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November 20

Francisco Madero’s Plan de San Luis Potosi Begins Mexican Revolution (1910)


On November 20, 1910, Francisco Madero issued the Plan de San Luis Potosi, which called for the overthrow of the current Mexican government led by President Porfirio Díaz. In effect, Madero’s Plan led to the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.

Francisco Madero ran against Porfirio Díaz in 1910 for the Presidency of Mexico. After Madero began to gain support, Diaz illegally jailed Madero to subdue Madero’s followers. Madero fought back by writing a plan to overthrow the current Mexican government and reinstate a more democratic state.

On November 20, 1910, Madero released his Plan de San Luis de Potosi in San Luis Potosí, Mexcio. Madero’s Plan called for the Mexican people to band together on Sunday, November 20, 1910, at 6:00 p.m., and overthrown the then current government. Because of Madero’s call to action to the Mexican people, the Mexican Revolution began on November 20, 1910 against the Mexican government.

The people eventually did overthrow the Mexican government and established the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) as the dominant political party. Francisco Madero was elected as Mexico’s President for the PRI in 1911. However, two years later, Madero was imprisoned by a different military coup, forced to resign as president, and executed in February 1913.

The beginning of Madero’s Plan states:
Peoples, in their constant efforts for the triumph of the ideal of liberty and justice, are forced, at precise historical moments, to make their greatest sacrifices.

Our beloved country has reached one of those moments. A force of tyranny which we Mexicans were not accustomed to suffer after we won our independence oppresses us in such a manner that it has become intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny we are offered peace, but peace full of shame for the Mexican nation, because its basis is not law, but force; because its object is not the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country, but to enrich a small group who, abusing their influence, have converted the public charges into fountains of exclusively personal benefit, unscrupulously exploiting the manner of lucrative concessions and contracts.

(Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1910potosi.html)