Eulalio Gutiérrez

Biography

Early life and political career

He was born on the Hacienda de Santo Domingo, in the municipality of Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila. In his youth he was a shepherd and a miner in Concepción del Oro, Zacatecas, where after some years he was named mayor of the municipality.

After joining Ricardo Flores Magón's Mexican Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Mexicano) for a short period, he affiliated with the Anti-reelectionist Party (Partido Antirreleccionista) of Francisco I. Madero in 1909.

As with many revolutionaries, Gutiérrez was not a trained soldier, but combat in the Mexican Revolution showed his skill. He participated in the Mexican Revolution, after which he returned to his native state where he was elected mayor of Ramos Arizpe. After the coup d'état of Victoriano Huerta, he took up arms again and placed himself under the orders of Pablo González Garza in the Constitutionalist Army of Venustiano Carranza.

During the Aguascalientes Convention, he was named the provisional president of the Republic on November 1, 1914, and assumed the position two days later. His cabinet was composed of Lucio Blanco as Interior Minister; José Vasconcelos as Minister for Public Instruction and Fine Arts; Valentín Gama as Minister for Public Works; Felícitos Villarreal as Finance Minister; José Isabel Robles as Minister of War (Guerra y Marina); Manuel Palafox as Agriculture Minister; Manuel Chao as Mayor of the Distrito Federal; Mateo Almanza as Commander of the National Guard (Guarnición de México), and Pánfilo Natera as president of the Supreme Military Tribunal.

A month after he took office, revolutionary leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata took Mexico City. Gutiérrez's government was moved to the national capital, now in the hands of the Army of the Convention. Relations with Villa were strained to the point Villa had ordered the Minister of War (his superior), to execute President Gutiérrez in January 1915. In 1915, Gutiérrez told Vasconcelos that "The Mexican landscape smells of blood." Gutiérrez decided to leave the capital on January 16, 1915, and moved his government to San Luis Potosí, where he declared both Villa and Carranza traitors to the "revolutionary spirit" and formally resigned the presidency on July 2, 1915. Another source gives the date of his resignation as May 1915.

Later years

After exiling himself to the United States, he returned to Mexico in 1920 under the amnesty of Álvaro Obregón and was elected senator and governor of Coahuila in 1928. Later on, he publicly criticized the re-election of Álvaro Obregón in 1928 (assassinated before he could take office) and the Maximato of former president Plutarco Elías Calles (the period during which Calles was Jefe Máximo, "Maximum Chief", and ruled via puppet presidents). He joined the rebellion of José Gonzalo Escobar.

After the defeat of that rebellion, he exiled himself to San Antonio, Texas, U.S., and did not return to Mexico until 1935. Four years later, he died in the city of Saltillo.