Discover

'Plutarco Elías Calles' (September 25, 1877 – October 19, 1945) was a Mexican general and politician. He was president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928. Calles founded the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Party, or PNR) – it eventually became Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) –, which governed Mexico for more than 70 years

Contents

Early Years

Presidency

U.S.-Mexico Relations During Calles' Presidency

Cristero War

Maximato and Exile

Legacy and Controversy

References

Further reading

Early Years

He was born as Plutarco Elías Campuzano in 1877 in Guaymas, Sonora. His father being an alcoholic and his parents unmarried, Calles grew up in poverty and deprivation. He took the last name of Calles from the uncle who raised him after the death of his mother, Maria de Jesús Campuzano. Calles worked many different jobs from a bartender to a schoolteacher. Calles had a keen sense of political opportunity. He was a supporter of Francisco I. Madero, under whom he became a police commissioner, and his ability to align himself with the political winners of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) allowed him to quickly move up the ranks, attaining the rank of general in 1915. He led the Constitutional Army in his home state Sonora, and managed to repel the conventionalists of José María Maytorena and Pancho Villa in the Battle of Agua Prieta in 1915. He was rumored to be a high ranking Freemason and was said to have received a Masonic medal of merit for oppressing Catholicism in Mexico, although his personal papers contain no information regarding this issue.
In 1915, Calles became governor of Sonora and became known as one of the most reformist politicians of his generation. His radical phraseology tended to conceal the pragmatic essence of his policy, which was to promote the rapid growth of Mexican national capitalism, whose infrastructure he helped to establish. In particular, he attempted to make Sonora a dry state, he promoted legislation giving social security and collective bargaining to workers, and he expelled all Catholic priests from Sonora. In 1919, Venustiano Carranza promoted Calles to Secretary of Commerce, Industry and Labor. In 1920 Calles aligned himself with Álvaro Obregón to overthrow Carranza, and Obregon named him head of the interior ministry. Calles used his ability to draw in labor class votes to come to power with Obregon. He aligned himself with the Laborist Party and was in 1924 elected president, defeating the agrarianist candidate Ángel Flores and the eccentric perennial candidate Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda.

Presidency

Calles' presidency was supported by labor and campesino unions. The Laborist party which supported his government in reality functioned as the political-electoral branch of the powerful Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers (CROM), led by Luis Napoleón Morones. Shortly before his inauguration he had travelled to Europe to study social democracy and the labor movement, and he tried to implement the things he had learnt there in Mexico. Calles supported land reforms and promoted the ejido as a way to emancipate campesinos but nonetheless no large tracts of land were redistributed under his presdidency. Calles founded several banks in support of campesinos as well as the Banco de México, Mexico's national bank. Calles secretary of hacienda Alberto J. Pani managed to achieve debt relief of a part of Mexico's foreign debt. After a conflict with Calles, Pani resigned in 1927.
Calles changed Mexico's civil code, giving illegitimate children the same rights as legitimate, partly as a reaction against the problems he himself often had encountered being a child of unmarried parents. According to (false) rumours, his parents had been Syrians or Turks, giving him the nickname ''El Turco'' (The Turk). In order not to draw too much attention to his bad childhood, Calles chose to ignore those rumours rather than to combat them.

U.S.-Mexico Relations During Calles' Presidency

One of the major points of contention with the U.S. was oil. Calles quickly rejected the Bucareli Agreements of 1923 between the U.S. and Mexico, when Alvaro Obregón was president, and began drafting a new oil law that would strictly enforce article 27 of the Mexican constitution. The oil problem stemmed from article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which restated a law from Spanish origin which makes everything under the soil property of the state. The language of article 27 threatened the oil possession of U.S. and European oil companies, especially if the article was applied retroactively. A Mexican Supreme Court decision had ruled that foreign-owned fields could not be seized as long as they were already in operation before the constitution went into effect. The Bucareli Agreements stated that Mexico would agree to respect the Mexican Supreme Court decision in exchange for official recognition from Washington of the presidency of Alvaro Obregón.^[1]
The reaction of the U.S. government to Calles intention to enforce article 27 was swift. The American ambassador to Mexico, Ambassador Sheffield branded Calles a communist, and Secretary of State Kellog issued a threat against Mexico on June 12, 1925. ^[2] Calles himself never considered himself a communist but considered revolution a way of governing rather than an ideological position. Public opinion in the United States turned particularly anti-Mexican when the first embassy of the Soviet Union in any country was opened in Mexico, on which occasion the Soviet ambassador remarked that "no other two countries show more similarities than the Soviet Union and Mexico", after this, the anti-Calles press in the United States started to call Mexico 'Soviet Mexico'.
The debate on the new oil law happened during 1925, with U.S. interests opposing all initiatives. By 1926, the new law was enacted. In January of 1927 the Mexican government canceled the permits of oil companies that wouldn't comply with the law. Talks of war circulated by the U.S. president and in the editorial pages of the New York Times. Mexico avoided a war through a series of diplomatic maneuvers. Soon after, a direct telephone link was established between Calles and American president Coolidge, and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico Sheffield was replaced with Dwight Morrow. Dwight Morrow successfully won the Calles government over to the US position, and helped negotiate an agreement between the government and the oil companies.^[3]
Another source of conflict with the United States was Mexico's support for the liberals in the civil war in Nicaragua, while the United States supported the conservatives. This conflict ended when both countries signed a treaty in which they allowed each other to support the side they considered to be the most democratic.

Cristero War

On June 14, 1926, president Calles enacted an anticlerical legislation known formally as "The Law Reforming the Penal Code" and unofficially as the Calles Law. The Calles Law included provisions fining those wearing church decorations up to 500 pesos and up to 5 years in prison for questioning the law. Calles also strictly enforced anti-clerical provisions of the constitution, which had previously gone unenforced. His actions, which have been characterized as anti-Catholic, included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to vote. Many Catholics considered the anticlerical law intolerable. The Catholic antipathy towards Calles enhanced because of his vocal atheism^[4]. Due to these strict laws people in strongly Catholic areas, found primarily in west central Mexico, especially the states of Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacán, began to oppose him, and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929, which was characterized by brutal atrocities committed by both sides. While some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics, including blowing a passenger train and killing teachers supporting the government, the Mexican government persecuted Catholics, especially priests, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters, and also retaliating against innocent Catholics and clergy.

Maximato and Exile

Under Calles a constitutional change was passed that allowed for a non-consecutive reelection, and in 1928 Obregón was elected as Calles successor. However, Obregón was murdered by José de León Toral, a catholic extremist, before he could assume power. To avoid a political vacuum, Calles named himself ''Jefe Máximo'', the political chieftain of Mexico and Emilio Portes Gil was appointed temporary president, although in reality he was little more than a puppet of Calles. The following year, he founded the PNR, or Partido Nacional Revolucionario, the predecessor of today Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).
The period between 1928 and 1935, in which Calles was Jefe Máximo, is called the Maximato in Mexican history, with many regarding Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo Rodríguez as his puppets. Officially, after 1929, he served as minister of war, as he continued to suppress the rebellion of the Cristero War, but a few months later after intervention of the United States ambassador Dwight Morrow the Mexican government and the cristeros signed a peace treaty. During the Maximato Calles became increasingly authoritiarian and moved to the right. After a large demonstration in 1930 the Mexican Communist Party was banned, Mexico stopped its support for the rebels of César Sandino in Nicaragua, strikes were no longer tolerated, and the government ceased redistributing lands amongst poorer peasants. Calles, who once had been the candidate of the workers and at one point had used Communist unions in his campaign against competing labor organisers but later, having acquired wealth and engaging in finance, suppressed Communism.^[5]
In 1934, Calles selected his old wartime subordinate Lázaro Cárdenas as presidential candidate, on the false assumption he could control Cárdenas as he had controlled his predecessors. Soon after his inauration however, conflicts between Calles and Cárdenas started to arise. Calles was vehemently opposed to Cárdenas support for labor unions and especially his tolerance and even support for strikes, while Cárdenas opposed Calles' violent methods and his closeness to fascist organziations, most notably the Gold Shirts of general Nicolás Rodríguez Carrasco, which harassed communists, Jews and Chinese.^[6] Cárdenas started to isolate Calles politically, removing the callistas from political posts and exiling his most powerful allies: Tomás Garrido Canabal, Fausto Topete, Emilio Portes Gil, Saturnino Cedillo, Aarón Sáenz and finally Calles himself. Calles and Luis Napoleon Morones, one of the last remaining influential callistas, were charged with conspiring to blow up a rairoad and placed under arrest under the order of President Cárdenas and deported on April 9, 1936 to the United States. At the time of his arrest, he was reading a Spanish translation of ''Mein Kampf'', which he had reportedly read with admiration.^{[7] [8]}
In exile the United States Calles was into contact with various American fascists, although he rejected their antisemitic and anti-Mexican sentiments, and also befriended José Vasconcelos, a Mexican philopher who had previously been a political enemy. Calles was allowed to return to Mexico under the reconciliation policy of Cárdenas' successor Manuel Ávila Camacho in 1941. He spent his last years quietly in Mexico City and Cuernavaca. Back in Mexico Calles' political position become more moderate; in 1942 he supported Mexico's declaration of war upon the axis powers and he no longer held strongly antireligious opinions. In his last years he became interested in Spiritualism^[9].) and a few months before his death in October 1945 Calles told he "most certainly believed" in a higher power. ^[7]

Legacy and Controversy

Calles' legacy remains controversial today. He is honored with statues in Sonoyta, Hermosillo, and Guaymas in Sonora, and the official name of the municipality of Sonoyta is named General Plutarco Elías Calles in his honor. The PNR, the party he had founded, would (renamed Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)) continued to rule the country until 2000.
The Mexican conservative view of Calles is he was anti-clerical and anti-Catholic, a man who brought to Mexico the Cristero War. The Mexican left criticizes the amount of power that he accumulated and his key role in creating the single-party state.

References

1. Kirkwood, Burton. The history of Mexico. Greenwood Press, Westport, 2000. pages 157-158
2. Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, 1997. Pages 417
3. Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, 1997. Pages 417-419
4. Shirk, David A. ''Mexico's New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change'' p.58 (L. Rienner Publishers 2005)
5. Calles, Plutarco Elias The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05.
6. Meyer, Michael C. and William L. Sherman ''The Course of Mexican History'' (5th E. Oxford Univ. Press 1995)
7. Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, 1997. Page 436
8. Larralde, Carlos "Roberto Galvan: A Latino Leader of the 1940s". ''The Journal of San Diego History'' 52.3/4 (Summer/Fall 2006) p. 160.
9. Larralde, Carlos "Roberto Galvan: A Latino Leader of the 1940s". ''The Journal of San Diego History'' 52.3/4 (Summer/Fall 2006): 160.
10. Krauze, Enrique. Mexico: Biography of Power. A History of Modern Mexico, 1810-1996. HarperCollins Publishers Inc. New York, 1997. Page 436

Further reading

★ Jurgen Buchenau, Plutarco Elias Calles and the Mexican Revolution (Denver: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

★ ''Mexico Before the World'' by Plutarco Elías Calles at archive.org