Anois agus arís
By Peter Berresford Ellis
It was well known that the icon of 20th Century revolution, ‘Che’ Guevarra bore the name Ernesto Guevarra Lynch, a scion of an Irish Argentine family. Argentina has the biggest Irish migrant population outside of the English speaking world.
But ‘Che’ was not the only revolutionary son of Ireland’s diaspora to make his mark in the Latin American world. There was, of course, the famous revolutionary Bernardo O’Higgins, who liberated Chile from Spanish rule.
Not so well known in Irish annals is the hero of the Mexican revolution, Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928) who became president of Mexico in 1920.
It had been through the introduction of the railway in the 1850s that Mexico began to unify itself. In 1854 the San Juan Railway with 50km of track became the first railroad. In the 1850s also Charles Posten carried out a survey of the state of Sonora, in north-west Mexico, and the Sonora Railroad concession was given to an American named James Eldridge. Mexican railroad planners had to be trained in Europe or bring in skilled workers from the United States.
Eldridge brought with him into the area many foreign railroad construction workers among whom were a large number of Irish. The Irish settled in Sonora and their names have come down with Spanish forms such as Ocana (O’Connor), Moran de Leon and O’Donoju.
A railroad foreman named Michael (‘Miguel’) O’Brien from Limerick also arrived to work on the Sonora scheme. He married a local girl and settled down and, like many others before him made his name easier to local pronunciation by turning it into Obregon.
His grandson, Alvaro Obregon, was born on a farm near Alamos, Sonora, on February 17, 1880. Jim Tuck, writing of Obregon says that while his biographer, Linda Hall, ‘makes no mention of this, she does record the rumour that his grandfather was the Irish foreman of a railroad company. Fair skinned and sporting a walrus mustachio most of his life, Obregon could easily pass for a turn-of-the century Tammany politician. If wit is an Irish characteristic, Obregon had it in abundance.’
Obregon’s family was not rich and he had a variety of jobs before turning to chickpea farming. Raised alongside the Mayos Indians, Obregon spoke their language fluently. In 1910 the tyrant dictator Porfirio Diaz was overthrown by Francisco Madero whose liberal attitudes caused a right-wing rising against his government. Pascal Orozco’s rising in 1912 convinced Obregon that he should defend Madero and he commanded a battalion of irregulars from Sonora, many of them Mayos and Yaquis. He displayed qualities of an outstanding guerrilla leader.
In February, 1913, General Victoriano Huerta assassinated Madero and declared himself president. The provincial Sonoran Congress refused to recognise Huerta and placed Obregon at the head of their forces. Joining Obregon was a former senator Venustiano Carranza of Coahuila; the former bandit Pancho Villa from Chihuahua and an Indian farmer from Morales, Emiliano Zapata. They all raised armies and began to wage a revolutionary war, which drove Huerta into exile in July 1914.
Obregon was head of the newly created Army of the Northwest, winning decisive victories against Government forces before marching into Mexico City in August, 1914.
However, there was no consensus among the Mexican revolutionary leaders. Villa, Zapata and Carranza suspected each other’s motives and Obregon did his best to bring them together. Eventually Villa and Zapata supported an unknown named Eulalio Gutierrex as provisional president but Carranza refused to recognise him. Pancho Villa declared Carranza was an outlaw.
The choice to Obregon was to support the lesser of two evils. Villa was hot-headed and his reputation as a bandit was a ruthless one. He supported Carranza. War erupted again and this time Obregon was fighting the joint forces of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
It was Obregon’s grasp of strategy and defensive tactics that won the day. He was able to defeat Villa at Leon, where Obregon lost his arm in the fighting. Villa then made the mistake of raiding into the US in 1916, which resulted in a futile US Punitive Expedition into Mexico. Villa evaded them for 11 months. It was Obregon who finally negotiated the withdrawal of the US army from Mexican soil and so won an enhanced prestige among the people.
Obregon served as the new provisional government’s secretary of War from March 1916 and Carranza was finally elected president in 1917. Obregon then resigned his cabinet post and retired to private life.
In June, 1927, Obregon decided that he should stand again for the presidency. He was returned with a landside victory in July, 1928. On the 17th of that month, a young man approached Obregon while he was sitting in an open air restaurant called La Bombilla in San Angel. He pulled a pistol, firing five shots into Obregon’s face. Obregon died instantly.
Obregon was 48 years old. He was certainly one of the great sons of the Irish Diaspora. | 