José María Pino Suárez

Pino Suárez visits the Aerial Exhibition accompanied by the journalist Gerald Brandon

Various Congressmen of the Progressive Constitutionalist Party (PCP) host an banquet in honor of Pino Suárez, who was seen as the leader, together with Gustavo A. Madero (sitting to his right), of the more liberal and socially progressive politicians who formed a slim majority in the Chamber of Deputies between 1912 and 1913.

He was the son of José María Pino Salvatiel, a prosperous businessman of Cantabrian origin and Josefa Suárez Abreu. Both his parents had been born in Mérida, Yucatán, of Spanish origin.

He was born into a well-known family in the Yucatán peninsula. His great-grandfather was Pedro Sainz de Baranda y Borreiro (1787–1845), a former Governor of Yucatán who, having fought in the Battle of Trafalgar and in the Mexican War of Independence, is acknowledged as the founder of the Mexican Navy.[14] Two of his sons, Joaquín Baranda y Quijano and General Pedro Baranda y Quijano, also had distinguished political careers on their own right. The former was a lawyer, politician, writer and Mexican historian who served as Secretary of State for Justice (1882–1901) for almost two decades under President Porfirio Díaz. The latter, was a deputy in the constituent assembly of 1857, and promoted the creation of the states of Campeche and Morelos, serving as Governor of both states.[15]

Shortly after the birth of José María, his mother died. His father entrusted his education to a private tutor. When Pino Suárez reached adolescence, it was decided that he would carry out his studies in the city of Mérida (Yucatán). There he entered the Colegio de San Ildefonso, a Jesuit school that had a curriculum inspired by that of the French Lyceum. Pino Suárez would become fluent in French, English and Spanish. Upon finishing his preparatory studies, he studied Law at Escuela de Jurisprudencia de Yucatán, from which he graduated on 12 September 1894.[16]

After graduating, he devoted himself to the private practice of the law. In 1896, he married María Cámara Vales (1877–1970), born into one of the most aristocratic families in the Yucatán Peninsula.[17] Through the Cámara family, she could claim direct-line descent from Juan de la Cámara (1525–1602), a Spanish conquistador and nobleman.[18] Through the Vales family, she was the niece and goddaughter of Agustín Vales, a wealthy industrialist and politician who made a considerable fortune exporting henequen (used for making ropes) to Europe and the United States.[19]

The marriage had six children:[20]

• María Pino Cámara
• Emilio Pino Cámara
• Hortensia Pino Cámara
• Alfredo Pino Cámara
• Aída Pino Cámara
• Cordelia Pino Cámara

Recently married, the couple moved to Mexico City, where Pino partnered with his uncle, Joaquín Casasús, a well-connected lawyer, to form a law firm.

In 1899, Pino decided to return to Mérida, partnering with his father-in-law, Raymundo Cámara Luján in several business projects. At the turn of the century, he launched El Peninsular, a newspaper that focused on opposing the government and the poor treatment of the indigenous Mayan population by the oligarchy of Spanish descent.

In his spare time, he was an accomplished poet, having published two volumes: Melancolias (1896)[21] and Procelarias (1903).[22] He also wrote the prologue to Memorias de un alférez (Memoires of an Ensign), written by his close friend, Eligio Ancona (1904).[23]

Having avoided public life for most of his life, Pino was drawn into politics after meeting Francisco Madero in Puerto Progreso in 1909.[24] Madero, who had been born in into one of the wealthiest families of industrialists and landowners in the country, had been educated in France and the United States and returned to Mexico with liberal and progressive ideals. In his book, "The Presidential Succession in 1910" (1908), he argued in favor of a transition from the military dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz toward a liberal democracy.[25]

Madero also proposed an amendment to the Constitution to prohibit the President and Vice-President from seeking re-election.[26] Pino soon became a member of the National Anti-Reelectionist Party that was formed, and supported Madero as he campaigned through the Yucatán Peninsula and other southern states.

With the support of the National Anti-Reelectionist Party, he was a candidate for the governorship of Yucatán in the 1910 election. The election was a contest between Enrique Muñoz Arístegui, the official candidate backed by the government, and Delio Moreno Cantón, a rabid socialist. Through an evident electoral fraud, the triumph was granted to Muñoz, who almost immediately initiated a political persecution against the two losing candidates, forcing them to flee from the State.[27] Pino exiled himself in British Honduras before joining Madero in San Antonio, Texas.

Madero, meanwhile, had also launched his own bid for the presidency, but had been imprisoned before the election even took place. Escaping prison, he fled to San Antonio, where he was granted asylum by the Taft Administration. Through the years, the Madero family had developed close connections in Washington and Wall Street.[28] Therefore, when Francisco Madero launched the Mexican Revolution in San Antonio, no attempts were made by the U.S. Government to stop him.[29]

When Madero declared the 1910 presidential election to have been fraudulent and assumed the provisional presidency according to the Plan of San Luis Potosí, he appointed Pino to his cabinet as Secretary of State for Justice. Under the San Luis Plan, he also called on his countrymen to revolt against the Díaz Government. Soon, Madero's Revolution managed to temporarily unify various disparate forces around his cause.

Pino Suárez, standing behind Madero, attends a ceremony to commemorate Benito Juárez, it would be the last public event he would attend before the events of the Ten Tragic Days and his assassination.

By May 1911, the revolutionaries had already captured Ciudad Juárez. Under intense domestic and U.S. pressure, General Díaz agreed to negotiate with Madero, who named Pino one of the principal negotiators representing the revolutionary side.[30] According to the deal struck by the parties, Díaz would resign and would be allowed to seek exile in Europe. He would be succeeded by Francisco León de la Barra, the Foreign Secretary and a career diplomat, as interim president. León de la Barra immediately organized fresh elections both at the Federal level, as well as in several States. While such elections were held, he appointed Pino as interim Governor of Yucatán.

After the State Elections were held in Yucatán, Pino won a full four-year term as Governor for the period 1911 and 1915.[31] However, as these developments were occurring at the State level, at the Federal level, the National Anti-Reelectionist Party was disbanded and reorganized into the Progressive Constitutionalist Party (PCP). During the first party congress, the PCP decided to select a Madero-Pino ticket to contest the 1911 presidential elections.

Having been elected to the Vice-presidency, Pino resigned as Governor of Yucatán, where he was succeeded by Nicolás Camára Vales,[32] his brother-in-law, and travelled to Mexico City to take the oath of office on 15 November 1911.

Between 1912 and 1913, he was also appointed as Secretary of State for Education and the Fine Arts.[33]

The new federal government faced several difficulties. Madero immediately ended all forms of censorship and introduced immediate reforms for democratization and increased political freedom. The new agenda was unpopular with the old oligarchy that had grown wealthy during thirty years of military dictatorship. It was also considered to be insufficiently radical by his former supporters who were more interested in social revolution than liberal reform. During the fifteen months that the Madero administration governed Mexico it faced no fewer than four putsch attempts from both sides of the political spectrum.[34]

In February 1913, a putsch lead by army officers loyal to the old regime managed to arrest the Cabinet of Madero after Victoriano Huerta, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, turned against the government. Huerta had the tacit support of Henry Lane Wilson, the U.S. Ambassador, who was himself acting against the instructions of his government. The outgoing Taft administration had refused to intervene in Mexican politics, until the Wilson Administration was inaugurated in March. Woodrow Wilson closely sympathized with Madero who had similar political ideas to his own, and would later investigate the action of Henry Lane Wilson, having him sacked.[35][36]

After arresting the cabinet, Huerta forced Madero and Pino to resign at gunpoint, allowing him to usurp power. Once Huerta was interim president, he ordered the assassination of Madero and Pino on 22 February 1913.[37]

This Statue was erected in 1927 on the site where José María Pino Suárez was assassinated during the events of the Ten Tragic Days. On the plaque of the statue, Pino Suárez is praised as the Martyr of Democracy.

Pino's widow, Maria Cámara, fearing persecution from the new military dictatorship, fled Mexico City. Returning initially to her native Mérida, she later fled through Havana to Europe, where she lived for a time in France and Switzerland, settling in Lausanne with her six children. She would later return to Mexico, where she died in 1970 at the age of 93. In 1969, before her death, she was granted the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor by the Mexican Senate, the highest award Mexico can award to her own citizens.[38]

In 1986, President Miguel de la Madrid ordered the remains of José Pino to be transferred with full military honors to The Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres (Rotunda of Illustrious Persons),[39] a site that honors those who are considered to have exalted the civic and national values of Mexico. The Pino family was represented by his grandson, Ismael Moreno Pino, then the Ambassador of Mexico in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

In 1915, the Congress of the State of Tabasco ordered that the birthplace of Pino was to be renamed as Tenosique de Pino Suárez.[40] In Villahermosa, the state capital of Tabasco, a similar statue was erected.[41] Later, his name was written in golden letters in the assembly hall of the Congress of the State of Tabasco.

Throughout the country, several cities have streets named in his honour near the city center. Mexico City is no exception, having named one of the main avenues running out of the Zocalo (where the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation building is located) in his honor. Metro Pino Suárez, one of the most important stations of the Mexico City Metro also bears his name.

His tomb at the Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres.

• Liberalism in Mexico
• Mexican Revolution
• List of Vice presidents of Mexico
• Ten Tragic Days