Mexican Constitution of 1917: The Revolution's Landmark Charter

The Mexican Constitution of 1917 is the founding charter of modern Mexico, written by a revolutionary congress at Querétaro and promulgated on 5 February 1917. Born in the middle of the Mexican Revolution, it combined a federal, democratic republic with sweeping promises of land reform, workers’ rights, secular education and national control of natural resources. It was among the first constitutions anywhere to place social rights alongside individual liberties, and it is still in force today.

Background

Mexico’s previous charter, the liberal Constitution of 1857, had separated church and state and guaranteed individual rights, provoking the Reform War. Under Porfirio Díaz (in power for most of 1876-1911) it remained formally in force but was largely ignored in practice.

By late 1916 the Constitutionalist faction led by Venustiano Carranza had defeated Pancho Villa’s main army and controlled most of the country. Carranza wanted to give his government legal legitimacy and to channel revolutionary demands into law. He called elections for a constituent congress, from which supporters of Villa, Zapata and the old regime were effectively excluded.

The Querétaro congress

The congress opened in the city of Querétaro on 1 December 1916, meeting in the Teatro Iturbide, now called the Teatro de la República. Roughly 200 delegates attended, most of them young, middle-class supporters of the revolution: lawyers, teachers, engineers, journalists and army officers.

Carranza presented a draft that was essentially a cautious revision of the 1857 text, strengthening the presidency but adding few social provisions. The majority rejected this moderate approach. A radical group, often called the “Jacobins”, gathered around General Francisco J. Múgica, who chaired a key drafting committee, and were broadly sympathetic to General Álvaro Obregón. Working with figures such as Pastor Rouaix, a former governor who led the drafting of the land and labour articles, they rewrote several articles to give the state a strong role in social and economic life.

Debates were intense but rapid. The congress finished its work on 31 January 1917, Carranza promulgated the new constitution on 5 February 1917, the sixtieth anniversary of the 1857 charter, and it came into force on 1 May 1917.

Key articles

The 1917 constitution kept the structure of a federal republic with a president, a two-chamber Congress and a Supreme Court. Its most famous features were a handful of articles that went well beyond earlier liberal models.

Article 3: education. Primary education was to be secular and, in public schools, free. Religious bodies and ministers were barred from running primary schools.

Article 27: land and natural resources. Ownership of land and waters was declared to belong originally to the nation, which could impose on private property the conditions required by the public interest. Villages that had lost lands could claim restitution or new grants, providing the legal basis for the communal ejido system. Subsoil resources such as oil and minerals were placed under the direct ownership of the nation, and foreigners were restricted from owning land near the borders and coasts. Religious institutions were forbidden to acquire real estate.

Article 123: labour. This long article set an eight-hour working day, a maximum of seven hours for night work, one day of rest for every six worked, a minimum wage, equal pay regardless of sex or nationality, limits on child labour, protections for pregnant workers, employer liability for workplace accidents, and the right to form unions and to strike. Disputes were to go to arbitration boards with worker and employer representatives.

Article 130 and related articles: church and state. Churches were denied legal personality, states could limit the number of clergy, priests had to be Mexican by birth, and clergy could not vote or criticise the laws in public. Monastic orders were banned and public worship outside churches was restricted.

No re-election. Reflecting Madero’s slogan against Díaz, the president was barred from re-election. After a brief change in the 1920s, the ban was made absolute in 1933, and the presidential term was fixed at six years from 1934.

Other provisions. The first chapter listed individual guarantees, such as freedom of speech, assembly and worship, protection against arbitrary arrest and the right to a fair trial, protected through the Mexican writ of amparo. Article 115 made the free municipality the basic unit of local government, a response to the hated district political bosses (jefes políticos) of the Porfiriato. The office of vice-president, which had been used for political manoeuvring under Díaz, was abolished; if a president died or left office, Congress would choose a replacement.

Why it was so radical

At the time, few constitutions anywhere guaranteed workers’ rights or subordinated private property to social needs. Mexico’s charter preceded the German Weimar Constitution of 1919, often cited as the European model of a social constitution, by two years. It drew on Mexican experience rather than foreign models: the land question that had driven Zapata’s rebellion, the labour conflicts of the Porfiriato and long-running liberal hostility to the political power of the Catholic Church.

The constitution was also strongly nationalist. By asserting national ownership of the subsoil, it threatened the concessions held by American and British oil companies, which had made Mexico one of the world’s leading oil producers by 1920. This became a lasting source of friction with Washington.

Implementation and conflict

Many provisions remained promises for years. Carranza distributed little land, and early governments moved cautiously for fear of disrupting the economy and provoking foreign intervention. Land reform gathered pace under President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), who distributed roughly 18 million hectares to peasant communities. On 18 March 1938 Cárdenas used the constitution’s subsoil provisions to expropriate the foreign oil companies, creating the state company Pemex.

The anticlerical articles produced the most violent clash. When President Plutarco Elías Calles enforced them strictly through the so-called Calles Law in 1926, Catholic bishops suspended public worship and armed rebels in western Mexico rose in the Cristero War of 1926-1929.

Later amendments and legacy

The constitution has been amended hundreds of times, more often than most national constitutions. In 1992, reforms under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari ended the obligation to distribute land, allowed ejido land to be sold or rented, and gave churches legal recognition, ending much of the original anticlerical framework.

Even so, the 1917 constitution remains the symbolic centre of Mexico’s political order. Constitution Day is a national holiday, observed on the first Monday of February, and articles 3, 27 and 123 are still cited in Mexican debates about schools, energy and workers’ rights.

Timeline

• 1916, September: Carranza calls elections for a constituent congress.
• 1916, 1 December: The congress opens at Querétaro.
• 1917, 31 January: Delegates complete and sign the new text.
• 1917, 5 February: Carranza promulgates the constitution.
• 1917, 1 May: The constitution comes into force; Carranza takes office as president.
• 1926, July: The Calles Law enforces the anticlerical articles.
• 1938, 18 March: Cárdenas expropriates foreign oil companies under Article 27.
• 1992: Major reforms to land tenure and church-state relations.

Why it matters

The 1917 constitution turned the demands of a bloody revolution into law. Its articles on land, labour, education and natural resources shaped Mexican policy for most of the twentieth century and made Mexico an early pioneer of the idea that a constitution should guarantee social as well as political rights.