WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
On May 20, 1913, Eulalio Gutierrez led seven hundred insurgents in an attack on Concepcion del Oro in Zacatecas. The attack took place in the context of the Mexican revolution, which spanned 1910 to 1919.
Gutierrez’s forces were in revolt against the military dictatorship of General Jose Victoriano Huerta, who overthrew President Francisco Madero in a coup d’état in February 1913 that ended in Madero’s execution. The coup sparked rebellions throughout 1913, in which haciendas, mines and other industries were targeted including in Los Tocayos, Sombrerete and Zacatecas.
The 38th rural regiment defected to the rebels in Zacatecas, who took the town in what was considered a major conquest, as Zacatecas was not only a silver-mining town of 30,000, but also a railroad junction necessary to advance to Mexico City. Upon taking Zacatecas, Gutierrez and the rebels formed the so-called “Army for the restoration of the Constitution.”
Huerta, a figure from the previous regime of longtime ruler Porfirio Diaz, was retained by Madero when he assumed the presidency after Diaz fled into exile in Spain in 1911. Huerta was charged with suppressing an anti-Madero rebellion led by Pascual Orozco, one of the radical leaders, along with Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who had initially backed Madero.
Huerta conspired with Henry Lane Wilson, United States Ambassador to Mexico, General Bernardo Reyes and Porfirio Diaz’s nephew, Felix Diaz, to overthrow Madero––events that are known in Mexican history as the Ten Tragic Days.