'V^e.NT ^o. *.. ^^ ^V ^^-^.^^ >* .0' .V _ _ -/• /\ -IK-" *^^'^-^- '^^" /\ wri^ o ^^V^^ ».o>* ^^^ .4 o^ > <^l» Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 with funding from Tine Library of Congress http://www.arcliive.org/details/cliargesagainstdOObuln Charges Against the Diaz Administration By FRANCISCO BULNES Froir the book "THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT MEXICO" < v> K .-5^^ First: — Having sold half of Lower California for a mere pittance to Mr, Louis Huller, of German extraction and a nat- uralized American citizen, who passed it on to an American colonizing enterprise. "El Nacional," a newspaper with a wide circulation, started the campaign, causing great alarm. It held that Lower California would follow the fate of Texas from the moment that the same methods of turpitude and treason were employed against the Mexican people. Second: — The Government was accused of having given its consent to changes affected in the Mining Code, including the clause which assigns to the owner of the land the coal de- posits that may be found upon it, for no other reason than that of enriching the grantees of unclaimed lands in the state of Coahuila, who had acquired the Sabina lands for an in- significant sum with a view to selling them to the American multi-millionaire, Huntington. r/zzrd:— Having sold, for next to nothing, 3,000,000 hect- ares of excellent lands in the State of Chihuahua to two fav- orites of the Mexican Government, that they might resell to Mr. Hearst, the well known celebrated millionaire, who con- stantly conspired against the integrity of Mexican territory so as to bring about armed intervention. Fourth: — Granting concessions to foreign companies to exploit the oil lands, among which companies the American predominated; granting them also exemption from export duties on the crude or refined product, thereby depriving the Mexican people of the only means at their command to de- rive anything from the exploitation of their great national wealth. Fifth: — Notwithstanding the fact that the most scandal- ous of all the oil concessions was that granted by the dictator- ship to Lord Cowdray (consequently in favor of English capital) it was well received by the patriots, until the press began agitating the matter, saying that Lord Cowdray was intimately associated with ex-President Taft's Administra- tion, as his brother, Henry W. Taft, and George W. Wick- ersham. Attorney General in the Taft Cabinet, were directors in the company organized and presided over by Lord Cow- dray. 3 Sixth :i— Maying permitted the Guggenheiltts to monopol- ize almost completely the important metallurgic industry upon which the progress of mining in the country depended. The Giiggenheims controlled the smelting plants of Monter- rey, San Luis Potosi, Aguascalientes, and Velardena in Du- i-ango, and were trying to get a foothold in Pachuca and Real del Monte, thereby forcing the retirement of all the com- panies that had sunk a great amount of capital in smelters and mining ventures. Seventh : — The granting to Colonel Greene, an American citizen, of enormous concessions in the copper lands of the State of Sonora, upon which he had established the famous Cananea Plant, where the four thousand employees were treated like slaves, and with such inhumanity that there was an uprising among them, with the result that armed men from the United States passed into Mexican territory to pro- tect the American oppressors. The national press stigma- tized Governor Izabal of Sonora as a traitor to his country for not having ejected the insolent intruders by force of arms. Eighth : — Having permitted the United States Ambassa- dor, Mr. Thompson, to enter the business field in Mexico, something that would not have been tolerated in any other country, and having granted him personal concessions by means of which he organized The United States Banking Company and the Pan-American Railroad. Ninth: — The permission given by General Diaz to the United States Ambassador, Mr. Powell Clayton, to appear every afternoon at the National Palace with a list of recom- mendations for private American affairs, in order that they might be approved immediately by the administrative and judicial authorities in favor of the interested parties, even when the requests constituted an infamous injustice to the rights of the Mexican people. Tenth: — The arrangement by the law office of the noted Cientifico, Sr. Joaquin Casasus, of the scandalous conces- sions in the rubber lands granted to the American multi-mil- lionaires John Rockefeller and Nelson Aldrich, which caused the ruin of a great number of poor towns in the State of Durango. 4 Eleventh: — The verbal arrangement between Senor Limantour, the leader of the Cientificos, and Mr. Mallet-Pre- vost, lawyer of the Tlahualilo Company, of an agreement which ruined the river-bank-dwellers, both great and small, of the Nazas River in the cotton region of the "Laguna," who were for the most part Mexicans; and moreover, the grant. of several millions indemnity to the Tlahualilo Company for damages caused by it to the river-bank-dwellers of the Nazas through a colonization contract which had lapsed under the provision of the law, because of non-fulfillment, and which was null, besides, because it was unconstitutional, as Senor Limantour had acted without the necessary faculties, because it did not come within the province of the Treasury Depart- ment to settle matters of this nature. The American Ambas- sador, Mr. Henry Lane Wilson, was the chief protector of the Tlahualila enterprise to exploit Mexico, and went so far as to make the absurd statement that when there was even a single American stockholder in a stock company, organized with stocks to the bearer, incorporated under Mexican laws, even if his share were only one cent, it gave the United States Gov- ernment the right to make a claim against the Mexican gov- ernment under the title of rights of aliens. Even after the Secretary of Fomento, Senor Olegario Molina, disavowed the Limantour-Mallet-Prevost agreement, the inhabitants of the "Laguna" region, when they became aware that the Cientificos protected the enterprises that were working their ruin in order to please the United States Am- bassador, assumed a revolutionary attitude, breathing hate against the Cientificos and all foreigners who sought to steal their water and lands — a hatred that later vented itself in the assassination of three hundred Chinamen and several Spaniards in Torreon, with the expulsion of the latter and the confiscation of their property. Twelfth: — Having sold for an almost nominal sum, 50,- 000,000 hectares of marvellously fertile lands to twenty-eight favorites, who made poor bargains with the foreign com- panies to whom they sold then , mostly Americans, as it was the latter's ambition to buy up the country by bits and finally realize the boasted pacific conquest. Thirteenth : — Having despoiled the Yaquis, brave and in- domitable as the Araucanians, of their magnificent lands to hand them over to thieving bureaucrats, who wanted them merely to sell to American investors. The spoliation of the Yaquis brought upon Mexico a bloody struggle of twenty years, which has served at tlie same time as a school of depravity for the Federal judges, the majority of whom dragged it out indefinitely in order to benefit pecuniarily by the frauds. Fourteenth : — Having despoiled various towns in the State of Mexico of their magnificent wooded hills in order to favor an American and Senor Jose Sanchez Ramos, a Spani- ard, proprietors of the paper factories of San Rafael and An- exas. Further, favor was shown these two favorites of the dictator, by allowing them to fix the rate of tariff at both the maritime and frontier custom houses so as totally to exclude paper for newspapers, and in great part, all other paper from the national market. Fifteenth: — Having conceived the gigantic operation that gave the Mexican Government control of the great rail- road system, with no purpose in view other than that of per- mitting the banking house of Scherer-Limantour, in combin- ation with American railroad magnates, to buy secretly and at a low figure the stocks of the Mexican Central, the Nation- al, the International, the Pan-American, and other railroads to sell them later at a great advance to the Mexican govern- ment, thus consummating a piratical financial stroke against Mexico and the holders of the Mexican railroad stocks. Sixteenth : — Consenting, after the Mexican Govern- ment had obtained control of the American branches and fused all into one great company called Lineas Nacionales, to the appointment by Senor Limantour of an American, Mr. Rrown, to the important post of General Manager, and to the assignment of all the important posts, especially those drawing large salaries, to Americans. The revolution- ary press proclaimed as one of the greatest principles of popular restitution the "Moicanization" of the railroads, which meant expulsion of all non-Mexican ofiicials and employees. i 6 Seventeenth: — The unceasing efforts of Senor Liman- tour, finally crowned with success, to place the oldest min- ing company, the Compania de Minas de Pachuca and Real del Monte, in the hands of an American company, organ- ized in Boston, and to having followed the same course with the "Santa Gertrudis" concern. Although both com- panies were obliged to keep the native working-men, they could dismiss all the Mexican employees, especially the high-salaried ones. A storm of indignation broke loose in the Mexican mining world against the Cientificos for having consented, for the sake of brokerage fees and enormous gratuities, to drain the nation of its capital by making it over to out- siders. ' Eighteenth : — The grant by Senor Limantour of a mon- opoly to the house of Mosler, Bowen & Cook, to supply all office furniture to Government offices, as well as to Gov- ernment schools, and to supply permanently all desk re- quisites for Government offices. Nineteenth: — The abandonment by Senor Limantour of his patriotic resolution not to place any of the foreign loans with New York banks, as he had given these banks a share in the conversion of the loans of 1899, and had placed the entire loan of 1904, amounting to $40,000,000, with the New York house of J. Pierpont Morgan. Twentieth: — The complete prostitution of the judicial system, which dictated that in case a foreigner was in liti- gation with a Mexican, the case had to be decided in favor of the foreigner, whether he were right or wrong, without making the Mexican pay the costs; but if the foreigner were an American, his Mexican opponent was obliged to pay the costs of the suit. Twenty-first — Having been guilty of the servile and traitorous act of lending Magdalena Bay to the United States. Twenty-second: — Having shown great vacillation about fortifying the ports on the Tehuantepec Railroad. Twenty-third '.^-Kaving rejected, in order not to dis- please the United States, the honorable propositions of em- inently respectable Japanese houses to establish Japanese colonies in various parts of the country, particularly on the Pacific Coast and in Lower California. Twenty-fourth: — Having neglected, with culpable weak- ness, to pursue the Chamizal question to the end, which would have put the Mexican people in possession of the ter- ritoiy upon which the citj^ of El Paso is built, stolen from tiiem by the Yankees. Twenty-fifth : — Having passed an immigration law in 1908 against the Japanese and Chinese, dictated by the United States State Department, whose chief object was to prevent the Chinese from getting into the United States across the ex- tensive Mexican frontier. Twenty-sixth: — Having followed so degrading a policy toward the United States that any American, however insig- nificant or knavish he might be, felt privileged to repeat with haughtiness Saint Paul's famous words when sentence was passed upon him : "Civis romanus sum..' ; 04 '^' A A ^ » «/ >>J -^.^ ^^-^^^ o • "^o :^ " -}^ ■ay