Constitution Mexicana
On February 5, at the Iturbide Theater in the city of Querétaro, the Magna Carta or Mexican Constitution that currently governs us was promulgated. The Constitution establishes that the highest law of a people must establish the organizational base of the State, recognize individual guarantees, and be the guarantor of the social, economic, and cultural rights of the popular classes.
The political constitution of the United Mexican States is considered the first in the world to establish social rights, at the same time that human rights and individual guarantees achieved with the independence of 1810 were ratified, including the prohibition of slavery of any kind of person, mexican or foreign.
The Mexican Political Constitution began to be drafted in 1906 and concluded in 1917, with the signature of the founding pact of the modern Mexican State that emerged after the Mexican Revolution. During the government of Porfirio Díaz (1876 to 1911) political liberties and individual guarantees were canceled throughout the country.
The Mexican Constitution of 1917
The 1906 program of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), headed by the Flores Magon brothers, became the basis of the 1917 Constitution. Article 123 of the Constitution was stipulated, referring to the collective right to work, the right to secular education and mandatory, the strengthening of municipalities and the nationalization of the land.
Other articles that had their origin in the ideas of the PLM are those that refer to the right of indigenous peoples, so that the law protects and promotes the development of their cultures and specific forms of social organization; the right to health protection, to expeditious and honest justice; and the right of every person to dignified and socially useful work.
In 1914, additions were made to the Plan of Guadalupe in which the revolutionary leaders were summoned to “agree on a government program, which would indicate in general synthesis the essential reforms to achieve the social and political redemption of the Nation, and set the form and time to restore the constitutional order”.
Added to this, in the second article of the aforementioned Plan it was established that during the time that the struggle still lasted, “all laws, provisions and measures aimed at satisfying the economic, social and political needs of the country” would be issued. In the following months, Carranza decreed a series of laws that were integrated into the debates of the Constituent Congress, which began work in December 1916 and concluded two months later. The laws or decrees issued by the First Chief were: Free Municipality Law, Divorce Law, Agrarian Law, Property Nationalization Law, labor legislation and reforms to the Civil Code.
Mexican Constitution Day
On February 5, 1917, the different revolutionary factions that rose up in 1910 to put an end to the iron dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz left the rights of Mexicans in writing in the Magna Carta. The constituents of Querétaro defined the Nation as the original owner of land and water within the national territory; and the right to regulate the use of all elements susceptible to appropriation.
What is the Mexican Constitution?
The 1917 Constitution is based on a series of political principles that the Mexican people have been adopting since the Chilpancingo Congress. Those principles are:
- Popular sovereignty.
- Guarantee of individual and social rights of man.
- The representative system of government.
- The division of powers.
- The federal system.
- The rectory of the State on national development and the mixed economy
- The separation between the State and the churches.
Mexican Constitution of 1917 Summary
Some facts about the 1917 Constitution are:
- The 1917 Constitution consists of 9 titles, 136 articles and 16 transitory ones.
- First constitution in history that includes social rights.
- The Constitution was signed by 209 deputies with the same pen with which the Guadalupe Plan was signed.
- The only state that did not sign the Constitution was Campeche, although the reasons why neither of the two disputed owners and the two substitutes did not do so are unknown.
- The book was handwritten by Perfecto Arvizu Arcaute with Chinese ink and a gold pen. Arvizu was the calligrapher of the Congress, one of the most recognized of the time.
- The canteens or meeting centers, such as Cosmos, which were close to the Iturbide theater, became places where some points of the Magna Carta were agreed upon.
- Since its entry into force, on May 1, 1917, 605 reforms have been made.
- 22 Articles have remained the same since their promulgation.
- It is available in 23 indigenous languages.
