Álvaro Obregón

Biography

Alvaro Obregon was born in 1880 at Siquisiva in Sonora, the youngest of eighteen children; his father died the year he was born, and he grew up poor. He had only an elementary education, learned the Mayo language from farm workers, and made a living in a sugar mill, as a salesman and as a garbanzo farmer, inventing a garbanzo harvester in 1909. In 1911-1912 he was municipal president of Huatabampo.

He volunteered in 1912 with local forces opposing Pascual Orozco's revolt and, after Victoriano Huerta's coup of 1913, sided with Venustiano Carranza's Constitutionalist Army, becoming its leading general in the northwest. When the revolutionaries split, he stayed with Carranza and defeated Pancho Villa in the battles around Celaya in 1915, losing his right arm. He served as Carranza's Secretary of War from 1916 to 1917, then retired to farming in Sonora.

In 1920 Obregon and fellow Sonorans Plutarco Elias Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta rose against Carranza under the Plan of Agua Prieta, and Obregon won the presidential election that September with overwhelming support. As president from 1920 to 1924 he backed education reform under Jose Vasconcelos and the muralist movement, carried out moderate land reform, allied with organised labour, and signed the Bucareli agreements of 1923, which settled American claims and won U.S. recognition. He crushed de la Huerta's rebellion in 1923-1924 with American help.

Obregon handed the presidency to Calles in 1924 but stayed influential, and after the constitution was changed to allow non-consecutive re-election he won the 1928 election unopposed. On 17 July 1928, before taking office, he was shot dead by Jose de Leon Toral during the Cristero War. The crisis that followed led Calles to found the party that became the PRI.