Cedillo Martínez, Saturnino (1890–1939)

Saturnino Cedillo Martínez (b. 29 November 1890; d. 11 January 1939), Mexican politician and rebel leader. An important revolutionary general and the regional boss of the state of San Luis Potosí, Cedillo led the last military rebellion against the government in the post-Revolutionary period and was killed in battle.

Born at Rancho de Palomas, Ciudad del Maíz, San Luis Potosí, the son of landowning peasants, he obtained a primary school education. He joined the Maderistas, but later, with his brothers Magdaleno and Cleofas, he sided with Emiliano Zapata and fought against Madero on the side of Pascual Orozco in 1912. He was captured and imprisoned. He later joined the Constitutionalists, but abandoned Venustiano Carranza to support the Plan of Agua Prieta in 1920. He remained in the army, holding top military commands, and supported the government against rebel causes in 1923 and 1929. After serving as governor of his home state, he provided decisive peasant support for Lázaro Cárdenas's presidential candidacy in 1934, for which he was rewarded with the post of secretary of agriculture (1935). He broke with the president in 1937, leaving the cabinet. He then organized his supporters into a small army and opposed the Cárdenas government.

See alsoMexico: Since 1910 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nathaniel Weyl and Sylvia Weyl, The Reconquest of Mexico: The Years of Lázaro Cárdenas (1939).

Additional Bibliography

Ankerson, Dudley. El Caudillo Agrarista: Saturnino Cedillo y la Revolución Mexicana en San Luis Potosí. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1994.

                                      Roderic Ai Camp