at times rejected: in some Ministries it acted in a conciliatory manner; in others, it was tenacious and intolerant to a civil service which remained loyal to the old regime. Pino Suárez headed the Renovador movement, a group of Ministers who wanted the government to be exclusive to revolutionaries and which strived to return the government to base its support on the people who had elected it." In the legislative elections held in February 1912, the Renovador movement, headed in Congress by Gustavo Madero, obtained a slim legislative majority. However, the opposition against the government was better organized, effectively "exaggerating the badness of the situation in the country, hindering the action of the Executive branch and launching harsh attacks against the government... with their activities they were undermining the prestige of Madero, whom they branded as inept and naïve.” However, the most virulent attacks were always reserved for Pino who was immensely unpopular with the opposition in Congress. Manuel Márquez Sterling, the Cuban Ambassador to Mexico at the time, described it:"If the attacks on [Madero] were violent…the opposition to Pino Suárez was even more so. Daily, he was radicalized and the opposition attributed to his person defects which he did not possess [...] And as if fate made of the vice presidency in all forms of government a target of insatiable anger, Pino Suárez could match the headaches he suffered to those of his late predecessor [Vice President Ramón Corral]. Stuck between Madero [...] and his adversaries, on both sides of the political aisle, who were out to crucify him [...] he waited patiently for the discomforts and blows to tilt [Madero's] vacillating policy to his side and that of his party. After a delicious banquet offered by Madero to the Diplomatic Corps, Pino Suárez, smoking a delicious cuban cigar from Vuelta Abajo and with a glass of Chartreuse between his fingers, explained to me, in an intimate tone, his criteria, and I remember, as if I was just hearing them now, his words, full of faith. “We find ourselves – he said – in a very critical situation; and only a change of methods will be able to avoid total catastrophe; the change is already planned and the government will manage to move away from the precipice. An energetic hand, a determined, concrete, invariable political leadership, is what the extremely altered state of the country requires. To go towards