Plutarco Elías Calles and the revolutionary government in Sonora, Mexico, 1915-1919

• Main Author: Farmer, E. M.
• Published: University of Cambridge 1997
• Subjects: 970
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.598937

This dissertation addresses Plutarco Elías Calles's government in the Mexican state of Sonora between 1915 and 1919, the years immediately following the period of most intense armed conflict in the Mexican revolution. Calles, the most astute and influential politician to emerge from the revolutionary struggle as well as the founder of the modern Mexican state, has been the most conspicuously ignored figure in the extensive historiography on the revolution. Until very recently it was generally accepted that Calles's political development began with his appointment in 1920 as Obregón's interior minister, and that from this office and later as president he pioneered corporatistic programs of agrarian reform and labour organization. Furthermore, revisionist historians have long characterized Calles as the principal influence in the betrayal of the supposedly more 'radical' and 'revolutionary' movements led by Villa and Zapata, who represented popular aspirations and a nationalistic response towards foreign capital finally redeemed by President Cárdenas in the late 1930s. My research, which in a narrative sense complements the wellknown work of the Mexican historian Héctor Aguilar Camín, suggests that the half decade of the <I>callista</I> state government in Sonora had a direct and important bearing on the future character of Mexican government and politics. Indeed, I have found Calles's governorship in Sonora to be a dry run for policies later implemented nationally. Calles pursued a programme which included the expansion of the public education system, substantial, often militarized agrarian reform, advanced labour reforms and the promotion of unions linked to the government, and the successful submission of large American firms to Mexican law; he expelled the Catholic clergy from the state and enforced the prohibition of alcohol and gambling.