Venustiano Carranza, Mexican soldier and politician, 37th President of Mexico (d. 1920)
José Venustiano Carranza de la Garza (Spanish pronunciation: [benusˈtjano kaˈransa ðe la ˈɣaɾsa]; 29 December 1859 – 21 May 1920) was a Mexican wealthy land owner and politician who was Governor of Coahuila when the constitutionally-elected president Francisco I. Madero was overthrown in a February 1913 right-wing military coup. Known as the Primer Jefe or "First Chief" of the Constitutionalist faction in the Mexican Revolution, Carranza was a shrewd civilian politician. He supported Madero's challenge to the Díaz regime in the 1910 elections, but became a critic of Madero once Díaz was overthrown in May 1911. Madero did appoint him the governor of Coahuila. When Madero was murdered during the February 1913 counter-revolutionary coup, Carranza drew up the Plan of Guadalupe, a purely political plan to oust Madero's usurper, General Victoriano Huerta. As a sitting governor when Madero was overthrown, Carranza held legitimate power and he became the leader of the northern coalition opposed to Huerta. The Constitutionalist faction was victorious and Huerta ousted in July 1914. Carranza did not assume the title of provisional president of Mexico, as called for in his Plan of Guadalupe, since it would have prevented his running for constitutional president once elections were held. His government in this period was in a preconstitutional, extralegal state, to which both his best generals, Álvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa objected. The factions of the coalition against Huerta fell apart and a bloody civil war of the winners ensued, with Obregón remaining loyal to Carranza and Villa, now allied with peasant leader Emiliano Zapata, breaking with him. The Constitutionalist Army under Obregón defeated Villa in the north, and Zapata and the peasant army of Morelos returned to guerrilla warfare. Carranza's position was secure enough politically and militarily to take power in Mexico City, although Zapata and Pancho Villa remained threats. Carranza consolidated enough power in the capital that he called a constitutional convention in 1916 to revise the 1857 liberal constitution. The Constitutionalist faction had fought to defend it and return Mexico to constitutional rule. With the promulgation of a new revolutionary Mexican Constitution of 1917, he was elected president, serving from 1917 to 1920.
The constitution that the revolutionaries drafted and ratified in 1917 now empowered the Mexican state to embark on significant land reform and recognized labor's rights, and curtail the power of the Catholic Church, but Carranza did not implement major reforms once he was duly elected. Once firmly in power in Mexico, Carranza sought to eliminate his political rivals, having Zapata assassinated in 1919. Carranza won recognition from the United States, but nonetheless took strongly nationalist positions.
In the 1920 election, in which he could not succeed himself, Carranza attempted to impose a virtually unknown, civilian politician, Ignacio Bonillas, as president of Mexico. Sonoran revolutionary generals Álvaro Obregón, Plutarco Elías Calles, and Adolfo de la Huerta, who held real power, rose up against Carranza under the Plan of Agua Prieta. Carranza fled Mexico City, along with thousands of his supporters and with gold of the Mexican treasury, aiming to set up his government in Veracruz. Instead he died in an attack by rebels. Although Carranza played a major role in the Revolution, his contributions were not initially acknowledged in Mexico's historical memory, since he was overthrown by rivals. But later as a historical narrative that recognizes the various competing factions as members of the "revolutionary family," Carranza's place in Mexican history has been assured.