Once President Huerta was overthrown, the various organizations agreed to hold a convention to design a reform program. It started in October 1914, but the organizations around Villa argued that it should be moved to the considered neutral territory of Aguascalientes. Once formed there, Carranza, who left Mexico City and set up his government in Veracruz, was proclaimed sovereign and disavowed by the convention. The struggle between constitutionalists and conventionalists was imminent, and forces moved to Mexico City from the Sovereign Revolutionary Convention.
The Xochimilco Pact was signed in December 1914, uniting the forces of Villa and Zapata and temporarily placing themselves under the command of Eulalio Gutiérrez, the president chosen by the convention. For his part, General Obregón decided to lend his assistance to Carranza, who played a crucial role in the mid-1915 Constitutionalist victory. In parallel with the military fights, another battle was waged, this one along ideological lines, through the publishing of laws and decrees on social issues that benefited farmers and employees. The latter, members of the House of the World Worker, supported and joined the Constitutionalist army in what they called Red Battalions to fight against Villa. Maintaining the active revolutionary armies meant using the meager current harvests and cattle to feed the soldiers, causing widespread starvation. As each military minted and issued its currency, this was followed by financial chaos. As if that were not enough, epidemics spread in both towns and countryside owing to the absence of hygiene.
Both the defeated Conventionists and the victorious Constitutionalists applied themselves to drawing up plans and laws to satisfy the demands of the struggle. The convention survived in Emiliano Zapata's controlled land. He would publish a "Program of Reforms" in that year, 1916, which included many of the ideas expressed by Magón's supporters since 1906, plus others that had appeared during the revolutionary fight itself. For his part, Carranza would convene elections for a Constituent Congress at a meeting in Querétaro City at the end of the year, where he would put forward a proposed constitutional reform for discussion.
The congress was elected and on December 1916 started its session, ending on February 5, 1917. While the only participants present were from the victors ' camp, the delegates ' composition was representative and varied in social, generational, and professional terms. The more radical wing, whose suggestions on academic, agricultural, labor and religious problems overshadowed his more moderate project running along traditional liberal lines, quickly exceeded Carranza's plan. The radicals went much further, dubbed Jacobins. As a consequence, as the supreme judge in labor, agricultural, educational, and religious matters, the state was given more faculties. Although individual guarantees were created, many of them gave priority to a preponderance of the state, expressed in a stable government focused on the figure of the president, who was not at all restricted, except for the republican norms that preserved a balance between government branches and individual liberties. The Constitution also gave the country possession of land, subsoil, minerals, and hydrocarbons, and the ability to transfer it to people.
Organized by Obregon and his followers, Plan de Agua Prieta brought a power succession from Sonora to revolutionary rulers. As provisional president, Adolfo de la Huerta took control. De la Huerta provided for all insurgents an unconditional amnesty and persuaded Pancho Villa to retire. Obregon reached an agreement with Gildardo Magana, a Zapatista, and in Morelos started land reform discussions. In addition, through economic incentives and ongoing rotations in administrative, military areas, he obtained the allegiance of high-ranking federal army officers. Obregon acknowledged the need to forge links with organized labor and the influential leader of CROM, Luis Morones.
In Sonora's secular culture and society, Obregon's upbringing forged his faith in economic liberalism and modernism.
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