Victoriano Huerta

Victoriano Huerta seized the Mexican presidency in February 1913 by betraying the man who had entrusted him with its defence. He was a Huichol from Jalisco who rose through the army under Porfirio Díaz as an engineer and a ruthless campaigner against indigenous rebellions. When Díaz fell, Huerta stayed in the army and served the elected reformer Francisco Madero, putting down a revolt for him in 1912. In February 1913 a rising in Mexico City known as the Ten Tragic Days left Madero dependent on Huerta as his commander. Huerta instead negotiated with the rebels in the American embassy, under the auspices of Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, and agreed to take power. Madero and his vice-president resigned on a promise of safe conduct and were shot four days later. The coup did not end the revolution but widened it: Carranza, Villa, Obregón and Zapata all took the field against him. Woodrow Wilson refused to recognise his government, occupied Veracruz in April 1914 to cut off his arms supply, and Huerta resigned and fled in July after seventeen months in office. He went to Spain, then to the United States, where he was arrested in 1915 conspiring with German agents to return to power. He died in custody at El Paso in 1916, of cirrhosis. Woodrow Wilson's refusal to recognise him marked a break in American policy, which had generally recognised whoever held power. The Veracruz occupation killed around two hundred Mexicans and turned even Huerta's opponents against Washington. Henry Lane Wilson was recalled within months of the coup he had helped arrange.

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