Victoriano Huerta - Military Career

Military Career

During the Porfirio Díaz administration he rose to the rank of general, and fought to subdue the Chan Santa Cruz Maya peoples of the Yucatán and against the rebels of Emiliano Zapata. On the eve of the 1910 Revolution against the long-established Díaz regime, Huerta was involved in the innocuous project of reforming the uniforms of the Federal Army.

After Díaz went into exile, Huerta initially pledged allegiance to the new administration of Francisco Madero, and he was retained by the Madero administration to crush anti-Madero revolts by rebel generals such as Pascual Orozco. However, Huerta secretly plotted with United States Ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson, cashiered general Bernardo Reyes, and Félix Díaz, Porfirio Díaz's nephew, to overthrow Madero. This episode in Mexican history is known as La decena trágica. Following a confused few days of fighting in Mexico City between loyalist and rebel factions of the Army, Huerta had Madero and vice-president José María Pino Suárez seized and briefly imprisoned on 18 February 1913 in the National Palace. The conspirators then met at the U.S. Embassy to sign el Pacto de la Embajada (The Embassy Pact), which provided for the exile of Madero and Pino Suárez, and Huerta's takeover of the Mexican government.