Figure 1.--Francisco I. Madero was the first-born son of Francisco Ignacio Madero Hernández and Mercedes González Treviño. He was ne of the family patriasrch's, Evaristo Maderios, first-born grandsons. Here is the complete family with all 11 children. I think that is Franciso at left rear. The boys all wear stylish Euroean-looking sailor suits.

Francisco Madero came from a landing owning family, yet he woukld become a vuirtual crusading saint of the Revolution. Rather like Luther, he did not want a revolution, but a reformtion. His murder would turn what Díaz called The Tiger (aising of of the Mexican campesino class) lose. Madero would not do that, but his murder would. Madero was a small, physically unimposing man, he dared to challenge Díaz. He was no opolitican, but an idealist. That was why he woukd be the one to challenge Díaz and ultinarely led to huis untimely death. Unfortunately for Diaz he had let the genie out of the bottle. A political unknown appeared on the Mexican scene. Francisco I. Madero was the son of a wealthy landowner. The Madero family was one of the richest in Mexico although not connected to Díaz. He was of slight build and a sickly child. His marriage to Sara Pérez was childless. The desendents of Evaristo Masero has large families and make up some of Mexico's most influential families to this day. The young Francisco was a member of an extended and powerful northern Mexican clan with a focus on commercial rather than political interests. Madero received a through education. He studied at schools in Baltimore, Versailles, Austria and at the University of California, Berkeley. He was more of a scholar than a politican. He was an idealistic scholar with no political experience. He owned a hacienda and practiced law. He was deeply disturbed about Mexico's backward economy and the plight of the poor under President Díaz. He began to take an interest in politics. He joined the Benito Juárez Democratic Club (1904). Madero resented the Porfiriato (Diaz dictatorship) on constitutional and human rights grounds. Díaz was not the bloodiest of dictators by any means, but he was a dictator. He had done considerable good in modernizing the economy, but ignored the plight of the poor, especially the need for land reform. And he had not impeded hacendados from seizig communal lands. Madero was concerned that Diaz's conservative politics and alliance with wealthy industrialists and landowners would eventually lead to a bloody social revolution. Díaz at first dismissed him, callining the loquito--little crazy man. Than when it was clear that he was becoming an effective candidate, had him arrested

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Created: 12:56 AM 12/6/2022
Last updated: 12:57 AM 12/6/2022