Portes Gil, Emilio (1890–1978)

Emilio Portes Gil was president of Mexico from 1928 to 1930, the youngest person to become the country's president in the twentieth century. Born on October 3, 1890, in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, he graduated from the local normal school in 1910 and then taught elementary school. He attended the National University before joining with fellow students to form the Free School of Law in 1912, from which he graduated in 1915. He worked for the Department of Military Justice as a civilian employee before serving as a member of congress from 1917 to 1918, a post he held again in 1920 and 1924. Portes Gil did not participate in the 1910 Revolution. He became governor of his home state in 1925. (He would continue to influence politics there well into the 1950s, similar to other presidents in their home states, notably Lázaro Cárdenas in Michoacán.) Under President Plutarco Elías Calles, he briefly served as secretary of government before assuming the presidency in 1928.

Portes Gil was the first of three Mexicans to serve out the six-year term presidential term won by General Álvaro Obregón, who was assassinated before he could take office in 1928. A favorite of Calles, Portes Gil was selected by Congress to serve as interim president while new elections were held in 1929. He was the only civilian to hold the presidential office between 1920 and 1946. Although many historians consider him to have been subservient to Calles during his brief administration, he pursued many of his own policies. He is best remembered for having settled a university strike that led to the autonomy of the National University in 1929, and even more so for secretly negotiating the resolution of the violent civil war between church and state known as the Cristero Rebellion, thereby paving the way for the church-state relationship that lasted until the 1992.

During the administrations of his two successors, Portes Gil served as ambassador to France and to the League of Nations in 1931–1932 and then became attorney general of Mexico. When Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934, Portes Gil served in his first cabinet as secretary of foreign relations. An important leader of the National Revolutionary Party, he served twice as its president, initially in 1930 and then in 1935–1936. He held a number of minor administrative and ambassadorial posts until 1970, having achieved the stature of a senior statesman. He died in Mexico City on December 10, 1978.

See alsoCalles, Plutarco Elías; Cárdenas del Río, Lázaro; Mexico: Since 1910; Mexico, Political Parties: National Revolutionary Party (PNR); Obregón Salido, Álvaro.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarado Mendoza, Arturo. El portesgilismo en Tamaulipas. Mexico: Colegio de México, 1992.

Dulles, John W. F. Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919–1936. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.

Meyer, Lorenzo. Historia de la revolución mexicana, periodo 1928–1934. Mexico: Colegio de México, 1978.

                                         Roderic Ai Camp