A forerunner to the modern Legion was founded in 1917 under President Venustiano Carranza to provide an "honorable location for excess officers of the Constitutional Army."

[2][a] Eligibility changes included admission for those who had served the country, or completed at least thirty years of active military service.

[2][b] It also established a Council to have the final word on eligibility[4] and defined more exactly the criteria for members of the Navy and the Air Force to be honored.

[6] A 2015 amendment recognized the original, purely military nature of the organization, but taking into account an extended period of peacetime, expanded the eligibility to certain outstanding non-military recipients as well.

When peace came, they not only bypassed women for honors and pensions, but ignored their contributions entirely, as their mere presence would do violence to a patriarchal institution.