Pedro Fuentes of Chiapas.
The Bloody Season was a period of political violence in the United States of Mexico that resulted from passage of the Manumission Act freeing the country's Negro slaves. The Bloody Season lasted from May to September 1920.
Passage of the Manumission Act on 21 May 1920 left the U.S.M. deeply divided. Douglas Benedict, the President of Kramer Associates, used his power to compel acceptance in the areas K.A. controlled, and support for manumission was strongest in California and Jefferson, the two states with the largest Anglo and Hispano populations. The Indians of Arizona and Mexico del Norte also supported manumission. However, the Mexicano-majority states of Durango and Chiapas were centers of the anti-manumission movement led by Assemblyman Pedro Fuentes.
After passage of the Manumission Act, slaves were attacked by hooded gangs, beaten, and in 154 cases, murdered. Opponents of manumission were particularly outraged that politicians who had been elected by pledging to oppose manumission had bowed down to financial pressure from K.A. to allow its passage. Seventeen Assemblymen and two Senators were forced to resign in the face of overwhelming pressure from constituents. The riots and demonstrations were so severe that President Calles was obliged to call out the Mexican army to separate supporters and opponents of manumission, and had it not been for Calles' great personal following in the army, many officers might have deserted to the anti-manumission side. By late August, the opposition had taken to burning down Manumission Bureau offices, and threatening its officials with death if they attempted to rebuild them.
Fuentes was shocked by the extremity of the reaction against manumission, but he continued to lead the movement. Later on, he claimed that he did so in an attempt to moderate the violence. "You cannot lead a people," he said, "unless you accept the heart of their beliefs." Sobel suggests that Fuentes was planning to use the anti-manumission movement to overthrow President Emiliano Calles and make himself dictator of Mexico.
Ullman did his best to calm the anti-manumission movement. He pointed out that although the freedman would no longer be bound to their masters, "most will doubtless prefer to remain where they are." In fact, few household servants left their masters, becoming paid employees rather than bound servants. However, there was a great exodus of fieldhands and dockhands. Only 42% of freed industrial workers remained at their jobs, with the rest leaving either voluntarily or under pressure from Mexicano-led labor unions. Many freedmen made their way to Arizona and Mexico del Norte, where they found refuge and employment in Indian areas.
The Bloody season ended soon after President Calles personally confronted an armed mob in front of the Mexico City Manumission Bureau in the company of the capital's first freed slave, John Walker, on the morning of 22 September 1920. However, sporadic violence continued for another decade. Fuentes would use the following he gained during the Bloody Season to win election as president in the 1926 Mexican elections.
Sobel's sources for the Bloody Season are Miguel San Martín's The Bloody Season (Mexico City, 1930); and Dwight Hermon's Starkism in Mexico: The Public Career of Pedro Fuentes (New York, 1955).