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When did Francisco I. Madero Decide on Revolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Jerry W. Knudson
Jerry W. Knudson*
Affiliation:
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Extract

A surprisingly frank letter from Francisco I. Madero, political figurehead of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, to New York publisher William Randolph Hearst casts new light on the difficult question of when Madero finally opted for revolution to topple the 35-year dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911).

The letter was dated April 25, 1911, when Madero was with insurrectionary troops fighting at Ciudad Juárez. It contained Madero's responses to some written questions on his role in the Revolution submitted by Hearst through Sonunerfield, an American consular official in Mexico. Madero's answers were to form the basis for a news story in the Hearst newspapers.

Type
Documents
Information
The Americas , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , April 1974 , pp. 529 - 532
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1974

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References

1 The best biography of Hearst is Tebbel, John, The Life and Good Times of William Randolph Hearst (New York, 1952).Google Scholar See also Swanberg, W. A., Citizen Hearst (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Lundberg, Ferdinand, Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography (New York, 1936),Google Scholar and Carlson, Oliver and Bates, Ernest Sutherland, Hearst, Lord of San Simeon (New York, 1936).Google Scholar

2 Document 5/2350, Correspondencia del Presidente Madero, Biblioteca Nacional, México, D.F.

3 Ross, Stanley R., Francisco 1. Madero, Apostle of Mexican Democracy (New York, 1955), p. 63,Google Scholar and Cumberland, Charles Curtis. Mexican Revolution, Genesis under Madero (Austin, 1952), p. 117.Google Scholar

4 Quirk, Robert E., The Mexican Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1910–1929 (Bloomington, 1973), p. 19.Google Scholar

5 Cline, Howard F., The United States and Mexico (New York, 1963), pp. 120–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Estenssoro, Víctor Paz, Mensaje a la VI convención del MNR (La Paz, 1953), p. 10.Google Scholar See the forthcoming monograph by Jerry W. Knudson, The Press and the Bolivian National Revolution, in the Journalism Monographs series published by the Association for Education in Journalism. A book by the same author, Propaganda and the Bolivian National Revolution, is also in preparation.

7 A brief survey of Mexican journalism is Lepidus, Henry, The History of Mexican Journalism (Columbia, Mo., 1928).Google Scholar A more recent account is Underwood, Robert Bruce, “A Survey of Contemporary Newspapers of Mexico,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri, 1964.Google Scholar See also Guzmán, Diego Arenas, El periodismo en la revolución mexicana (México, D. F., 1966), 2 vols.Google Scholar; Ugarte, José Bravo, Periodistas y periódicos mexicanos hasta 1935. Selección (México, D. F., 1966)Google Scholar; Puente, Rafael Carrasco, La prensa en México, datos históricos (México, D. F., 1962),Google Scholar and Campos, Moisés Ochoa, Reseña histórica del periodismo mexicano (México, D.F., 1968).Google Scholar There is no adequate history of Bolivian journalism, although longer studies are forthcoming by Rodolfo Salamanca de La Fuente and Eduardo Ocampo Moscoso. An important book in the MNR progaganda campaign was Montenegro, Carlos, Nacionalismo y coloniaje, su expressión en la prensa de Bolivia (La Paz, 1953).Google Scholar

8 See Knudson, Jerry W., “The Press and the Mexican Revolution of 1910,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 46 (Winter 1969), pp. 760–766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Document 255, Política Interior, Ramo Revolución, Archivo General de la Nación, México, D. F.

10 See Mott, Frank L., “Evidences of Reliability in Newspapers and Periodicals in Historical Studies,” Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 21 (December 1944), pp. 304–310,Google Scholar and Dahl, Folke, “On Quoting Newspapers: A Problem and a Solution,” ibid., Vol. 25 (December 1948), pp. 331–338).Google Scholar

11 This approach is used by Knudson, Jerry W., “The Jefferson Years: Response by the Press, 1801–1809,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1962.Google Scholar Curiously, there have been only two doctoral studies to date on responses by the press to presidential administrations—those of Thomas Jefferson and Herbert Hoover.