Luis Manuel Rojas Arriola

Who he was

Lawyer, congressman, journalist and president of the Constituent Congress that wrote the 1917 Constitution of Mexico. He founded and ran newspapers all his life —among them Revista de Revistas and, from 1918, El Universal— and went to prison for what he published: he was court-martialled and held for more than three months for denouncing the Army's second reserve, and he stayed jailed under Victoriano Huerta's dictatorship for accusing U.S. ambassador Henry Lane Wilson of Francisco I. Madero's fall.

He presided over the Constituent debates in Querétaro, signed the Constitution on 31 January 1917 and promulgated it on 5 February. He later served as Mexico's ambassador to Guatemala, twice as director of the National Library, as head of the University and Fine Arts Department, and as professor of constitutional law at UNAM —a chair he held almost until his death on 27 February 1949.

His main achievements

1. A working journalist: he ran publications in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and used the press to denounce both the military reserve and ambassador Henry Lane Wilson's role in the Tragic Ten Days of 1913.
2. Congressman for Jalisco in 1912 and vice-president of the Chamber: he proposed that active-duty soldiers be barred from voting or holding elected office.
3. On 19 February 1913 he opposed accepting the resignations of Madero and Pino Suárez, and was among the deputies who walked out rather than give Huerta's coup a legal veneer.
4. President of the Constituent Congress in Querétaro (30 November 1916): he declared the sessions open and signed the Constitution still in force today.
5. Public servant and diplomat: ambassador to Guatemala, director of the National Library and head of the University and Fine Arts Department.
6. Teacher: he taught constitutional law at what was then UNAM's law school almost until the end of his life, and published books on law and on the 1913 disaster.
7. Posthumous recognition: his image from the Constituent Congress closing session was printed on Mexico's 100-peso banknote for the Constitution's centenary in 2017, and Guadalajara's city council inscribed his name in its session hall in 1990.

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