“The future of our history”: Rhetorics of Transformation and Power in Plutarco Elías Calles’ 1928 Informe

Abstract

This essay uses the specter of Mexican presidential rhetoric (specifically, Plutarco Elías Calles’ 1928 informe) to remark on the nationalistic limitations of U.S. presidential rhetoric scholarship as a whole. Such limitations can lead to possible mis- and under-readings that can hinder the applicability of U.S. scholarship to other “American” places. These observations are then followed by a reading of Calles’ informe that argues for a wider hemispheric approach to our understanding of “American” presidential rhetoric. Such an approach aims to push our collective gaze beyond the territory of the United States to the point where the rhetorical histories of Latin America rub uncomfortably but productively against our own U.S.-centrism.

Notes

¹ I use my English translation of Calles’ speech as my source text (De los Santos, “A Nation of Institutions and Laws”). I refer to paragraph numbers instead of page numbers.

² Calles’ own inauguration in 1924 had been the first peaceful transition of power since 1884.

³ Continuismo is often defined as a political situation in which a caudillo, regime, or system prolongs their hold on power indefinitely. In the Mexican case, its lure often led to coups, assassinations, and rigged elections.

⁴ The Revolution of 1910 began as a response to Porfirio Díaz’s (1876–1911) long rule. The 1917 Constitution explicitly forbade reelection. Technically ineligible for reelection, Obregón had strong-armed the Congress to pass laws allowing nonconsecutive reelection. This was met with an armed insurrection that was quickly and violently squashed. With no viable opponents in sight, Obregón easily won reelection in a landslide.

⁵ The major revolutionaries: Francisco I. Madero (1913), Emiliano Zapata (1919), Venustiano Carranza (1920), and Francisco “Pancho” Villa (1923) were all dead, themselves victims of assassins’ bullets.

⁶ He also intensified an all-out war on the Yaquis (an indigenous community) and helped the governors of Baja California and Sonora expel their sizable Chinese populations.

⁷ The PRI would return to power in 2012 with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto.

⁸ By 1928, Mexico had had 75 presidents in its hundred-year history as an independent nation; if we discount the 30 years of the porfiriato (Porfirio Díaz, 1876–1910), the usual presidency had a duration of a little more than a year (Krause 174).

⁹ I say “essentially,” since the office had been institutionally established in all three Mexican Constitutions (1824, 1857, 1917). In practice, however, the reality was much different.

¹⁰ Attentive readers will see the profound impact that Positivism held for Calles’ social and political thought.

¹¹ With the possible exception of Francisco Madero’s assassination in 1913, no other fallen revolutionary president had been offered such glowing praise.

¹² However, Calles must have felt this claim was not clear enough, for he returned to it (commartio) in ¶17. Here Calles references Obregón explicitly by name, defining him as an “exceptional” personality “who personified patriotism, ability and good intentions,” but ultimately someone who could not escape the devouring force of continuismo: “the [innate] deficiencies of the caudillo brings a tremendous disorientation and sense of imminent anarchy” (¶17).

¹³ La familia revolucionaria would gain traction as one of the key unifying terms in the years that follow. Calles posits la familia against la Reaccíon, the nation’s conservative forces. Interestingly, he will not push for war against conservatism, but rather locate it as necessary for the political stability of Mexico.

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René Agustín De los Santos

René Agustín De los Santos is Professor Titular at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Blvd. Zertuche y Blvd. de los Lagos S/N, Fracc. Valle Dorado, 22890, Ensenada, B.C., Mexico.