Álvaro Obregón

President of Mexico (1920-1924)

• Born: February 19, 1880
• Birthplace: Alamos, Mexico
• Died: July 17, 1928
• Place of death: Mexico City, Mexico

Obregón emerged from humble beginnings to become the most successful and celebrated general of the Mexican Revolution. Elected president of Mexico after ten years of civil war, Obregón worked from 1920 to 1924 to pacify his country by a program of demilitarization, support for public education, and recognition by the U.S. government.

Early Life

Álvaro Obregón (AHL-bahr-oh oh-bray-GOHN), the eighteenth and youngest child of Francisco Obregón and Cenobia Salido, was born to a respectable family fallen on hard times. Francisco had been a successful businessman but lost most of his holdings because his business partner had supported the emperor Maximilian. The family was reduced to living on their Sonoran ranch, which was ruined by a series of disasters, including Indian uprisings and floods. Francisco died a few months after his youngest son’s birth.

Obregón spent his early years at Siquisiva, living there until his mother moved the family to the town of Huatabampo, Sonora. Three elder sisters, Cenobia, María, and Rosa, assisted his mother in rearing him. He would remain close to his sisters for the rest of his life. These sisters, all schoolteachers, gave him his essential education. He received little formal education, attending the primary school in Huatabampo, run by his brother José, for only a few years. He was a voracious reader and largely self-educated.

By the age of thirteen Obregón had left school to begin making a living. He tried his hand at various jobs and money-making schemes: growing tobacco and making cigarettes, organizing a family orchestra, photography, and carpentry. He discovered that he had natural mechanical talent and began to get jobs taking care of machinery on large plantations in the region. In his early twenties, he turned to farming, after also having been a traveling salesman and schoolteacher.

In 1903, Obregón married Refugio Urrea, by whom he would have four children. By 1906, Obregón had become successful enough to buy a small farm of his own. He gave this place a whimsical name, “La Quinta Chilla,” which translates as “the broken down farm” or “penniless farm.” In 1907 tragedy struck. His wife and two of his children, including the eldest, died. His sisters stepped in to help rear his remaining children. In 1909, Obregón achieved his first real success, inventing a chickpea planter that was soon adopted by most of the local growers. This allowed him to become modestly prosperous. After an unsuccessful attempt to gain a state office, Obregón, by a small margin, was elected presidente municipal (mayor) of Huatabampo during the presidency of Francisco Madero. His interests as mayor centered on public education and public works.

Life’s Work

Obregón did not participate in Madero’s 1910-1911 rebellion against Porfirio Díaz, citing his parental responsibilities as his reason for abstaining. Later he would regret his actions, which he considered cowardly. When the next opportunity came to fight, he came forward. In April, 1912, he was called on as mayor to raise troops to fight Pascual Orozco, then in rebellion against Madero’s government. Obregón recruited three hundred men and was named lieutenant colonel of the Fourth Sonoran Irregular Battalion. During the following months, Obregón demonstrated his courage and natural military ability in the successful campaign against Orozco, earning the rank of colonel.

Obregón had no previous military training or experience but from the first displayed a natural talent for tactics and leadership. He was shrewd, intelligent, and blessed with a prodigious memory. He used these talents to his advantage. Obregón’s forte was in assessing troop and material strengths, evaluating terrain, and patiently waiting to do battle when the enemy could be maneuvered into maximum disadvantage. He was a master of the bluff and used his superior knowledge of the situation to trick the enemy into defeating itself. Obregón was also an innovator. His men were using individual foxholes for protection several years before World War I made this technique well known. A pilot in Obregón’s army made the first aerial bombardment of gun emplacements in 1914. Such abilities and innovations permitted Obregón a string of uninterrupted victories during the Mexican Revolution.

In December, 1912, Obregón returned to farming, only to take up arms again after Madero’s overthrow by General Victoriano Huerta in February, 1913. By August of 1914, Obregón, fighting for the constitutionalist cause organized by Venustiano Carranza, had fought his way from Sonora to Mexico City. Along the way the victorious warrior was made first a brigadier general (May, 1913), and then commander in chief of the Army of the Northeast by Carranza, the head of the constitutionalist forces.

The young general was an attractive figure. Obregón was taller than average and stockily built. His wide, handsome face, with large green eyes, brown hair, and light complexion, reflected his Hispanic heritage. He possessed a lively and creative intelligence and, despite his lack of formal education, was renowned for his prodigious memory. He had a reputation of being a cheerful, frank, and congenial person with a good sense of humor. He was a good conversationalist, much given to telling jokes and humorous stories, often with himself as the butt of the humor. He was abstemious in his personal habits, neither smoking nor drinking. However, Obregón was a man of contradictions, and there was a darker side to his personality as well. His genial demeanor masked a driving ambition and ruthlessness. He would not hesitate as the revolution progressed to deal harshly with his enemies and former allies if he deemed it expedient.

After the victory over Huerta, the constitutionalist forces fell into factionalism. General Obregón attempted to serve as conciliator between Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata, but without success. Obregón had to defeat Zapata and Villa’s forces in battle to end their challenge to Carranza’s dominance. He accomplished this but at great personal cost. It was during this campaign, at the Battle of León in June, 1915, that Obregón was wounded and lost his right arm. He became not only the revolution’s most successful general but also something of a martyr.

After recovering from his wound, Obregón continued his campaign against Villa. He was made secretary of war by Carranza in March of 1916 to facilitate the campaign. Nevertheless, a rift was growing between the first chief of the revolution and his best general. By 1916, Obregón’s military successes, his reputation as a peacemaker and negotiator among the revolutionaries, his position in the government, and his personal charisma had given him a powerful position. Carranza began to see Obregón as a potential rival and to fear his growing power. For his part, Obregón was increasingly critical of his chief’s lack of social conscience. Yet, each needed the other, and this postponed an open break between them until 1917.

Obregón used his position as secretary of war to begin the reorganization and professionalization by which he planned to eliminate the military from politics. He took an active, though indirect, interest in the constitutional convention that met in Querétaro from December, 1916, to January, 1917. Although not a delegate and frequently absent on military business, Obregón associated himself at the convention with the radicals, who were responsible for the inclusion of innovative articles in the constitution regarding the Church, labor, and landownership. Obregón emerged from the convention with a reputation as a champion of radical causes.

Having waited until the ratification of the new constitution and Carranza’s election as president under it, in May, 1917, Obregón resigned from the cabinet and returned to private life. He and his second wife, María Tapia, whom he had married in 1916, returned to La Quinta Chilla. There, Obregón pursued numerous economic activities. He grew chickpeas, founded a cooperative agricultural society for chickpea growers, acquired additional land, raised cattle, and opened an import-export firm. He grew wealthy from his business interests and began to age rapidly, growing fat and gray by the age of forty.

By 1919, Obregón was preparing himself to run for the presidency. He had not directly challenged Carranza, preferring to bide his time until the 1920 election. President Carranza, however, attempted to block Obregón’s ambitions, believing that his former subordinate lacked both an understanding of national problems and a program for dealing with them. Obregón increasingly saw Carranza as an obstructionist and reactionary who lacked commitment to the revolutionary principles embodied in the constitution. The showdown began when Obregón announced his candidacy in June, 1919. Carranza realized that Obregón, an energetic and effective campaigner, was the popular candidate and would win unless he could be eliminated from the race. Therefore, in April, 1920, Carranza pushed Obregón and his supporters into armed rebellion, hoping to eliminate the threat once and for all. Within a month, however, Carranza was dead, and the rebels triumphed. This paved the way for Obregón’s landslide election to the presidency.

Obregón was inaugurated president of Mexico on December 1, 1920, inheriting a nation in chaos. While committed to implementing the provisions of the 1917 constitution, he was at heart a pragmatist. His main objective as president was the pacification of Mexico after ten bloody years of civil war. To achieve this, he needed to strengthen the central government, eliminate the military from politics, and begin the economic and social regeneration of Mexico. Strengthening and legitimizing the regime was of paramount importance if the revolution was to endure. To do this, Obregón had to compromise the constitution’s nationalist principles regarding foreign investors and make an accommodation with the United States. The Bucareli Agreements of 1923 granted concessions to American companies and investors but obtained American recognition. This was an important deterrent to the success of future rebellions against the regime, because American arms and support would be withheld from the rebels. He began the forced professionalization of the army, making limited but significant gains in depoliticizing its leadership. To check the power of the military, he built new bases of regime support among urban labor and the rural peasantry by beginning the implementation of the labor and agrarian reforms outlined in the constitution. Obregón reduced military spending and increased the government’s commitment to education, hoping to build Mexico’s future on an educated citizenry. Obregón’s presidency paved the way for the more rapid and complete implementation of the constitution under his successors.

After defeating a major military rebellion in 1923, Obregón finished his full term of office the first Mexican president to do so since 1910 and handed power to his elected successor Plutarco Elías Calles. He then returned to farming. Helped by government loans, he further expanded his business interests. For a time he was content living in Sonora, enjoying his return to private life surrounded by his wife and children, but by 1926 he was spending increasing amounts of time in the capital. In October, 1926, the congress, after stormy debate, changed the constitution to pave the way for Obregón’s reelection as president. This triggered discontent among the military chieftains. After having dealt harshly and efficiently with them, Obregón ran unopposed in 1928. He did not, however, live to take office a second time. After surviving a series of assassination attempts in 1927 and 1928, President-elect Obregón met his death at a banquet in Mexico City in July, 1928. José de León Toral, a young Roman Catholic fanatic posing as a caricaturist, shot Obregón at point-blank range as he sat at the head table. In keeping with his wishes, Obregón was buried in his home state of Sonora.

Significance

Álvaro Obregón’s career represented both the good and bad aspects of the Mexican Revolution. He was a member of the new elite, which came to power as a result of the revolutionary struggle. A moderately successful farmer before the revolution, he considered himself a citizen-soldier compelled to arms to champion the interests of the Mexican people. He risked his life to topple the entrenched interests that had perpetuated a life of misery for so many of his countrymen. He supported the writing of a constitution that would build a new, more equitable Mexico from the ashes of the old regime. As president, he worked to institutionalize the revolutionary regime and to build the mechanism needed to create that new nation. He is justly considered one of the great heroes of the revolution.

He was, however, a flawed hero. Obregón also used the revolution for self-aggrandizement. The upheaval created opportunities for him to feed his driving ambition for power and influence. He used his success as a military leader to become the most powerful man in Mexico, despite the fact that he considered the military in politics to be the major threat to the stabilization of the country. He ruthlessly eliminated his rivals for power if they did not step aside. He forced the amending of one of the most cherished provisions of the revolutionary constitution prohibiting the reelection of presidents to prevent dictatorships because it stood in the way of his personal ambition. In the end, he met the fate of most revolutionary generals who survived the Revolution, death by assassination in the political struggles that followed.

Bibliography

Bailey, David C. “Obregón: Mexico’s Accommodating President.” In Essays on the Mexican Revolution, edited by George Wolfskill and Douglas W. Richmond. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. A short piece focusing on Obregón’s contributions as president of Mexico. Bailey believes that Obregón’s willingness to compromise made possible the institutionalization of revolutionary goals.

Dillon, E. J. President Obregón: A World Reformer. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1923. An idealized and uncritical study of Obregón by a journalist who traveled with his retinue. Dillon presents Obregón as a statesman who, among others, holds out hope for the future of Western civilization.

Dulles, John W. F. Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919-1936. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961. Dulles uses interviews with survivors, published memoirs, and newspaper accounts to construct a narrative of the rise and fall of the three great Sonoran revolutionary leaders: Obregón, Huerta, and Calles. Valuable for its coverage of Obregón’s presidential years.

Gonzales, Michael J. The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2002. This history of the revolution includes information about the triumphs and failures of Obregón and other revolutionary leaders.

Hall, Linda. “Alvaro Obregón and the Agrarian Movement 1912-20.” In Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution, edited by David Brading. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. An article focusing on Obregón’s relations with the peasantry. Hall sees Obregón not as a typical caudillo but as a leader with broader based support.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Alvaro Obregón: Power and Revolution in Mexico, 1911-1920. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1981. Extensively researched and well balanced, this is the best work in English on Obregón. Hall covers Obregón’s rise to presidential power through military success and political infighting. Unfortunately, Hall does not extend the work to Obregón’s presidency.

Hansis, Randall. “The Political Strategy of Military Reform: Alvaro Obregón and Revolutionary Mexico 1920-1924.” The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History (October, 1979): 197-233. Highlights Obregón’s program of military reform during his presidency.

Lieuwen, Edwin. Mexican Militarism: The Political Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Army, 1910-1940. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968. This work describes how the revolutionary army of Mexico seized power, the role it played in social reform, and how it was gradually forced to surrender its power to civilian politicians. Obregón as president was a key figure in professionalizing and depoliticizing the army, although the task would be completed by his successors.

Ruiz, Ramón Eduardo. The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905-1924. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Contains a chapter devoted to Obregón. Ruiz sees him not as a revolutionary nor even much of a reformer, despite his political reputation. Instead, he finds Obregón’s political philosophy (as reflected in his actions) to be more in keeping with nineteenth century liberal notions about individualism and capitalism.