Plutarco Elías Calles

(1877 – 1945)

Plutarco Elias Calles was born in the coastal city of Guaymas in the state of Sonora, Mexico in 1877. He was a supporter of President Francisco I. Madero, and later of President Venustiano Carranza‘s Constitutionalist government (defending it against Francisco Villa, among others). Calles was involved in numerous military campaigns throughout the revolution. He is best known as President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928, and the de facto ruler behind the three puppet presidents who followed him in a period known as the Maximato (1928 to 1934). His reign of power ended with the presidency of Lazaro Cárdenas, who had him exiled from Mexico.

1915 was a very important year for the general and a turning point for the Mexican revolution. In that year, he lead the federal troops of Carranza’s government against the “Conventionalist” Francisco Villa (so-called because he was called to power as a result of the Convention of Aguas Calientes the year before). He followed up Álvaro Obregón’s major defeat of Villa at Celaya, with an additional, brutal defeat for Villa at Agua Prieta. Using trench warfare and other techniques developed in World War I, Calles handily defeated Villa’s 19th century-style cavalry attacks. In addition, it has been strongly suggested that the United States helped Calles defeat Villa both by providing access through U.S. territory, so that Calles’ men could surprise Villa from behind, and by providing power for massive searchlights. This was the first time searchlights were used in Mexican military warfare – so that Calles’ troops could successfully fight Villa at night. The one-two punch of Celaya and Agua Prieta marked the beginning of Villa’s downfall as a revolutionary general.

That same year, Calles became Governor of Sonora, one of the northern states of Mexico. His era of governorship was known for several themes: One was his strong efforts to reform the educational system of the state, to make schools more accessible, including in rural areas where illiteracy was high. Another was his support of labor: He helped to create labor reform and provide a form of social security to the workers of his state. But Calles was also known for his violent discrimination against the Catholic Church. These three priorities – pro-education, pro-labor, and anti-religion – would hold over into his policies as Mexican President a decade later.

In 1919, after Carranza had officially been inaugurated President and had helped to birth the new Constitution, he named Calles Secretary of Commerce, Labor and Industry. But in 1920, Calles, in league with Carranza’s other top general, Álvaro Obregón, engineered the assassination of Carranza, so that first Obregón, and then Calles, could come to power.

When Alvaro Obregón became president in 1920, a new era in the revolutionary period began. Although there were various uprisings and threats, the new president turned his attention to rebuilding the country. Part of this was to play to Calles’s strengths – and so the new President appointed Calles Minister of the Interior.

In 1924, Plutarco Elías Calles succeeded Obregón as President of Mexico. He instituted many of the priorities he had put into practice as Governor of Sonora. He strengthened the schools and helped the campaign to lower the illiteracy rate in the country; he also created laws that encouraged unprecedented restrictions on the Church. He had the support of labor unions, especially the largest one, the CROM (Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers). But with the help of its charismatic leader, Luis Napoleon Morones, Calles soon turned the CROM into an organ of support for the government. Although Calles also announced major land reform (in keeping with the tenets of the 1916 Constitution), he effected little actual change — just enough to keep the peasantry in line. The main reform he provided for the workers was to establish banking policies that allowed campesinos (the people who worked the and) to borrow money.

During Calles’ presidency, his anti-Catholic policies (including banning the mass in public places, eliminating the right to vote for the clergy, and barring the Church from owning land) helped spark the so-called Cristero Revolt, a civil war between catholic rebels and the federal government; one of the bloodiest chapters of the 1920s.

In 1928, Obregón was re-elected President by a landslide, but before he could take office, he was shot and killed at a banquet in his honor by a man posing as a caricaturist, making the rounds of the tables at the banquet. Calles was quick to denounce the assassin as a Cristero terrorist, but in fact, Calles may have been a conspirator in the murder.

Wanting to retain power, but being prohibited from a second consecutive term by the Constitution, Calles used his military connections to put forward three presidents who would do his bidding. For six years, between 1928 and 1934, Mexico was ruled by three successive presidents, Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo Rodríguez, who were simply front-men for Calles. In each case, Calles had them removed when their actions displeased him. Since Calles referred to himself as the Jefe Maximo, this period of puppet presidents became known as the Maximato.

In 1934, Calles supported a man for president whom he thought would be the fourth puppet to follow his orders. Lazaro Cárdenas was a general who had served in the revolution. Cárdenas was elected by a landslide, but quickly showed that he was a true reformer. One of Cárdenas’ first acts as president was to have Calles exiled, when he found out that the Jefe Maximo was plotting to overthrow him. On April 9, 1936, a military officer barged into Calles’s bedroom in the middle of the night (Calles was reading Adolf Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf in Spanish translation at the time). He was arrested, driven to an airport, and flown to San Antonio, Texas. His reign of power in Mexico abruptly came to an end.

jorge almada

In 1936 it would make sense that people in politics would read Mien Kampf
in order to understand what was going on in Europe. It seems you are inferring something by including this comment that may or may not be true. I think perhaps it is difficult to grasp the need for a “strong man” after the Revolution in order to bring an end to the war and to establish institutions to replace the “Caudillos”. Mexico’s social failings are extremely complex and Calles is a little understood figure even in Mexico.
Marco Luis Teller

I fully agree with Jorge Almada. Just the reading of the book does not make him a Hitlerite. It is obvious he was obsessed with power and was taking a good look at another tyrants thesis of power. It is and has been a darkened era in Mexican history. As a student forty years ago I became interested in this period and unable find much of any thing about Calles as to early life and family background. There is very little about him and deep hatred of the Church and religion in general. Would like reading recommendations in either Spanish or English.
Jimdoyle

calles was as bad as hitler.
Anonymous

PBS is keeping the truth from you. Calles was a mass murderer of Mexican Catholics. When soldiers sent by President Plutarco Calles tortured 14-year-old
Jose Sanchez Del Rio and demanded that he deny his faith, he looked them
eye and said: “Viva Cristo Rey.” (Long Live Christ the King.)

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/andy-garcia-movie-about-freedom-hollywood-would-not-make

Online Exhibit of Cristeros:

http://www.storialibera.it/epoca_contemporanea/messico_1926-1929/mostra_online_cristeros_en.php
Patricia

I am Elias from my mother’s side of the family and the narrative (you know how family stories go) I will share with you may shed some light on this complex man. Elias Calles was born to a well to do man, Elias, who never married Elias Calles’es mother because of her lower social caste. She was made to give him up and, fortunately, he was adopted by the Calles family. He loved his adopted family and as a tribute to them kept the Calles name.

We believe he was Jewish, and may have suffered because of that early in his life in Mexico. At one point when he assumed power he visited Europe and invited many unwanted Jews to come to Mexico. Stalin assumed that Elias Calles would side with him, but Elias Calles did not. And, frankly, there is nothing that supports the notion that he was a Nazi sympathizer.

We believe that he sought to separate church and state in Mexico. Of course, how he went about it is tragic. Power corrupts and certainly this was true for him.

My grandmother Elias was his niece; her father and Elias Calles had the same father. My grandmother seldom spoke of her connection to Elias Calles.The Elias clan kept their religious ways private as their survival depended on that. They could and still can be found in Sonora and Chihuahua, Mexico and in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

My grandmother did not raise my mother and her sisters’ and brothers’ in the Jewish faith, but gave them Old Testiment names like Abner, Eliazer, Deborah, etc. She also kept a kosher diet, and, like Elias Calles, greatly distrusted the Catholic Church.
Timemoves

One must always watch for the potentially deceitful version of history. The scared and selfish man makes it his own. This description of Calles is bland at best if even a portion of the atrocities of Mexico in the 20′a are coming from his mind. PBS, don’t be so quick to paint a lifeless portrait of a dictator when the story is far deeper than a half-worked research team can sift together.
Timemoves

Thank you for sharing your family history. I used the word dictator to describe Ellas. It is just incredibly difficult to justify civil brutality by using any other language. I appreciate that you shared your history with us and glad to see Mexico overcome some of the challenges it faced, as did the rest of the world face similar challenges, and in many ways still does. God speed.
Timemoves

Sorry – meant Calles (spelling)
Blueguyconn

now i now why, EL PRI. the political party that ruled mexico for 71 consecutive years was doing the same thing,the president while in power appointed the next president to be.
Blueguyconn

correction. “now i know”(why….
Penny

I’m glad my family left Mexico. I saw the movie and it was amazing.
http://twitter.com/mrlosik Andy Losik

Roberto Elias was a dear, dear friend of ours as is his wife Lily. They are more like family. Robert would tell us stories about how he and his father took his grandfather REC to San Diego where he lived out his years in exile. Despite what the grandfather may have done in power, the Elias family members that we know from Southern AZ and Mexico are hard working, proud, and charitable people. Roberto managed the Flying R Ranch near Benson, AZ for 38 and was a far greater representation of the great American (and Mexican) cowboy than John Wayne or Clint Eastwood could have been. His stories of growing up Elias in the 20′s and 30′s could have filled books and movies for years. We have a little piece of that legend in the fact that our horse bares the Elias brand and came from the family ranch in Sonora…and that is what we named him…Sonora.

Plutarco Elías Calles

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