How Porfirio Diaz resigned from the presidency

It was May 1911; six months earlier an armed movement had broken out, whose purpose was to overthrow the long-lived government of Porfirio Díaz, who had been in power for a little more than three decades.

Francisco Ignacio Madero González sought the presidency of the Republic in 1910, with the promise of a fair and equitable electoral process; however, shortly before the elections, he was arrested and imprisoned, and Díaz was re-elected for the seventh time.

Given the rejection of Diaz's reelection and after the publication of the Plan de San Luis by Madero, the armed revolt began on November 20, 1910, and with it, the long administration of the long-lived general took a nosedive. The victories of Madero's forces in the north of the country were decisive for the decline of Diaz in the first stage of the Mexican Revolution, which would last for almost a decade.

The author of the Plan of San Luis fled to the United States and there he remained in expectation during the first months of the armed conflict. On February 14, 1911, Madero returned from his brief exile to Mexico to take control of the revolutionary movement, for which he established his base of operations in the town of Guadalupe, Chihuahua, to later advance on the town of Casas Grandes and Ciudad Juárez, which took place in May of that same year.

Meanwhile, Diaz, despite the climate of social and political tension unleashed by his questionable triumph in the 1910 elections, presided over the independence centennial celebrations, which took place without major problems.

Faced with the advance of the Maderista forces and their capture of Ciudad de Juarez on May 10, 1911, the long-lived general -who was already in his eighties-, tired and with a mouth infection, expressed his intentions to resign from the presidency.

The resignation of General José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was presented on May 25, 1911, in the Chamber of Deputies, after the signing of the treaties of Ciudad Juárez, which had taken place on the 21st of the same month.

After the resignation of the Oaxacan dictator, the government was left in charge of Francisco León de la Barra, who finally called the elections that would give way to the triumph of Madero, who would eventually be assassinated not long after, in February 1913.

Diaz went into exile in France after being deposed. However, his overthrow was not enough to bring peace back to the country.