Chronology, Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) (*)

 

1910

July 8
Porfirio Diaz is reelected president of Mexico, a post he has held almost continuously since 1876. His main political rival, Francisco I. Madero, is in jail, along with 60,000 other supporters. Madero, released on bail eleven days later, flees to San Antonio, Texas.

Nov. 20
Francisco Madero returns to Mexico from Texas, an event still commemorated in Mexico.

1911

May 5
Francisco I. Madero, leader of the rebellion against President Porfirio Diaz, holds a meeting at Bustillos.

May 10
City of Juarez falls to Madero's forces, thanks largely to the aggressiveness (and insubordination) of Francisco ("Pancho") Villa and Pascual Orozco.

May 13-15
Villa and Orozco break with Madero over his clemency to General Navarro, whom they took prisoner at Juarez. Villa returns to his wife at San Andres, Chihuahua.

May 25
Porfirio Diaz resigns as president, is escorted to Veracruz, departs for exile in Paris. Madero refuses to take office until elected. Vice President Francisco de La Barra is installed as interim president.

Oct.
Madero is elected president, inaugurated in November.

1912

March 3
Threatened by Orozco, Villa flees from Chihuahua after refusing to join in rebellion against Madero. Villa sets about raising his own force.

March 24
Villa takes the city of Parral from the Orozco rebels.

April 4
Orozco retakes Parral from Villa, who melts into the mountains and joins Victoriano Huerta, Madero's field commander, at Torreón.

June 3
Villa, sentenced to be shot for insubordination by Huerta, is spared by Madero's order at the last moment and sent to Santiago Tlatelolco prison, in Mexico City.

Nov.
Woodrow Wilson elected president of the United States.

Dec. 26
Villa escapes prison, where he has learned of plots hatched by Generals Bernardo Reyes and Felix Diaz, but has refused to join them. Villa crosses Rio Grande into El Paso on January 3, 1913.

1913

Feb. 9-18
"Ten Tragic Days." Rebellion of Bernardo Reyes, Felix Diaz, and Victoriano Huerta. Huerta arrests Madero on February 18 and assumes power.

Feb. 22
President Madero and Vice President Pino Suarez are murdered outside Lecumberri prison, Mexico City.

March 4
Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson as president of the United States.

March 23
Villa returns to Mexico after learning of Madero's assassination; gathers army on way to San Andres; sends message of defiance to governor of Chihuahua.

March 28
Venustiano Carranza draws up Plan of Guadalupe, in which he declares himself "First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army," claiming to be the rightful successor to Madero.

June 1
President Wilson sends William Bayard Hale to Mexico on a fact-finding mission. Hale sends reports throughout June.

Aug. 9
President Wilson sends Governor John Lind to Mexico as an unofficial agent. Lind, rebuffed by Huerta, spends some months in Veracruz.

Aug. 26
Villa's new army routs forces under Felix Terrazas at San Andres, taking three trains and other booty.

Aug. 27
Woodrow Wilson declares policy of "watchful waiting" before a joint session of Congress. Start of the ''honeymoon'' between Mexico and the United States.

Oct. 2
Villa's Division of the North captures Torreón. Villa becomes a civil governor for the first time.

Oct. 10
Huerta's second coup. Arrest and imprisonment of eighty-five Mexican congressmen. Huerta is elected president in an election so obviously rigged as to be nullified and deferred for nine months.

Oct. 17
Carranza establishes a provisional government at Hermosillo, in Sonora.

Nov. 7
Wilson's "Circular Note," which includes an obvious implied threat to remove Huerta.

Nov. 15.
Villa captures Juarez, taking 3,000 prisoners.

Mid-Nov.
Wilson sends William Hale to Nogales, Mexico, for a conference with Carranza, which turns out disastrously. Hale returns to the U.S. side on November 19. Wilson levies an arms embargo against Carranza.

Nov. 19
Villa defeats General Jose Ines Salvador at Tierra Blanca.

Dec. 8
Chihuahua City falls to Villa's Division of the North.

1914

Jan. 11
Villa defeats Salvador Mercado at Ojinaga, across from Presidio, Texas, on the Rio Grande. Mercado and his army escape to the Texas side of the river. John J. Pershing comes to the Mexican side to call on Villa.

Feb. 3
President Wilson lifts the embargo of arms against Carranza.

Feb.
The Benton affair, in which Villa murders the British subject William H. Benton. Villa claims "self-defense," but nobody believes him.

March
Villa and Carranza fall out over plans for the future. Villa gives in and attacks Saltillo, at Carranza’s insistence. Villa then learns that Carranza has sent another general to take Zacatecas, Villa's own objective.

April 10
A Huertista general at Tampico arrests crewmen from the US Dolphin. U.S. demands for a public display of contrition create an international crisis.

April 20
Wilson asks Congress for extraordinary military powers as a result of the Tampico incident.

April 21
The German ship Ypiranga arrives off Veracruz. Admiral Frank Fletcher lands sailors and marines at Veracruz the next day.

April 24
Meeting between Wilson and his cabinet. Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison urges that the U.S. Army push on to Mexico City. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile offer to mediate between the United States and Mexico the next day.

April 30
Fifth Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier General Frederick Funston, relieves marine garrison at Veracruz.

May 20-July 2
U.S. and Mexican diplomats meet at Niagara Falls, Canada, under ABC sponsorship. As a result, Wilson asks Carranza to hold up the march on Mexico City. Carranza refuses on June 16.

June 23
Villa takes Zacatecas, though without Carranza's approval. Carranza responds by with-holding supplies of ammunition and coal from Villa.

July 8
Alvaro Obregón, military commander under Carranza, captures Guadalajara.

July 15
Huerta resigns as provisional president and flees to Spain.

Aug. 15
Obregón occupies Mexico City on behalf of the Constitutionalists. Carranza soon follows.

Aug. 16
Woodrow Wilson sends Paul Fuller to visit Villa at Santa Rosalia and urges him to establish a government and then retire. Villa agrees.

Sept. 5
Fuller confers with Carranza in Mexico City. Carranza promises to cooperate.

Sept.
Obregón, now minister of war in Mexico City, visits Villa in Chihuahua. Together they visit Pershing in Fort Bliss, Texas, and Maytorena in Nogales.

Sept. 23
Villa declares war on Carranza.

Oct. 12-Nov. 12
Convention at Aguascaliente. General Eulalio Gutierrez is elected president.

Nov. 23
U.S. Fifth Infantry Brigade debarks at Veracruz. Generals Alvaro Obregón and Pablo Gonzalez join the deposed Carranza, who occupies Veracruz as his capital. Villa and Emiliano Zapata occupy Mexico City.

1915

Jan. 6
Carranza issues a decree revising the Plan of Guadalupe to include land reform, electoral reform, workers' rights.

Jan.
Villa meets with U.S. General Hugh S. Scott and sells out Governor Maytorena in the Sonora civil war.

Jan. 15
Obregón begins a campaign against Villa's forces.

April 6-15
Obregón defeats Villa in two battles at Celaya, near Queretaro.

June 2
Wilson warns Mexico, threatening intervention.

June-Sept.
Villa is defeated at León and takes refuge in Chihuahua.

Oct. 19
The United States and six Latin American nations recognize the Carranza government.

Nov. 1
Villa's army is decimated by Carrancista forces under Plutarco Elias Calles in a two-day battle at Agua Prieta, opposite Douglas, Arizona. Later word that the U.S. had assisted Calles infuriates Villa. Agua Prieta is soon followed by a similar defeat at Hermosillo, Sonora.

Dec.
Pascual Orozco, jumping bail in El Paso, is killed by Texas Rangers near Presidio, Texas. Huerta dies in El Paso.

1916

Jan. 11
Villa raids a train, running from Chihuahua City to the Cusi mines, at Santa Isabel, Chihuahua. Villa's men kill sixteen of the seventeen Americans aboard.

March 9
Villista raid on Columbus, New Mexico, killing nineteen Americans.

March 15
Brigadier General John J. Pershing, on President Wilson's order, crosses the Mexican border at Columbus and Culberson's Ranch, pursuing Villa.

March 24
Protocol signed between Washington and Carranza, interpreted by Wilson as allowing the Punitive Expedition into Mexico.

April 8
Pershing's Punitive Expedition, now 6,675 men strong, reaches over three hundred miles into Mexico.

April 12
Skirmish between U.S. cavalry and Carrancistas at Parral, over five hundred road miles into Mexican territory. End of Pershing's pursuit of Villa.

May 22
Long and bitter note from Carranza to Wilson.

June 18
Wilson calls up the National Guard, eventually 100,000 men.

June 21
Battle of Carrizal, in which Captain Charles T. Boyd, Lieutenant Henry R. Adair, and Mexican General Felix G. G6mez are killed. Heavy losses on both sides. Twenty-three Americans are taken prisoner by the Carrancistas

July 4
Carranza proposes Mexican-U.S. talks.

Sept. 16
U.S.-Mexican meetings begin in New London. Later shifted to Philadelphia and Atlantic City. A protocol is signed November 24.

Oct.
Constitutional convention meets at Queretaro.

Dec. 17
Carranza rejects protocol of November 24 between the United States and Mexico.

1917

Jan. 27
Beginning of the withdrawal of the Punitive Expedition.

Jan. 31
Completion of the radical new Mexican constitution.

Feb. 5
Last of the Punitive Expedition crosses the Rio Grande into the United States.

March 11
Venustiano Carranza is elected president.

March 13
President Woodrow Wilson establishes full diplomatic relations with the new Carranza government by sending Henry P. Fletcher as ambassador to Mexico.

April 6
The United States declares war on imperial Germany.

May 1
Carranza is inaugurated as president of Mexico.

1919

April 10
Emiliano Zapata is assassinated at Chinameca on orders of Carranza.

June 1
Alvaro Obregón declares himself a candidate for the presidency in the election to be held in 1920. Carranza, in early September, endorses his own candidate, Ignacio Bonillas.

1920

April 2
Carranza summons Obregón to Mexico City to face trumped-up charges. Obregón escapes with his life through the aid of friends.

April 20
Obregón manifesto declaring rebellion against Carranza.

May 7
Carranza flees Mexico City. Abandons train on May 14

May 21
Carranza is assassinated in the village of Tlaxcalantongo, Puebla.

June 1
Adolfo de la Huerta is inaugurated provisional president.

Sept. 5
Obregón is elected president, inaugurated on November 30.

1923

July 20
Assassination of Pancho Villa and his bodyguards in Parral. His executioners are never punished.

 

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(*) John Eisenhower, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-1917 (New York, Norton, 1993).