Venustiano Carranza

Biography

Venustiano Carranza was born in 1859 in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila, into a prosperous cattle-ranching family. A liberal admirer of Benito Juárez, he entered local politics in 1887 as municipal president of his home town, took part in an 1893 ranchers' revolt against a Díaz-backed governor and, through the patronage of Bernardo Reyes, went on to the state legislature and, in 1904, the federal Senate.

Denied the governorship of Coahuila by Porfirio Díaz, he backed Francisco Madero's challenge in 1910 and, after Díaz fell in 1911, became governor of the state. When Madero was overthrown and killed in February 1913, Carranza refused to recognise Victoriano Huerta and issued the Plan of Guadalupe, which named him First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army. His forces, led by generals such as Álvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa, drove Huerta from power in July 1914.

The victors then split: Villa and Emiliano Zapata broke with Carranza and backed the rival Convention government, but Obregón's victories over Villa left the Constitutionalists in control and won Carranza recognition from the United States. To undercut his rivals he embraced land and labour reform, which were written into the Constitution of 1917, and he was elected president that year. In office he kept Mexico neutral in the First World War, rejecting the German proposal of the Zimmermann Telegram, but did little to carry out the new constitution's social reforms and moved against opponents; Zapata was assassinated on his orders in 1919.

Barred from re-election in 1920, Carranza tried to impose the little-known civilian Ignacio Bonillas as his successor. The Sonoran generals Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta rose against him under the Plan of Agua Prieta, and he fled the capital for Veracruz with the national treasury. He was killed on 21 May 1920 at Tlaxcalantongo, Puebla, by troops under a local commander who had betrayed him.