Showing posts with label Mexican Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexican Revolution. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Wednesday, February 15, 1911. Bogosity then and now and "Viva Diaz!"

NAVARRO IN JUAREZ; REBELS GO SOUTH; Mexican General with 1,000 Men Greeted with Cries of "Viva Diaz!" -- Met No Insurrectos.

Headline in the New York Times.


Compulsory domestic service? Crud, most women had that then, and still do today.

A completely ineffective medicine that purported to be a remedy for the treatment of tuberculosis made up of  olive oil, squill root, almonds, nettle and red poppy petals was granted U.S. Patent 1,368,974.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is probably ready to back it as we speak or read, assuming he's not recounting his glory days of sniffing coke off of toilet seats.

Ah. . . the best and the brightest. . . 

"13 anniversary, destruction of the U.S.S. Maine, Havana Harbor, Feb. 15, 1911"

Last edition:

Tuesday, February 14, 1911. Madero reenters Mexico, John Browning patents the 1911.

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Monday, February 14, 1916. Russians take Ft. Fafet, Australians mutiny, Petra Herrera murdered, Vietnamese rebel.

The Russians captured Ft. Tafet.

Australian troops mutinied against conditions at Casula Camp in New South Wales.

Mexican revolutionary Petra Herrera, who fought both as a soldier and worked as a spy, was shot dead by drunken revolutionaries in a bar.

She's started off as a Villista who disguised herself as a man, and then later became an acknowledged female combatant, and later a spy.

Vietnamese rebels rose up in Saigon.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 12, 1916. Russians advance against the Ottomans.

Tuesday, February 14, 1911. Madero reenters Mexico, John Browning patents the 1911.

Madero crossed back into Mexico from Texas to assume command of Mexican revolutionaries, and to evade a U.S. warrant for his arrest.

John Browning was issued a patent:






The House of Representatives approved a controversial reciprocal trade agreement between the United States and Canada, by a 221-92 margin.

Niobrara County, Wyoming, was established.

Last edition:

Monday, February 13, 1911. Taking Durango.

Friday, February 13, 2026

Monday, February 13, 1911. Taking Durango.

The Acting Secretary of State to the Governor of Texas.

Department of State,

Washington, February 13, 1911.

Your telegram of the 10th instant. Department informed by Embassy at Mexico City that Mexican Government does not just now desire to ask for permission to move troops over United States territory.

Huntington Wilson

Troops under Jose Luis Moya took Durango.  55 years old, and therefore into advanced years by the standards of the day, he was an unusual example of a wealthy man who joined the revolution.  He'd lose his life in its service in May, 1911.

Today In Wyoming's History: February 13: 1911  Campbell County created.

A coal and hydrocarbons producing county, the population of the county has grown by a factor of nearly ten since my birth, and doubled since I graduated from high school.  I vividly recall going there for swim meets in the late 70s and early 80s at which time it was an incredibly rough county.

Nicaragua's President Juan José Estrada declared martial law after an explosion in Managua destroyed a large quantity of arms and ammunition.

Last edition:

Sunday, February 12, 1911.

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Thursday, February 11, 1926. Calles attacks the Church.


Plutarco Elías Calles nationalized all property of the Catholic church in Mexico.

The degree to which the leaders of the Mexican Revolution were anti Catholic in a very Catholic nation is hard to overestimate, although at the same time, particularly in some regions, Catholic viewpoints were very represented amongst the revolutionaries.  Emiliano Zapata in particularly was notably Catholic.

Be that as it may, Madero was not a practicing Catholic and had peculiar spiritual views.  He was in fact a spiritualist and a Mason.  Still, his victory in the revolution, temporary though it was, was seen by Catholics as an opportunity to form a Mexican Catholic political party, which they did.  The Church condemned Madero's assassination.

It was that killing that sparked the second stage of the revolution.   Álvaro Obregón and Calles both featured prominently in that, and both were anti Catholic.  Calles was also a Mason.  In that phase of the revolution, moreover, democratic forces, which had brought about Madero's rise, started to wane and with the murder of Zapata and the victory of Carranza Mexico headed off in a much more radically leftist direction. In some ways the Mexican Revolution, in spite of its romantic portrayal in American cinema, was much more of a 20th Century European Revolution, many of which featured radically anti Catholic leaders against Catholic populations in favor of utopian leftism.

Calles fit that mold and was the sort example in the office of president of Mexico.  His anti clerical laws would lead to the Cristero War the following year.

Mexico remains a very Catholic country to this day and the Mexican people are very Catholic. But like other religious communities, the period of anti religious domination hurt the religious nature of the people nonetheless and the culture of the country.  Mexico has never really recovered from the anti religious views of the revolution.  Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of that has been Protestant Millennialism which has been successful in drawing in religious Mexicans who are unchurched, a byproduct of the revolution.

Actor Leslie Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan.  He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War Two as an aerial gunner, although he was not deployed overseas.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 10, 1926. Going to the League.

Monday, February 9, 2026

Thursday, February 9, 1911. Establishing the size of the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives approved the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, increasing the number of U.S. Representatives, beginning in 1913, from 391 to 435, the number that it has had ever since. 

This has created unequal representation and something really needs to be done to change it.

Voters in the Arizona Territory approved the proposed state Constitution.

Writer Jack London, who was a Socialist, came out in support of Socialist revolutionaries in Mexico.

The Army intended to deploy lighter than air craft near El Paso in an attempt to figure out what was going on in the revolution near there.

Indentured servitude for Chinese workers in British Malaya was abolished, effective June 30, 1914.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 8, 1911. Revolutions.

Thursday, February 5, 2026

Sunday, February 5, 1911. First Battle of Bauche.

Mexican Federal troops, stopped the day prior at Bauche by rebels under Pascual Orozco, abandoned the railroad and commenced marching overland towards Juarez in an effort to relieve forces besieged there.

A revolution in Haiti was put down with the capture of rebel General Montreuil Guillaume.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 4, 1911. Deadlocks.


Friday, January 9, 2026

Saturday, January 9, 1926. A different train attack.

Oddly enough, given the events that had happened ten years prior, Mexican rebels, under Colonel Manuel Núñez, opened fire on board a train  traveling from Guadalajara to Mexico City, ultimately destroying it and making away with 300,000 pesos. Eleven people were killed.

The Navy League of the United States released a report finding the United States Navy to be unprepared for war and short of the tonnage limitation set by the Washington Naval Treaty.

It was a Saturday.

Last edition:

Friday, January 8, 1926. Crownings.

Monday, October 20, 2025

Wednesday, October 20, 1915. Arms okay for Carranza.

The impact of Woodrow Wilsons' administration recognizing Carranza, whose followers had blown off the Convention of Aguascalientes, and who personally hated the United States, was becoming immediately clear.


Arms to Carranza. . . that would tip the scales for sure.

While Wilson had his hand on the scale of the Mexican Revolution, he was issuing a proclaimation about American Thanksgiving.

President Wilson issued a proclamation regarding Thanksgiving.

Proclamation 1316—Thanksgiving Day, 1915

October 20, 1915

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

It has long been the honoured custom of our people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. The year that is now drawing to a close since we last observed our day of national thanksgiving has been, while a year of discipline because of the mighty forces of war and of change which have disturbed the world, also a year of special blessing for us.

Another year of peace has been vouchsafed us; another year in which not only to take thought of our duty to ourselves and to mankind but also to adjust ourselves to the many responsibilities thrust upon us by a war which has involved almost the whole of Europe. We have been able to assert our rights and the rights of mankind without breach of friendship with the great nations with whom we have had to deal; and while we have asserted rights we have been able also to perform duties and exercise privileges of succour and helpfulness which should serve to demonstrate our desire to make the offices of friendship the means of truly disinterested and unselfish service. Our ability to serve all who could avail themselves of our services in the midst of crisis has been increased, by a gracious Providence, by more and more abundant crops. our ample financial resources have enabled us to steady the markets of the world and facilitate necessary movements of commerce which the war might otherwise have rendered impossible; and our people have come more and more to a sober realization of the part they have been called upon to play in a time when all the world is shaken by unparalleled distresses and disasters. The extraordinary circumstances of such a time have done much to quicken our national consciousness and deepen and confirm our confidence in the principles of peace and freedom by which we have always sought to be guided. Out of darkness and perplexity have come firmer counsels of policy and clearer perceptions of the essential welfare of the nation. We have prospered while other peoples were at war, but our prosperity has been vouchsafed us, we believe, only that we might the better perform the functions which war rendered it impossible for them to perform.

Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday the twenty-fifth of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease from their wonted occupations and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks to Almighty God.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this twentieth day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and fortieth.

Signature of Woodrow Wilson

Louis Botha, once a Boer General, of the South African Party won the 1915 South African general election and retained power.

French forces reached the town of Krivolak on the Vardar river in Vardar Macedonia. The British dug in at a mountain pass near Kosturino and Doiran Like.

The Ottoman Empire brought an end to Armenian resistance at Urfa.

The British Commonwealth recognized women as bus and tram operators for the duration, something that had been going on for some time.

Sweden established the Swedish Infantry Officers College.

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 20, 1915: With bleeding heart ...: Headline of the Day -100:  Male voters in New Jersey reject women’s suffrage in the referendum by roughly 133,000 to 184,000. It los...

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 19, 1915. The US extends recognition to Carranza.

Friday, July 11, 2025

Sunday, July 11, 1915. Garza enters Mexico City. Revolutionary ambush in Brownsville.

Constitutionalist Gen. Pablo Gonzáles Garza entered Mexico City

Sheriff's Deputy Constable Pablo Falcon and Deputy Sheriff  Encarnacion Cuellar were shot and killed when they were ambushed by six men at a dance hall three miles from Brownsville, Texas. They are asserted to be the first victims of the Plan of San Diego, with it being ironic in that they were both Hispanic.  Other causes for the ambush have been theorized.

The Germans scuttled the cruiser SMS Königsberg in the Rufiji River, German East Africa following the vessel being heavily damaged in action against the Royal Navy.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 10, 1915. Writing the Mexican governments about Huerta.


Monday, June 30, 2025

Wednesday, June 30, 1915. Armenian massacre.

Facing a lack of ammunition, Aremenial militiamen engaged Ottoman troops hand to hand.

They lost, and the Ottomans entered the fort and killed the women and children inside.

The HMS Lightning struck a mine in the Thames Estuary of England and sank.  The German submarine SM UC-2 struck a mine in the North Sea and sank.

French commander Henri Gouraud was wounded at Gallipoli and replaced by his divisional commander, Maurice Bailloud.

A telegram was sent to the Secretary of State from El Paso.

Collector Cobb to the Secretary of State.

[Telegram.]

El Paso, June 30, 1915.

Trial Huerta and others postponed until July 12. When Huerta left Federal building there was repetition of scene of June 27; he was given an ovation by his partisans who are assembled in El Paso.

Cobb.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 29, 1915. Airpower comes to the forests.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Friday, September 25, 1874. The Act of September 1874.

Tilmahtli from the 1531 apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico.

Mexico enacted  The Act of September 25, 1874 making the provisions of the Reform Law constitutional.

The act provided "liberal" reforms basically on the French model, following the results of the bitter Reform War of the late 1850s, and were hostile accordingly to the Church in certain ways.  They provided:

  • The State and the Church were independent of each other.
  • Congress could not enact laws, establishing or prohibiting any religion.
  • Marriage was a civil contract.
  • No religious institution could acquire real property or capital taxes on them, with the sole exception established in Article 27 of the Constitution.
  • A promise to speak the truth and to fulfill contracted obligations replaced a religious oath.
  • No one could be compelled to give personal works without their full consent. 
  • The State could not allow any contract, covenant or agreement that provided for the loss or irrevocable sacrifice of the freedom of man, whether due to work, education or religious vow.
Anti Catholicism as an element of Mexican politics dated back to its earliest independence movements, and like the rise of protestantism in France and England, a desire to appropriate the property and wealth of the Church had a great deal to deal with it, although taking over the Church's obligations to the poor on the other hand were typically left to political theory, save in England where it was simply ignored.  Mexico's first Constitution (1824) provided that it was to perpetually be a Catholic state, but hostility set in by 1857 when Benito Juárez attacked the property rights and possessions of the Church. Many of the figures of the 1854 1855 Revolution of Ayutla had been Freemasons and anticlericists.  

This had caused the supporters of tradition and religion to back the Second Mexican Empire, which of course turned out badly.  Anticlericalism was moderated under Porfirio Díaz, but revived during the Mexican Revolution, save for the followers of Zapata.

Ultimately, this would lead to the Cristero War, but even with its end, the Mexican government remained strongly hostile up until very recent years to the Catholic Church, having an overall impact on the practice of the faith in Mexico.  Open repression mostly ended with the election of Catholic Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940–46) and most of the remaining official repressive statutes ended under  President Carlos Salinas in 1992.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 22, 1874. 1874 Hong Kong Typhoon.