Plutarco Elías Calles
September 25, 1877 — October 19, 1945 — Guaymas, Mexico
Plutarco Elías Calles was a Mexican general and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 before ruling from behind the scenes as the nation's de facto leader during the so-called Maximato. A veteran of the Mexican Revolution, he founded the political party that evolved into the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which would dominate Mexican politics for the rest of the 20th century.
Early Life and Revolutionary Rise
Plutarco Elías Calles was born on September 25, 1877, in Guaymas, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. His early years were marked by hardship, and before entering politics he worked as a schoolteacher, hotel manager, and small businessman. When the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910, Calles joined the Constitutionalist forces led by Venustiano Carranza, rising through the ranks to become a general. His military service in Sonora during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary fighting earned him a reputation as a capable and disciplined commander, and it was in his home state that he first entered civilian government, serving as Governor of Sonora. There he began implementing reforms that foreshadowed his later national agenda, including measures aimed at curbing the power of the Catholic Church and improving conditions for workers. His alliance with fellow Sonoran general Álvaro Obregón proved crucial, as the two men would dominate Mexican politics throughout the 1920s. Calles served Obregón's government as Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of War, positions that gave him broad influence over the machinery of state and positioned him as Obregón's natural successor when the presidency came open in 1924.
Presidency and the Cristero War
Calles won the presidency in 1924 and immediately pursued an ambitious program of left-wing populist and secularist reform. He expanded public education, built roads and irrigation systems, supported land redistribution to peasants, and strengthened labor unions. Most controversially, he rigorously enforced the anticlerical provisions of the 1917 Constitution, closing churches, expelling foreign priests, and restricting religious education and public worship. These policies provoked fierce resistance from devout Catholics in rural Mexico, sparking the bloody Cristero War (1926–1929), in which Catholic rebels took up arms against the government under the cry "Viva Cristo Rey." The conflict claimed tens of thousands of lives before a negotiated settlement, brokered with U.S. diplomatic help, brought an uneasy truce. After Obregón was assassinated in 1928 shortly after winning reelection, Calles declined to seek an unconstitutional new term himself. Instead, he founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in 1929, an organization designed to unite the fractious revolutionary factions and regulate the peaceful transfer of power—an institution that would later become the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Did You Know?
Calles founded the political party in 1929 that, after several name changes, became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)—which went on to govern Mexico continuously for 71 years until losing power in 2000, making it one of the longest-ruling political parties in modern history.
The Maximato and Later Life
From 1928 to 1934, Calles wielded enormous influence over three successive presidents—Emilio Portes Gil, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Abelardo Rodríguez—earning him the title "Jefe Máximo" (Supreme Chief) and giving the era its name, the Maximato. During this period he held additional cabinet posts, including Secretary of War, Secretary of the Economy, and Secretary of Public Education, continuing to shape national policy from behind the scenes. His dominance ended when he backed Lázaro Cárdenas for president in 1934, expecting to control him as he had his predecessors. Cárdenas instead outmaneuvered Calles, rallying labor and military support to break his influence, and in 1936 had him arrested and exiled to the United States. Calles lived abroad for a decade before being allowed to return to Mexico in 1941, by which time he had largely withdrawn from active politics. He died in Mexico City on October 19, 1945. His legacy remains deeply contested: celebrated by some for modernizing the Mexican state and institutionalizing its revolution, and condemned by others for his authoritarian methods and brutal suppression of religious dissent.
