February
5th is a national holiday to commemorate the Constitution of 1917,
the legal document drawn up to embody the ideals of the Mexican
Revolution and which still governs our Republic today.
The
first Mexican Constitution was signed in Apatzingán, Michoacán,
on October 22nd, 1814. While the war for independence from Spain
was still being waged, delegates met to draw up the "Constitutional
Decree for the Freedom of Mexican America". This document served
to legally constitute the nation as independent from Spain, which,
though granting concessions, still claimed Mexico as its territory
in the Constitution of Cádiz of 1812.
In
1824, another constitution was formulated; however, it was not
a very practical document, but rather an ideological statement.
The representatives who wrote it were concerned with the organization
and functioning of the government, and with popular sovereignty,
rather than how these things were to be achieved. It was signed
on October 4th of 1824, and placed in the hands of Guadalupe Victoria,
the first President of Mexico, by Tomás Vargas who proclaimed:
"May despotism flee far from here in fear of this Law which holds
in trust the rights of man and shall be the terror of tyrants!"
Several
decades later, a reform movement called for a Constitutional Congress
to draft the changes deemed necessary to the Constitution of 1824.
After one year of debate, a document was produced; it was the
first to include a bill of rights and a judicial system to uphold
it. The manifesto which accompanied its publication proclaimed:
Equality shall henceforth be the great law of the republic. It
was published on March 11th of 1857, and was still in effect in
1910, when the Revolution broke out.
The
Mexican Revolution was intended to overthrow Porfirio Díaz, who
had remained in office as President of Mexico for seven terms,
over 30 years, by means of manipulating the law to serve his personal
interests, and by electoral fraud in 1910. When all peaceful options
seemed closed to the opposition, Francisco I. Madero called for
the people to rise up in arms to oust the tyrant. However, the
Revolution soon broadened into a many-faceted struggle which dragged
on for years and attracted many men of high ideals and strong
positions, especially regarding land and labor reforms. In May
1911, the Federal Army found itself on the verge of absolute defeat;
Porfirio Díaz resigned, and, after a short interim Goverment,
Madero was elected President and assumed power in November. Though
he immediately set about reforming the laws, the various revolutionary
leaders did not agree on how the new government was to be run,
and fighting continued. In February 1913, Victoriano Huerta, a
general from the Federal Army, taking advantage of the situation,
at bayonet-point forced the President and the Vicepresident to
resign, and the Congress to accept their resignations. Huerta
promptly had the President and the Vicepresident assassinated,
jailed members of Congress who opposed him and disregarded the
law of the land.
Venustiano
Carranza, then Governor of Coahuila, soon issued the Guadalupe
Plan calling for respect for the Constitution and promising legal
reforms. He raised an army known as Constitutionalist, because
it was set up to defend the Constitution, and was joined by Alvaro
Obregón, Francisco Villa, Pablo González, who commanded the main
corps of that army, and by Emiliano Zapata, whose military force
had been active since the beginning of the Revolution. The Constitutionalist
movement was triumphant and a Sovereign Revolutionary Convention
was held in 1914 to determine the course to be followed. However,
Carranza disagreed with the decisions reached at this gathering
and a split occurred between his followers and those of Villa
and Zapata. From this point on, the Revolution turned into a civil
war.
Carranza and Obregón achieved military victory over their adversaries
and Carranza became President. He called for a Constitutional
Congress to be held in Querétaro, deeming the previous legal instrument
of "indisputable goodness … but insufficient to meet the public
needs". The Congress was held from November 20th, 1916, through
January 31st, 1917. It soon became apparent that the members were
independent men with revolutionary political and social ideas,
and with a knowledge of the problems facing Mexico, but that their
views ranged from moderate to quite radical. Pastor Rouaix was
one of the few delegates who managed not to become associated
with either side, retaining the respect of both, and enabling
him to make important contributions to two of the most important
articles of the new Magna Charta, those dealing with agrarian
and labor reform.
Article
27 established that ownership of land and waters belongs primarily
to the nation, which can transfer direct control and set up private
property, but stipulates that this shall remain subject to the
public interest. It authorized confiscation of large estates to
be divided into small properties; it distinguished between the
land and subsoil rights pointing out that, though the first may
be held as private property, the second is the exclusive, inalienable
domain of the nation; it placed conditions on foreign ownership
of land and excluded the Church from holding property. This article
was passed unanimously and paved the way for the confiscation,
years later, of foreign-owned lands and oil companies.
Article 123 also was largely the result of the efforts of Rouaix,
Francisco J. Múgica and Heriberto J. Jara. It granted the right
to professional association as a social guarantee for workers
and employers to defend their interests. No such law had ever
before been included in the constitution of any country. In addition,
article 123 set limits to working hours, established a day of
rest per week, equal pay for equal work, compensation for work-related
accidents and injuries, comfortable and hygienic conditions. Article
123 also passed unanimously.
Article 3 called for lay education, paving the way for José Vasconcelos
to set up the educational system in Mexico.
The
Constitution of 1917 proved to be even more radical than Carranza's
initial proposals. Nonetheless, it was signed on January 31st
and published on February 5th. Carranza called for elections to
be held the following month and the country to return to constitutional
order. He won the election and took office as elected President
on May 1, 1917.
The new Constitution encountered opposition, not only among the
interest groups whose influence it was designed to limit: the
Catholic Church, foreign and national estate owners and industrialists,
but also among a minority of the people it attempted to satisfy,
peasants and workers who had other ideas regarding how to achieve
the necessary reforms. The states were not all equally eager to
modify their own laws in accord with the new Constitution. The
country was still reeling from the problems left behind in the
wake of the Revolution: agrarian, political, labor, economic and
other difficulties abounded. Nonetheless, a legal foundation had
been laid that would be, for the rest of the century, the criterion
for Government policies, and is still considered the guideline
of the national project.
The
Constitution of 1917, a document drafted by men of high ideals
and legally adopted as the law of Mexico, has had to face hard
obstacles to its full application. Over the years, it has been
modified many a time to deal with both inherent and current problems,
and to adapt to national and world changes, yet it remains the
basis of our legal system today.
