The Un-president …

While the lists of Mexican Presidents generally includes Pedro Lascuráin in 1913, lists generally leave off another short term President, Francisco Carvajal… who’s 28 days in office certainly  was a much longer term than the 45 minutes (or less) served by Lascuráin, who only had the job to give a veneer of “constitutionality” to the U.S. sponsored coup against Francisco I. Madero.  As Foreign Secretary, Lascuráin was only fourth in line of succession to the Presidency, but with  Madero, Vice-President José Pino Suarez and third in line, Attorney General Adolfo Valles Baca  forced to resign at gunpoint, Lascuráin was handed the top job.  He understood, of course, that his job was to appoint Victoriano Huerta to the next job in the Presidential line of succession (Secretary of Governance… “Home Secretary”) and then make a hasty exit.  Which he did.

Francisco Carvajal. Hail to the… whatever!

When Huerta had to make his own hasty exit from the Presidency in 1914,  Huerta  — with just the clothes on his back (and 50,000 gold German Marks in his suitcase… and pockets full of negotiable bonds and checks) — fled Mexico City for the coast on the 15th of July, 1914.  With no Vice President or Attorney General, constitutionally, the presidency logically was assumed by foreign minister Francisco Carvajal.  HOWEVER… Huerta was being chased out by the Constitutionalist Army led by Alvaro Obregon.  The whole point of calling themselves “Constitutionalist” was that Huerta’s presidency was illegitimate.  And, if so, then Carvajal was never a legitimate president either.

Which Carvajal more or less agreed with.  He understood that his mandate was basically to hold off the Constitutionalists long enough for Huerta’s henchmen to skedaddle with as much of the national treasury as they could, and then hit the road himself.  Which he did on 13 August.  By which time, besides not much more than downtown Mexico City under the control of his “government” the only half-way respectable authority around was Mexico City’s appointed governor, Eduardo Iturbide… who had no claim on the Presidency in any way, shape or manner.

Irtubide and the few remaining Huertaistas still in town, however, did sign off on a cease fire, dissolving the Federal Army and admitting the previous government(s) were illegitimate.  A rather ad hoc ending to an ad hoc fake government, the Treaty of Teoloyocan — with U.S. and French diplomats looking on —  is also known as the Treaty of the Ford Fender.