Álvaro Obregón

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General Álvaro Obregón Salido (February 19, 1880 – July 17, 1928) was President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924.

Born in Navojoa, Sonora, to an Irish-Mexican ranching family. He entered politics in 1911 with his election as mayor of the town of Huatabampo. At the time, he supported President Francisco I. Madero against a revolt led by Pascual Orozco. When Madero was overthrown and murdered in the revolt led by Félix Díaz and General Victoriano Huerta (and supported by US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson), Obregón joined Venustiano Carranza in revolt against Huerta's new government, and succeeded in forcing Huerta from power on July 14, 1914.

Military career

As a military commander, Obregón was a strong supporter of Carranza when he took office, and helped him, as Minister of War and the Navy, to repel rebel forces loyal to Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The armies of Obregón and Villa clashed in four battles. The first took place on April 6 and April 7, 1915, and ended with the withdrawal of the 'villistas'. The second in Celaya, Guanajuato, took place between April 13 and April 15, when Villa attacked the city of Celaya but was repulsed. The third was the prolonged position battle of Trinidad and Santa Ana del Conde between April 29 and June 5, which was the definitive battle. Villa was again defeated by Obregón, who lost his right arm in the fight. Villa made a last attempt to stop Obregón's army in Aguascalientes, on July 10, but without success.

All these battles are collectively known as the Battle of Celaya, the largest military confrontation in Latin American history before the Falklands War of 1982. Obregón had distinguished himself during the campaign by being one of the first Mexicans to comprehend that the introduction of modern field artillery and especially machine guns, had shifted the battlefield in favor of a defending force. In fact, while Obregón studied this shift and used it in his defense of Celaya, generals in the World War I trenches of Europe were still advocating bloody and mostly failing mass charges.

Political career

Obregón returned to politics in 1920, hoping to succeed Carranza as president. When it became apparent, however, that Carranza wanted to ensure that Ignacio Bonillas would succeed him, Obregón organized the military in a revolt against the president, the aims of which were expressed in the manifesto of the Plan of Agua Prieta. His forces were augmented by General Benjamín Hill and the Zapatistas led by Gildardo Magaña and Genovevo de la O. The revolt was successful and Carranza was deposed. Carranza was killed in the state of Puebla in an ambush led by General Rodolfo Herrera as he fled from Mexico City to Veracruz on horseback. For six months, from June 1, 1920 to December 1, 1920, Adolfo de la Huerta served as provisional president of Mexico, until elections could be held. When Obregón was declared the victor, de la Huerta stepped down and assumed the position of Secretary of the Treasury in the new government.

Obregón's four years in office were known for the agrarian and anticlerical reforms he instituted and for the cultivation of good relations with the United States, based on the sale of Mexican petroleum to the U.S. market. The greatest interruption to his term in office was a revolt by Adolfo de la Huerta, who regarded himself as the president's natural successor, while Obregón preferred Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles was elected and Obregón stepped down from office.

Strict government's policies on the church prompted a widespread violent insurrection from 1926 to 1929 by Roman Catholics, a war known as the Cristero War. In 1928 Obregón ran again for office, winning a second term as president after a bitterly contested election, he returned to Mexico City to celebrate his victory, but was assassinated in a restaurant on July 17, 1928 by José de León Toral, a Roman Catholic opposed to the government policies on religious matters. Ciudad Obregón, in Gen. Obregón's home state of Sonora, was renamed in his honor; so was Álvaro Obregón borough in Mexico City, which contains the site of his assassination and a large monument to the fallen general, Cañadas de Obregón, a municipality of Jalisco, and Colonia Álvaro Obregón (commonly known as Rubio), a small village in the state of Chihuahua.

Honors

Obregón was awarded Japan's Order of the Chrysanthemum at a special ceremony in Mexico City. On November 27, 1924, Baron Shigetsuma Furuya, Special Ambassador from Japan to Mexico, conferred the honor on the President. It was said to have been the first time that the Order had been conferred outside the Imperial family.

References

External links

Admiring essay on the Battle of Celaya with a focus on the tactics used by General Obregón.