Victoriano Huerta - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Jose Victoriano Huerta Ortega (December 23rd 1854 with Colotlán, Jalisco - January 13rd 1916) was a soldier and a Mexican politician , president of Mexico of the February 18th 1913 with the 14 July 1914.

Family and studies

Huerta is the son of Jesús Huerta and Refugio Márquez, of the natives Huichol, farm laborers in the ranch of Agua Gorda in Colotlán (State de Jalisco) It engages in the army at seventeen years under the orders of the general Donato Guerra. Its intellectual abilities noticed by this one allowed him malgé its modest origins to enter to the prestigious military academy of Chapultepec with the assistance of president Bénito Juarez. It also studies there the Mathématiques and the Astronomie. After obtaining its diploma, it is built-in the body of the engineers of the army and works within the topographic service in the area of Puebla. It is there that it meets and marries Emilia Águila with which it will have eleven children.

Military career

During the administration of Porfirio Díaz it climbs the levels to arrive at the row of Général and takes part in the engagements against the Yaquis and of Chan Santa Cruz against the Mayas of the Yucatán and the Quintana Roo where it contracts (1902) a disease of the eyes which will afflict it for the remainder with its days.

Career politico-soldier

After the departure of Díaz in exile, Huerta started by making allegiance with the new administration of Francisco Madero, but he plotted secretly in el Pacto of Ciudadela with the ambassador of the the United States and Felix Díaz, nephew of Porfirio. It was charged by president Madero with fighting against the insurrectionists of the Morelos, in favor of Zapata. Huerta betrays Madero as well as the vice-president Pino Suárez and, after a very short interlude, the February 19th 1913, Huerta proclaimed president. During his nomination which took place with the national palate and in the presence of the diplomatic corps accredited in Mexico City the Wilson ambassador made an optimistic speech, ensuring that peace would be restored soon in the country thanks to the skill of the new president. The news of its nomination was sent by telegraph to all the governors of the States. All accepted the usurpation even those of Tabasco, Potosi San Luis and Michoacan however resulting from the revolution. Only the governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza opposed it followed some weeks later by that of Sonora.

February 22nd, on order of Huerta, president Madero and the vice-president Pino Suárez were carried out.

Huerta with the firm support of the British imposed his government. The president of the the United States Woodrow Wilson who succeeded Taft in 1913, became hostile with the Huerta administration which continued the policy of Diaz in favor of European capitalists. During the summer 1913 he recalled his ambassador Henry Lane Wilson and placed the embargo on the sale of the ammunition at Mexico, sent John Lind to Mexico City to request Huerta not to present itself to the next presidential elections. At the time of the elections which had place Huerta in October did not arise but declared that the majority of the voters in spite of had very voted for him. President Wilson announced that it had to be reversed of force and in February 1914 the embargo was raised in favor of constitutionalists. Under the pretext of protect its fellow-citizens but actually for empécher the delivery from weapons and military material for the federal troops and learning arivée in Veracruz from the trading vessel German Ypiranga charged with ammunition, it made unload the marines on April 21st, 1914 with Veracruz, port which was defended heroically by the juniors by the Mexican navy and the inhabitants of the port. There were several revolts against Huerta, like those carried out by Zapata, Francisco Villa, and Venustiano Carranza. After the defeats of its troops with Torréon, Zacatecas, Orendain, the situation of Huerta becoming desperate it names a provisional government charged to negotiate with the rebels. It gives up the présidance formally on July 15th, 1914. August 14th by the treaty of Teoloyucan the federal army went to the constitutionalists.

Exile

It was exiled initially in England, then in Spain and finally in the United States. In Spain and in Washington, it negotiated with German agents in order to obtain the support of Guillaume II of Germany for a coup d'etat. Kaiser would have promised to him the restitution of the territories lost in 1848 against a Mexican military action in the South of the United States. It was stopped with Newman (New Mexico) on June 27th, 1915 with Pascual Orozco, was shown to conspire and violate the laws of neutrality of the United States. After a stay in a military prison, it was released in bond with obligation to remain at his place, because it was likely to flee with the Mexico. Under house arrest, it continued to be devoted to drink and succumbed, according to the version given by the American authorities, with the consequences of its addiction to alcohol on January 13rd, 1916 with El Paso.

Its notorious Alcoholism, its Drug-addiction (Huerta was a heavy smoker of marijuana), its physical appearance, its eternal black glasses, its frock coat like its manner of going, were worth the mockeries of its aversaires to him which called it cucaracha (cockroach). In 1913 some stanzas of old woman (it goes back from the wars between Moors and Christians to Spain) song éponyme were made up for him. It remains of him the image of the traitor in all his mean action, but also that of a man who did not let himself intimidate by the United States.

Victoriano Huerta should not be confused with Adolfo of Huerta, which was also briefly him president of Mexico in 1920.

Vera Estanol which was during a few months its Minister for the State education and which knew it well carries the following judgment on Victoriano Huerta: Old of sixty and one years, very robust and having a very great resistance as well to work as with excesses of any kind, it was (in normal weather at least) of a sharp, malicious, perspicacious intelligence. Soldier in the heart, it was a man of action, firm in his decisions (there still during its normal time). But it was egoistic, impermeable with the concept of having and an ambition without terminals. He was unaware of, or scorned, any individual or social initiative independent of his will. Moreover it was cheating and even machiavelic, arbitrary, brutal, dissolu and in addition alcoholic, with consequently of the intermittent states of abulia and inhibition. All this, amplified under the effect of the capacity, made of him within gouverenement the element of dissolution par excellence.

Sources

Gobernantes of Mexico City ; Fernando Orozco Linares - Leading Panorama - Mexico City D.F. - ISBN 968-38-0133-1
the Mexican revolution ; Jesus Silva Herzog; small collection Maspero - Paris - ISBN 2-7071-0191-5
History of Mexico , Henry B. Parkes prefaces of Jacques Soustelle - Payot - Paris
Memorias de Victoriano Huerta ; Victoriano Huerta; Mexico City: Ediciones " Vertice" , 1957.
Huerta; political portrait has; Michael C Meyer; Lincoln, University off Nebraska Close 1972.
El militarismo of Victoriano Huerta ; Arturo Langle Ramírez; Mexico City: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1976.

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