Saturnino Cedillo

Saturnino Cedillo was the son of Amado Cedillo and Pantaleona Martínez. He was born in 1890 in Palomas, a ranch belonging to the municipality of Ciudad del Maíz. He was one of seven siblings: Elena, Homobono, Magdaleno, Cleofas, Engracia and Higinia. It would be thanks to his brothers Cleofas and Magdaleno that Saturnino went into the revolution.

The first actions of dissent by the Cedillo family were not against the government but the wealthy landowners who preyed on their small neighbor's lands and often served as government representatives. The type of practice was widespread throughout the Porfiriato.

At first, the Cedillos showed little interest in political issues, much less the anti-reelectionist movement that gained strength after the economic crisis of 1907. Through a school teacher from the nearby Tula, Tamaulipas called Alberto Carrera Torres, a friend of Magdaleno Cedillo the brothers began their involvement in politics. However, even after being introduced to politics, Cedillo didn't show much interest in the Maderista movement, in part due to its lack of positioning regarding the "agrarian question".

The first armed revolt the Cedillo brothers were involved in was against the Maderista government which ruled San Luis Potosí at the time. On November 17, 1912 they participated in a group of coordinated attacks in Río Verde, Tula, and Ciudad del Maíz. At the end, Saturnino and Cleofas read the Plan of Ayala to the peasants. After hearing about the failure of their attack on Río Verde, the brothers retreated to Tula, where they decided to cross the border into the United States in order to flee. Cedillo then got arrested at the American border after trying to return to Mexico with weapons he had bought to arm his men. He was transferred to San Luis Potosí, where he spent a relatively short time in prison before being released.

After Madero's assassination, the Cedillos momentarily surrendered to the usurper Victoriano Huerta before they rose in arms against him. What followed was a series of political maneuvers that allowed Saturnino to be on the triumphant side of several political conflicts. At first they joined Venustiano Carranza's constitutionalist movement, only to join Villistas and Zapatistas at the Aguascalientes Convention in 1914 when the two groups disavowed Carranza's government.[2]

After the death of his brothers Cleofas and Magdaleno shortly after the Battle of El Ébano in 1915 and after a skirmish near Ciudad del Maíz in 1917, respectively, Saturnino surrendered, but it was not accepted by the Constitucionalistas. After living in hiding for some years, things took a turn for the better with Álvaro Obregón's presidency. Cedillo adhered to the Plan of Agua Prieta and was rewarded with his inclusion in the Federal Army as a Brigade General. Cedillo was also given control of his native state.

Saturnino Cedillo thrived under the rule of the sonorenses. After Plutarco Elías Calles took power in 1924, Cedillo's cacicazgo became stronger, as did his control over the state's political affairs. Cedillo was granted with even more control after his intervention in the Cristero War in which he was an important asset in fighting the Catholic rebels in Jalisco and Guanajuato, having killed their leader, Enrique Gorostieta in 1929.[3] His control allowed him to create and maintain military-agricultural colonies in his area of control, where veterans of his army and their widows could live and work the land. After Obregón's assassination at the hands of a religious fanatic, who also hailed from San Luis Potosí, Calles's hold on Mexico's politics became even stronger.

In 1930, Cedillo's niece, María Marcos Cedillo Salas, the daughter of his brother Homobono, learned to fly at the Civil Aviation School in San Luis Potosí, which he had been instrumental in setting up. She became Mexico's first female pilot and named her plane "Ángel del Infierno" (Angel of Hell) after the term that her uncle used to describe aircraft.[4] She then became a flying instructor. Maria died in her plane when it crashed during aerial stunts in 1933.[5] Cedillo is said to have fired all the bullets from his pistol at the remains of the plane, which he blamed for the death of his niece.[6]

By 1934, Cedillo had briefly served as the Minister of Agriculture under Sonoran Pascual Ortiz Rubio. He was held in high regard by the agraristas, whom he convinced to support the presidential candidate Lázaro Cárdenas. Cedillo and Cárdenas shared similarities regarding land reform, but their beliefs on the matter differed radically as Cedillo was in favor of land reform based on the concept of private ownership, but Cárdenas was a firm enforcer of co-ownership, known as ejidos. Similarly, Cedillo was openly against the nationalization of the oil and the electric industries that took place under Cárdenas's presidency. The differences would prove fatal for the relationship between the politicians.[7]

After a series of conflicts between the President and his Minister of Agriculture, which resulted in the latter being left out of most of the decision-making process, a downfall in relations between the two became inevitable. They included accusations from Vicente Lombardo Toledano, the leader of the government-endorsed Confederation of Mexican Workers, that Cedillo was a fascist, as well as General Francisco Múgica's attacks on Cedillo's proposed solution to the "agrarian question". The event that led to Cedillo's resignation was a conflict between him and students from Chapingo Autonomous University.

Around then, Graham Greene visited Cedillo at his home in Palomas. In his book about his travels to Mexico, Greene briefly describes meeting Cedillo and talks about the concern from the federal government of an uprising led by the agrarian warlord.[8] By the fall of 1938, most of Cedillo's private army had been disarmed, and important characters had been trying to convince him not to embark on a suicidal uprising against the cardenista government.[9] However, Cedillo did not listen and rose up in arms against Cárdenas at the beginning of 1939. Cedillo was killed, allegedly after a skirmish with federal forces, but theories of treason by one of his men also exist, on January 11, 1939.

Largely forgotten by historiography, because he was considered a traitor as he took up arms against the people, thanks in part to Lombardo Toledano's accusations of Cedillo's links to the Nazis, which have since been disproven,[10] Cedillo's legacy are the former colonies that he founded in the surroundings of Ciudad del Maíz, and the annual commemoration in the same town on 11 January.

• Ankerson, Dudley. Agrarian Warlord: Saturnino Cedillo and the Mexican Revolution in San Luis Potosí. DeKalb IL: Northern Illinois University Press 1984.
• Camp, Roderic Ai. "Saturnino Cedillo" in Mexican Political Biographies. 2nd edition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 1982.
• Falcón, Romana. Revolución y caciquismo: San Luis Potosí 1910-1938. Mexico City: El Colegio de México 1984.

• Newspaper clippings about Saturnino Cedillo in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW