title: Richard II of England

text: Arundel was the first of the three to be brought to trial, at the parliament of September 1397. After a heated quarrel with the king, he was condemned and executed. Gloucester was being held prisoner by the Earl of Nottingham at Calais while awaiting his trial. As the time for the trial drew near, Nottingham brought news that Gloucester was dead. It is thought likely that the king had ordered him to be killed to avoid the disgrace of executing a prince of the blood.


title: Richard II of England

text: Warwick was also condemned to death, but his life was spared and his sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Arundel's brother Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was exiled for life. Richard then took his persecution of adversaries to the localities. While recruiting retainers for himself in various counties, he prosecuted local men who had been loyal to the appellants. The fines levied on these men brought great revenues to the crown, although contemporary chroniclers raised questions about the legality of the proceedings.


title: Richard II of England

text: These actions were made possible primarily through the collusion of John of Gaunt, but with the support of a large group of other magnates, many of whom were rewarded with new titles, and were disparagingly referred to as Richard's "duketti". These included the former Lords Appellant


title: Richard II of England

text: With the forfeited lands of the convicted appellants, the king could reward these men with lands suited to their new ranks.


title: Richard II of England

text: A threat to Richard's authority still existed, however, in the form of the House of Lancaster, represented by John of Gaunt and his son Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford. The House of Lancaster not only possessed greater wealth than any other family in England, they were of royal descent and, as such, likely candidates to succeed the childless Richard.


title: Richard II of England

text: Discord broke out in the inner circles of court in December 1397, when Bolingbroke and Mowbray became embroiled in a quarrel. According to Bolingbroke, Mowbray had claimed that the two, as former Lords Appellant, were next in line for royal retribution. Mowbray vehemently denied these charges, as such a claim would have amounted to treason. A parliamentary committee decided that the two should settle the matter by battle, but at the last moment Richard exiled the two dukes instead: Mowbray for life, Bolingbroke for ten years.


title: Richard II of England

text: In 1398 Richard summoned the Parliament of Shrewsbury, which declared all the acts of the Merciless Parliament to be null and void, and announced that no restraint could legally be put on the king. It delegated all parliamentary power to a committee of twelve lords and six commoners chosen from the king's friends, making Richard an absolute ruler unbound by the necessity of gathering a Parliament again.


title: Richard II of England

text: On 3 February 1399, John of Gaunt died. Rather than allowing Bolingbroke to succeed, Richard extended the term of his exile to life and expropriated his properties. The king felt safe from Bolingbroke, who was residing in Paris, since the French had little interest in any challenge to Richard and his peace policy. Richard left the country in May for another expedition in Ireland.


title: Richard II of England

text: In the last years of Richard's reign, and particularly in the months after the suppression of the appellants in 1397, the king enjoyed a virtual monopoly on power in the country, a relatively uncommon situation in medieval England. In this period a particular court culture was allowed to emerge, one that differed sharply from that of earlier times. A new form of address developed; where the king previously had been addressed simply as "highness", now "royal majesty", or "high majesty" were often used. It was said that on solemn festivals Richard would sit on his throne in the royal hall for hours without speaking, and anyone on whom his eyes fell had to bow his knees to the king. The inspiration for this new sumptuousness and emphasis on dignity came from the courts on the continent, not only the French and Bohemian courts that had been the homes of Richard's two wives, but also the court that his father had maintained while residing in Aquitaine.


title: Richard II of England

text: Richard's approach to kingship was rooted in his strong belief in the royal prerogative, the inspiration of which can be found in his early youth, when his authority was challenged first by the Peasants' Revolts and then by the Lords Appellant. Richard rejected the approach his grandfather Edward III had taken to the nobility. Edward's court had been a martial one, based on the interdependence between the king and his most trusted noblemen as military captains. In Richard's view, this put a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the baronage. To avoid dependence on the nobility for military recruitment, he pursued a policy of peace towards France. At the same time, he developed his own private military retinue, larger than that of any English king before him, and gave them livery badges with his White Hart. He was then free to develop a courtly atmosphere in which the king was a distant, venerated figure, and art and culture, rather than warfare, were at the centre.


title: Richard II of England

text: As part of Richard's programme of asserting his authority, he also tried to cultivate the royal image. Unlike any other English king before him, he had himself portrayed in panel paintings of elevated majesty, of which two survive: an over life-size Westminster Abbey portrait (c. 1390), and the Wilton Diptych (1394–99), a portable work probably intended to accompany Richard on his Irish campaign. It is one of the few surviving English examples of the courtly International Gothic style of painting that was developed in the courts of the Continent, especially Prague and Paris. Richard's expenditure on jewellery, rich textiles and metalwork was far higher than on paintings, but as with his illuminated manuscripts, there are hardly any surviving works that can be connected with him, except for a crown, "one of the finest achievements of the Gothic goldsmith", that probably belonged to his wife Anne.


title: Richard II of England

text: Among Richard's grandest projects in the field of architecture was Westminster Hall, which was extensively rebuilt during his reign, perhaps spurred on by the completion in 1391 of John of Gaunt's magnificent hall at Kenilworth Castle. Fifteen life-size statues of kings were placed in niches on the walls, and the hammer-beam roof by the royal carpenter Hugh Herland, "the greatest creation of medieval timber architecture", allowed the original three Romanesque aisles to be replaced with a single huge open space, with a dais at the end for Richard to sit in solitary state. The rebuilding had been begun by Henry III in 1245, but had by Richard's time been dormant for over a century.


title: Richard II of England

text: The court's patronage of literature is especially important, because this was the period in which the English language took shape as a literary language. There is little evidence to tie Richard directly to patronage of poetry, but it was nevertheless within his court that this culture was allowed to thrive. The greatest poet of the age, Geoffrey Chaucer, served the king as a diplomat, a customs official and a clerk of The King's Works while producing some of his best-known work. Chaucer was also in the service of John of Gaunt, and wrote "The Book of the Duchess" as a eulogy to Gaunt's wife Blanche. Chaucer's colleague and friend John Gower wrote his "Confessio Amantis" on a direct commission from Richard, although he later grew disenchanted with the king.


title: Richard II of England

text: In June 1399, Louis I, Duke of Orléans, gained control of the court of the insane Charles VI of France. The policy of "rapprochement" with the English crown did not suit Louis's political ambitions, and for this reason he found it opportune to allow Henry Bolingbroke to leave for England. With a small group of followers, Bolingbroke landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire towards the end of June 1399. Men from all over the country soon rallied around him. Meeting with Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, who had his own misgivings about the king, Bolingbroke insisted that his only object was to regain his own patrimony. Percy took him at his word and declined to interfere. The king had taken most of his household knights and the loyal members of his nobility with him to Ireland, so Bolingbroke experienced little resistance as he moved south. Keeper of the Realm Edmund, Duke of York, had little choice but to side with Bolingbroke. Meanwhile, Richard was delayed in his return from Ireland and did not land in Wales until 24 July. He made his way to Conwy, where on 12 August he met with the Earl of Northumberland for negotiations. On 19 August, Richard surrendered to Henry Bolingbroke at Flint Castle, promising to abdicate if his life were spared. Both men then returned to London, the indignant king riding all the way behind Henry. On arrival, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 1 September.


title: Richard II of England

text: Henry was by now fully determined to take the throne, but presenting a rationale for this action proved a dilemma. It was argued that Richard, through his tyranny and misgovernment, had rendered himself unworthy of being king. However, Henry was not next in line to the throne; the heir presumptive was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, great-grandson of Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward's third son to survive to adulthood. The problem was solved by emphasising Henry's descent in a direct "male" line, whereas March's descent was through his grandmother, Philippa of Clarence.


title: Richard II of England

text: According to the official record, read by the Archbishop of Canterbury during an assembly of lords and commons at Westminster Hall on Tuesday 30 September, Richard gave up his crown willingly and ratified his deposition citing as a reason his own unworthiness as a monarch. On the other hand, the "Traison et Mort Chronicle" suggests otherwise. It describes a meeting between Richard and Henry that took place one day before the parliament's session. The king succumbed to blind rage, ordered his own release from the Tower, called his cousin a traitor, demanded to see his wife, and swore revenge, throwing down his bonnet, while Henry refused to do anything without parliamentary approval. When parliament met to discuss Richard's fate, John Trevor, Bishop of St Asaph, read thirty-three articles of deposition that were unanimously accepted by lords and commons. On 1 October 1399, Richard II was formally deposed. On 13 October, the feast day of Edward the Confessor, Henry Bolingbroke was crowned king.


title: Richard II of England

text: Henry had agreed to let Richard live after his abdication. This all changed when it was revealed that the earls of Huntingdon, Kent, and Salisbury, and Lord Despenser, and possibly also the Earl of Rutlandall now demoted from the ranks they had been given by Richardwere planning to murder the new king and restore Richard in the Epiphany Rising. Although averted, the plot highlighted the danger of allowing Richard to live. He is thought to have been starved to death in captivity in Pontefract Castle on or around 14 February 1400, although there is some question over the date and manner of his death. His body was taken south from Pontefract and displayed in St Paul's Cathedral on 17 February before burial in King's Langley Priory on 6 March.


title: Richard II of England

text: Rumours that Richard was still alive persisted, but never gained much credence in England; in Scotland, however, a man identified as Richard came into the hands of Regent Albany, lodged in Stirling Castle, and serving as the notionaland perhaps reluctantfigurehead of various anti-Lancastrian and Lollard intrigues in England. Henry IV's government dismissed him as an impostor, and several sources from both sides of the border suggest the man had a mental illness, one also describing him as a "beggar" by the time of his death in 1419, but he was buried as a king in the local Dominican friary in Stirling. Meanwhile, in 1413, Henry Vin an effort both to atone for his father's act of murder and to silence the rumours of Richard's survivalhad decided to have the body at King's Langley moved to its final resting place in Westminster Abbey. Here Richard himself had prepared an elaborate tomb, where the remains of his wife Anne were already entombed.


title: Richard II of England

text: Contemporary writers, even those less sympathetic to the king, agreed that Richard was a "most beautiful king", though with a "face which was white, rounded and feminine", implying he lacked manliness. He was athletic and tall; when his tomb was opened in 1871, he was found to be six feet (1.82 m) tall. He was also intelligent and well read, and when agitated he had a tendency to stammer. While the Westminster Abbey portrait probably shows a good similarity of the king, the Wilton Diptych portrays him as significantly younger than he was at the time; it must be assumed that he had a beard by this point. Religiously, he was orthodox, and particularly towards the end of his reign he became a strong opponent of the Lollard heresy. He was particularly devoted to the cult of Edward the Confessor, and around 1395 he had his own coat of arms impaled with the mythical arms of the Confessor. Though not a warrior king like his grandfather, Richard nevertheless enjoyed tournaments, as well as hunting.


title: Richard II of England

text: The popular view of Richard has more than anything been influenced by Shakespeare's play about the king, "Richard II". Shakespeare's Richard was a cruel, vindictive, and irresponsible king, who attained a semblance of greatness only after his fall from power. Writing a work of fiction, Shakespeare took many liberties and made great omissions, basing his play on works by writers such as Edward Hall and Samuel Daniel, who in turn based their writings on contemporary chroniclers such as Thomas Walsingham. Hall and Daniel were part of Tudor historiography, which was highly unsympathetic to Richard. The Tudor orthodoxy, reinforced by Shakespeare, saw a continuity in civil discord starting with Richard's misrule that did not end until Henry VII's accession in 1485. The idea that Richard was to blame for the later-15th century Wars of the Roses was prevalent as late as the 19th century, but came to be challenged in the 20th. Some recent historians prefer to look at the Wars of the Roses in isolation from the reign of Richard II.


title: Richard II of England

text: Richard's mental state has been a major issue of historical debate since the first academic historians started treating the subject in the 19th century. One of the first modern historians to deal with Richard II as a king and as a person was Bishop Stubbs. Stubbs argued that towards the end of his reign, Richard's mind "was losing its balance altogether". Historian Anthony Steel, who wrote a full-scale biography of the king in 1941, took a psychiatric approach to the issue, and concluded that Richard had schizophrenia. This was challenged by V. H. Galbraith, who argued that there was no historical basis for such a diagnosis, a line that has also been followed by later historians of the period, such as Anthony Goodman and Anthony Tuck. Nigel Saul, who wrote the most recent academic biography on Richard II, concedes thateven though there is no basis for assuming the king had a mental illnesshe showed clear signs of a narcissistic personality, and towards the end of his reign "Richard's grasp on reality was becoming weaker".


title: Richard II of England

text: One of the primary historiographical questions surrounding Richard concerns his political agenda and the reasons for its failure. His kingship was thought to contain elements of the early modern absolute monarchy as exemplified by the Tudor dynasty. More recently, Richard's concept of kingship has been seen by some as not so different from that of his antecedents, and that it was exactly by staying within the framework of traditional monarchy that he was able to achieve as much as he did. Yet his actions were too extreme, and too abrupt. For one, the absence of war was meant to reduce the burden of taxation, and so help Richard's popularity with the Commons in parliament. However, this promise was never fulfilled, as the cost of the royal retinue, the opulence of court and Richard's lavish patronage of his favourites proved as expensive as war had been, without offering commensurate benefits. As for his policy of military retaining, this was later emulated by Edward IV and Henry VII, but Richard II's exclusive reliance on the county of Cheshire hurt his support from the rest of the country. Simon Walker writes: "What he sought was, in contemporary terms, neither unjustified nor unattainable; it was the manner of his seeking that betrayed him."


title: Solange Knowles

text: Solange Piaget Knowles (; born June 24, 1986) is an American singer, songwriter, performance artist, and actress. Expressing an interest in music from an early age, Knowles had several temporary stints as a backup dancer for Destiny's Child, which featured her elder sister, Beyoncé Knowles, among its members, before signing with her father Mathew Knowles's Music World Entertainment label. At age 16, Knowles released her first studio album "Solo Star" (2002). She also appeared in the films "Johnson Family Vacation" (2004), and "" (2006).


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2007, Knowles began to record music again. Heavily influenced by Motown girl groups, her second studio album "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams" (2008) deviated from the pop-oriented music of her debut to Motown-inspired sounds from the 60's and 70's. It peaked at number nine on the US "Billboard" 200 and received positive reviews from critics. She followed this up with the 1980s pop and R&B-inspired extended play "True" (2012) on Terrible Records and her imprint Saint Records. Her third studio album, "A Seat at the Table" (2016) was released to widespread critical acclaim and became her first number-one album in the United States. The album's lead single, "Cranes in the Sky" won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance. Her fourth studio album, "When I Get Home", was released in March 2019 to further critical acclaim.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles says that her first passion is songwriting. Frequently compared by the media to her sister Beyoncé, Knowles has claimed that they have different aspirations and are musically different. She has been ranked by "Billboard" as the 100th most successful dance artist of all-time, and in 2017 was honored with the "Impact Award" at the "Billboard" Women in Music event. Her other ventures include an endorsement deal with Rimmel London and a line of hip-hop-oriented merchandise for young children.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles has also ventured into performance art, working in several international museums and exhibitions, such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Venice Art Biennale and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 2022, Knowles became the third woman and first African American to compose a score for the New York City Ballet.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Solange Piaget Knowles was born on June 24, 1986, in Houston, Texas, to Mathew Knowles and Tina Knowles. Her older sister is singer Beyoncé Knowles. Her father, originally from Alabama, is African American, and her mother, originally from Texas, is an African American of Louisiana Creole heritage. Her maternal grandparents are Lumis Beyincé and Agnéz Deréon, a seamstress. She is also a descendant of Acadian leader Joseph Broussard. Knowles was raised Catholic until the age of four, when her family became members of a Methodist church. As a child, she studied dance and theater. At the age of five, she made her singing debut at Six Flags AstroWorld, a theme park in Houston. She began writing songs at the age of nine. At 13, she decided to pursue recording, but her parents initially advised her to wait. During Destiny's Child's opening stint for Christina Aguilera's 2000 tour, Knowles temporarily replaced member Kelly Rowland after she broke her toes backstage during a costume change. At the age of 15, Knowles replaced a departed dancer and performed with the group on tour.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Managed by her father Mathew, Knowles first ventured into the music business in 2001 as the lead singer, backed by Destiny's Child, on the title theme song for the animated television series "The Proud Family". She also was a featured performer on "Hey Goldmember" for the soundtrack to the 2002 film "Austin Powers in Goldmember", as well as a backup singer on the track "Little Drummer Boy" on Destiny's Child's 2001 holiday album "8 Days of Christmas". In 2002, she was featured on Lil Romeo's second studio album "Game Time", singing portions of Luther Vandross-penned "So Amazing" on the single "True Love", and on Kelly Rowland's debut solo album "Simply Deep", for which she also wrote the tracks "Simply Deep", "Beyond Imagination" and "Obsession". In 2001 she appeared as Lil' Bow Wow's date in the music video for his single "Puppy Love". She also made an appearance on "The Master of Disguise" soundtrack and made cameos in Play's video for "M.A.S.T.E.R. (Part II)" featuring Lil' Fizz.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2002, she lent her voice for the character Chanel, the cousin of the protagonist Penny Proud, in an episode of the animated television series "The Proud Family". In June 2003, Mathew Knowles excitedly announced that he was considering adding Knowles to Destiny's Child when the group reunited in 2004, thus turning them into a quartet for the first time since short-lived member Farrah Franklin left in 2000. Mathew Knowles said he was testing the reactions, and, judging by what he had heard, "it seems like a good idea". Later in August, however, Beyoncé said it was only a rumor and Destiny's Child would remain a trio. Rowland added, "She's a solo star," name-dropping Knowles's debut album.


title: Solange Knowles

text: At the age of 14, Knowles started working on her debut album "Solo Star", which involved American producers such as Jermaine Dupri, The Neptunes, Linda Perry and Timbaland among others. She then recorded the album under her father's Music World Entertainment label with Columbia Records. The album is primarily uptempo R&B, although Knowles said there are pop, rock, reggae and hip hop influences. Knowles co-wrote and co-produced some of the 15 tracks in the album, including its lead single, "Feelin' You (Part II)". The song failed to enter the "Billboard" Hot 100, but reached number three on both the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles Sales and Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart. "Solo Star" was released on January 21, 2003 in the United States, where it debuted at number 49 on the "Billboard" 200 and reached number 23 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. "Solo Star" had a mixed critical reception: William Ruhlmann of AllMusic called it a "state-of-the-art contemporary R&B album", but deemed Knowles "lost somewhere in the mix". By mid-2008, the album had sold 112,000 copies domestically according to Nielsen SoundScan.


title: Solange Knowles

text: After the release of her debut album, Knowles began acting in films, followed by a career break to start a family. In 2004, she guest starred in an episode titled "The Catch" on the sitcom "One on One". Knowles appeared as a teenager in the 2004 comedy film "Johnson Family Vacation", starring alongside American actors Cedric the Entertainer, Vanessa Williams and Bow Wow. She provided a song, "Freedom", a collaboration with the Houston-based funk-jazz band Drop Trio, for its soundtrack. Although the reviews were generally negative, Knowles earned praise from "Variety", which opined that she "is nearly as dazzling as big sister Beyoncé and does little more than smile winningly in her first bigscreen outing."


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2006, she starred as a cheerleading captain in the film "", the third installment of the "Bring It On" series, alongside American actress and singer Hayden Panettiere. What little critical reaction the low-budget, direct-to-DVD movie got was negative, and Knowles was described as an "affordable young starlet". Knowles uses her full name for acting, rather than just the first name she uses when singing; for "Bring It On: All or Nothing", she was billed as Solange Knowles-Smith, reflecting her married state at the time.


title: Solange Knowles

text: While she was married, her family moved to Idaho, and, while staying there, she resumed writing songs including the singles "Get Me Bodied" and "Upgrade U" from her sister's second solo album, "B'Day". Knowles earned the R&B and Hip-Hop Song accolade for "Get Me Bodied" at the 2008 ASCAP Awards. During this time, she had also written songs for Destiny's Child, and members Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams. In 2004, while pregnant with her son, she made a cameo appearance in Destiny's Child's music video for "Soldier".


title: Solange Knowles

text: After her divorce, Knowles returned to Houston to begin working on her second album. In 2007, Knowles renewed her management, signing a record deal with Geffen and a publishing deal with EMI. Knowles finished working on her second studio album in 2008 and titled the project "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams". It includes production by CeeLo Green, Soulshock & Karlin and Mark Ronson as well as an appearance by Bilal. A collection of 1960s and 1970s influenced songs, it is seen as a departure from her pop-oriented debut, with what "Billboard" magazine called "more of a modern twist on hip-hop and R&B flecked with tinges of blues and jazz". The album was released on August 26, 2008 in the United States. By December 2008, the album had sold over 114,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album was positively received by critics, with Ian Griffin of "The Guardian" considering it far better than her debut. The album's lead single, "I Decided", was released in April 2008, and reached the top of the "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Play chart; "Rolling Stone" magazine labelled it her breakthrough single. In support of the album, Knowles began the Solange Presents Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams Tour in Britain in November 2008.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles announced via her blog that she would be releasing a series of mixtapes to coincide with the album. The first mixtape, "I Can't Get Clearance...", includes the leaked track "Fuck the Industry (Signed Sincerely)". On this record, Knowles expressed her views on the current state of the music industry. The lyrics to the song name check some major artists such as Mary J. Blige, Ashanti, Keyshia Cole, and Beyoncé, although she made a point of stating that it does not have "a negative light to any of [them]". The mixtape was never released, but Knowles released "Fuck the Industry (Signed Sincerely)" as a single in 2010.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In an interview with MTV in 2009, Knowles revealed that she was determining the type of sound for the follow-up to "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams". During this time, Knowles also parted ways with the Interscope-Geffen-A&M record label group. She would now release her third studio album independently. Early in 2010, Knowles traveled to Australia to work with Australian rock band Midnight Juggernauts on her third studio album. Knowles had planned to release the album in summer as revealed on her official Twitter account in 2009. She also confirmed on Twitter that she rented a house in Santa Barbara, California to get into a certain state of mind while writing and making music. On May 7, 2010, Knowles made a guest appearance on the popular children's show, "Yo Gabba Gabba!" for a "Mothers Day Special" where she performed an original song called "Momma Loves Baby".


title: Solange Knowles

text: In an interview with "Vibe" on July 7, 2010, Knowles said she suffered "a little bit of a breakdown" while recording her new album: "I literally gave up my sanity for a while to do this record. [...] We literally were waking up in the morning and just making music all day and all night. [...] It just started to wear on me in so many different ways. I started having these crazy panic attacks." Knowles explained how she made sacrifices "mentally, emotionally and financially", and continued, "It's more than an album to me. It's a transitional time in my life." Regarding the musical direction of the album, she said the inspiration came from new wave and stated, "This is a dance record, but the lyrics can get pretty dark at times."


title: Solange Knowles

text: In September 2012, Knowles released a teaser video for "Losing You", which was announced as the lead single from the EP "True". This release marked Knowles's first release as a signee of the independent label Terrible Records. The video was shot in Cape Town, South Africa in early September 2012. Knowles revealed in an interview that her mother Tina had paid for Knowles and her friends to fly out and record the video as her birthday gift. On October 24, 2012, Knowles held a listening party in New York City for her EP "True", released for digital download on iTunes on November 27, 2012. The CD and vinyl was made available on January 8, 2013. Following the EP's release, Solange appeared on the cover of "The Fader" magazine's 84th issue.


title: Solange Knowles

text: On May 14, 2013, Knowles announced that she had launched her own record label named Saint Records, which she would be using to release her third full-length album and future music projects distributed through Sony. Saint Records was established to focus on not-yet mainstream hip-hop and R&B artists. She also collaborated with The Lonely Island on the song "Semicolon", which was showcased as part of YouTube's Comedy Week and is featured on the group's album, "The Wack Album". On November 11, 2013, Knowles's record label released its first compilation album, "Saint Heron".


title: Solange Knowles

text: On May 15, 2015, Knowles performed "Rise" for the first time at an HBO-sponsored event, which was inspired by police killings in Ferguson and Baltimore and the subsequent protests. In July 2015, Knowles announced that her third studio album was nearly complete. On her thirtieth birthday, June 24, 2016, she stated that she had completed "A Seat at the Table" three days before her birthday, on June 21. The album was released on September 30, 2016, to universal critical acclaim. It became her first number-one album in the United States. This made her and Beyoncé the first sisters to have both had US number-one albums in a calendar year. On October 3, 2016, Knowles released music videos for the songs "Don't Touch My Hair" and "Cranes in the Sky", both co-directed by herself and Alan Ferguson.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In June 2017, Knowles performed at the Glastonbury Festival; her performance earned a perfect five-star review from Patrick Smith of "The Daily Telegraph", who deemed her "an artist to be cherished" and the performance itself "fantastic theatre." In December 2017, Knowles directed the video for the song "The Weekend" by SZA. In 2019, Solange performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival, the Parklife festival, and the Lovebox Festival. On March 1, she released her fourth studio album, "When I Get Home". She previously teased the album by posting two video snippets on her Instagram and Twitter as well as a personal web page on the African-American social networking site BlackPlanet. Stereo Williams of "The Daily Beast" deemed the album a confirmation that Knowles "is one of the most talented singer-songwriters of her generation."


title: Solange Knowles

text: On her debut album, Knowles had no control over which kinds of music to produce, stating that "when you're 14, everyone else is older and more seasoned and you trust their decisions". She was more concerned with pleasing her record label by submitting to their desires.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Her musical influences were better expressed on "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams", when she considered herself mature and was able to write and produce songs as she wished, without worrying about the expectations of others. Knowles's lyrics tackle relationships, world issues, and deceased friends, with her second album focusing on events in her life, such as marriage, divorce, and parenthood. The album touched upon a variety of genres including pop-soul, psychedelic soul, electronica, and R&B.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles's debut extended play "True" is a new wave album with Knowles stating, "This is a dance record, but the lyrics can get pretty dark at times." Knowles described the EP as "eclectic with 1980s references and African percussion influences." Sonically the extended play is influenced by the keyboard sounds and beats of early 1980s pop and R&B music. The EP was recorded in five cities including Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and on the German autobahn. Her 2016 album, "A Seat at The Table", discusses themes such as "black womanhood," "Southern culture and glory," and "what it means to be free and not free all at once."


title: Solange Knowles

text: Outside her work of being a singer-songwriter, Knowles has also ventured into performance art. In an interview with "Surface" magazine, she said "I'm not at all interested in entertainment. I'm really interested in energy exchange between the viewer and the performer. One way to do that is to make an inclusive experience through style, through energy, through space." She has put on subsequent performance art pieces throughout the world, including "Witness!" at the Elbphilharmonie, "Metatronia (Metatron's Cube)" at the Hammer Museum and "Bridge-s" at the Getty Museum. In November 2019, Knowles directed and composed the art and music performance "In Past Pupils and Smiles" at the Venice Art Biennale. In August 2022, the New York City Ballet announced that Knowles would compose a score for the Fall Fashion Gala the following September, becoming the third woman and first African American to serve in that role for the company.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles has always been compared by the media to her sister, Beyoncé, whom she considers one of her role models. She has expressed her opinion of the comparison in the lyrics to "God Given Name": "I'm not her and never will be" – which was purposely set as the opening track of "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams" to show their differences. In his review for the album, Jody Rosen of "Rolling Stone" magazine referred to the lyrics as a declaration of independence. Beyoncé was unwilling to bring her sister into the recording industry, reasoning that it "involves a lot of pressure". Knowles countered by saying, "It's good to have her advice, but we really have different goals". In her self-titled album, Beyoncé credits Knowles with the lyric "my sister told me I should speak my mind", as she acknowledges the impact her family has made on her life.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles has been described as a fashion icon. Her knack for bold colors, mixed prints, and retro styles, as well as her knack for glamorous, fashion-forward looks in her music videography and public appearances, has become integral to her current image. She has been photographed wearing Alexander Wang, Alexander McQueen, and Chanel. The music video for her 2012 single "Losing You" featured a heavy demonstration of the contemporary sartorial movement throughout Africa, La Sape.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Similarly, her decision to grow her natural hair initially generated strong reactions from the public. In a cover interview with Toyin Ojih Odutola for Cultured Magazine, Knowles addressed her shift to minimalist fashion and the response she received from the public, "This idea that black women could not be minimalist, we could not be subtle— we have to be big, we have to be loud, we have to be an explosive presence."


title: Solange Knowles

text: At the 2017 Glamour Women of the Year awards, Knowles wore a yellow Jean-Paul Gaultier couture gown, with a blonde afro, and was named a Woman of the Year.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles is an activist for the Black Lives Matter movement. After the Charleston church shooting in June 2015, Knowles released a statement posing the following questions: "Where can we be safe? Where can we be free? Where can we be black?" In July 2016, she marched in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in protest of the shooting of Alton Sterling; she also criticized police presence during the march.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2007, Knowles began promoting Baby Jamz, a hip hop-styled toy line for pre-schoolers. It was inspired by her son, who is fond of hip hop music. She is the executive producer of the CD, composed of updated hip hop inspired nursery rhymes, which is featured in all of the toys.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2008, Knowles was named as ambassador for Giorgio Armani's younger diffusion line, Armani Jeans. Armani said Knowles epitomizes the style, which is a "vision of a young, independent, casual lifestyle with a strong and cool, fashion sensibility".


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2010, Knowles worked on the award-winning children's television series "Yo Gabba Gabba!". She performed an original song "Momma Loves Baby" in the special episode titled "Baby". She also sang "Momma Loves Baby" live when the show toured the Dallas–Fort Worth area.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2011, Knowles, Alejandra Ramos Munoz and Zooey Deschanel were announced as the new faces of Rimmel London. At the time, Knowles was also the face of Carol's Daughter. She stepped down from this position in 2012, amid criticism of her natural hair.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2013, Knowles was named art director and creative consultant at Puma. In this role, she curated four women's shoe collections: "Girls of Blaze" (2014), "Wild Wonder" (2014), "Behind the Baazar" (2014) and "Word to the Woman" (2015).


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2018, Knowles received the artist of the year award from the Harvard Foundation. She became the face of Mercedes-Benz's campaign "#WEWONDER" and Helmut Lang's fashion campaign. She also began a collaboration for interior design with IKEA.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2022, Knowles was the star of LOUIS XIII’s "Believe in Time" campaign. She was honored with the 2022 NYU Global Trailblazer Award.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles and sister Beyoncé modeled for their family's clothing line, House of Deréon, named after their grandmother, Agnéz Deréon. She also helped launch Deréon, a junior apparel collection and sister line to House of Deréon. Both sisters modeled for Deréon, and were featured in most of Deréon's marketing campaigns. Together they were featured in a "Got Milk?" campaign ad, wearing House of Deréon.


title: Solange Knowles

text: In 2013, Knowles launched the digital platform Saint Heron as a music and cultural hub to amplify Black artistry. In May 2021, Saint Heron expanded into a multidisciplinary institution, which includes a studio, creative agency, library, and art gallery. Saint Heron's official website debuted a dossier, with plans of highlighting both “literary and visual retrospectives of radical family and artist lineages.” Each dossier installation will be live on the site for seven to ten days, the first recounting the story of Saint Heron, in Knowles's own words.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles married Daniel Smith in February 2004, when she was 17 and he was 19. On October 18, 2004, Knowles gave birth to a son. After their son's birth, the family moved to Moscow, Idaho, where Knowles's husband continued studying in college. The two divorced in 2007, after which Knowles split her time between her residences in Los Angeles and Houston, Texas. She and her son relocated to Brooklyn in 2011, and to New Orleans, Louisiana in 2013.


title: Solange Knowles

text: Knowles married music video director Alan Ferguson at the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans on November 16, 2014. The couple separated in 2019.


title: Solange Knowles

text: That same year, Knowles began dating experimental jazz artist Gio Escobar from the band Standing on the Corner, with whom she had previously collaborated on her studio album "When I Get Home". Knowles publicly acknowledged the relationship on Instagram in November 2020.


title: Solange Knowles

text: On May 12, 2014, TMZ released security video footage of Knowles appearing to physically attack her brother-in-law, Jay-Z, and being restrained by a security guard in an elevator at The Standard, High Line in Manhattan. The video went viral, receiving a significant amount of media attention from news organizations and gossip columnists, with many wondering what led to the violent confrontation. The infamous moment was mentioned in monologues on late night talk shows such as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and "The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon." The matter was also spoofed on television shows including "Saturday Night Live" and "Family Guy". Knowles, Jay-Z, and Beyoncé called the occurrence an "unfortunate incident" and stated that the family "has worked through it." Knowles later clarified that she and her family were "all good."


title: Solange Knowles

text: At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards (2017), Knowles won her first Grammy Award, for Best R&B Performance for her song "Cranes in the Sky", the lead and only single from her third album, "A Seat at the Table" (2016), which was Knowles's first Grammy Award nomination. In 2017, she also won a "Glamour" Award for Woman of the Year, and became the first winner of the "Billboard" Women in Music Impact Award. Knowles has won several other awards including a BET Award, a Soul Train Music Award, and a Webby Award.


title: Gia Carangi

text: Gia Marie Carangi (January 29, 1960November 18, 1986) was an American model, considered by many to be the first supermodel. She was featured on the cover of many magazines, including multiple editions of "Vogue" and "Cosmopolitan", and appeared in advertising campaigns for luxury fashion houses such as Armani, Dior, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent.


title: Gia Carangi

text: After Carangi became addicted to heroin, her career rapidly declined. In 1986, at age 26, she died of AIDS-related complications. Believed to have contracted it from a contaminated needle, she became one of the first famous women to die of the disease. Her life was dramatized in the 1998 HBO television film "Gia," directed by Michael Cristofer and starring Angelina Jolie as Carangi.


title: Gia Carangi

text: Carangi was born in January 29, 1960 in Philadelphia, the third and youngest child of Joseph Carangi, a restaurant owner, and Kathleen Carangi ("née" Adams), a homemaker. She had two older brothers. Her father was Italian, and her mother was of Irish and Welsh ancestry. Joseph and Kathleen had an unstable, violent marriage, ultimately leading Kathleen to abandon the family when Carangi was eleven years old. Gia was described as "needy and manipulative" by relatives who recalled her as spoiled and shy as a child and a "mommy's girl" who did not receive the motherly attention that she desired. Those who knew Gia blamed her "fractured childhood" for the instability and drug dependence that plagued her adult life.


title: Gia Carangi

text: In her adolescent years, Carangi found the attention she sought from other teenage girls, befriending them by sending flowers. While attending Abraham Lincoln High School, Carangi bonded with "the Bowie kids", a group of obsessive David Bowie fans who emulated Bowie's "defiantly weird, high-glam" style. Carangi was drawn to Bowie for his fashion preferences and his ambiguous gender play and outspoken bisexuality. One of Carangi's friends later spoke of her "tomboy persona", describing her relaxed openness about her sexuality as reminiscent of the character Cay in the 1985 film "Desert Hearts". Carangi and her "bi-try Bowie-mad" friends hung out in Philadelphia's gay clubs and bars. Though she associated with the lesbian community, she did not want to take up "the accepted lesbian style."


title: Gia Carangi

text: After being featured in Philadelphia newspaper ads and being discovered by Sondra Scerca in Maurice Tannenbaum's hair salon, Carangi moved to New York City at the age of 17, where she signed with Wilhelmina Models. Her first major shoot, published in October 1978, was with top fashion photographer Chris von Wangenheim, who had her pose nude behind a chain-link fence with makeup artist Sandy Linter. Carangi immediately became infatuated with Linter and pursued her, though the relationship never became stable. By the end of 1978, her first year in New York, Carangi was already a well-established model. Of her quick rise to prominence, described by "Vogue" as "meteoric", Carangi later said, "I started working with very good people, I mean all the time, very fast. I didn't build into a model, I just sort of became one."


title: Gia Carangi

text: Carangi was a favorite model of various fashion photographers, including Von Wangenheim, Francesco Scavullo, Arthur Elgort, Richard Avedon, and Denis Piel. Well-integrated within the fashion world, she had the selection of several photographers, most notably Scavullo. Carangi was featured on the cover of many fashion magazines, including the April 1979 issue of "British Vogue", the April 1979 and August 1980 issues of "Vogue Paris", the August 1980 issue of American "Vogue", the February 1981 issue of "Vogue Italia", and multiple issues of "Cosmopolitan" between 1979 and 1982. During these years, she also appeared in various advertising campaigns for high-profile fashion houses, including "Armani", "André Laug", "Christian Dior", "Versace", and "Yves Saint Laurent". At the height of her career, Carangi was most known in modeling circles by only her first name. During this time, she also appeared in the Blondie music video for "Atomic".


title: Gia Carangi

text: A regular at Studio 54 and the Mudd Club, Carangi usually used cocaine in clubs. After her agent, mentor, and friend Wilhelmina Cooper, died of lung cancer in March 1980, a devastated Carangi began using drugs and developed an addiction to heroin. Carangi's addiction soon began to affect her work; she had violent temper tantrums, walked out of photo shoots to buy drugs, and fell asleep in front of the camera. Scavullo recalled a fashion shoot with Carangi in the Caribbean when "she was crying, she couldn't find her drugs. I literally had to lay her down on her bed until she fell asleep." During one of her final location shoots for American "Vogue", Carangi had red bumps in the crooks of her elbows where she had injected heroin. Despite airbrushing, some of the photos, as published in the November 1980 issue, reportedly still showed visible needle marks.


title: Gia Carangi

text: In November 1980, Carangi left Wilhelmina Models and signed with Ford Models, but she was dropped within weeks. By then, her career was in a steep decline. Modeling offers soon ceased and her fashion industry friends, including Sandy Linter, refused to speak to her, fearing their association with her would harm their careers. In an attempt to quit using drugs, she moved back to Philadelphia with her mother and stepfather in February 1981. Carangi underwent a 21-day detox program, but her sobriety was short-lived. She was arrested in March 1981 after she drove into a fence in a suburban neighborhood. After a chase with police, she was taken into custody where it was later determined she was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. After her release, Carangi briefly signed with a new agency, Legends, and worked sporadically, mainly in Europe.


title: Gia Carangi

text: In late 1981, although still using drugs, Carangi was determined to make a comeback in the fashion industry and signed with Elite Model Management. While some clients refused to work with her, others were willing to hire her because of her past status as a top model. Scavullo photographed her for the April 1982 cover of "Cosmopolitan", her last cover appearance for an American magazine. Sean Byrnes, Scavullo's long-time assistant, later said, "What she was doing to herself finally became apparent in her pictures. ... I could see the change in her beauty. There was an emptiness in her eyes."


title: Gia Carangi

text: Carangi then mainly worked with photographer Albert Watson and found work modeling for department stores and catalogs. She appeared in an advertising campaign for "Versace", shot by Richard Avedon. He hired her for the fashion house's next campaign, but during the photo shoot, in late 1982, Carangi became uncomfortable and left before any useable shots of her were taken. Around this time, Carangi enrolled in an outpatient methadone program but soon began using heroin again. By the end of 1982, she had only a few clients that were willing to hire her. Carangi's final photo shoot was for German mail-order clothing company "Otto Versand" in Tunisia; she was sent home during the shoot for using heroin. She left New York for the final time in early 1983.


title: Gia Carangi

text: As she had spent most of her modeling earnings on drugs, Carangi spent the final three years of her life with various lovers, friends, and family members in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. She was admitted to an intense drug treatment program at Eagleville Hospital in December 1984. After treatment, she got a job in a clothing store, which she eventually quit. She later found employment as a checkout clerk and then worked in the cafeteria of a nursing home. By late 1985, she had begun using drugs again and was engaging in sex work in Atlantic City.


title: Gia Carangi

text: In December 1985, Carangi was admitted to Warminster General Hospital in Warminster, Pennsylvania, with bilateral pneumonia. A few days later, she was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex. In the fall of 1986, Carangi was hospitalized again, after being found on the street badly beaten and raped. On October 18, she was admitted to Hahnemann University Hospital. Carangi died at the Hahnemann Hospital of AIDS-related complications one month later, on November 18, 1986, at the age of 26, becoming one of the first famous women to die of the disease. Her funeral was held on November 23 at a small funeral home in Philadelphia. No one from the fashion world attended. However, weeks later, Francesco Scavullo, Carangi's friend and confidant, sent a Mass card when he heard the news.


title: Gia Carangi

text: Carangi is often considered to be the first supermodel, although that title has been applied to others, including Margaux Hemingway,


title: Gia Carangi

text: Audrey Munson, Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, and Janice Dickinson. Model Cindy Crawford, who rose to prominence the year Carangi died, was referred to as "Baby Gia" because of her resemblance to Carangi. Crawford later recalled, "My agents took me to all the photographers who liked Gia: Albert Watson, Francesco Scavullo, Bill King. Everyone loved her look so much that they gladly saw me." Additionally, Carangi, whose sexual orientation has been reported as either lesbian or bisexual, is considered a lesbian icon and is said to have "epitomized lesbian chic more than a decade before the term was coined." Argentine model Mica Argañaraz has often been compared to Carangi, whom she considers a beauty icon.


title: Gia Carangi

text: Carangi's life has been the subject of several works. A biography of Carangi by Stephen Fried titled "Thing of Beauty"—taken from the first line of John Keats' famous poem "Endymion"—was published in 1993. "Gia", a biographical television film starring Angelina Jolie, debuted on HBO in 1998. Jolie won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance, among other accolades. A documentary titled "The Self-Destruction of Gia", released in 2003, showcased footage of Carangi, contemporary interviews with Carangi's family and former colleagues, including Sandy Linter, and footage of actress-screenwriter Zoë Lund, herself a heroin addict, who had been commissioned to write a screenplay based upon Carangi's life at the time of her own death of drug-related causes in 1999.


title: Gia Carangi

text: A biography of Carangi by Sacha Lanvin Baumann titled "Born This Way: Friends, Colleagues, and Coworkers Recall Gia Carangi, the Supermodel Who Defined an Era", was published in 2015. Sondra Scerca, who brought Carangi to Wilhelmina, is currently writing a memoir titled "GIA, WILLY and ME", which will be released in 2022.


title: Gia Carangi

text: The AIDS Memorial Quilt contains one panel with Carangi's full name on it that only commemorates her, one panel that refers to her as Gia that only commemorates her, and one panel that refers to her as Gia and commemorates other people as well as her.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The Mexican Revolution () was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction of the Federal Army and its replacement by a revolutionary army, and the transformation of Mexican culture and government. The northern Constitutionalist faction prevailed on the battlefield and drafted the present-day Constitution of Mexico, which aimed to create a strong central government. Revolutionary generals held power from 1920 to 1940. The revolutionary conflict was primarily a civil war, but foreign powers, having important economic and strategic interests in Mexico, figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Although the decades-long regime of President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) was increasingly unpopular, there was no foreboding in 1910 that a revolution was about to break out. The aging Díaz failed to find a controlled solution to presidential succession, resulting in a power struggle among competing elites and the middle classes, which occurred during a period of intense labor unrest, exemplified by the Cananea and Río Blanco strikes. When wealthy northern landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election and Díaz jailed him, Madero called for an armed uprising against Díaz in the Plan of San Luis Potosí. Rebellions broke out in Morelos, but most prominently in northern Mexico. The Federal Army was unable to suppress the widespread uprisings, showing the military's weakness and encouraging the rebels. Díaz resigned in May 1911 and went into exile, an interim government was installed until elections could be held, the Federal Army was retained, and revolutionary forces demobilized. The first phase of the Revolution was relatively bloodless and short-lived.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero was elected President, taking office in November 1911. He immediately faced the armed rebellion of Emiliano Zapata in Morelos, where peasants demanded rapid action on agrarian reform. Politically inexperienced, Madero's government was fragile, and further regional rebellions broke out. In February 1913, prominent army generals from the Díaz regime staged a coup d'etat in Mexico City, forcing Madero and Vice President Pino Suárez to resign. Days later, both men were assassinated by orders of the new President, Victoriano Huerta. This initiated a new and bloody phase of the Revolution as a coalition of northerners opposed to the counter-revolutionary regime of Huerta, the Constitutionalist Army led by Governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza, entered the conflict. Zapata's forces continued their armed rebellion in Morelos. Huerta's regime lasted from February 1913 to July 1914, with the Federal Army defeated by revolutionary armies. The revolutionary armies then fought each other, with the Constitutionalist faction under Carranza defeating the army of former ally Francisco "Pancho" Villa by the summer of 1915.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Carranza consolidated power and a new constitution was promulgated in February 1917. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 established universal male suffrage, promoted secularism, workers' rights, economic nationalism, and land reform, and enhanced the power of the federal government. Carranza became President of Mexico in 1917, serving a term ending in 1920. He attempted to impose a civilian successor, prompting northern revolutionary generals to rebel. Carranza fled Mexico City and was killed. From 1920 to 1940, revolutionary generals held office, a period when State power became more centralized and revolutionary reforms were implemented, bringing the military under the control of the civilian government. The Revolution was a decade-long civil war, with new political leadership that gained power and legitimacy through their participation in revolutionary conflicts. The political party they founded, which would become the Institutional Revolutionary Party, ruled Mexico until the presidential election of 2000 when an opposition party won. Even the conservative winner of that election, Vicente Fox, contended his election was heir to the 1910 democratic election of Francisco Madero, thereby claiming the heritage and legitimacy of the Revolution.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Liberal general and war veteran Porfirio Díaz came to the presidency of Mexico in 1876 and remained almost continuously in office until 1911 in an era now called Porfiriato. Coming to power after a coup to oppose the re-election of Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, he could not run for re-election in 1880. His close ally, General Manuel González, was elected president (1880–1884). Díaz saw himself as indispensable, and after that interregnum, ran for the presidency again and served in office continuously until 1911. The constitution had been amended to allow unlimited presidential re-election. During the Porfiriato, there were regular elections, widely considered sham exercises, marked by contentious irregularities.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In his early years in the presidency, Díaz consolidated power by playing opposing factions against each other and by expanding the , an armed police militia directly under his control that seized land from local peasants. Peasants were forced to make futile attempts to win back their land through courts and petitions. By 1900, over ninety percent of Mexico's communal lands were sold with an estimated 9.5 million peasants forced into the service of wealthy landowners or "hacendados". Diaz rigged elections, arguing that only he knew what was best for his country, and he enforced his belief with a strong hand. "Order and Progress" were the watchwords of his rule.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz's presidency was characterized by the promotion of industry and the development of infrastructure by opening the country to foreign investment. Díaz suppressed opposition and promoted stability to reassure foreign investors. Farmers and peasants both complained of oppression and exploitation. The situation was further exacerbated by the drought that lasted from 1907 to 1909. The economy took a great leap during the Porfiriato, through the construction of factories, industries and infrastructure such as railroads and dams, as well as improving agriculture. Foreign investors bought large tracts of land to cultivate crops and range cattle for export. The cultivation of exportable goods such as coffee, tobacco, henequen for cordage, and sugar replaced the domestic production of wheat, corn and livestock that peasants had lived on. Wealth, political power and access to education were concentrated among a handful of elite landholding families mainly of European and mixed descent. These controlled vast swaths of the country through their huge estates (for example, the Terrazas had one estate in Sonora that alone comprised more than a million acres). Many Mexicans became landless peasants laboring on these vast estates or industrial workers toiling long hours for low wages. Foreign companies (mostly from the United Kingdom, France, and the U.S.) also exercised influence in Mexico.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz had legitimacy as a leader through his battlefield accomplishments. He knew that the long tradition of military intervention in politics and its resistance to civilian control would prove challenging to his remaining in power. He set about curbing the power of the military, reining in provincial military chieftains, and making them subordinate to the central government. He contended with a whole new group of generals who had fought for the liberal cause and who expected rewards for their services. He systematically dealt with them, providing some rivals with opportunities to enrich themselves, ensuring the loyalty of others with high salaries, and others were bought off by rewards of landed estates and redirecting their political ambitions. Military rivals who did not accept the alternatives often rebelled and were crushed. It took him some 15 years to accomplish the transformation, reducing the army by 500 officers and 25 generals, creating an army subordinate to central power. He also created the military academy to train officers, but their training was aimed at repelling foreign invasions. Díaz expanded the rural police force, the "rurales" as an elite guard, including many former bandits, under the direct control of the president. With these forces, Díaz attempted to pacify the Mexican countryside, led by a stable government that was nominally civilian, and the conditions to develop the country economically with the infusion of foreign investments.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: During Díaz's long tenure in office, the Federal Army became overstaffed and top-heavy with officers, many of them elderly who last saw active military service against the French in the 1860s. Some 9,000 officers commanded the 25,000 rank-and-file on the books, with some 7,000 padding the rosters and nonexistent, so that officers could receive the subsidies for the numbers they commanded. Officers used their position for personal enrichment through salary and opportunities for graft. Although Mexicans had enthusiastically volunteered in the war against the French, the ranks were now filled by draftees. There was a vast gulf between officers and the lower ranks. "The officer corps epitomized everything the masses resented about the Díaz system." With multiple rebellions breaking out in the wake of the fraudulent 1910 election, the military was unable to suppress them, revealing the regime's weakness and leading to Díaz's resignation in May 1911.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Although the Díaz regime was authoritarian and centralizing, it was not a military dictatorship. His first presidential cabinet was staffed with military men, but over successive terms as president, important posts were held by able and loyal civilians. He did not create a personal dynasty, excluding family from the realms of power, although his nephew Félix attempted to seize power after the fall of the regime in 1911. Díaz created a political machine, first working with regional strongmen and bringing them into his regime, then replacing them with (political bosses) who were loyal to him. He skillfully managed political conflict and reined in tendencies toward autonomy. He appointed several military officers to state governorships, including General Bernardo Reyes, who became governor of the northern state of Nuevo León, but over the years military men were largely replaced by civilians loyal to Díaz.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: As a military man himself, and one who had intervened directly in politics to seize the presidency in 1876, Díaz was acutely aware that the Federal Army could oppose him. He augmented the , a police force created by Juárez, making them his private armed force. The were only 2,500 in number, as opposed to the 30,000 in the army and another 30,000 in the federal auxiliaries, irregulars and National Guard. Despite their small numbers, the were highly effective in controlling the countryside, especially along the 12,000 miles of railway lines. They were a mobile force, often sent on trains with their horses to put down rebellions in relatively remote areas of Mexico.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The construction of railways had been transformative in Mexico (as well as elsewhere in Latin America), accelerating economic activity and increasing the power of the Mexican state. The isolation from the central government that many remote areas had enjoyed or suffered was ending. Telegraph lines constructed next to railroad tracks meant instant communication between distant states and the capital.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The political acumen and flexibility Díaz exhibited in his early years in office began to decline after 1900. He brought the state governors under his control, replacing them at will. The Federal Army, while large, was increasingly an ineffective force with aging leadership and troops conscripted into service. Díaz attempted the same kind of manipulation he executed with the Mexican political system with business interests, showing favoritism to European interests against those of the U.S.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Rival interests, particularly those of the foreign powers with a presence in Mexico, further complicated an already complex system of favoritism. As economic activity increased and industries thrived, industrial workers began organizing for better conditions. With the expansion of Mexican agriculture, landless peasants were forced to work for low wages or move to the cities. Peasant agriculture was under pressure as "haciendas" expanded, such as in the state of Morelos, just south of Mexico City, with its burgeoning sugar plantations. There was what one scholar has called "agrarian compression", in which "population growth intersected with land loss, declining wages and insecure tenancies to produce widespread economic deterioration", but the regions under the greatest stress were not the ones that rebelled.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz suppressed strikes, rebellions, and political opposition effectively until the early 1900s. Mexicans began to organize in opposition to Díaz, who had welcomed foreign capital and capitalists, suppressed nascent labor unions, and consistently moved against peasants as agriculture flourished. In 1905 the group of Mexican intellectuals and political agitators who had created the Mexican Liberal Party () drew up a radical program of reform, specifically addressing what they considered to be the worst aspects of the Díaz regime. Most prominent in the PLM were Ricardo Flores Magón and his two brothers, Enrique and Jesús. They, along with Luis Cabrera and Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, were connected to the anti-Díaz publication . Political cartoons by José Guadalupe Posada lampooned politicians and cultural elites with mordant humor, portraying them as skeletons. The Liberal Party of Mexico founded the anti-Díaz anarchist newspaper , which appeared in both Spanish and English. In exile in the United States, Práxedis Guerrero began publishing an anti-Díaz newspaper, ("Red Dawn"), in San Francisco, California. Although leftist groups were small in numbers, they became influential through their publications, articulating their opposition to the Díaz regime. Francisco Bulnes described these men as the "true authors" of the Mexican Revolution for agitating the masses. As the 1910 election approached, Francisco I. Madero, an emerging political figure and member of one of Mexico's richest families, funded the newspaper , in opposition to the continual re-election of Díaz.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Organized labor conducted strikes for better wages and just treatment. Demands for better labor conditions were central to the Liberal Party program, drawn up in 1905. Mexican copper miners in the northern state of Sonora took action in the 1906 Cananea strike. Starting on June 1, 1906, 5,400 miners began to organize labor strikes. Among other grievances, they were paid less than U.S. nationals working in the mines. In the state of Veracruz, textile workers rioted in January 1907 at the huge Río Blanco factory, the world's largest, protesting against unfair labor practices. They were paid in credit that could be used only at the company store, binding them to the company.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: These strikes were ruthlessly suppressed, with factory owners receiving support from government forces. In the Cananea strike, mine owner William Cornell Greene received support from Díaz's rurales in Sonora as well as Arizona Rangers called in from across the U.S. border. This private military force was ordered to use violence to combat labor unrest, marking the U.S.'s involvement in suppressing the Mexican working class. In the state of Veracruz, the Mexican army gunned down Rio Blanco textile workers and put the bodies on train cars that transported them to Veracruz, "where the bodies were dumped in the harbor as food for sharks".


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Since the press was censored in Mexico under Díaz, little was published that was critical of the regime. Newspapers barely reported on the Rio Blanco textile strike, the Cananea strike or harsh labor practices on plantations in Oaxaca and Yucatán. Leftist Mexican opponents of the Díaz regime, such as Ricardo Flores Magón and Práxedis Guerrero, went into exile in the relative safety of the United States, but cooperation between the U.S. government and Díaz's agents resulted in the arrest of some radicals.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz had ruled continuously since 1884. The question of presidential succession was an issue as early as 1900, when he turned 70. Díaz re-established the office of vice president in 1906, choosing Ramón Corral. Rather than managing political succession, Díaz marginalized Corral, keeping him away from decision-making. Díaz publicly announced in an interview with journalist James Creelman for "Pearson's Magazine" that he would not run in the 1910 election. At age 80, this set the scene for a possible peaceful transition in the presidency. It set off a flurry of political activity. To the dismay of potential candidates to replace him, he reversed himself and ran again. His later reversal on retiring from the presidency set off tremendous activity among opposition groups.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz seems to have initially considered Finance Minister José Yves Limantour as his successor. Limantour was a key member of the , the circle of technocratic advisers steeped in positivist political science. Another potential successor was General Bernardo Reyes, Díaz's Minister of War, who also served as governor of Nuevo León. Reyes, an opponent of the Científicos, was a moderate reformer with a considerable base of support. Díaz became concerned about him as a rival and forced him to resign from his cabinet. He attempted to marginalize Reyes by sending him on a "military mission" to Europe, distancing him from Mexico and potential political supporters. "The potential challenge from Reyes would remain one of Díaz's political obsessions through the rest of the decade, which ultimately blinded him to the danger of the challenge of Francisco Madero's anti-re-electionist campaign."


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In 1910 Francisco I. Madero, a young man from a wealthy landowning family in the northern state of Coahuila, announced his intent to challenge Díaz for the presidency in the next election, under the banner of the Anti-Reelectionist Party. Madero chose as his running mate Francisco Vázquez Gómez, a physician who had opposed Díaz. Madero campaigned vigorously and effectively. To ensure Madero did not win, Díaz had him jailed before the election. He escaped and fled for a short period to San Antonio, Texas. Díaz was announced the winner of the election by a "landslide".


title: Mexican Revolution

text: On 5 October 1910, Madero issued a "letter from jail", known as the Plan de San Luis Potosí, with its main slogan ("effective voting, no re-election"). It declared the Díaz presidency illegal and called for a revolt against him, starting on 20 November 1910. Madero's political plan did not outline a major socioeconomic revolution but offered hopes of change for many disadvantaged Mexicans. The plan was very strongly opposed to militarism in Mexico as it was constituted under Díaz, calling on Federal Army generals to resign before true democracy could prevail in Mexico. Madero realized he needed a revolutionary armed force, enticing men to join with the promise of formal rank, and encouraged to join the revolutionary forces with the promise of promotion.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero's plan was aimed at fomenting a popular uprising against Díaz, but he also understood that the support of the United States and U.S. financiers would be of crucial importance in undermining the regime. The rich and powerful Madero family drew on its resources to make regime change possible, with Madero's brother Gustavo A. Madero hiring, in October 1910, the firm of Washington lawyer Sherburne Hopkins, the "world's best rigger of Latin-American revolutions", to encourage support in the U.S. A strategy to discredit Díaz with U.S. business and the U.S. government achieved some success, with Standard Oil representatives engaging in talks with Gustavo Madero. More importantly, the U.S. government "bent neutrality laws for the revolutionaries".


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In late 1910 revolutionary movements arose in response to Madero's Plan de San Luis Potosí, but their ultimate success was the result of the Federal Army's weakness and inability to suppress them. Madero's vague promises of land reform attracted many peasants throughout the country. Spontaneous rebellions arose in which ordinary farm laborers, miners and other working-class Mexicans, along with much of the country's population of indigenous peoples, fought Díaz's forces, with some success. Madero attracted the forces of rebel leaders such as Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Venustiano Carranza. A young and able revolutionary, Orozco—along with Chihuahua Governor Abraham González—formed a powerful military union in the north and, although they were not especially committed to Madero, took Mexicali and Chihuahua City. These victories encouraged alliances with other revolutionary leaders, including Villa. Against Madero's wishes, Orozco and Villa fought for and won Ciudad Juárez, bordering El Paso, Texas, on the south side of the Rio Grande. Madero's call to action had some unanticipated results, such as the Magonista rebellion of 1911 in Baja California.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: With the Federal Army defeated in a string of battles with irregular, voluntary forces, Díaz's government began negotiations with the revolutionaries in the north. In historian Edwin Lieuwen's assessment, "Victors always attribute their success to their own heroic deeds and superior fighting abilities ... What happened in the spring of 1911 was that armed bands under self-appointed chiefs arose all over the republic, drove Díaz officials from the vicinity, seized, money, and stamps, and staked out spheres of local authority. Towns and cities as well as the countryside, passed into the hands of the Maderistas."


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Díaz sued for peace with Madero, whom himself did not want a prolonged and bloody conflict. The result was the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, signed on 21 May 1911. The signed treaty stated that Díaz would abdicate the presidency along with his vice president, Ramón Corral, by the end of May 1911, to be replaced by an interim president, Francisco León de la Barra, until elections were held. Díaz and his family and a number of top supporters were allowed to go into exile. When Díaz left for exile in Paris, he was reported as saying, "Madero has unleashed a tiger; let us see if he can control it."


title: Mexican Revolution

text: With Díaz in exile and new elections to be called in October, the power structure of the old regime remained firmly in place. Francisco León de la Barra became interim president, pending an election to be held in October 1911. Madero considered De la Barra an acceptable figure for the interim presidency since he was not a or politician, but rather a Catholic lawyer and diplomat. He appeared to be a moderate, but the German ambassador to Mexico, Paul von Hintze, who associated with the Interim President, said of him that "De la Barra wants to accommodate himself with dignity to the inevitable advance of the ex-revolutionary influence, while accelerating the widespread collapse of the Madero party." The Federal Army, despite its numerous defeats by the revolutionaries, remained intact as the government's force. Madero called on revolutionary fighters to lay down their arms and demobilize, which Emiliano Zapata and the revolutionaries in Morelos refused to do.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The cabinet of De la Barra and the Mexican congress was filled with supporters of the Díaz regime. Madero campaigned vigorously for the presidency during this interim period, but revolutionaries who had supported him and brought about Díaz's resignation were dismayed that the sweeping reforms they sought were not immediately instituted. He did introduce some progressive reforms, including improved funding for rural schools; promoting some aspects of agrarian reform to increase the amount of productive land; labor reforms including workman's compensation and the eight-hour day; but also defended the right of the government to intervene in strikes. According to historian Peter V. N. Henderson, De la Barra's and congress's actions "suggests that few Porfirians wished to return to the status quo of the dictatorship. Rather, the thoughtful, progressive members of the Porfirian meritocracy recognized the need for change." De la Barra's government sent General Victoriano Huerta to fight in Morelos against the Zapatistas, burning villages and wreaking havoc. His actions drove a wedge between Zapata and Madero, which widened when Madero was inaugurated as president. Zapata remained in arms continuously until his assassination in 1919.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero won the 1911 election decisively and was inaugurated as president in November 1911, but his movement had lost crucial momentum and revolutionary supporters in the months of the Interim Presidency and left in place the Federal Army.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero had drawn some loyal and militarily adept supporters who brought down the Díaz regime by force of arms. Madero himself was not a natural soldier, and his decision to dismiss the revolutionary forces that brought him to power isolated him politically. He was an inexperienced politician, who had never held office before. He firmly held to democratic ideals, which many consider evidence of naivete. His election as president in October 1911, raised high expectations among many Mexicans for positive change. The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez guaranteed that the essential structure of the Díaz regime, including the Federal Army, was kept in place. Madero fervently held to his position that Mexico needed real democracy, which included regime change by free elections, a free press, and the right of labor to organize and strike.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The rebels who brought him to power were demobilized and Madero called on these men of action to return to civilian life. According to a story told by Pancho Villa, a leader who had defeated Díaz's army and forced his resignation and exile, he told Madero at a banquet in Ciudad Juárez in 1911, "You [Madero], sir, have destroyed the revolution ... It's simple: this bunch of dandies have made a fool of you, and this will eventually cost us our necks, yours included." Ignoring the warning, Madero increasingly relied on the Federal Army as armed rebellions broke out in Mexico in 1911–12, with particularly threatening insurrections led by Emiliano Zapata in Morelos and Pascual Orozco in the north. Both Zapata and Orozco had led revolts that had put pressure on Díaz to resign, and both felt betrayed by Madero once he became president.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The press embraced its newfound freedom and Madero became a target of its criticism. Organized labor, which had been suppressed under Díaz, could and did stage strikes, which foreign entrepreneurs saw as threatening their interests. Although there had been labor unrest under Díaz, labor's new freedom to organize also came with anti-American currents. The anarcho-syndicalist (House of the World Worker) was founded in September 1912 by Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, Manuel Sarabia, and Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara and served as a center of agitation and propaganda, but it was not a formal labor union.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Political parties proliferated. One of the most important was the National Catholic Party, which in several regions of the country was particularly strong. Several Catholic newspapers were in circulation during the Madero era, including and , only to be later suppressed under the Victoriano Huerta regime (1913–14). Under Díaz relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Mexican government were stable, with the anticlerical laws of the Mexican Constitution of 1857 remaining in place, but not enforced, so conflict was muted. During Madero's presidency, Church-state conflict was channeled peacefully. The National Catholic Party became an important political opposition force during the Madero presidency. In June 1912 congressional elections, "militarily quiescent states ... the Catholic Party (PCN) did conspicuously well." During that period, the Catholic Association of Mexican Youth (ACJM) was founded. Although the National Catholic Party was an opposition party to the Madero regime, "Madero clearly welcomed the emergence of a kind of two-party system (Catholic and liberal); he encouraged Catholic political involvement, echoing the exhortations of the episcopate." What was emerging during the Madero regime was "Díaz's old policy of Church-state detente was being continued, perhaps more rapidly and on surer foundations." The Catholic Church in Mexico was working within the new democratic system promoted by Madero, but it had its interests to promote, some of which were the forces of the old conservative Church, while the new, progressive Church supporting social Catholicism of the 1891 papal encyclical was also a current. When Madero was overthrown in February 1913 by counter-revolutionaries, the conservative wing of the Church supported the coup.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero did not have the experience or the ideological inclination to reward men who had helped bring him to power. Some revolutionary leaders expected personal rewards, such as Pascual Orozco of Chihuahua. Others wanted major reforms, most especially Emiliano Zapata and Andrés Molina Enríquez, who had long worked for land reform. Madero met personally with Zapata, telling the guerrilla leader that the agrarian question needed careful study. His meaning was clear: Madero, a member of a rich northern "hacendado" family, was not about to implement comprehensive agrarian reform for aggrieved peasants.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In response to this lack of action, Zapata promulgated the Plan de Ayala in November 1911, declaring himself in rebellion against Madero. He renewed guerrilla warfare in the state of Morelos. Madero sent the Federal Army to deal with Zapata, unsuccessfully. Zapata remained true to the demands of the Plan de Ayala and in rebellion against every central government up until his assassination by an agent of President Venustiano Carranza in 1919.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The northern revolutionary General Pascual Orozco, a leader in taking Ciudad Juárez, had expected to become governor of Chihuahua. In 1911, although Orozco was "the man of the hour", Madero gave the governorship instead to Abraham González, a respectable revolutionary, with the explanation that Orozco had not reached the legal age to serve as governor, a tactic that was "a useful constitutional alibi for thwarting the ambitions of young, popular, revolutionary leaders". Madero had put Orozco in charge of the large force of "rurales" in Chihuahua, but to a gifted revolutionary fighter who had helped bring about Díaz's fall, Madero's reward was insulting. After Madero refused to agree to social reforms calling for better working hours, pay, and conditions, Orozco organized his army, the , also called the ("Red Flaggers") and issued his on 25 March 1912, enumerating why he was rising in revolt against Madero. This caused considerable dismay among U.S. businessmen and other foreign investors in the northern region. It was a signal to many that Madero's government could not maintain the order that was the underpinning of modernization in the era of Porfirio Díaz.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In April 1912 Madero dispatched General Victoriano Huerta of the Federal Army to put down Orozco's dangerous revolt. Madero had kept the army intact as an institution, using it to put down domestic rebellions against his regime. Huerta was a professional soldier and continued to serve in the army under the new commander-in-chief. Huerta's loyalty lay with General Bernardo Reyes rather than with the civilian Madero. In 1912, under pressure from his cabinet, Madero called on Huerta to suppress Orozco's rebellion. With Huerta's success against Orozco, he emerged as a powerful figure for conservative forces opposing the Madero regime. During the Orozco revolt, the governor of Chihuahua mobilized the state militia to support the Federal Army. Pancho Villa, now a colonel in the militia, was called up at this time. In mid-April, at the head of 400 irregular troops, he joined the forces commanded by Huerta. Huerta, however, viewed Villa as an ambitious competitor. During a visit to Huerta's headquarters in June 1912, after an incident in which he refused to return a number of stolen horses, Villa was imprisoned on charges of insubordination and robbery and sentenced to death. Raúl Madero, the President's brother, intervened to save Villa's life. Jailed in Mexico City, Villa escaped and fled to the United States, later to return and play a major role in the civil wars of 1913–1915.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: There were other rebellions, one led by Bernardo Reyes and another by Félix Díaz, nephew of the former president, that were quickly put down and the generals jailed. They were both in Mexico City prisons and, despite their geographical separation, they were able to foment yet another rebellion in February 1913. This period came to be known as the Ten Tragic Days (), which ended with Madero's resignation and assassination and Huerta assuming the presidency. Although Madero had reason to distrust Victoriano Huerta, Madero placed him in charge of suppressing the Mexico City revolt as interim commander. He did not know that Huerta had been invited to join the conspiracy, but had initially held back. During the fighting that took place in the capital, the civilian population was subjected to artillery exchanges, street fighting and economic disruption, perhaps deliberately caused by the coupists to demonstrate that Madero was unable to keep order.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: The Madero presidency was unraveling, to no one's surprise except perhaps Madero's, whose support continued to deteriorate, even among his political allies. Madero's supporters in congress before the coup, the so-called ("the renewers"), criticized him, saying, "The revolution is heading toward collapse and is pulling the government to which it gave rise down with it, for the simple reason that it is not governing with revolutionaries. Compromises and concessions to the supporters of the old [Díaz] regime are the main causes of the unsettling situation in which the government that emerged from the revolution finds itself ... The regime appears relentlessly bent on suicide."


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Huerta, formally in charge of the defense of Madero's regime, allowed the rebels to hold the armory in Mexico City—the Ciudadela—while he consolidated his political power. He changed allegiance from Madero to the rebels under Félix Díaz (Bernardo Reyes having been killed on the first day of the open armed conflict). U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who had done all he could to undermine U.S. confidence in Madero's presidency, brokered the Pact of the Embassy, which formalized the alliance between Félix Díaz and Huerta, with the backing of the United States. Huerta was to become provisional president following the resignations of Madero and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez. Rather than being sent into exile with their families, the two were murdered while being transported to prison—-a shocking event, but one that did not prevent the Huerta regime's recognition by most world governments, with the notable exception of the U.S.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Historian Friedrich Katz considers Madero's retention of the Federal Army, which was defeated by the revolutionary forces and resulted in Díaz's resignation, "was the basic cause of his fall". His failure is also attributable to "the failure of the social class to which he belonged and whose interests he considered to be identical to those of Mexico: the liberal hacendados" (owners of large estates). Madero had created no political organization that could survive his death and had alienated and demobilized the revolutionary fighters who had helped bring him to power. In the aftermath of his assassination and Huerta's seizure of power via a military coup, former revolutionaries had no formal organization through which to raise opposition to Huerta.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Madero's "martyrdom accomplished what he was unable to do while alive: unite all the revolutionists under one banner." Within 16 months, revolutionary armies defeated the Federal Army and the Huerta regime fell. Like Porfirio Díaz, Huerta went into exile. The Federal Army was disbanded, leaving only revolutionary military forces.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Upon taking power, Huerta had moved swiftly to consolidate his hold in the North, having learned the lesson from Díaz's fall that the north was a crucial region to hold. Within a month of the coup, rebellions began to spread throughout Mexico, most prominently led by the governor of the state of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, along with Pablo González. Huerta expected state governors to fall into line with the new government. But Carranza and Abraham González, Governor of Chihuahua did not. Carranza issued the Plan of Guadalupe, a strictly political plan to reject the legitimacy of the Huerta government, and called on revolutionaries to take up arms. Revolutionaries who had brought Madero to power only to be dismissed in favor of the Federal Army eagerly responded to the call, most prominently Pancho Villa. Alvaro Obregón of Sonora, a successful rancher and businessman who had not participated in the Madero revolution, now joined the revolutionary forces in the north, the Constitutionalist Army under the ("First Chief") Venustiano Carranza. Huerta had Governor Gonzálezá arrested and murdered, for fear he would foment rebellion. When northern General Pancho Villa became governor of Chihuahua in 1914, following the defeat of Huerta, he located González's bones and had them reburied with full honors. In Morelos, Emiliano Zapata continued his rebellion under the Plan of Ayala (while expunging the name of counter-revolutionary Pascual Orozco from it), calling for the expropriation of land and redistribution to peasants. Huerta offered peace to Zapata, who rejected it. The Huerta government was thus challenged by revolutionary forces in the north of Mexico and the strategic state of Morelos, just south of the capital.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Huerta's presidency is usually characterized as a dictatorship. From the point of view of revolutionaries at the time and the construction of historical memory of the Revolution, it is without any positive aspects. "Despite recent attempts to portray Victoriano Huerta as a reformer, there is little question that he was a self-serving dictator." There are few biographies of Huerta, but one strongly asserts that Huerta should not be labeled simply as a counter-revolutionary, arguing that his regime consisted of two distinct periods: from the coup in February 1913 up to October 1913. During that time he attempted to legitimize his regime and demonstrate its legality by pursuing reformist policies; and after October 1913, when he dropped all attempts to rule within a legal framework and began murdering political opponents while battling revolutionary forces that had united in opposition to his regime.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Supporting the Huerta regime initially were business interests in Mexico, both foreign and domestic; landed elites; the Roman Catholic Church; and the German and British governments. The U.S. President Woodrow Wilson did not recognize the Huerta regime, since it had come to power by coup. Huerta and Carranza were in contact for two weeks immediately after the February coup, but they did not come to an agreement. Carranza then declared himself opposed to Huerta and became the leader of the anti-Huerta forces in the north. Huerta gained the support of revolutionary general Pascual Orozco, who had helped topple the Díaz regime, then rebelled against Madero because of his lack of action on agrarian issues. Huerta's first cabinet comprised men who had supported the February 1913 Pact of the Embassy, among them some who had supported Madero, such as Jesús Flores Magón; supporters of General Bernardo Reyes; supporters of Félix Díaz; and former Interim President Francisco León de la Barra.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: During the counter-revolutionary regime of Huerta, the Catholic Church in Mexico initially supported him. "The Church represented a force for reaction, especially in the countryside." However, when Huerta cracked down on political parties and conservative opposition, he had "Gabriel Somellera, president of the [National] Catholic Party arrested; , which, like other Catholic papers, had protested Congress's dissolution and the rigged elections [of October 1913], locked horns with the official press and was finally closed down. , the main Catholic newspaper, survived for a time."


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Huerta was even able to briefly muster the support of Andrés Molina Enríquez, author of "The Great National Problems" (), a key work urging land reform in Mexico. Huerta was seemingly deeply concerned with the issue of land reform, since it was a persistent spur of peasant unrest. Specifically, he moved to restore "ejido lands to the Yaquis and Mayos of Sonora and [advanced] proposals for distribution of government lands to small-scale farmers." When Huerta refused to move faster on land reform, Molina Enríquez disavowed the regime in June 1913, later going on to advise the 1917 constitutional convention on land reform.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: U.S. President Taft left the decision of whether to recognize the new government up to the incoming president, Woodrow Wilson. Despite the urging of U.S. ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, who had played a key role in the coup d'état, President Wilson not only declined to recognize Huerta's government but first supplanted the ambassador by sending his "personal representative" John Lind, a progressive who sympathized with the Mexican revolutionaries, and the president recalled Ambassador Wilson. The United States lifted the arms embargo imposed by Taft in order to supply weapons to the landlocked rebels; while under the complete embargo Huerta had still been able to receive shipments from the British by sea. Wilson urged European powers to not recognize Huerta's government, and attempted to persuade Huerta to call prompt elections "and not present himself as a candidate". The United States offered Mexico a loan on the condition that Huerta accept the proposal. He refused. Lind "clearly threatened a military intervention in case the demands were not met".


title: Mexican Revolution

text: In the summer of 1913, Mexican conservatives who had supported Huerta sought a constitutionally-elected, civilian alternative to Huerta, brought together in a body called the National Unifying Junta. Political parties proliferated in this period, a sign that democracy had taken hold, and there were 26 by the time of the October congressional elections. From Huerta's point of view, the fragmentation of the conservative political landscape strengthened his own position. For the country's conservative elite, "there was a growing disillusionment with Huerta, and disgust at his strong-arm methods." Huerta closed the legislature on 26 October 1913, having the army surround its building and arresting congressmen perceived to be hostile to his regime. Despite that, congressional elections went ahead, but given that congress was dissolved and some members were in jail, opposition candidates' fervor disappeared. The sham election "brought home to [Woodrow] Wilson's administration the fatuity of relying on elections to demonstrate genuine democracy." The October 1913 elections were the end of any pretension to constitutional rule in Mexico, with civilian political activity banned. Prominent Catholics were arrested and Catholic newspapers were suppressed.


title: Mexican Revolution

text: Huerta militarized Mexico to a greater extent than it already was. In 1913 when Huerta seized power, the army had on the books approximately 50,000 men, but Huerta mandated the number rise to 150,000, then 200,000 and, finally in spring 1914, 250,000. Raising that number of men in so short a time would not occur with volunteers, and the army resorted to the , forced conscription. The revolutionary forces had no problem with voluntary recruitment. Most Mexican men avoided government conscription at all costs and the ones dragooned into the forces were sent to areas far away from home and were reluctant to fight. Conscripts deserted, mutinied and attacked and murdered their officers.