González, Pablo (1879–1950)

Pablo González (b. 5 May 1879; d. 4 March 1950), Mexican general and revolutionary. González is best known for his military exploits in the Constitutionalist army of revolutionary chief Venustiano Carranza and his role in the death of agrarian leader and revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.

González was born in Lampazos, Nuevo León, and orphaned at age five. He attended primary school in Nadadores, Coahuila, and then tried to enter the National Military College, but was turned down. He worked in a flour mill in Lampazos (1893), served as a laborer and later foreman on the Santa Fe Railroad (1902), and worked in California (1903). He joined the liberal political movement headed by Ricardo Flores Magón (1873–1922) and in 1907 edited the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM) newspaper Revolución. Later he joined the Anti-Reelectionist Party and supported Francisco I. Madero against long-time dictator Porfirio Díaz. He commanded Madero's forces in Coahuila, rising to the rank of colonel (1911). In 1912 he fought against the anti-Madero rebellion led by Pascual Orozco.

After joining the forces of Carranza in 1913, González rose to the rank of general and commander-in-chief of the armies of the Northeast and West. He participated in the Convention of Aguascalientes (1914–1915); became the zone commander of Morelos, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcala; and served as the governor of Morelos (1916, 1919). While commander in Morelos he carried out an especially vicious military campaign against the Zapatistas and is considered to be the perpetrator of Emiliano Zapata's assassination (1919). In 1920 González ran unsuccessfully for the presidency and, upon Álvaro Obregón's overthrow of Carranza, rebelled against the new regime in July 1920. Captured and sentenced to death, González was allowed to seek asylum in San Antonio, Texas, where he remained until 1940. He died in Monterrey, Nuevo León.

See alsoDíaz, Porfirio; Zapata, Emiliano.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José Morales Hesse, El General Pablo González: Datos para la historia, 1910–1916 (1916).

John W. F. Dulles, Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919–1936 (1961).

Charles C. Cumberland, Mexico: The Constitutionalist Years (1972).

Ramón Eduardo Ruíz, The Great Rebellion: Mexico, 1905–1924 (1980).

Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, 2 vols. (1986), esp. vol. 2.

Additional Bibliography

Moguel, Josefina. Venustiano Carranza, primer jefe y presidente. Coahuila de Zaragoza, México: Gobierno del Estado de Coahuila, 1995.

                                      David LaFrance