Showing posts with label 1913. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1913. Show all posts

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Mexican Revolution. . . where we're at in terms of century delayed time.

Yesterday we ran this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .: .

Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .

on this day in 1920, by officers who had betrayed him, pretending to offer him a safe lodging for the night in the town of Tlaxcalantongo.  Sometime during the night, their forces surrounded the house and then opened fire into ito.  Oddly, the assassins then telegramed Obregon to inform him that "we are at your service" but also asked for permission to bring Carranza's body to Mexico City for burial.  Obregon replied with the comment "It is very strange that a group of officers who vouched their loyalty and honor should have permitted him to be assassinated instead of complying with your duty."


And it goes on from there.

So, where are we at on this story that we've been following for years and for which there are now 306 entries on this blog.

The story starts with the revolution against Porifirio Diaz in 1911

Well, not really.  Diaz, who had been a lieutenant of Mexican revolutionary and then president Benito Juarez, served as President of Mexico three times with his last period of dictatorial service running form 1884 until May 21, 1911.  An odd statement to an American reporter about being willing to hold elections in 1908 lead to one and ultimately he proved unwilling not to run, as he'd promised, with his running meaning an assured reelection..  That lead to the rebellion in 1910 we now call The Mexican Revolution, lead at first by the improbable Francisco Modero.

Diaz at age 77.

On this date in 1920, Diaz had been dead five years.  He'd died of natural causes at age 85 in France.

In 1911 he took to his exile and was succeeded by Francisco León de la Barra y Quijano, whom Mexican conservatives called the "white president" due to his purity.  He only served until November.

León.

During his short administration León had to attempt to deal with the growing revolution against him and the growing right wing extremism in his army.  He wouldn't succeeded, but he did succeed in outliving the revolution  He was still living in 1920 and had a career as a diplomat ahead of him.  He ultimately retired to Spain, but even there was used unofficially in this capacity as a go between between France and Spain.  He died in 1939 of natural causes.

Modero.

León's successor was Modero who was a weak president from November 1911 until he was killed in a military coup on February 19, 1913.  His death threw the country back into civil war.

The fallen Huerta.

His successor was the successful head of the coup, Victoriano Huerta.  Huerta was able to topple Modero, but he couldn't quell the revolution, and he went into exile in July 1914.  Going first to Europe and then the United States, he died an alcoholic in 1916.

His successor, Francisco Sebastián Carvajal y Gual, served for only a month before also going into exile, a victim of Huerta's failed effort to reclaim Diaz's position in Mexico.  His story was happier, however, as he met his wife in exile in the United States and he ultimately returned to Mexico in 1922 to resume his legal practice, which he occupied until his death by natural causes in 1932.

And then came Carranza.

So, so far we've seen the assassination of two of the real revolutionary presidents of Mexico, the odd but admirable Modero and the determined and not so admirable Carranza.  And we've seen the exile of three of the right wing pretenders, two of whom had died by natural causes.

Not dying by natural causes up to this point were thousands of Mexican soldiers who had fought on both sides of the Mexican Revolution, and in some cases literally on both sides.  Included in that number was Emiliano Zapata, the greatest of the Mexican revolutionaries, who was its best post Modero hope.

And the revolution was getting increasingly extreme. Having gone from a hope for democracy with Modero it was coming to increasingly reflect the extreme left wing politics of revolutions of its age, something that would have ill consequences for Mexico in coming years.

Indeed, a real oddity of Mexico's post Maximillian politics in general, up to this point, is how radical it was even when seemingly combined with conservative elements.  If Diaz sometimes dressed like Napoleon, his politics, he in some ways was like him.  He was a political liberal but one who did not trust the democratic process.  Ultimately he governed as a moderate liberal with a focus on stability.  Even today he is credited with having laid the foundations for modern Mexico.  His real fault was in not trusting democracy and running for reelection in 1910, when he promised not to.

Had Diaz held to his initial promise, Modero would have been elected in 1910.   Whether Diaz stepping away from politics voluntarily would have necessarily resulted in a Mexican army that would have accepted the election is another question, and one we will never know the answer to.  Had that occured, Mexico would have stepped into being a true democracy in 1910, something that would take another century to occur.  Diaz's failure to trust his own people lead to a revolution in which propelled radicals to the top.  One of those radicals was Carranza, who ended up sharing that lack of trust with Diaz.  He sought to dictate the results of the upcoming 1920 Mexican election, which in turn lead to his bloody end in May, 1920.  That put Obregon in the position of being the assured ultimate next president of the country, with extreme radicals rising up right behind him.

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Churches of the West: Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church

Churches of the West: Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian be...:

Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church.

I debated on whether to put this entry here or on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet.  In the end, I decided to put it up here first and then link it over. This will be one of a couple of posts of this type which explore changes, this one with a local expression, that have bigger implications.

When we started this blog, some of the first entries here were on churches in downtown Casper.  These included the First Presbyterian Church and the First Baptist Church, with buildings dating to 1913 and 1949 respectively.  First Baptist, it should be noted, has occupied their present location, if not their present church, for a century.

Indeed, while I wasn't able to get it to ever upload, I have somewhere a video of the centennial of the First Presbyterian Church from 2013, featuring, as a church that originally had a heavy Scots representation ought to, a bagpipe band.  Our original entry on that church building is right below:

First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park.

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

Well, since that centennial, First Presbyterian has been going through a constant set of changes, as noted in our entry here:

Grace Reformed at City Park, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This isn't a new addition to the roll of churches here, but rather news about one of them.  We formerly posted on this church here some time ago:
Churches of the West: First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming: This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of whi...
People who have followed it would be aware that the Presbyterian churches in the United States are undergoing a period of rift, and this church has reflected that.  The Presbyterian Church, starting in the 1980s, saw conflict develop between liberal and more conservative elements within it which lead to the formation of the "moderate conservative" EPC.  As I'm not greatly familiar with this, I'll only note that the EPC is associated with "New School Presbyterianism" rather than "Old School" and it has adopted the motto  "In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; In All Things, Charity. Truth in Love.".

The change in name here is confusing to an outsider in that this church is a member of the EPC, but it's no longer using its original name.  As it just passed the centennial of its construction, that's a bit unfortunate in some ways. 

We'd also note that the sought set of stairs is now chained off.  We're not sure why, but those stairs must no longer be used for access.

The changes apparently didn't serve to arrest whatever was going on, as there's a sign out in front of the old First Presbyterian, later Grace Reformed, that starting on February 23, it'll be City Park Church.

City Park Church, it turns out, is the name that the congregation that presently occupies another nearby church, First Baptist Church, will call its new church building, which is actually a much older building than the one it now occupies, which is depicted here:

First Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

This is the First Baptist Church in Casper, Wyoming. It's one of the Downtown churches in Casper, in an area that sees approximately one church per block for a several block area.

This particular church was built in 1949, and sits on the same block as Our Savior's Lutheran Church.

What's going on?

Well, it's hard to say from the outside, which we are, but what is pretty clear is that the rifts in the Presbyterian Church broke out, in some form, in the city's oldest Presbyterian Church to the point where it ended up changing its name, and then either moving out of its large church, and accompanying grounds, or closing altogether.  I've never been in the building but I'm told that its basement looked rough a couple of years ago and perhaps the current congregation has other plans or the grounds and church are just too much for it.  At any rate, the 1949 vintage building that First Baptist occupies is apparently a bit too small for its needs and it had taken the opportunity to acquire and relocate into the older, but larger, church.  It can't help but be noted that both churches have pretty large outbuildings as well. Also, while they are both downtown, the 1913 building is one of the three very centrally located old downtown Casper churches, so if church buildings have pride of place, the Baptist congregation is moving into a location which has a little bit more of one.

While it will be dealt with more in another spot, or perhaps on Lex Anteinternet, the entire thing would seem to be potentially emblematic of the loss that Christian churches that have undergone a rift like the Presbyterian Church in the United States has sustained when they openly split between liberal and conservative camps.  The Presbyterian Church was traditionally a fairly conservative church, albeit with theology that was quite radical at the time of its creation.  In recent years some branches of that church have kept their conservatism while others have not and there's been an open split.  As noted elsewhere this has lead in part to a defection from those churches in a lot of localities, and a person has to wonder if something like that may have happened here, as well as wondering if the obvious fact that a split has occurred would naturally lead to a reduction in the congregation as some of its members went with the other side.  We've noted here before that the Anglican Community locally not only has its two Episcopal Churches in town, but that there are also two additional Anglican Churches of a much more theologically conservative bent, both of which are outside of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming.

A person can't really opine, from the outside, if something like this is "sad" or not, but it's certainly a remarkable event.  We've noted church buildings that have changed denominations of use before, but this is the first one where we've actually witnessed it.  And in this case, the departing denomination had occupied their building for a century.

Friday, May 31, 2019

1959 El Camino


Today's installment on recently viewed cars of the past features a 1959 Chevrolet El Camino.


The El Camino was Chevy's effort to combine the pickup truck with the coup.  The result was a light pickup truck that really wasn't very suitable for much, but which had a certain appearance that people either love or hate to this day.

The El Caminio followed a prior mid 1950s Chevrolet pickup truck that was specifically aimed at an urban market.  That model, based on its standard pickup, had some sedan features that Chevy incorporated in the hopes of breaking into the suburban market, and in fact it was called the Suburban Carrier.  The El Camino followed and was sold first in 1959, with various models lasting all the way to 1987.  By that time it had evolved from a really sporty looking car/truck to a fairly pedestrian looking late 80s sedan/truck and, by that time, the plethora of trucks in the urban market, including light duty Japanese trucks, rendered it pointless.

Which is to assume it ever had a point in the first place.

But maybe it did.

Pickup trucks entered the American market really early and in fact there were pickup truck conversions for Model T body's available as early as 1913.  Dodge introduced a factor built pickup in 1924 and Ford followed in 1925.  While early pickups were on car frames, with car suspensions, the heavy duty nature of cars at the time made them pretty suitable for such conversions.  By the 1930s, however, with improvements in roads, pickups were departing company with automobiles in significant ways.  While postwar automobiles remains more suitable for dirt roads than any car made today, the direction was very clear and by the 1960s car suspensions were low and no longer really suitable for double duty, rural and urban.

Not that the El Camino really was either, but pickups of the 1940s and 1950s were definitely rather stout vehicles.  In the rural West there were plenty of people who used a pickup as their primary daily driver, almost all of which were two wheel drives, but Chevrolet was on to the need for an urban carrier.

El Caminio's filled a notch that nothing else really did, but they were a vehicle of mixed success.  It really took the introduction of Chevrolet's sleek styled pickup in 1968 to begin the move towards urban popularity of pickup trucks.  Dodge followed suit in 1972 when it remodeled its D Series trucks along similar lines.  Ford had started towards a sleeker line of truck, which still remained a work styling, in the 1960s, but followed suit with a major restyling in 1987.

Ford in some ways ultimately won this contest. . . for the time being, with the Ford F Series trucks absolutely dominating the market for the most part.  Ironically, however, Dodge's 1994 turn from this style of truck to a more rugged appearing body style brought beefy back into the truck market and secured, at least for the time being, Chrysler as the heavy truck king, a position it had held from the end of World War Two until at least the early 70s due to its wartime Power Wagon series of truck.  Everyone else has followed since then except that Ford and Chevrolet both make light duty trucks that are more car like, but still trucks.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Sharp Headgear and the Unversity Student.

From the Laramie Daily Boomerang, April 17, 1913. The height of the bowler era.

I wonder how many university students decked themselves  out with bowlers in 1913?

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Related Threads: 

Thursday, May 11, 2017

The British Pattern 13 Enfield

This is part of a series, which will lead up to the M1917 Enfield, whose adoption date this is.  You'll have to read the later post for the story of the "American" Enfield.

The British Patter 13 Enfield.



It never served, but it darned near did.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Sidney Nebraska

Churches of the West: St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Sidney Nebraska:





This is St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Sidney, Nebraska.  It's a striking church that was built in 1913, although I wonder if part of the structure may have been added on to much more recently.  If so, the architects did an amazing job of keeping later construction consistent with the original design of the church.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Monday, March 15, 1909. Walking.

Edward Payson Weston, age 71, let the New York Post Office bound for San Francisco on foot, seeking to become the first person to do so.


He would in fact succeed, taking 105 days to accomplish the task.

Weston was a major figure in the rise of pedestrianism, something that was very much in vogue at the time.  After his last major walk in 1913, he warned that automobiles were making people lazy and sedentary, something he was really correct about.  He urged people to talk up waking for exercise and competition.

Not without some irony, he was rendered unable to walk after being hit by a car in 1927, and he passed away in 1929 at age 90.

Congress was called into a special session to consider the Payne Tariff act.

Last prior:

Saturday, March 13, 1909. Sulphur Springs Florida and Augusta Georgia.

Related threads:

Walking