Mexican Revolution

The Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920 overthrew the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and produced a landmark constitution of social rights.

Overview

Decades of Porfirian modernization had dispossessed peasant communities and concentrated land and wealth. Francisco Madero opposition campaign in 1910 triggered a national uprising after a fraudulent election, and Diaz resigned in 1911. Madero was overthrown and murdered by general Victoriano Huerta in 1913, uniting the northern armies of Venustiano Carranza, Francisco Villa, and Alvaro Obregon with the southern peasantry of Emiliano Zapata. The Constitution of 1917 guaranteed labor rights, land reform, secular education, and limits on foreign ownership of subsoil wealth. Obregon defeated Villa, Zapata was assassinated in 1919, and perhaps a million people died. The revolution created the nationalist state that governed Mexico for the rest of the century.