Giuseppe Garibaldi vs Plutarco Elias Calles

Plutarco Elias Calles vs Giuseppe Garibaldi ### The Redshirt and the Jefe Máximo On a dusty Sicilian road in May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a man with a flowing red shirt and a mane of wild hair, led a thousand ragged volunteers against a Bourbon army three times its size. Half a world away and sixty years later, in the sun-baked halls of Mexico City, Plutarco Elías Calles, a stern-faced man in a dark suit, signed a law that would ignite a civil war. One fought for a unified nation; the other fought to define one. Both were generals, both were revolutionaries, yet their paths—and their legacies—diverged as sharply as the oceans that separated their homelands. Why did Garibaldi, the romantic hero, become a global symbol of liberation, while Calles, the iron-willed reformer, remains a controversial architect of modern Mexico? The answer lies not in their goals, but in the soil from which they grew. ### Origins Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in 1807 in Nice, a Mediterranean port city then part of the French Empire. His father was a fisherman, his mother a woman of deep piety. From boyhood, Garibaldi was drawn to the sea and to the radical ideas of Italian nationalism—a dream of a single, unified Italy free from foreign domination. His world was one of empires: the Austrian Empire in the north, the Bourbon Kingdom in the south, and the Pope in Rome. His enemy was clear: tyranny. Plutarco Elías Calles, born in 1877 in Guaymas, Sonora, came from a humbler, harsher world. His father was an alcoholic who died when Calles was young; his mother raised him in poverty. He worked as a schoolteacher, a bartender, and a flour mill manager before the Mexican Revolution of 1910 shattered the old order. Calles’s enemy was not a foreign king but a system: the entrenched power of the Catholic Church, the landed aristocracy, and the remnants of the Porfiriato dictatorship. If Garibaldi fought to *create* a nation, Calles fought to *remake* one. ### Rise to Power Garibaldi’s rise was a series of dramatic leaps. Exiled after a failed uprising in 1834, he fled to South America, where he became a guerrilla leader in Brazil and Uruguay. There he honed his military skills, adopted the red shirt as his uniform, and earned a reputation for audacity. His great moment came in 1849, when he led the defense of the Roman Republic against French forces sent to restore the Pope. Outnumbered and outgunned, Garibaldi’s stand was heroic but doomed. He retreated across Italy, his pregnant wife Anita dying in his arms. It was a defeat that became legend. Calles’s path was more calculated. He rose through the ranks of the Mexican Revolution as a military governor of Sonora, where from 1915 to 1919 he implemented radical reforms: land redistribution, anti-clerical laws, and the promotion of public education. He was not a battlefield hero like Garibaldi; he was an organizer. In 1924, he was elected President of Mexico. Where Garibaldi’s power came from the people’s adoration, Calles’s came from the machinery of the state. ### Leadership & Governance As a military leader, Garibaldi was inspirational. His 1860 Expedition of the Thousand was a masterpiece of strategic daring. Landing in Sicily with fewer than 1,200 men, he won the Battle of Calatafimi against a larger Bourbon army, the victory boosting morale and proving that his "Redshirts" could win. He swept through Sicily and Naples, culminating in the Battle of Volturnus, where his forces defeated the Neapolitan army. But Garibaldi was no politician. After conquering southern Italy, he voluntarily handed his conquests to King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, famously declaring, "Italy is made. Now we must make Italians." He trusted the monarch to unify the country, a decision that would leave the south neglected for generations. Calles governed with a different hand. As president from 1924 to 1928, he enforced the secular, anti-clerical constitution of 1917, restricting the Catholic Church’s role in education, property, and public life. The result was the Cristero War (1926–1929), a brutal rebellion of Catholic peasants that killed an estimated 90,000 people. Calles did not lead armies in the field; he directed them from the presidential palace. After his term ended, he remained the *Jefe Máximo* (Maximum Chief) during the Maximato (1928–1934), controlling puppet presidents and founding the National Revolutionary Party (PNR) in 1929—the precursor to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that would rule Mexico for seven decades. His governance was institutional, ruthless, and enduring. ### Triumph & Tragedy Garibaldi’s greatest triumph was the unification of Italy. In 1860, at the height of his power, he was the most famous man in Europe, hailed as the "Hero of Two Worlds." His tragedy was that his idealism outpaced his political reality. He failed to capture Rome (it fell to Italian troops in 1870, not to him) and spent his final years in retirement on the island of Caprera, disillusioned with the monarchy he had served. Calles’s triumph was the creation of a stable, one-party state that ended decades of revolution and chaos. His tragedy was the cost. The Cristero War stained his legacy with blood, and his anti-clericalism alienated millions. In 1936, he was exiled by his own protégé, Lázaro Cárdenas, who outmaneuvered him. Calles died in 1945, a ghost of his former power. ### Character & Destiny Garibaldi was a man of passion—impulsive, generous, and charismatic. He fought for ideals, not power. "I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, and death," he told his volunteers. His destiny was to be a symbol, not a ruler. Calles was cold, calculating, and pragmatic. He once said, "The revolution is not a bed of roses." His destiny was to build a machine, not a legend. Their personalities shaped their outcomes: Garibaldi’s romance made him immortal; Calles’s ruthlessness made him effective. ### Legacy Today, Garibaldi is remembered as a global icon of liberty. Streets, squares, and monuments bear his name from Buenos Aires to London. His red shirt is a symbol of grassroots revolution. Calles is remembered more ambiguously. In Mexico, he is honored as a founder of the modern state, but also blamed for the PRI’s authoritarian grip and the Cristero War’s suffering. His total score of 74.5 slightly edges Garibaldi’s 73.4, but the numbers mask a deeper truth: Garibaldi’s influence (82.0) and legacy (75.0) reflect a universal appeal, while Calles’s political score (79.8) reflects his institutional impact. ### Conclusion In the end, Garibaldi and Calles represent two faces of revolution. One was a knight-errant who dreamed of a nation; the other was a builder who forged a state. Garibaldi’s Italy is a unified democracy; Calles’s Mexico is a vibrant, complicated republic. Both succeeded, but in different currencies. Garibaldi gave the world a story; Calles gave Mexico a system. And as history judges them, it may be that the world needs both the dreamer and the architect—but it will always remember the man in the red shirt.