Sovereign Convention of 1914
It was a series of meetings held at the Morelos Theater in Aguascalientes, convened by Mexican President Venustiano Carranza with revolutionary leaders Francisco "Pancho" Villa and Emiliano Zapata. They took place from October 10 to November 9, 1914.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the political agenda and government affairs. At that time, our nation was facing fear, economic disaster, unemployment, violence, hunger, a lack of democracy, and the deepest inequality.
However, those revolutionary delegates, men of will and conviction, were able to silence the roar of arms and make way for dialogue, which had been lacking as an alternative to resolve the differences that prevented the recovery of a Mexico devastated by war and inequality.
The purpose of the meeting was to develop a government program and decide who would govern the country and how. The Convention was, above all, an attempt at political negotiation between the revolutionary factions, a dispute over power, an attempt to impose their hegemony, a struggle for the state. It was the institutional setting where the main revolutionary currents measured their respective political and ideological strengths.
The Convention declared itself Sovereign, elected General Eulalio Gutiérrez Ortiz as President of the Republic, and appointed Villa as head of the Conventionist Army, which engaged in armed conflict with Carranza's constitutionalists. As a result, on November 6, 1914, the Sovereign Revolutionary Convention, meeting in Aguascalientes, issued a manifesto to the people of Mexico in which it explained the reasons for its formation:
“The October 1st Convention has met with the aim of unifying the revolutionary criterion, to determine the foundations and direction of the new Government of the Republic, inspired by the opinion of the majority of its armed citizens, so that this Government may realize the ideals of the Revolution and democratic institutions, for in this way we fulfill the solemn commitment made to the Nation to replace tyranny with a Government that satisfies current public needs. And just as we obeyed a single idea and were animated by a single aspiration for redemption and progress in launching ourselves against the dictatorship, in the same way, and driven by the same sentiments, we have gathered in this Convention, no longer to overthrow and destroy, but to organize and build the new Republican Government in which all our ideals and all our tendencies will be synthesized”.
Beyond the anecdotes that occurred at this site, in the heat of the discussions and positions, lies what that group of Mexicans attempted to do for our country: reconcile differences, to build and fulfill agreements that will mean living in a better Mexico.
