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not satisfy the aspirations of the campesino
     and industrial working classes without betraying himself and his closest associates. He lost the support of the leftist intellectuals
     who were at the forefront of the ideological debate with Díaz. He failed to maintain law and order in the countryside and
     city and therefore could satisfy neither the investors, the industrial elite, nor the great landowners. His open investment
     policy and reassurances to foreign investors were blunted by his inability to protect their properties from attack. The army
     officer corps remained hostile toward what it regarded as his upstart and weak leadership.
    But perhaps one of his worst decisions was to use Victoriano Huerta, a ruthless holdover from the Díaz regime, to quell the
     dissent. Then in his late fifties, Huerta was a Huichol Indian born in an adobe hut in the state of Jalisco, located on the
     Pacific coast. He was a handsome man, with a hard body and hard face, and hands that were soft as kitten paws. Huerta seemed
     destined for a life of poverty, but in a twist of fate an army general passing through his village hired him as an assistant.
     With the general as his mentor, Huerta was eventually able to enroll in the prestigious Colegio Militar and embark upon a
     military career. Among his countrymen, Huerta developed the reputation of a “bloodthirsty animal,” but to the foreign diplomats
     he seemed a gallant and tragically misunderstood figure. A heavy drinker, he favored pulque in his youth, but switched to
     brandy as his career flourished and his tastes grew more refined. He showed no signs of dissipation from alcohol and friends
     noticed that the more he drank the clearer his brain seemed to become. “To even his intimates, Huerta was always a silent
     man,” the
New York Times
wrote:
    He seldom spoke, and his face was always expressionless, with thin lips tightly drawn together, and his cold, black penetrating
     eyes looking straight ahead. He was said to have an indomitable will, great strength, fixity of resolve, absolute ignorance
     of fear and utter mercilessness. There was always the same look in his face, whether he was watching his fighting cocks, himself
     facing death on the battle line, in the Hall of Congress, or at the El Globo tea rooms in Mexico City, where he was wont to
     drink large quantities of cognac, during his social talks with members of his Cabinet, who, however, always drank tea.
    Madero had an uneasy relationship with Huerta and twice had him removed from command positions. But on Sunday, February 9,
     1913, when several army generals launched a coup in Mexico City, he accepted Huerta’s help in putting down the rebellion.
     Thus the inexperienced and naive president unwittingly delivered himself and his vice president, José María Pino Suárez, into
     the arms of their executioner. During this period, known as the
Decena Trágica,
or Tragic Ten Days, the avenues of Mexico City grew thick with dust and smoke as a rebel army led by dissident generals fought
     Huerta’s troops. Newspapers closed their doors as artillery fire destroyed the beautiful turn-of-the century buildings and
     elegant homes. Trolleys and buses ground to a halt, mobs roamed the city. Soon the air filled with the stench of decaying
     human corpses and the bloating bodies of horses caught in the cross fire.
    During an apparent lull in the artillery attacks, two U.S. citizens, Josephine Griffith and Minnie Holmes, who lived in a
     boardinghouse on Calle Ayuntamiento, crept upstairs from the basement to make lunch. “My mother had just entered the kitchen
     where there was a horrible explosion in front of us, not more than twenty feet from where we sat,” remembered Josephine’s
     son, Percy Griffith. His mother’s left leg had been so shattered by the blast that her clothing was littered with small pieces
     of bone. When she awoke, her son gave her sips of whiskey to blunt her pain and then ran out into the