Luis Vicente Cabrera Lobato was a Mexican lawyer, politician and writer. His pen name for his political essays was "Lic. Blas Urrea"; the more literary works he wrote as "Lucas Rivera". During the late presidency of Porfirio Díaz, he was a vocal critic of the regime. He became an important civilian intellectual in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920).

Francisco I. Madero González was a Mexican businessman, revolutionary, writer and statesman, who served as the 37th president of Mexico from 1911 until he was deposed in a coup d'état in February 1913 and assassinated. He came to prominence as an advocate for democracy and as an opponent of President and de facto dictator Porfirio Díaz. After Díaz claimed to have won the fraudulent election of 1910 despite promising a return to democracy, Madero started the Mexican Revolution to oust Díaz. The Mexican revolution would continue until 1920, well after Madero and Díaz's deaths, with hundreds of thousands dead.