Emilio Portes Gil

Emilio Portes Gil

Emilio Portes Gil (born October 3, 1891 in Ciudad Victoria , Tamaulipas , † December 10, 1978 in Mexico City ) was President of Mexico from December 1, 1928 to February 5, 1930 .

Life

Political career until 1928

Emilio Portes Gil studied law at the "Escuela Libre de Derecho" in Mexico City and then practiced as a lawyer. He joined Francisco Madero's supporters in 1910 and was one of Venustiano Carranza's partisans in 1914 . Portes Gil worked as a legal advisor to the War Department from 1915, later he advised the judiciary of the state of Sonora and in 1917 he was elected to Congress. From 1918 he headed the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Tamaulipas and in the spring of 1920 he supported the rebellion of Álvaro Obregón and Adolfo de la Huerta , which led to the overthrow of President Carranza. In 1921 and 1923 he was again elected to Congress.

Portes Gil served as governor of Tamaulipas from 1925. On August 28, 1928 he was appointed Minister of the Interior of Mexico and in September 1928 the successor to the incumbent President Plutarco Elías Calles . He was the compromise candidate of the partisans of the assassinated on July 17, 1928 President-elect Álvaro Obregón and the supporters of Plutarco Elías Calles.

Presidency 1928 to 1930

From December 1, 1928, Portes Gil served as President of Mexico. He remained under the influence of his predecessor Calles, who as "Jefe Maximo de la Revolucion" further determined national politics. On March 3, 1929, Calles and Portes Gil initiated the establishment of the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR) to discipline the revolutionaries, which were organized into more than a thousand factions. The president ordered a portion of their salaries to be deducted from government employees to finance the PNR, and Calles, who as the first chairman of the PNR eliminated any power competition, was able to consolidate his rule, the so-called "Maximato" .

A few days after the PNR was founded, in March 1929, the army under General José Gonzalo Escobar rose against the government. Portes Gil managed to beat the rebels with the help of peasant militias. He was also able to end the Catholic rural Cristeros uprising , which had been going on since 1926 . Portes Gil advocated the continuation of the agrarian reform against Calles' will. During his tenure, 692 villages were allocated land. During the presidency of Portes Gil, Mexico's relationship with foreign corporations normalized. Furthermore, the conflicts between the Mexican state and the Catholic Church subsided. Portes Gil earned lasting merit when he was granted autonomy by the National University of Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico - UNAM ) .

Political career from 1930

On February 5, 1930, the term of office of the newly elected President Pascual Ortiz Rubio began . Portes Gil took over the office of interior minister for the next eighteen months and the party chairmanship of the PNR for a few months. He opposed the conservative agricultural policy of Ortiz Rubio and Calles and therefore resigned from his offices.

In 1932 Emilio Portes Gil traveled to Europe and represented his country there for the first time in the League of Nations . He then worked as Attorney General of the Republic , headed the Foreign Ministry from 1934 to 1935 and in June 1935 supported President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río , whose agricultural policy Portes Gil advocated, in removing Calles from power. In December 1935, Portes Gil took over the party leadership of the PNR again for a few months. He was then committed to the education of the people and served his country as an ambassador z. B. 1951 in India.

Emilio Portes Gil passed away in Mexico City on December 10, 1978.

literature

• Hans Werner Tobler: The Mexican Revolution - Social Change and Political Upheaval, 1876-1940. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1st edition 1984, ISBN 3-518-04588-1
• Dieter Nohlen: Mexico. In: "Our Century in Word, Image and Sound - The 20s". Bertelsmann Lexikothek Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-570-07947-3

Web links

• Newspaper article about Emilio Portes Gil in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .