Plutarco Calles: Puppet And Puppetmaster

Those that suffered through the Mexican Revolution experienced corruption

, political instability, violence and other hardships, brought on by political leaders, and this was in full evidence by the mid 1920s. Another Mexican President was assassinated and Alvaro Obregon was thrown into the Presidency. Obregon was succeeded by Plutarco Calles, and Calles turned out to be both a political puppet and something of a political mastermind in his own right.

Calles had grown up overwhelmingly poor and had come into politics through hard work and his ability to get on the good side of many of the men involved in the Revolution. He aligned himself with President Alvaro Obregon, who appointed him as the leader of the interior ministry. In 1924 he ran for office, using his connections with the peasant and labor unions to help win votes. Plutarco did so with the full endorsement of the current leader, whose term limit had been reached and thus could not run for re-election.

land and labor reforms were introduced into Mexico, and Obregon also worked to improve the educational system; Calles proved to be more of a loose cannon almost immediately. While he did support land redistribution and founded several banks during his tenure, he did not have the moderate nature of his predecessor. A bloody three-year conflict called the Cristero War, was launched after Plutarco violently enforced new anti-clerical laws (much to the Catholic Churche's chagrin), and he also managed to create poor relations with the USA, by threatening the stakes that they had in Mexico's oil reserves..

In 1926, Calles proved that his close friendship with Obregon had a definite ulterior motive: he overturned presidential term limits, allowing Alvaro to run for President again. While he won in 1928, he was assassinated before he could take office again, leaving a vacuum in the political scene. 'Jefe Maximo' or the lead political chieftain, was what Plutarco called himself; he named a temporary presidential replacement named Emilio Gil, who was essentially a puppet.

Obregon's new term would have been from 1928 to 1934; this time came to be known as the Maximato, and was marked by Calles controlling the country from behind the scenes; he became more and more authoritarian in his policies and installed two more puppet Presidents. Eventually the Jefe Maximo was forced to live in the United States, because his next Presidential winner, Lazaro Cardenas, refused to cooperate with Plutarco, and began to isolate him (and his allies) politically..

Calles left a controversial legacy in his wake; in 1929, the Cristero peace treaty put an end to his tenure, and he helped to create one of the longest-lived political parties, the Institutional Revolutionary Party.. More conflicts were bound to creep up in governmental policy in the future, as he was criticized as being undemocratic.. Plutarco was also denounced by the Pope for his hateful actions towards the Church. Nonetheless, his Presidency had a significant role in the end of a two-decade struggle for freedom and equal rights.

by: Robert Nickel

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