PLUTARCO ELÍAS CALLES: BIOGRAPHY AND GOVERNMENT - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Plutarco Elías Calles (1877-1945) was a Mexican military and political leader who ruled Mexico between 1924 and 1928. Calles was the one who modernized the revolutionary armies and was the founder of the National Revolutionary Party, a political organization that became the main one of the country.

Calles' presidential campaign in 1924 became the first populist campaign in the country's history. He promised land redistribution, more education, labor rights, and equal justice; between 1924 and 1926 he tried to fulfill all his promises.

By National Photo Company Collection., via Wikimedia Commons

Two years after 1926, it entered an anti-clerical phase in which it forced the Catholic Church to pay a fee to the government to be able to call itself the official church. Calles applied extreme measures against the church by means of force, to such an extent that it later escalated into a serious conflict in 1929.

Although Calles' intention was to leave Mexico without caudillos and rather turn it into a nation with institutions, he himself ended up becoming a caudillo par excellence, even after his presidential term.

Biography

Early years

Plutarco Elías Calles was born on September 25, 1877 in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. He was baptized with the full name of Francisco Plutarco Elías Campuzano. He came from a family of landowners with a good economic position, which as the years went by, went into decline.

He grew up in poverty and deprivation. His father, Plutarco Elías Lucero, had alcoholism problems and abandoned his family. Her mother, María Jesús Campuzano Noriega, died when Calles was only 3 years old.

He adopted the surname Calles after his uncle, Juan Bautista Calles, with whom he lived throughout his youth. His uncle and his wife María Josefa Campuzano raised him after the death of his mother.

His uncle was an atheist, so he instilled in Calles a strong commitment to regular education and a complete loathing of the Roman Catholic Church.

As a young man, Calles held several different jobs, from bartender to school teacher. He always identified with politics and became a committed anticlerical.

Activities

Calles began his career as a teacher and in 1894 he dedicated himself to teaching. He was an inspector of the Public Instruction Boards in Hermosillo. In addition, he was a teacher in a school for boys, edited the School Magazine and directed the school of the Artisan Society, known as "El Porvenir".

For a time, Calles immersed himself in alcohol; However, he managed to rebuild himself and in 1899 he married Natalia Chacón, with whom he had 12 children.

He held several unsuccessful jobs; He was municipal treasurer of Guaymas and general inspector of education. However, he was fired from both jobs on serious suspicions of fraud.

At the beginning of the 1900s, Calles owned 9,000 hectares in Santa Rosa, for which he dedicated himself to agriculture. On the other hand, it did not have good machinery for the business, so it was economically destabilized.

Participation in the Mexican revolution

In 1910, Calles was a supporter of Francisco Madero; thanks to this, he became a police commissioner. He was in charge of maintaining order, reorganizing prisons and even created a school instruction center.

Then, in 1912, he participated in the rebellion of Pascual Orozco, in which he was victorious. After the coup by Victoriano Huerta and the assassination of Madero, Calles invited the governor of Sonora, José María Maytorena, to take up arms against the Huerta dictatorship.

Finally, on March 5, 1913, Calles took charge of a small group of soldiers willing to fight against the Huerta government. After the fight, that same year he participated in the signing of the Nacozari Plan where the government of the tyrant was unknown.

His ability to align himself with the Constitutionalists, led by Venustiano Carranza, led him to reach the rank of general in 1915. In addition, he led the Constitutionalist Army in his home state of Sonora.

That same year, his forces repelled the conventionalist faction of José María Maytorena and Pancho Villa.

Governor of Sonora

In 1915, Calles became governor of Sonora. While in office, he was known as one of the most reformist politicians of the generation of Mexican politicians. His intention was to promote the rapid growth of the Mexican national economy, creating the entire structure to exercise it.

On the other hand, within the state he strongly regulated alcohol consumption and promoted legislation that provided social security and collective bargaining among workers. Calles issued at least 6 decrees a month during his first term as governor of Sonora.

Despite this, on June 25, 1917, he again assumed the governorship in a constitutional manner. He was appointed Minister of Industry, Commerce and Labor during the Carranza government, for which he appointed Cesáreo Soriano to hold his position for a time.

During his second term, he inaugurated the Normal School for Teachers, as well as the organization of a pedagogical congress. He opened 127 primary schools and the “Cruz Gálvez de Artes y Oficios” schools for children orphaned by the revolution. In defense of his ideas, against the church, he expelled all Catholic priests.

The northern dynasty

The relationship between Carranza and Álvaro Obregón dissolved and Carranza failed to advance with social reforms. For that reason, General Obregón enlisted the two powerful leaders of northern Mexico: Plutarco Elías Calles and Adolfo de la Huerta. They joined the coup movement.

Carranza fled from Mexico City and, in that trance, was assassinated. Obregón assumed office on December 1, 1920. The dynasty agreed that peace was needed to rehabilitate Mexico from the devastations of nearly a decade of civil unrest.

Finally, Obregón began to implement the ideals of the 1917 constitution. He established an administrative machinery for the distribution of lands to the less favored and re-established communal properties in the villages.

The Obregón government supported a cultural program that made Mexico famous and important internationally and implemented a series of measures on behalf of Mexican citizens. At the end of his term, Obregón stepped aside so that Calles finally seized power.

Presidency

Obregón's support for Calles was absolute and was also supported by the unions, labor and peasants. However, he had to face the rebellion led by Adolfo de la Huerta and beat his opponent, Ángel Flores, in the elections.

Shortly before his possession, he traveled to Europe to study social democracy and the labor movement and thus apply these European models in Mexico. Finally, on December 1, 1924, he took office as president of Mexico.

During Calles' presidency, he relied on the financial acumen of Alberto Pani, whom he appointed as his finance secretary. Pani's liberal policies helped him restore the confidence of foreign investors in Mexico. In addition, the finance secretary managed to alleviate the foreign debt.

For Calles, education was key to transforming Mexico into a post-revolutionary nation. For that reason, he appointed José Vasconcelos and Moisés Sáenz to reform the Mexican educational system.

Last years

Calles opposed Cárdenas's candidacy and applied certain violent methods. From there, Cárdenas began to politically isolate Calles, eliminating the Callistas in political positions and exiling his most powerful allies such as Tomás Garrido Canabal, Fausto Topete, Saturnino Cedillo, Aarón Sáenz and Emilio Portes Gil.

Calles was accused of blowing up a railroad. Later, he was arrested under the order of President Cárdenas. He was quickly deported to the United States on April 9, 1936.

Thanks to the Institutional Revolutionary Party of President Manuel Ávila Camacho, who was in Mexican power between 1940 and 1946, he was allowed to return to Mexico under the reconciliation policy of the successor Cárdenas.

Death

Later years, Calles fell ill and prepared for surgery. Several doctors recommended that he go to Rochester for the operation, but he refused because he did not want to leave Mexico again. A week after his operation, he presented a hemorrhage, which caused him to die on October 19, 1945.

government

Calles and his bad relationship with the United States

Plutarco Elías Calles argued a main point in disagreement with the United States: oil. At the beginning of his term, he quickly rejected "The Bucareli Accords" of 1923. These they tried served as a measure to try to resolve the problems between Mexico and the United States.

Article 27 of the 1917 constitution established that everything that was under Mexican soil belonged to the country. That article threatened US companies with possession of the oil.

Calles enforced article 27 of the constitution. The United States government branded him communist, posing a threat to Mexico in 1925. American public opinion turned anti-Mexican when the first embassy of the Soviet Union was opened in Mexico.

In January 1927, the Calles government canceled all permits for oil companies that did not comply with the law.

After those decisions by the Mexican government, talks about a possible war circulated. Mexico managed to avoid war through a series of diplomatic maneuvers developed by Calles.

Calles, the anticlerical

Calles, throughout his government, was a tenacious anticlerical. He was in charge of complying with all the anticlerical articles of the 1917 constitution, so his decisions in front of the church led him to a violent and prolonged conflict, known as the Cristero War.

The Calles government violently persecuted the clergy; he massacred the alleged Cristeros and their supporters. On June 14, 1926, the president promulgated anti-clerical legislation known as the Penal Code Reform Law and unofficially as the Streets Law.

Among the actions written in the law includes: depriving the clergy of civil liberties, their right to a trial by jury and the right to vote. Due to their strong actions, various areas of the country began to oppose it and on January 1, 1927, the Catholics declared at war.

About 100,000 people died from the war. An attempt was made to negotiate a truce with the assistance of the US ambassador, Dwight Morrow, in which the Cristeros agreed to stop the weapons; however, Calles reneged on the terms of war.

On the contrary, he suppressed the Catholic religion in schools, introducing socialism in its place.

Policies during the Calles government

Regarding trade policies during the Calles government, in 1926, the value of exports was much higher than in 1910. Calles ensured that the Mexican commercial position was favorable.

The exported products were, especially, raw materials such as minerals, oil and some of its derivatives, livestock and agricultural products.

On the other hand, a large number of railways that had been closed due to debts were rehabilitated. Calles' solution consisted in giving the administration of the railways to private companies that were in charge of their maintenance.

The construction of the Sud Pacífico railroad managed to allow production from the northeast to reach the rest of Mexico through a single route.

In terms of education, the Callista government was in charge of giving greater impetus to education; For Calles, education always meant the basis of a good society. He built rural and urban schools and the Industrial Technical Institute was built, in addition to other institutions.

The Maximato

In 1928, Calles chose Obregón as his successor, by passing a non-consecutive election. However, Obregón was assassinated by a Catholic militant before he could assume power.

Although Calles was named "Chief Maximum" to avoid a political vacuum, and Emilio Portes Gil as temporary president, Gil was a puppet of Calles, which he manipulated at will. Quickly, he founded the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Obregón's period, in 1928 and 1934, was practically fulfilled by Calles as Chief Maximum. This period is known in the history of Mexico as "El Maximato".

In 1933, Calles looked to Manuel Pérez Treviño for a candidate to continue his policies, but pressure from party officials led Calles to support Lázaro Cárdenas as the presidential candidate.

Cárdenas was properly associated with the Calles government for 20 years; he joined Calles' army in Sonora in 1915, reason enough for Calles and his cabinet to trust the former revolutionary.

On the other hand, Calles thought he could manipulate Cárdenas, as he did with his predecessors. However, Cárdenas had his own political goals and personal goals for the country.

References

1. The Mexican Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1910-40, Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from britannica.com
2. Plutarco Elias Calles, Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, (nd). Taken from britannica.com
3. Plutarco Elías Calles, Wikipedia in English, (nd). Taken from wikipedia.org
4. Mexico: A populist story, Carlos Ramírez, (nd). Taken from elvigia.net
5. Plutarco Elías Calles, Portal Buscabiografía, (nd). Taken from Buscabiografia.com