ABSTRACT
The government, as a series of institutions, was tenuously held together by a group of politicians who had emerged from the military phase of revolution. The fragility of the coalition was revealed when President Alvaro Obregon was shot by a Catholic zealot in 1928, and the question of presidential succession fell into question. Plutarco Elias Calles, the incumbent president, made a speech before Congress on September 1, 1928, urging his fellow revolutionaries to consider how to proceed. The death of the president-elect is an irreparable loss which has left the country in an extremely difficult situation. The general’s death brings a most grave and vital problem to public attention, for the issue is not merely political, but one of our very survival. The very circumstances that Mexico now confronts—namely, that for perhaps the first time in our history there are no caudillos—give us the opportunity to direct the country’s politics toward a true institutional life.
