Prerevolution and personal life
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Carrillo Puerto was born in the town of Motul, Yucatán, 45 km northeast of Mérida, and was of partly indigenous Maya background; he was rumored to be a descendant of the Nachi Cocom dynasty of Mayapan.[citation needed] His parents were the merchant Justiniano Carrillo Pasos and his wife Adelaide Puerto Solis. He was one of fourteen children, thirteen of whom lived into adulthood. Although his family were Spanish speakers, he also grew up speaking Maya (Mayathan), the language of the neighborhood children.
He was a socialist who favored land reform, women's suffrage, and rights for the indigenous Maya people. As a teenager during the Caste War, he was briefly imprisoned for urging the Maya people to tear down a fence that had been built by the large landowners around lands in the community of Dzununcán to keep the Maya out. He obtained work on the local railways (known as tramways), joined the railway workers union, and married Isabel Palma.
Carrillo Puerto then began publishing and editing El Heraldo de Motul, which was briefly closed down in 1907 by the authorities for "insulting public officials". In the Yucatán gubernatorial election of 1909, Carrillo Puerto supported the candidacy of the poet Delio Moreno Cantón in the three-way race against the Antirreeleccionista Party's (Maderista's) José María Pino Suárez, and the pro-Díaz Enrique Muñoz Arístegui. Arístegui was announced as the winner in what is generally considered to have been a fraudulent tally. In 1910 he attended the Third Congress of the Associated Press of the States (Congreso de la Prensa Asociada de los Estados) in Mexico City and spearheaded a resolution to free the political prisoners being held at San Juan de Ulúa; a resolution that President Díaz acceded to. In 1912, he went to work as a reporter and columnist for the periodical Revista de Mérida run by his friend and colleague Carlos R. Menéndez.
He married María Isabel Palma in 1901. They had six children. In 1923, he had a romance with a United States journalist, Alma Reed of San Francisco, California, which was commemorated in the song commissioned by him: "Peregrina", written by the poet Luis Rosado de la Vega and the composer Ricardo Palmerín.
