Francisco Madero

Biography

Francisco Ignacio Madero González was born on October 30, 1873, in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, into one of the wealthiest families in Mexico. The Madero clan owned haciendas, mines, textile factories, and vineyards — his grandfather had been a state governor. Francisco was educated in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV and at the University of California, Berkeley, returning to Mexico imbued with liberal and democratic ideals. He was, in many ways, the most unlikely revolutionary: a wealthy idealist who genuinely believed that replacing Díaz with free elections would solve Mexico's problems. Madero's 1908 book 'La Sucesión Presidencial en 1910' (The Presidential Succession of 1910) called for democratic reform, not social revolution. He believed Mexico's problems were political — the absence of democracy — rather than structural, and he had little grasp of the land hunger and social misery that would fuel the revolution once it began. When Díaz broke his promise to allow free elections and had Madero jailed, Madero escaped to the United States and issued the Plan de San Luis Potosí on October 5, 1910, calling for a national uprising on November 20th. The revolution exceeded anything Madero had imagined. Villa in the North and Zapata in the South were fighting a social war — for land, for dignity, for the destruction of the hacienda system — that went far beyond Madero's modest political agenda. When Díaz fled and Madero became president in November 1911, he found himself caught between the radical peasant armies who had brought him to power and the conservative establishment that retained control of the government and army. He failed to satisfy either side: he refused to implement serious land reform (Zapata issued his Plan de Ayala denouncing Madero in 1911), but also refused to destroy the old Díaz army that would eventually kill him. The end came in February 1913 during the Decena Trágica — the Ten Tragic Days — when General Victoriano Huerta, whom Madero trusted, staged a coup with the connivance of U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. Madero was arrested, forced to resign, and on February 22, 1913, he and his Vice President José María Pino Suárez were shot 'while attempting to escape' — the ley fuga used against the man who had fought to end such killings. He was 39 years old. His murder shocked the nation and united the anti-Huerta factions in a way that nothing else could have.

Key Battles