A whole generation of ambitious military men emerged from the local, regional, and national conflicts that cost Mexico so dearly between 1910 and 1920. These freebooters dominated postrevolutionary Mexico throughout the Sonoran dynasty (1920-1934), beginning with the successful overthrow of Venustiano Carranza by Alvaro Obregón in 1920. They had various motivations. Some looked out only for themselves, their families, and their camarillas. Other saw unparalleled opportunity for social experimentation; they would attempt to create a new Mexico. A few, of more modest vision, sought only to preserve the culture and mores of their ethnic or geographic origins.
General Heliodoro Charis Castro, a Zapotec Indian, was a significant military figure during the 1920s and early 1930s, to whom the Sonoran bosses of the Revolution entrusted a series of difficult assignments. He was also involved in the treacherous politics of his home region, Juchitán, Oaxaca. According to Víctor de la Cruz, Charis was the last of a long line of leaders who nobly resisted the incursions of central authorities and fought to preserve Zapotec culture on the isthmus of Tehuantepec (p. 12).
Charis, like so many others, grew up as a soldier in the Revolution. He chose his side depending on the “logic” of the local situation at a particular time. Thus he was, in turn, a Maderista, Huertista, Carrancista, and Obregonista. Switching allegiances was not unusual during the Mexican Revolution; the author offers Charis’ youth and ignorance as additional excuses for the brief adherence to Victoriano Huerta.
Charis must have been an especially well regarded general, for Obregón and Calles kept him and his Juchitecan troops quite busy throughout the 1920s putting down successive uprisings. They fought the Delahuertistas in 1923-24 and the Yaquis in 1927. Later that year, they were dispatched to fight the rebellion of Francisco Serrano; and of course, President Plutarco Calles sent them to war against the Cristeros as well. Charis did much dirty work for the Sonorans.
Eventually, in the late 1920s, Charis acquired ambitions beyond being a good soldier. He faced severe obstacles, however. State and local politics in Oaxaca were murderous. Vicious factional disputes ruled the era. As a Zapotec, moreover, Charis faced enormous prejudice, exacerbated by his lack of education. Charis at first proved less than adept at politics, losing a gubernatorial election in the late 1920s and then allegedly sponsoring an unsuccessful revolt in Oaxaca in 1931, which abruptly curtailed his military career. But by the mid-1930s, the general had established himself as an important political figure in Juchitán. He was elected, successively, municipal president, federal deputy, and federal senator over the next decade.
Based on extensive research in local and state archives and on interviews, this biography presents the general’s military career in considerable detail. Unfortunately, its presentation of the political aspect of his life is confusing, and it offers little insight into the man himself.