General Victoriano Huerta, who had usurped the presidency in a coup d'état in February 1913, resigned the office in July 1914 on account of revolutionary pressures, and left the country.

However, faced with the absence of the Zapatistas (who did not recognise Carranza's authority) and the refusal of Pancho Villa to attend a meeting in Mexico City, it was agreed to relocate the convention to Aguascalientes.

The convention was intended to settle the differences between the "big four" warlords who played the biggest roles in overthrowing Huerta: Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza and Álvaro Obregón.

The supporters of Zapata did not arrive until 26 October (a delegation of 26, led by Paulino Martínez and Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama).

There was some support for this idea in theory, but the revolutionary armies had formed and fought under the command of particular leaders (such as Villa, Obregón, Zapata and Abraham González) and so in the current circumstances it was impossible to implement.