Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920) tried to dicatate who would succeed him as president as president of Mexico; he chose a little-known diplomat named Ignacio Banillas (fl. 1915-20). Alvaro Obregon (1880-1928), who had helped put Carranza in office and served as his minister of war, felt the office should be his. Obregon's former comrade-in-arms, Adolfo de la Herta (1881-1955), then the governor of the state of Sonora, and General Plutarco Elias Calles (1877-1945), chief of the Sonoran armed forces, called for Carranza's resignation. When Carranza sent federal troops into Sonora to break a labor strike, Huerta declared Sonora an independent republic. Obregon and Calles marched south, collecting arms and volunteer troops as they went. Finding no soldiers willing to oppose Obregon and his rebel army, Carranza fled from the capital, Mexico City, toward Veracruz aboard a train loaded with gold he had taken from the national treasury. En route, he learned that the governor of the state of Veracruz had joined the rebels; he then fled on horseback into the mountains, where he was betrayed and murdered. Obregon entered Mexico City unopposed; Huerta became provisional president and, after a special election, was succeeded by Obregon later in 1920.