Maximato

MAXIMATO

The Maximato is the period in Mexican history between 1928 and 1935, in which the former President Plutarco Elías Calles maintained control of the country as Jefe Máximo, with manyregarding succeeding Presidents Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo Rodríguez as his mere puppets.
Under Calles a constitutional change was passed that allowed for a non-consecutivereelection, and in 1928 Álvaro Obregón was elected as Calles' successor. However, Obregón was assassinated by José de León Toral, a Catholic militant, before he could assume power. To avoid a politicalvacuum, Calles named himself Jefe Máximo, the political chieftain of Mexico and Emilio Portes Gil was appointed temporary president, although in reality he was little more than a puppet of Calles. Thefollowing year, Calles founded the PNR, or Partido Nacional Revolucionario, the predecessor of today's Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Officially, after 1929, Calles served as minister ofwar, as he continued to suppress the rebellion of the Cristero War, but a few months later after the intervention of the United States ambassador Dwight Morrow the Mexican government and the cristerossigned a peace treaty. PNR candidate Pascual Ortiz Rubio won the controversial 1929 election, in which he defeated the philosopher José Vasconcelos of the National Antireelectionist Party (PNA), whosecampaign was supported mainly by university students, and Pedro Rodríguez Triana of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). The election was marred by violence and fraud however, and Vasconcelos refused toaccept the result. Dozens of antireelectionists were killed, and Vasconcelos decided to flee the country. During his inauguration, Ortiz Rubio was wounded in an assassination attempt byantireelectionist student Daniel Flores, who was tried and received the death penalty.
During the Maximato, Calles became increasingly authoritarian. In the early 1930s he appears to have flirted with the idea...