Almost Porfirio: Alvaro Obregón’s Second Presidential Election Campaign in Revolutionary Mexico, 1926–28

Former President Alvaro Obregón’s decision to seek a second term in 1928 demonstrated the limitations of Mexico’s emergent post-revolutionary political system. His candidacy was ironic, given that his faction had fought for anti-reelectionist principles in the Revolution (1910-1920). In addition, Obregón’s candidacy unleashed a bloodletting that ultimately claimed the lives of many of his erstwhile closest associates. It paralleled the decision of former dictator Porfirio Díaz to seek a non-consecutive reelection in 1884, and, as Mexicans knew, Díaz had not relinquished power after that until the revolutionaries drove him out of office in 1911. Obregón had once allegedly told a confidant, “Don Porfirio’s only sin … was to grow old.”

This paper challenges the prevailing orthodoxy regarding Obregón’s motivation for running for a second term, which holds that the caudillo had always planned to return to power, and that he had even signed a secret agreement with Calles to that effect. However, new evidence instead shows that Obregón’s actions as ex-president initially suggested an inclination to forgo a second candidacy. When his agribusinesses began to experienced difficulties, however, the caudillo actively promoted his return to power, buoyed also by the increasing difficulties of the national government with the Catholic opposition and the U.S. government.

The paper also offers new insights into the presidential campaigns of Obregón’s rivals, Francisco R. Serrano and Arnulfo Gómez. The two generals initially found encouragement in Obregón’s hesitation to run for another term. In the end, however, they became the primary obstacles to Obregón’s ambitions and were brutally murdered with the support of incumbent President Plutarco Elías Calles. Serrano’s campaign, however, suggests that the Serrano-Gómez challenge transcended a mere political rivalry, as it cultivated the Catholic opposition in the bid for the presidency.