Ten years of revolution that cost about a million lives, a Constitution written in the middle of the war, the Cristero War, a single party born of a murder, and Cárdenas, who handed out the land and nationalized the oil. This room gathers what our 32 state histories hold for the era, 55 dated events and 16 places.
Interactive maptap or click a state to open its page
0 dated events
1 dated event
2 dated events
3 or more dated events
City
Port
Mine
Railway
Battlefield
Hacienda
Oil field
Click a state to open its history; hover a dot for its name and date.Tap a state to open its history.
20 Nov 1910The date Francisco I. Madero's Plan of San Luis sets for a revolt against Porfirio Díaz. 1
21 May 1911The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez: Díaz resigns that month and goes into exile. 1
Nov 1911Madero is sworn in as president; the same month Emiliano Zapata issues the Plan of Ayala, rising against him for the land the villages had lost. 1
Feb 1913The Ten Tragic Days: generals of the old regime rise in Mexico City, Madero's own commander, Victoriano Huerta, turns on him, and Madero and his vice-president are murdered; Huerta rules until July 1914. 13
Apr 1914USA marines and sailors seize Veracruz; 193 Mexican soldiers and 19 Americans die, with civilians uncounted. 1
Oct 1914The winners meet at the Convention of Aguascalientes and fail to agree: Villa and Zapata on one side, Carranza and Obregón on the other. 1
6 to 15 Apr 1915At Celaya, Obregón's trenches and machine guns break Villa's cavalry charges. 1
9 Mar 1916Villa's men raid Columbus, New Mexico: 18 Americans and about 80 Villistas die. General Pershing leads some 5,000 USA troops into Mexico for nearly a year and does not catch him. 41
5 Feb 1917The Constitution is approved at Querétaro: secular public schooling (Article 3), land reform and the nation's ownership of the subsoil, oil included (Article 27), and the eight-hour day and the right to strike (Article 123). 2
10 Apr 1919Zapata is ambushed and killed by agents of President Carranza. 1
21 May 1920Carranza, fleeing the capital, is killed as he sleeps at Tlaxcalantongo, Puebla; Álvaro Obregón is elected president that year. 31
20 Jul 1923Villa is shot dead in an ambush in Parral, Chihuahua. 4
3 Aug 1926The Cristero War begins, days after the Calles Law on religion takes effect; it ends with the agreements of 21 June 1929. 6
Jul 1928President-elect Obregón is assassinated, and the crisis that follows leads to a single official party. 7
4 Mar 1929Plutarco Elías Calles founds the National Revolutionary Party (PNR); under its later names it holds the presidency until 2000. 7
1 Dec 1934Lázaro Cárdenas is sworn in as president; in 1935 he breaks with Calles, and in April 1936 he has him deported to the USA. 810
1934 to 1940Cárdenas hands some 18 million hectares (180,000 km²) of hacienda land to peasants, more than five times what Calles distributed. 89
18 Mar 1938Cárdenas nationalizes the oil; Pemex, the state oil company, is created the same year. 8
30 Mar 1938The official party is remade as the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM), built on four sectors: peasants, workers, the army and the popular sector. 87
1939Mexico takes in some 20,000 to 40,000 Spanish Republican refugees. 8
The story
What happened, and what is still argued
How much land did the Revolution hand out?Land distributed to villages and peasants, by presidency, millions of hectares
Álvaro Obregón, 1920 to 19241.7 million ha
Plutarco Elías Calles, 1924 to 19283.2 million ha
Lázaro Cárdenas, 1934 to 1940about 18 million ha
Cárdenas: more than five times what Calles distributed. No figure for 1928 to 1934 in our sources, so those years are left out, not guessed.
Tampico Cathedral Tampico was the Gulf port that shipped the oil of the 1910s and 1920s, when the wells were in foreign hands; the 1938 expropriation made them the nation's. Photo: Jesus Eduardo Arteaga Flores, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From one man's fall to ten years of war
Díaz fell fast: Madero called for revolt in November 1910 and Díaz was gone by May 1911. Ending the war took a decade. Zapata broke with Madero within weeks over land; in February 1913 Madero's own commander, Huerta, turned on him and Madero was murdered; Carranza, Villa, Zapata and Obregón united against Huerta and then fought one another after 1914.
Wikipedia puts the toll at around one million dead, mostly non-combatants. The USA took Veracruz in 1914 and chased Villa through Chihuahua in 1916 without catching him.
Women marched with every army, as camp followers, as soldiers and as officers. When one federal general crossed into the USA, 1,256 women and 554 children were interned at Fort Bliss beside 3,357 officers and men.
Petra Herrera fought for Villa disguised as a man named Pedro, left when she was denied credit for the siege of Torreón, and formed her own unit of women. Amelio Robles Ávila was a Zapatista colonel from 1913 to 1918 and lived as a man.
Written at Querétaro while the war went on, the Constitution answered the men who had fought: secular public schools in Article 3, land for the villages and the nation's ownership of everything under the ground in Article 27, and the eight-hour day and the right to strike in Article 123.
Article 27 is the one that would matter most to the economy. It made the oil Mexico's, which is how a president could expropriate it twenty-one years later.
When Calles enforced the religious articles in 1926, Catholics in the centre-west took up arms. The Cristero War lasted until June 1929 and cost about 90,000 lives; by some estimates as much as 5% of the population went north to the USA.
In July 1928 Obregón, just elected again, was murdered. Calles's answer was a party: the PNR of March 1929, which gathered the revolution's factions into one machine and, as the PRM and then the PRI, kept the presidency for 71 years.
Cárdenas broke with Calles in 1935, had him deported in April 1936, and did what the Constitution had promised. He broke up large commercial haciendas and handed some 18 million hectares to peasants, mostly as ejidos, more than five times what Calles had distributed.
On 18 March 1938 he nationalized the oil held by foreign companies and created Pemex; on 30 March the party became the PRM, built on four sectors. He also opened Mexico to some 20,000 to 40,000 refugees from the Spanish Republic. He handed over power in December 1940.
All 55 dated events of the era in our 32 state histories
Where and when did it happen?One of the 32 records no dated event in this era. One dot per dated event, one row per state, coloured by corridor; hover a dot to read it
Slide the chart to see all of it →
The Texas-Facing NorthThe Pacific BorderThe Bajío and Center-NorthThe CenterThe WestThe Gulf and the IsthmusThe PeninsulaThe Deep South: Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas
The full list, oldest first. Each state name opens its history, where the event carries its source.
See all 55 events
1910DurangoOn 19 Nov Gómez Palacio sees the state's first revolutionary rising.
1910PueblaThe attack on the Serdán house on 18 Nov opens the Revolution in Puebla.
1910San Luis PotosíMadero dates the Plan of San Luis on 5 Oct and calls for the rising of 20 Nov.
1910SinaloaGabriel Leyva Solano rises for Madero on 2 Jun and is killed on 13 Jun.
1910TlaxcalaAnti-reelectionists led by Juan Cuamatzi plan a rising for 26 May.
1911Baja CaliforniaMagonista rebels hold Mexicali and Tijuana before federal troops return.
1911ChihuahuaOrozco and Villa take Ciudad Juárez; the treaty of 21 May ends Díaz's rule.
1911MorelosZapata proclaims the Plan de Ayala on 28 Nov.
1913CoahuilaVenustiano Carranza proclaims the Plan de Guadalupe on 26 Mar.
The Revolution's toll: around one million deaths, mostly non-combatants, in Wikipedia's summary; it is an estimate, not a count. 1
The Cristero War's dead: about 90,000 in the article's text (56,882 federal soldiers and 30,000 Cristeros, plus civilians); the summary box gives 30,000 to 50,000 Cristeros. 6
Cárdenas's land: given as 45 million acres in one article and 180,000 km² in another (both about 18 million hectares). No figure is given for the presidencies of 1928 to 1934, so the chart leaves them out rather than guess. 98
Calles's exile: the Cárdenas article says 1935, the year of the break; Calles was deported in April 1936. 810
The 1917 Constitution: approved on 5 February 1917 at Querétaro; the Revolution article says only February. 21
Madero's death: the article says he and his vice-president were killed days after the February 1913 coup, without giving the day. 1
