The League, influenced by the liberal and egalitarian principles of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, two Swiss intellectuals, founded the Model School (Escuela Modelo), which operates to this day in Mérida, Chetumal and Valladolid.

[1] Cámara's liberal and democratic ideals aligned him with Francisco I. Madero, and he played a significant role in convincing the Yucatecan oligarchy, known as the divine caste, to support José María Pino Suárez during the 1911 gubernatorial election.

In February 1913, amidst the political turmoil in Mexico, Cámara was caught up in the Ten Tragic Days, a military coup d'état which toppled the Madero administration, the country's first democratically elected government.

[2] Born in Mérida, Yucatán on 25 April 1875, the eldest son of Raymundo Cámara Luján, a wealthy landowner and businessman who made a fortune during the henequen boom, and María del Carmen Vales Castillo.

She married Pablo Castellanos León also a noted virtuoso pianist who studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Antoine François Marmontel.

[8] Their son, Pablo Castellanos Cámara was also a distinguished virtuoso pianist who studied at the Paris and Berlin Conservatories under Alfred Cortot and Edwin Fischer, respectively.

[11][12] Similarly, his grandnephew, Ismael Moreno Pino, was a lawyer and senior diplomat who served as Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs and was the Mexican Ambassador to Germany and the Netherlands.

[13] The eldest of thirteen siblings, the Cámara Vales brothers were educated in a household which emphasized learning music and foreign languages; he played the violin and piano and spoke fluent English, Spanish, French and German.

She was the daughter of José María Millet Hübbe, a prosperous businessman of French, German and Danish origin, and Joaquina Heredia Cacaño.

The couple had two sons and a daughter:[5] Having specialized in pediatrics in Berlin, Cámara returned to Mérida and opened the first children's hospital in the Yucatán peninsula.

By 1910, the League founded the Model School (Escuela Modelo), based on liberal, secular, and egalitarian principles, inspired by the ideas of two Swiss thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.

During the 1911 gubernatorial election, Cámara was instrumental in convincing much of the Yucatecan oligarchy to transfer their allegiance to José María Pino Suárez, who won the governorship despite a tight race against Delio Moreno.

After the rebellion was defeated, Moreno went into exile from Yucatán, joining the anti-Maderist forces of Pascual Orozco and eventually supporting the coup d'état of February 1913, known as the Ten Tragic Days.

After the Panic of 1907, Molina's main competitors had been eliminated, including the Escalante exporting house, a family that had founded the Yucatecan henequen industry in the mid-19th century.

Its primary purpose was to safeguard Mexican interests and protect the local henequen industry against the influence of American capitalism, notably embodied by figures such as Olegario Molina in Yucatán:"The Reguladora was the first attempt to regulate the market of an export product in Mexico.

Ultimately, as a demonstration of their success as a lobbying group, in January 1912, the Maderist governor Nicolás Cámara Vales (1911-1913) created this state-directed commission, which aimed to raise international henequen prices through a fiber retention policy.

The Reguladora also intended to intervene in fiber marketing by acting as a direct exporter, making it a competitor to the Molina-Montes monopoly and the International Harvester Company.

The decree creating the Reguladora, presided over by Governor Nicolás Cámara Vales, is evidence of this because it establishes the Commission's goals, many of which were previously proposed by the agricultural chamber: to manage the defense of the henequen industry, raise and sustain the fiber's price to a level that is profitable for the producers, withhold the quantities of henequen it deems necessary from the market, and open new markets for the fiber trade.

[30] In January 1913, Cámara requested temporary leave from his position as governor to travel to Mexico City, being temporarily replaced by Fernando Solís León, the mayor of Mérida and a Maderist politician.

Days earlier, the private residence of the Madero family had been reduced to ruins by a devastating fire started by a group of Porfirian "aristocrats" sympathetic to Huerta's cause.

With the protection of Manuel Márquez Sterling, the Cuban ambassador, the Madero family managed to embark for Havana before dispersing to various parts of the United States: New York, California, and Texas.

[32] Cámara Vales, in turn, decided to accompany his sister and nephews back to Mérida, where he believed they would be safer due to their family's influence and connections.

[33] At that point, Cámara decided to travel with his family on a steamboat to Havana, under the protection of Márquez Sterling, before settling in Europe as a self-imposed exile.