeated reelections. He ran against Díaz in 1910, was jailed, and then launched the Revolution with the Plan of San Luis. He became president in 1911 and was murdered in 1913 during the coup known as the Decena Trágica.
Said it Effective suffrage, no reelection
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Presidential Succession in 1910
Published in 1908, Madero’s book criticized Porfirio Díaz’s repeated re-elections and called for free elections and democracy. It launched his Anti-Reelectionist movement, made him a national figure, and set the stage for the Revolution that broke out in 1910. Don’t confuse the book with the Plan de San Luis, the revolutionary proclamation that followed it.
The Plan of San Luis
Issued by Madero in 1910, after he escaped from prison, and dated in San Luis Potosí. It declared Porfirio Díaz’s reelection fraudulent and called on Mexicans to take up arms on November 20, 1910 — the date considered the start of the Mexican Revolution, and still commemorated every year. Don’t confuse it with the Plan of Ayala, Zapata’s later plan demanding land reform.
The Decena Trágica
Ten days of shelling and street fighting in Mexico City in February 1913. General Victoriano Huerta, who was supposed to defend the government, betrayed President Madero with the backing of rebel generals and of the United States ambassador Henry Lane Wilson.
Osuna · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Ten Tragic Days
The coup of February 9 to 19, 1913: about ten days of shelling and street fighting engulfed Mexico City as rebel soldiers rose against President Madero. Huerta betrayed him and seized the presidency, and his usurpation reignited the Revolution. Don’t confuse the Decena Trágica of 1913 with La Noche Triste of 1520, an episode of the Spanish Conquest.
Victoriano Huerta
The general who was supposed to defend Madero’s government and betrayed it instead, seizing the presidency in February 1913 with the backing of rebel generals and of the United States ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. Weeks later, Carranza’s Plan of Guadalupe refused to recognize his government and created the Constitutionalist Army to overthrow him.
José María Pino Suárez
Mexico’s vice president under Francisco I. Madero. During the Decena Trágica both men were forced to resign, and both were shot on February 22, 1913. Their assassination triggered a new, bloodier phase of the Revolution against Huerta’s regime.
Constitutionalists, villistas and zapatistas
Against Huerta, Carranza raised the Constitutionalist Army in the northeast, Villa commanded the División del Norte in the north, and Zapata led the south for the villages. Allies against the usurper, and not for long: in 1919 Zapata was ambushed on the orders of a general of Carranza’s own government.
The Plan of Guadalupe
Proclaimed by Venustiano Carranza at the Hacienda de Guadalupe, in Coahuila, on March 26, 1913, after Huerta seized power in the coup in which President Madero was arrested and then murdered. It refused to recognize Huerta’s government and created the Constitutionalist Army, with Carranza as its First Chief. Its goal was mainly political — restoring constitutional order — rather than social reform.
Venustiano Carranza
Then governor of Coahuila, he organized the Constitutionalist Army in 1913 through the Plan of Guadalupe, to overthrow Victoriano Huerta after the murder of President Madero. As “First Chief” of the movement he later convened the congress that drafted the Constitution of 1917 and became president of Mexico. Generals such as Álvaro Obregón fought within the Constitutionalist ranks, but its leader was Carranza. He was assassinated in 1920 in Tlaxcalantongo, Puebla.
Pancho Villa 1878–1923
Born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula in 1878 in San Juan del Río, Durango; as an outlaw he took the name Francisco Villa. He commanded the famous División del Norte and dominated the fighting in northern Mexico, which earned him the nickname “El Centauro del Norte”. After laying down his arms in 1920 he retired to the Canutillo hacienda; three years later he was ambushed and shot inside his car in Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua, on July 20, 1923.
Emiliano Zapata
Born in Anenecuilco, Morelos, he led the Liberation Army of the South and fought for the return of land to the villages — the demand set out in his Plan of Ayala and summed up in “Land and Liberty”. He is the agrarian leader of the south, the “Caudillo del Sur”, as against Villa in the north. He was ambushed and assassinated on April 10, 1919 at the Chinameca hacienda in Morelos, in a trap laid by Colonel Jesús Guajardo, who pretended to defect to his side.
Said it Land and liberty
The Plan of Ayala
Proclaimed by Emiliano Zapata in 1911, after he broke with President Madero for moving too slowly on land reform. It demanded the restitution of lands taken from villages and peasants by haciendas, and it became the banner of the Zapatista movement under the slogan “Land and Liberty”. The phrase originated in Ricardo Flores Magón’s press, but it is Zapata it stayed with.
Las adelitas
The adelitas, also called soldaderas, were the women who took part in the 1910 Revolution. They travelled with the revolutionary armies, cooking, nursing the wounded, carrying supplies, and in many cases fighting in battle themselves. They became an enduring symbol of women’s participation in Mexican history.
“La Adelita”
A corrido is a Mexican narrative folk ballad that tells stories of heroes, battles and everyday events. During the Revolution corridos spread news and legends from camp to camp, and “La Adelita” became the most famous of them all. It honors the soldaderas, and the name became such a powerful symbol that it is still used for any brave woman of the Revolution.
The Constitution of 1917
The Revolution’s most lasting product. Promulgated in Querétaro on February 5, 1917 under Carranza, it is the Constitution Mexico still lives under, and it was advanced for its time.
The Constitution of 1917
Mexico’s current Constitution was promulgated in the city of Querétaro on February 5, 1917, as a product of the Revolution, under Venustiano Carranza. It was advanced for its time, enshrining free secular education (Article 3), national ownership of land and resources (Article 27), and labor rights (Article 123). The date was chosen deliberately: the previous liberal Constitution of 1857 had also been promulgated on February 5.
Obregón, Calles and the Cristero War
With the fighting over, the winners governed. Obregón was president from 1920 to 1924 and was elected again in 1928, only to be assassinated before taking office; Calles followed him, enforced the Constitution’s anticlerical articles, and then dominated the country from behind the scenes.
Álvaro Obregón
A leading general of the Revolution — he fought within the Constitutionalist ranks under Carranza — Obregón was president of Mexico from 1920 to 1924 and was elected again in 1928. Before he could take office he was assassinated in July 1928 by José de León Toral at a restaurant in San Ángel, Mexico City. It was under his government that the Secretariat of Public Education was created, in 1921; his death opened the crisis that led to the Maximato and to the founding of the PNR in 1929.
José Vasconcelos
The first head of the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) when it was created in 1921, under President Obregón. He launched massive literacy campaigns, rural schools and popular libraries, and commissioned the murals of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros that gave birth to Mexican muralism — the reason this page is a mural at all. A philosopher and writer, author of La raza cósmica, he coined the UNAM motto “Por mi raza hablará el espíritu” in 1921, while he was rector of the university.
Said it The spirit shall speak for my race
Mariano Azuela
The founder of the “novel of the Revolution”, with Los de abajo (The Underdogs), written in 1915 while he served as a doctor in Pancho Villa’s ranks. The book portrays the Revolution through the eyes of ordinary fighters and inspired later writers such as Martín Luis Guzmán and Nellie Campobello. He practiced medicine most of his life and wrote about the Revolution’s failures with unusual frankness for his time.
Plutarco Elías Calles
President from 1924 to 1928. He founded the Bank of Mexico on September 1, 1925, and in 1926 enacted the Calles Law. After leaving the presidency he went on dominating Mexican politics as the “Jefe Máximo” of the Revolution, and in 1929 he founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) to unify the revolutionary strongmen after Obregón’s assassination.
The Calles Law
Enacted in 1926 under President Plutarco Elías Calles, it strictly enforced the anticlerical articles of the 1917 Constitution: it limited the number of priests, banned religious orders and public worship outside churches, and imposed penalties on clergy. In protest, the Catholic Church suspended public worship in Mexico. It was the immediate trigger of the Cristero War.
The Cristero War
An armed uprising of Catholic rebels, the cristeros, against the government’s enforcement of anticlerical laws, especially the 1926 Calles Law. They fought under the cry “Long live Christ the King!”, mainly in west-central states such as Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Zacatecas. The conflict ran from 1926 to 1929 and ended with agreements between the Church and the government known as the “arreglos”. Don’t confuse it with the War of Reform of 1858–1861.
The Maximato
From 1928 to 1934: the period after Plutarco Elías Calles left the presidency in which he went on dominating Mexican politics as the “Jefe Máximo” of the Revolution. Three presidents governed under his shadow — Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio and Abelardo L. Rodríguez. It ended when Lázaro Cárdenas, president from 1934, broke with Calles and expelled him from the country in 1936. Don’t confuse the Maximato with Calles’s own term, 1924–1928.
The Bank of Mexico
Banxico, the country’s central bank, was founded on September 1, 1925, during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles. It is the sole issuer of Mexico’s currency and has been constitutionally autonomous from the government since 1994. Don’t confuse its founding with the 1982 nationalization of the private commercial banks, decreed by José López Portillo.
From the PNR to the PRI
Founded in 1929 as the PNR, to unify the revolutionary strongmen after Obregón’s assassination, the party became the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM) under Cárdenas in 1938 and today’s PRI in 1946. It won every presidential election for more than seven decades. Its hegemony ended in 2000, when Vicente Fox of the PAN won the presidency — the country’s first peaceful transfer of power in modern history.
Cárdenas and the expropriation
Cárdenas broke with Calles and ended the Maximato. On March 18, 1938 he expropriated the foreign oil companies and put the industry in the hands of the nation, and he built institutions to go with it.
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río
President from 1934 to 1940. On March 18, 1938 he expropriated the foreign oil companies operating in Mexico, after they refused to comply with a labor ruling, and shortly afterward created Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). He also created the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, in 1936, and it was he who broke with Calles and expelled him from the country, ending the Maximato. Don’t confuse him with José López Portillo, who nationalized the banks in 1982.
The oil expropriation
On March 18, 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated the foreign oil companies operating in Mexico after they refused to comply with a labor ruling, placing the industry in the hands of the nation. The decree led to the creation of Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the state oil company, which took over exploration, production and refining. March 18 is still commemorated every year as a landmark act of national sovereignty.
Instituto Politécnico Nacional
Created in 1936, during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, to train engineers and technicians for Mexico’s industrialization, with the engineer Juan de Dios Bátiz among its main promoters. Its motto is “La Técnica al Servicio de la Patria”. Don’t confuse it with UNAM, a much older university whose roots go back to the colonial era; the IPN was born as a new institution focused specifically on technical education.
How Mexico remembers it
The Revolution left monuments as well as laws. November 20 is still an official civic holiday, and two Mexico City landmarks carry the memory of it.
Haakon S. Krohn · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Monument to the Revolution
In 1910 Porfirio Díaz began building a grand Federal Legislative Palace, but the Revolution halted the project, leaving only the steel frame of its dome standing. In the 1930s the architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia converted that structure into the Monument to the Revolution, completed in 1938 in Mexico City’s Plaza de la República. Its pillars hold the remains of revolutionary figures: Madero, Carranza, Villa, Calles and Cárdenas.
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Estela de Luz
A 104-meter quartz-clad pillar at the entrance to Chapultepec Park on Paseo de la Reforma. It commemorates 200 years since Independence and 100 years since the Revolution, built for the 2010 bicentennial — though construction delays meant it was inaugurated in January 2012. Don’t confuse it with the Angel of Independence, also on Reforma, which Porfirio Díaz inaugurated in 1910.
Revolution Day
November 20 commemorates the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when Madero’s Plan of San Luis called on Mexicans to rise up in arms against the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. It is an official civic holiday, celebrated with parades across the country. Don’t confuse it with September 16, which marks the start of the War of Independence in 1810 — the order is Conquest, Independence, Revolution: 1521, 1810, 1910.
Picture credits
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons. Files in the public domain need no credit; these ones do.
Every question above is verbatim from the question bank behind the practice test and flash cards.
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