FRANCISCO IGNACIO MADERO was the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and the democratically elected President of Mexico from 1911 until 1913, when, in a violent coup, his government was overthrown and he was murdered. Today Madero is best remembered as the "Apostle of Democracy," the visionary leader who overthrew Porfirio Díaz, the dictator who had ruled Mexico, both directly and indirectly, for more than three decades.

Less known is that Madero was also one of Mexico's leading Spiritists and a medium. Not only did he maintain an extensive correspondence with Spiritists in France and Mexico, but he was a organizer of Latin America's first and second Spiritist Congresses held in Mexico in 1906 and 1908, respectively, and it was after the latter that he took upon himself the task of writing and publishing the ardently evangelical Spiritist Manual, albeit under the pen name, "Bhima."

Although for several decades following the Revolution, historians tended to underplay or even ignore Madero's Spiritism— not to mention his role as Spiritism's Maecenas— in recent years, Mexican historians Enrique Krauze, Yolia Tortolero Cervantes, Manuel Guerra de Luna, and Alejandro Rosas Robles, among others, have shown that Madero's Spiritist beliefs and the messages he channeled as a medium inspired his first and much better known book, La sucesión presidencial en 1910 (The Presidential Succession in 1910), which helped spark the popular movement for the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz. His channeled messages also inspired his decision to launch the Revolution of 1910.the

(For a very basic idea of the "official" version of Madero's importance, watch this one minute Mexican government video in English.)