The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

Corral was the Vice-President. What little I saw of him I liked; but then he had hardly taken up the reins of power. He did not make himself popular; in fact, a large part of the country hated and distrusted him. But for that, probably nothing would have been heard of the troubles which ensued. As the party anxious for the introduction of new blood into the Government increased in vigor, the people showed themselves more and more determined to get rid of Corral. They wanted a younger man than Diaz in the President's chair: they wanted, above all, the prospect of a better successor.

But the official group whose interests depended on the maintenance of the Diaz régime was, for the moment, too powerful, and it succeeded in inducing the President to accept reelection.

To the general hatred of this group on the part of the nation, Madero owed his success. He was almost unknown, but the malcontents were determined to act, and to act at once, and they could not afford to pick and choose for a leader. As a proof that the country thought less of the democratic principles invoked than of the destruction of the official "cientificos," may be cited the fact that it at first placed all its trust and confidence in General Reyes, who is just as despotic and autocratic as General Diaz, but has at the same time, to them, a redeeming quality—his avowed opposition to the gang. Reyes refused to head the insurrection, and it was then Madero or nobody.

In the spring of 1910 Francis I. Madero came to the front. He was a man of education, of fortune, of courage, and a lawyer by profession. He had written a book entitled the Presidential Succession, and although without experience in the management of State affairs, he had shown that he had the courage of his convictions. He consented to stand against Diaz in a contest for the Presidency of the Republic.

The malcontents had found their leader. Madero not only accepted nomination, but began an active campaign, making speeches against the Diaz administration, denouncing abuses, more especially the retention of office by the Vice-President and the tactics of Limantour, and showing the people that as General Diaz was then eighty years of age, and his new term would not expire until 1916, Corral would almost certainly succeed to the inheritance of the Diaz regime.

Energetic, courageous, and outspoken, Madero had full command of the phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency. A few days before the Presidential election in July, 1910, when making a speech in Monterey, Madero was arrested as a disturber of the peace and thrown into prison, where he was kept until the close of the poll.

The election resulted, as usual, in a triumphant majority for General Diaz, though votes were recorded, even in the capital itself, for the anti-reelectionist leader.

As soon as opportunity offered, Madero escaped to the United States, and from that vantage-ground kept up a correspondence with his friends and partizans. Though the election had been held in July, the inauguration of the President did not take place until December, 1910. A fortnight before that date, a conspiracy, at which Madero probably connived, was discovered in Puebla. The first victim was the Chief of the Police at Puebla. He was shot dead by a woman who at his knock had opened the door of a house wherein the revolutionists were holding a meeting. The revolution had begun. Risings took place in different parts of the Republic, but were quickly quelled, with the exception of one in the State of Chihuahua, where the rebels had a special grievance against the all-powerful family of the great landowner, General Terrazas. These large landed proprietors are a subject of hatred to the new Socialist party.

Trouble followed trouble in the north, which, be it remembered, runs to a distance of over a thousand miles from Mexico City itself. But nothing very serious occurred, until suddenly, in the early weeks of 1911, President Taft mobilized a force of 20,000 American troops to watch the Mexican frontier. From that time events developed rapidly till the end of the Diaz regime in May. One thing became clear, that the revolution was rapidly making its way to victory, and that Diaz, prostrate with an agonizing disease, an abscess of the jaw, was in no condition to rally his disheartened followers in person. He saved his honor, as the phrase goes, by a declaration that he would not retire from office until peace was declared, and he kept his word. He was too ill to leave his simple home in one of the chief streets of the city, where he lived less ostentatiously than many of his fellow citizens, but this did not prevent the mob from firing upon his home. On the afternoon of May 25, 1911, he resigned, and Señor De La Barra, formerly Minister at Washington, became provisional President until the next election, fixed for October.

Madero was the hero of the hour. He entered Mexico City in triumphal procession, June 7, 1911. His entrance was preceded by the most severe earthquake the capital had known in years. Many buildings were wrecked and some hundreds of people killed. An arch of the National Palace fell, one beneath which Diaz had often passed.

Three days after signing his abdication, General Diaz was well enough to leave Mexico City. In the early hours of the morning three trains drew up filled with his own solders and friends, in the middle one of which the ex-President, his wife, the clever and beautiful Carmelita, Colonel Porfirio Diaz, his son, with his young wife, several children, and their ten-days-old baby, were seated. Along the route the train came upon a force of seven hundred rebels. A sharp encounter ensued. The revolutionists left thirty dead upon the field; the escort, which numbered but three hundred, lost only three men. The old fighting spirit returned to the old lion, and, unarmed, the ex-President descended from his car and took part in the engagement. He entered Mexico City fighting, and he has left her shores with bullets ringing in the air. This was but the second time that Diaz had left the land of his birth.