Victoriano Huerta

Biography

José Victoriano Huerta Márquez was born on March 22, 1850, in Colotlán, Jalisco, of Huichol indigenous descent. He rose through the Mexican Army on merit — a capable officer who had suppressed both Yaqui resistance in Sonora and the Zapatista rebellion in Morelos with systematic brutality. Díaz's professional army officer class, he was despised by the revolutionary factions but respected by the conservative establishment and the foreign business interests that profited from the Porfiriato. Huerta was appointed by President Madero to command the federal forces against the rebel generals who launched the Decena Trágica uprising in Mexico City in February 1913. Instead, with the connivance of American Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson — who was anxious to protect American business interests that he feared Madero threatened — Huerta negotiated the Pact of the Embassy with the rebels and turned on Madero. Madero was arrested, forced to resign, and then murdered. Huerta assumed the presidency on February 18, 1913, having overthrown and arranged the murder of the man who had appointed him to save the government. Huerta's seventeen months in power were brutal and chaotic. He ruled by terror, assassinating political opponents including Senator Belisario Domínguez, who had publicly denounced him in the legislature. He dissolved Congress and had its members arrested. He conscripted men off the streets to fill his army. But the murder of Madero had united all the revolutionary factions against him: Carranza in the North with his Constitutionalist Army, Villa's División del Norte, Zapata in the South, and Obregón's forces in Sonora all took up arms simultaneously. Even the United States, under the new President Woodrow Wilson (who personally despised Huerta), turned against him, occupying Veracruz in April 1914. With his armies beaten on every front and his supply lines cut, Huerta resigned on July 15, 1914, and fled to Europe. He later attempted to return to Mexico via the United States, was arrested by American authorities near El Paso in 1915 on charges of violating neutrality laws, and died in U.S. custody in Fort Bliss, Texas, on January 13, 1916. The cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver; he was 65.

Key Battles