[7] In 1911, when Francisco I. Madero who had also been exiled into Texas, wrote the Plan de San Luis Potosí calling for the election to be declared null and void, and for Díaz to be overthrown,[8] Alvarado recrossed the border into Mexico.

In Sonora the Yaqui were waging guerrilla warfare, Morelos and Durango were also unstable, and Pascual Orozco, former Madero supporter, was attempting to usurp the authority of Chihuahua governor Abraham González.

[16] Alvarado took six months after arriving in Mérida to evaluate the conditions he found, gathering data from all social levels assisted by local Yucatecos.

[17] One of his first actions was to address the situation of the Maya peasants and liberate them from serfdom, prohibiting their confinement, forced guardianships, retention of their children, and whipping as well as other corporal punishment.

He canceled their indenture debts with the landowners[1] and established laws for women and child laborers, including domestic workers, defining maximum hours, minimum pay, mandatory rest periods, health and safety standards, and prohibitions on immoral employment.

Lawyers were prohibited, only the commander and secretary of the military court were allowed to participate, so that judgments were quickly obtained and unintimidating to the ignorant or poor.

In addition to freeing the Maya from debt servitude,[19] he created Agrarian Committees in each municipality[21] to oversee land and farm worker issues.

[22] Alvarado also established the agente de propaganda, a proto-ombudsman position, who was responsible for reporting abuses against common people by the landed class and merchants or violations of law.

He passed laws making education mandatory, secular and free and required that it focus on literacy, reading, writing, arithmetic and civic responsibility.

[26] Alvarado had studied both European and United States feminist theory and socialism[27] and passed a series of laws aimed at freeing women from their traditional servitude, as he had the Maya.

[17] Because he felt that vice was particularly hard on women and families, a series of acts outlawing bullfights, drinking, gambling, lotteries and raffles were passed.

[27] When Alvarado was recalled for military duty in other parts of Mexico in 1918, he appointed Carlos Castro Morales to succeed him and Felipe Carrillo Puerto as head of the Partido Socialista de Yucatán, the Yucatecan Socialist Party.

Zapata and his rebels became the newest targets of Carranza's regime, causing devastation through warfare to the people of Morelos, who were already battling the 1918 flu pandemic.

Zapata's 1919 assassination, the resignation of Álvaro Obregón as Minister of War, and the failure to recognize Salvador Alvarado's maxim "give them land, and you bind them to Mexico," increasingly alienated Carranza's former allies.

[36] Following Carranza's assassination and Adolfo de la Huerta's election as the Interim President of Mexico on 1 June 1920,[37] Alvarado was named Secretary of the Treasury.

[1] De la Huerta had inherited an almost bankrupt government, and Alvarado made numerous trips to New York City to secure funds through both loans and publicity of Yucatecan henequin.

[35] In 1921 de la Huerta handed over power from his interim government to Álvaro Obregón[38] and Alvarado left the Treasury and began working as the Director of Free Ports and Secretary of the Advisory Board of Petroleum.

[39] In 1922, Alvarado was in Yucatán and U.S. newspapers were reporting that he was meeting with leaders who were in opposition to Obregón and his chosen successor, Plutarco Elías Calles.

[35] A few months after de la Huerta's escape, Alvarado was ambushed while fleeing from Obregón's force at El Hormiguero ranchero,[33] between Tenosique, Tabasco and Palenque, Chiapas and was killed on 10 June 1924.