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. 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. 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 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. ==As governor==