The Mexican Revolution Vocabulary

Pancho Villa

A Mexican Revolutionary general commander of the División del Norte (Division of the North) in the Constitutionalist Army, he was a military-landowner (caudillo) of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.

Campesinos

A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or farmer, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees or services to a landlord.

Constitution of 1917

It was drafted in Santiago de Querétaro, in the State of Querétaro, by a constitutional convention, during the Mexican Revolution. It was approved by the Constitutional Congress on 5 February 1917. It is the successor to the Constitution of 1857, and earlier Mexican constitutions.

Porfiriato

Refers generally to the period from 1876 until his fall in 1911, but especially to the successive administrations from 1884 to 1911. It has come to symbolize the dominance of a single, strong figure, political order and stability, centralized authority, a period during which Mexico achieved considerable (but badly distributed) economic growth, and an era of serious social ills, ranging from child labor to peasant indebtedness and exploitation. The Porfiriato sums up those ills—social, economic, and political—that produced the 1910 Revolution.

Article 130 of the Constitution

States that church(es) and state are to remain separate.

Jefe Maximato

a Mexican general and politician. He was the powerful interior minister under President Álvaro Obregón, who chose Calles as his successor. The 1924 Calles presidential campaign was the first populist presidential campaign in the nation's history, as he called for land redistribution and promised equal justice, more education, additional labor rights, and democratic governance.[

Victoriano Huerta

a Mexican military officer and 35th President of Mexico. After a military career under President Porfirio Díaz, Huerta became a high-ranking officer under pro-democracy

PRI

a Mexican political party founded in 1929, that held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000, first as the National Revolutionary Party, then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution.

Pascual Orozco

a Mexican revolutionary leader who rose up with Francisco I. Madero late 1910 to depose Porfirio Díaz.

Fransisco Madero

a Mexican revolutionary, writer and statesman who served as the 33rd president of Mexico from 1911 until his assassination in 1913. He was an advocate for social justice and democracy.

Rurales

a Mexican term used to describe two different government forces. ... It was a counterweight to the Mexican Army, whose nineteenth-century generals often overthrew the president.

Cientificos

a circle of technocratic advisors to President of Mexico Porfirio Díaz. Steeped in the positivist "scientific politics", they functioned as part of his program of modernization at the start of the 20th century.

constitutionalist

a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law

Plan of Ayala

a document drafted by revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution. ... The Plan was first proclaimed on November 25, 1911 in the town of Ayala, Morelos, and was later amended on June 19, 1914.

Alvaro Obregon

a general in the Mexican Revolution, who became President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He supported Sonora's decision to follow Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza as leader of a revolution against the Huerta regime.

Emiliano Zapata

a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, the main leader of the peasant revolution in the state of Morelos, and the inspiration of the agrarian movement called Zapatismo.

RNR

a loose confederation of local political bosses and military strongmen grouped together with labor unions, peasant organizations, and regional political parties.

Aguascalientes convention

a major meeting that took place during the Mexican Revolution between the factions in the Mexican Revolution that had defeated Victoriano Huerta's Federal Army and forced his resignation and exile in July 1914.

Reformer

a person who makes changes to something in order to improve it.

Plan of Guadalupe

a political manifesto which was proclaimed on March 26, 1913 by Venustiano Carranza in response to the overthrow and execution of President Francisco I. Madero, which had occurred during the Ten Tragic Days of February 1913.

Dictator

a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained power by force.

La Decena Tragica

a series of events that took place in Mexico City between February 9 and February 19, 1913, during the Mexican Revolution. This led up to a coup d'état and the assassination of President Francisco I. Madero, and his Vice President, José María Pino Suárez.

Cristero War

a widespread struggle in many central-western Mexican states against the secularist, anti-Catholic and anti-clerical policies of the Mexican government.

Henry Lane Wilson

appointed as the United States Ambassador to Mexico in 1910. Wikipedia

Article 123 of the Constitution

designed to empower the labor sector

Revolutionary

engaged in or promoting political revolution.

Article 3 of the Constitution

established the basis for a free, mandatory, and secular education

Article 27 of the Constitution

laid the foundation for land reforms

Puebla

one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico

Venustiano Carranza

one of the main leaders of the Mexican Revolution, whose victorious northern revolutionary Constitutionalist Army defeated the counter-revolutionary regime of Victoriano

Treaty of Ciudad Juarez

peace treaty signed between the then President of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz, and the revolutionary Francisco Madero on May 21, 1911. The treaty put an end to the fighting between forces supporting Madero and those of Díaz and thus concluded the initial phase of the Mexican Revolution.

Haciendas

plantations, mines or factories.

Juarez

the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

Conventionalist

the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality.

Plan of San Luis Potosi

was a political document written by Francisco Madero which was published in the year of 1910. This document was triggered when Diaz stole the presidential election from Madero by getting him arrested and imprisoned.

Soldaderas

were women in the military who participated in the conflict of the Mexican Revolution, ranging from commanding officers to combatants to camp followers