Francisco I. Madero

Evaristo married twice, with the first marriage before he made his fortune to sixteen-year-old María Rafaela Hernádez Lombaraña (1847–1870), the daughter of an influential landowner, together producing seven children.

She was the half-sister of the powerful miner and banker Antonio V. Hernández Benavides, close friend of José Yves Limantour, Secretary of Finance.

Alongside his brother-in-law, and other of his new political family's relations, Evaristo founded the Compañía Industrial de Parras, initially involved in commercial vineyards, cotton, and textiles, and later also in mining, cotton mills, ranching, banking, coal, guayule rubber, and foundries in the later part of the nineteenth century.

Evaristo was the founder of a commercial transport business, taking advantage of economic opportunity and transported cotton from the Confederate states to Mexican ports during the U.S. Civil War (1861–65).

After Rafaela Hernández's death at age 38, Evaristo then married Manuela Farías y Benavides (1870–1893), with the marriage producing eleven children.

She was member of one of northern Mexico's most influential families, daughter of Juan Francisco Farías, founder of the Rio Grande Republic.

Francisco I. Madero González (30 October 1873 – 22 February 1913) was a Mexican businessman, revolutionary, writer and statesman, who served as the 37th president of Mexico from 1911 until he was deposed in a coup d'état in February 1913 and assassinated.

He came to prominence as an advocate for democracy and as an opponent of President and de facto dictator Porfirio Díaz.

Madero was born in 1873 into a large and extremely wealthy family in northeastern Mexico at the hacienda of El Rosario, in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila.

His grandfather Evaristo Madero Elizondo had built an enormous and diversified fortune as a young man and briefly served as Governor of Coahuila, from 1880 to 1884, during the four-year interregnum of Porfirio Díaz's rule (1880–1884), when Díaz's right-hand man General Manuel González served as president, doing a poor job in Díaz's opinion.

Díaz returned to presidency in 1884 and did not relinquish the office until 1911, when Francisco Madero's revolutionary movement forced him to resign.

Díaz had permanently sidelined Evaristo Madero from further political office.

He was of Portuguese-Jewish descent

An advocate for social justice and democracy, his 1908 book The Presidential Succession in 1910 called Mexican voters to prevent the reelection of Porfirio Díaz, whose regime had become increasingly authoritarian.

Bankrolling the opposition Anti-Reelectionist Party, Madero's candidacy garnered widespread support in the country.

After Díaz claimed to have won the fraudulent election of 1910 despite promising a return to democracy, Madero started the Mexican Revolution to oust Díaz.

He challenged Díaz in the 1910 election, which resulted in his arrest.

After Díaz declared himself winner for an eighth term in a rigged election, Madero escaped from jail, fled to the United States, and called for the overthrow of his regime in the Plan of San Luis Potosí, sparking the Mexican Revolution.

Madero's armed support was concentrated in northern Mexico and was aided by access to arms and finances in the United States.

In Chihuahua, Madero recruited wealthy landowner Abraham González to his movement, appointing him provisional governor of the state.

González then enlisted Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco as revolutionary leaders.

Madero crossed from Texas into Mexico and took command of a band of revolutionaries, but was defeated in the Battle of Casas Grandes by the Federal Army, which led him to abandon military command roles.

Concerned the Battle of Ciudad Juárez would cause casualties in the American city of El Paso and prompt foreign intervention, Madero ordered Villa and Orozco to retreat, but they disobeyed and captured Juárez.

Díaz resigned on 25 May 1911 after the signing of the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez and went into exile.

Madero retained the Federal Army and dismissed the revolutionary fighters who had forced Díaz's resignation.

Madero was enormously popular among many sectors, but he did not immediately assume the presidency.

An interim president was installed and elections were scheduled.

Madero was elected in a landslide and sworn into office on 6 November 1911.

The Madero administration soon encountered opposition, both from conservatives and from more radical revolutionaries.

Hesitation to implement large-scale land reform efforts upset many of his followers, who viewed it as a promised demand from conflict participation.

Workers also became disillusioned by his moderate policies.

Former supporter Emiliano Zapata declared himself in rebellion against Madero in the 1911 Plan of Ayala; and in the north, Pascual Orozco led an insurrection against him.

Foreign investors became concerned that Madero was unable to maintain political stability, while foreign governments were concerned that a destabilized Mexico would threaten international order.

In February 1913, a coup d'état backed by the United States and led by conservative Generals Félix Díaz (a nephew of Porfirio Díaz), Bernardo Reyes, and general Victoriano Huerta was staged in Mexico City, with the latter taking the presidency.

Madero was captured and assassinated along with vice-president José María Pino Suárez in a series of events now called the Ten Tragic Days, where his brother Gustavo was tortured and killed.

After his assassination, Madero became a unifying force among revolutionary factions against the Huerta regime.

In the north, Venustiano Carranza, then Governor of Coahuila, led the nascent Constitutionalist Army; meanwhile Zapata continued his rebellion against the Federal Government under the Plan of Ayala.

Once Huerta was ousted in July 1914, the revolutionary coalitions met in the Convention of Aguascalientes, where disagreements persisted, and Mexico entered a new stage of civil war.

Madero supposedly initiated the Mexican Revolution with guidance from spirits (Madero identified as a medium who communicated with ghosts, including historical figures like Benito Juarez and even his deceased younger brother.) The Mexican revolution would continue until 1920, well after Madero and Díaz's deaths, with hundreds of thousands dead.

A member of one of Mexico's wealthiest families, Madero studied business at the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris.