Symbols of the Presidency

Three years ago today Enrique Peña Nieto was sworn in as president of Mexico. In photos of that event, many of which will be re-printed today, he’ll be shown with the presidential sash (banda presidencial) worn over his suit coat.

Law dictates that the sash is green, white and red and has the national seal embroidered on it. It also defines how the president wears the sash — over his right shoulder, with the red on top.

It is to be worn under his suit coat unless it’s his first or last day in office — on those days he shares it with his predecessor or successor. Transfer of power is symbolically represented by the outgoing president handing the sash to his successor.

Though Mexico’s president may wear the sash at his discretion, there are days on which law specifies he must wear it. He wears it when giving the president’s annual report to Congress, he wears it on the night of the 15th of September when presiding over the commemoration of the Grito de Dolores (the Shout of Independence), and he must wear it when he receives letters of credence from foreign ambassadors.

The sash is one of two political emblems in Mexico that are synonymous to the presidency. The other is a chair.

The President’s high backed armchair is probably the grandest chair in Mexico. Referred to as La Silla Presidencial (The Presidential Chair), it has the eagle from the shield of Mexico at the top of its arched backrest.

The official photograph of President Peña Nieto that hangs in all federal government offices shows him sitting in the Presidential Chair wearing the sash.

The most famous photograph of the chair is probably one taken when it was occupied during the Revolution, fleetingly, by one who was never president — Pancho Villa. Emiliano Zapata sits beside him in a much simpler chair.

Photography historian John Mraz refers to this photograph as one of three iconic photos of the Mexican Revolution. Another is the full-figure portrait of Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Liberating Army of the South, wearing what appears to be a presidential sash – but isn’t.

The third iconic photo of the Revolution has neither a sash nor a chair. It’s an unposed and stunning photo of a woman leaning out of a train car with a rifle over her shoulder.

In 1914, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata converged on Mexico City with their respective armies. They occupied the National Palace and posed for a photo with their officers. There was only one Presidential Chair but two leaders of two armies — Villa’s División del Norte and Zapata’s, Ejercito Libertador del Sur.

The oft-repeated story is that Villa offered Zapata the Presidential Chair. Zapata refused saying he didn’t want to sit in the chair so recently vacated by Porfirio Diaz. “It’s too tainted by corruption.”
Not only did Zapata refuse to sit in the Presidential Chair but he is reputed to have said he did not aspire to the presidency. Yet, his bestknown photographic portrait — a black and white photograph taken in 1911 — shows a dapper Zapata dressed as a charro, wearing a five-striped sash draped over his left shoulder. Diego Rivera copied from that photo when he portrayed Zapata in his murals in Cuernavaca’s Cortez Palace.

However, Rivera added color. He gave the photographed five-striped sash the presidential colors. He painted Zapata’s sash with red stripes at the top and bottom, a green stripe in the middle and white stripes between. The presidential sash has only three stripes.

From John Mraz, I learned Zapata was actually wearing a state of Morelos sash. By wearing it, Zapata was indicating he was the authority in the state with the right to appoint government officials.
The sash is no longer used in Morelos and I haven’t been able to determine what colors were on it, but even if they were the same as the national green, white, and red, when Zapata wore them they were state colors — hence it was not a presidential sash.

According to Mraz, the sash is the one worn by Revolutionary General Manuel D. Asúnsulo when he, with Emiliano Zapata at his side, peacefully entered and occupied Cuernavaca in 1911. After General Asunsolo’s death Zapata assumed the sash.

Though General Asúnsulo was photographed with the sash over his right shoulder, Zapata wears it over his left shoulder in his famous portrait.

Did Zapata not think that was a matter of importance? Or did he put on the sash while looking at himself in a mirror thinking he was wearing it just as General Asúnsulo had? Or is the photograph reversed left to right?

I like tradition. Today would be a good day for President Peña Nieto to wear the sash – on the third anniversary of his inauguration. Under his suit coat, of course.

The anniversary

Mexico observed the Anniversary of the Revolution of 1910 on Monday, Nov. 16. It, like many national holidays, is now celebrated on a Monday rather than on its real date.

You can thank the Chamber of Deputies for the long weekend. Charlie’s Digs collaborator Carol Hopkins and I were present the day Article 74 of Mexico’s Labor Law was amended to change several holidays guaranteed by law from specific dates to the Monday closest to the date.

Until 2005, the Anniversary of the Revolution was celebrated on Nov. 20. I’ve no doubt that on Friday there will be an official commemoration. After all, I doubt there has been any other revolution with as precise a starting date and time.

On election day in 1910, then President Porfirio Díaz claimed a landslide victory and ordered his opponent, Francisco I. Madero, arrested. Madero escaped from prison to San Antonio, Texas. From Texas he wrote a nine-page document published in San Luis Potosí setting the date and time for the uprising against President Díaz: 6 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 20.

Madero’s call-to-arms was first answered on the West Texas border by the relatively unknown Pancho Villa and Pascual Orozco. Orozco began to smuggle arms from the United States into Mexico. On Oct. 31, Madero placed him in command of revolutionary forces in his municipality.

Orozco led his troops to a series of guerrilla victories against Díaz loyalists. At the close of 1910, most of the state of Chihuahua was in the control of revolutionaries and Orozco was a hero.

Orozco was promoted to colonel and in early 1911 promoted again to brigadier general. In May of that year, Orozco was the architect of the important Battle of Ciudad Juárez.

Madero had been negotiating with Díaz for a cabinet position and greater power in the Díaz government. General Orozco and Colonel Pancho Villa feared the Revolution would be sidetracked before it got up to full steam. They engineered a confrontation before this could happen and the Battle of Ciudad Juárez resulted.

Victory in Juárez, combined with Emiliano Zapata’s victory in Cuautla, Morelos, led directly to the resignation and departure of Díaz and to the presidency of Madero.

Like Emiliano Zapata, Orozco was soon disillusioned when Madero’s presidency did not result in the promised labor and land reform. Furthermore, he was not offered a coveted cabinet position as secretary of war, which he felt was his due.

This anger and disillusionment led to Orozco’s defection from Madero, turning his support to Victoriano Huerta, whose counter-revolutionary views were diametrically opposed to those espoused by Orozco.

In 1915, a despondent Orozco skirted through Texas on his way to meet up with his army. There — in the High Lonesome Mountains south of Van Horn — he was killed, along with four of his companions, by Sheriff John A. Morine, a former Texas ranger.

Sheriff Morine circulated the story that the five men had raided a local ranch. His posse went after them and in the shootout all five were killed. Until now, this ignominious death was the more or less official story of the end of Orozco.

Last week I received a heads-up from Mexico City-based C.M. Mayo about a recently released book with a startling new history of General Pascual Orozco.

Author Raymond Caballero’s “Lynching Pascual Orozco: Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox” is a veritable detective story.

Mayo, herself writing a book about far West Texas, told me, “You can’t write about West Texas or Chihuahua and not write about the Mexican Revolution. They are deeply intertwined.”

Orozco’s anger and disillusionment with Madero led to what Caballero characterizes as the “paradox.” In an interview with C.M. Mayo, Caballero compared Orozco’s defection from Madero over to Victoriano Huerta, to Bernie Sanders suddenly aligning himself with the Koch Brothers.
Raymond Caballero is a lawyer and former mayor of El Paso, Texas. He researched the death of Orozco in old Texas courtroom files.

Caballero explained, “Sheriff John Morine thought he and his boys had ‘just killed themselves some Mexicans.’ When it was known he’d killed General Orozco, one of the greatest military heroes of the early years of the Mexican Revolution, questions began.

There was pressure for an inquest and a Grand Jury inquiry in El Paso where Orozco had many relatives.

“Sheriff Morine did an end run on his home turf. He went to the Culberson County Grand Jury and asked that he and all the members of his posse be indicted for the murder of Orozco and his companions. The trial was held in three days with no investigation. Not surprisingly, all were found not guilty.”

Caballero continued, “As I read the files and the court case I realized what a brilliant cover-up Morine had concocted. They had clothed themselves with the immunity of the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution. They would never be held accountable for the murder of Orozco.”

One hundred years since Orozco’s death, who would have thought new facts could emerge. It’s as though Orozco himself returned from the dead to straighten out the history books. Caballero’s book promises to be a fascinating read.