t 4 F 1234 .J82 Copy 2 WHAT OF MEXICO ? (Abstract of an address before the National Educational Association, Hotel Astor, New York, July 7, 1916.) By DAVID STARR-JORDAN First Effects of an Educational Exhibition Organized by the Revolutionary Government in the City of Queretaro, Mexico Published by THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN LEAGUE 70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY 1 'U34- Digitized by th6 Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/whatofmexicoabst01jord What of Mexico? By David Starr Jordan. The present condition in Europe is beyond question dis- tressing. It could be made worse in but two ways — by the restoration of the old tyranny or by the suppressing of national existence through armed intervention on the part of the United States. Yet the outlook for the long future was never better than to-day. The wounds of the Revolu- tion must heal slowly and from within. In nations, as in men, rehabilitation cannot begin at the surface. I believe that Mexico holds within herself capacity for regeneration. Everywhere outside the troubled zones, schools are building, great estates are being subdivided, justice is being estab- lished, the beginnings of self-government are arising. Inter- vention means war; war means conquest; conquest means the destruction of the growing elements in Mexican society. The United States can help Mexico but not by force of arms. We have no doubt made errors, these have been in response to the popular will to "do something" but nothing irre- vocable. To my mind we have avoided two capital mistakes —the recognition of Hnerta and International war. In this connection it must be remembered that in 1848 we signed with Mexico a treaty of arbitration whereby both nations agreed to submit to an arbitral tribunal any differ- ences which might arise. Under this treaty the chief ques- tion between the United States and Mexico, that arising from the seizure of the "Pious Fund" of the California Missions by President Santa Ana, was amicably adjusted at the Hague. The verdict was averse to Mexico and the sum in question was promptly paid. We are not ready to make "scrap paper" of this agreement respected on both sides for nearly seventy years. Mexico was long a Spanish colony, organized and ruled under mediaeval conditions. Its properties were owned by a few royal favorites — its people bound to the land they did not own and held as serfs in ignorance, disease and super- stition. After a partial revolution which threw off the Spanish yoke but not the Spanish . social ; system; after numerous disorders, with deeds of blood' 5 ana of heroism, arose Porfirio Diaz, a man of resource and resolution who held the nation in leash through a combination of terror, affection and chicane. His method was "not democracy but business". He accomplished many things for the good of his people, but he failed to give them' what they most neeed, education, with the freedom which education brings. Mediaevalism ruled as before, the land being still held in great estates, most of which were originally secured through favoritism or bought for a slight fraction of their value. On these properties the great landowner, as sole judge or "Alcalde", retained the power of life and death over the peasants or "peons". These, bound to the land and receiv- ing only a few "centavos" a day, were always in arrears to the "patron" or labor boss and to the "hacienda" store. From generation to generation their only heritage was an ever-increasing load of debt. "No other ranchers would employ a man in debt to his neighbor and furthermore it would be considered a very improper thing to induce a man to leave a neighbor by offering him higher wages. The peon only knew that he had to stay on the ranch or starve". (Joseph P. Chamberlain : The Survey, August 12, 1916.) Moreover vast estates claimed by the monastic orders and sequestrated for public use by Presidents Comofort and Juarez has been returned by Diaz to the brotherhoods who became again a power in politics. The "Home Rule" of the local communes or "municipios" was lost, and political bosses ("jefes politicos") appointed by the central govern- ment, dominated the towns and cities. Concessions of enormous value were peddled out for a trifle or given away to favorites, native or foreign. No doubt hundreds of foreign enterprises in Mexico rest on an honorable basis, yet too many of them do not, and some of the largest have a history which will not bear the light of day. Concession- aires, American, British, German, Spanish, became extrava- gantly rich, but no part of the immense wealth of Mexico in oil, mines, railways, forests, farms, water-power or bank- ing was allowed to flow back to the common people. As to Mexico's petroleum resources, the Mexican mem- bers of the recent El Paso Conference made the following statement: "PETROLEUM. — This great resource has been ex- ploited exclusively by English and American Companies, especially by the Pierson Company of London, and by the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of New York. The concessions granted by the administration of Diaz to the Pierson Company paralyzed compeltely the free exploitation of oil lands, even of those which might have been exploited by their native possessors. The most im- portant of these concessions consisted in, according to the Pierson Company, the right that no other company should be allowed to exploit the land within three kilometers of the place where they had sunk the well. The Pierson Company obtained in addition the exclusive right to use the federal zones of all the east of the republic with the promise to deliv- er to the government ten per cent, of the product that they obtained. The Pierson Company took advantage of this to survey and ascertain the oil-bearing zones, and secretly to buy the land for a bagatelle from the Indians, thus evading the agreement which it had with the government. At present no petroleum lands belong to Mexico. Foreign capitalists have acquired all the oil-bearing lands by de- ceiving the Indians or by taking advantage of the im- morality of local authorities. This national wealth flows silently to other countries without leaving any advantage to the Mexican people. It does not matter that it pays insignificant custom duties. The people are not able to obtain cheap petroleum to provide power for their indus- tries. Irrigation still awaits the coming of a cheap com- bustible. It is absurd that this should occur in the country which is par excellence the producer of the appropriate fuel". As to mines, the same authorities, Senores Rolland, Rojas and Atl, continue : "MINES. — The great foreign countries control immense mining regions, and exploit them under an absolutely ex- elusive regime, paralyzing all other works that do not suit them, but which might be of public utility. Wages have always been so miserable that the laborers have only been able to vegetate. "Due to the capitalistic criterion that reigned during the dictatorship of Diaz, the old law that permitted the small miner to exploit easily his reduced holdings, was replaced by the present law that favors only the great enterprises". As to Finance, I may further quote : "The bankers have carried on operations proper to usurers. They have specu- lated in lands, timber and every kind of privilege. The health of Porfirio Diaz had a profound influence in the markets, Mexican finances, functioned on a basis of spolia- tion and threatened to collapse with the fall of the dictator." It cannot be denied that in some regions American in- fluences, contemptuous of the feudal regime, have bettered the condition of the common people. Higher wages, real money, rational sanitation, more specialized forms of labor, were all to the peon's advantage. But the process of speeding-up which these advantages demanded were not often to his taste. As Flandreau observes — "No people whose diet consists chiefly of tortilla, chili, black coffee and cigarettes, are ever going to be lashed by the desire to ac- complish." Diaz, himself, so far as I may judge, was personally honest. One may admit that, as Chamberlain puts it, he "understood his people and his country well. With all his native Mexican cruelty and with all his faults, he was a loyal and patriotic Mexican. Mexico was his monument." But as with age Diaz grew too feeble to retain personal control, the system passed out of his hands and subordi- nates ran into wild extravagances of oppression. Diaz had leaned for support largely on foreign concessionaires, while the eager group of "cientificos", "clericos" and "jefes politicos", over-reaching in many directions, made condi- tions unbearable to those outside these favored circles, that is, to the great body of the Mexican people. The country was ripe, therefore, for some kind of an insurrection to re- move evils inherited from old Spain and to abate new ones of unbridled spoliation. Revolution is never law-abiding. In its appeal to higher law it lifts the lid from society. Whenever traditional or conventional restraints are dissolved, injustice, robbery and murder have sway for the time being. The Mexican Revo- lution has offered no exception. Rut once under way, it must go forward to the end. No backward movement by whomsoever led or supported could endure. For this reason the rule of General Huerta, avowedly re-actionary and sup- ported by foreign interests, was not and could not properly be recognized by the United States. It gave no promise of permanence or of peace. The era of Diaz is gone for- ever. Mexico could no more return to it than France to the regime of Napoleon III. The Mexican people will find peace only by deserving it and to this end, military force, their own or any other, can contribute very little. Randit violence, however mischievous, is only a feature of transition. It is not the Revolution itself, but a temporary, although hideous, excrescence. It is a common custom of the American public to re- gard Mexican disorder as all of one piece — the Revolution, the anarchy which the Revolution has failed to prevent and the ignorance and poverty for which it set out to find a remedy. The Mexicans must work out their own problems under their own leaders. Thus far the one who has shown most civil capacity, the only one the United States govern- ment could recognize since the death of Madero, as de facto administrator, has been Venustiano Carranza, lately gov- ernor of Coahuila. Though he may not be the wisest of Mexican statesmen, nor being a Spaniard, the fittest to bring order to a mixed population, yet thus far he alone has led the way out of chaos to law and order. Our Mexican col- leagues speak thus of the First Chief : "In this great constructive movement, Carranza repre- sents the largest effort toward the realization of popular ideals and toward the practical solution of the problem of Mexico. * * * Carranza has succeeded, during the revolu- tionary period, in unifying the popular confidence in his personality, and has slowly become the effective center of national efforts. "The American people naturally desire that the Mexican social reconstruction shall complete itself rapidly. But it should not escape their comprehension that the solution of the complicated problems of Mexico cannot be attained through simple desire, nor from the outside. The phenomena manifested in Mexico are in obedience to social laws whose action cannot be hurried." The revolution is nearing its end and one may now look toward the future. This does not lie in the hands of bandits or assassins, nor does it depend alone on the wisdom of Carranza. It rests with the Mexican people. It is for them to take possession of their country. What are they doing? In all of Mexico, except the war-torn belt and the mining states, new democratic institutions are springing up like fresh grass after a prairie fire. Yucatan has taken the lead; I have her new statutes before me. Under* her wise governor, Salvador Alvarado, 2,400 free schools now exist where were only 200 in 1914. The great "haciendas" have been bought up on equitable terms with state bonds, to be subdivided and sold in small farms on easy conditions, but with the proviso that if not worked they revert to the state. By such means the peons are trained in industry and thrift. Other states have followed along similar lines, fourteen out of the twenty-seven, notably Michoacan, Jalisco, Vera Cruz, Guanajuato, Queretaro, Sonora, Colima, Aguas Calientes, besides considerable portions of remaining districts. For example, in Zacatecas where the mining territory is still in confusion, the agricultural areas in the southeastern and southwestern corners are said to be making hopeful progress. Again, in several states the bull-fight and the cock- fight have been abolished to give way to baseball and "pelota" (hip-ball). In some the sale of liquor has been pro- hibited. In all the "jefe politico" has been abolished and local goverment, after the fashion of the New England town- meeting, gives new life to the "munieipios". Of this con- structive movement we find almost nothing in the American press. The Mexican delegates to the Conference complain rather bitterly that "periodicals say nothing when a thou- sand schools are inaugurated, but if a bandit assaults a train, the press declares that the country is in anarchy." The disorder in Mexico leads to constant discussion of intervention in the American press either as a "painful duty" or as a road to "easy money". On the other hand the fear or the hope of intervention and of national disso- lution at the hands of the "Colossus of the North" is a most potent cause of continued disorder. This is a vicious circle, only to be broken by a direct and helpful understanding with whatever group of men we recognize as constituting the actual government of Mexico. But in considering these progressive measures we need not be surprised if sometimes they encounter check or even disaster. It is not possible to always keep up the first en- thusiasms and the great opponents to betterment in Mexico are by no means subdued. The practical absence of a sane middle class, the selfishness of the higher caste and the ignorance of the lower, with the recklessness of foreign investors, will, no doubt, continue to hamper upward move- ments. What parts of Mexico then are in disorder? Mainly the border and the mining states, most of all Chihuahua. There Orozco maintained his revolt, and after him, Villa, certain men on our side of the Rio Grande having been in close financial relations with each as well as with Madero and Huerta. Later Villa's purpose has apparently been to force intervention by demonstrating Carranza's incapacity to maintain order. Villa was also doubtless impelled by a desire for revenge for real or supposed atrocities committed against Mexicans. The raid on Columbus followed closely the "holocaust" at El Paso, where some twenty Mexicans were burned alive in a jail by somebody's carelessness with a match after they had taken a forced bath in gasolene. The affair was officially called an "unavoidable accident" but it led to Villa's threat to make "a torch" of every American he could catch. Eagerness for war as a result of intrigue and mutual suspicion has kept Chihuahua in turmoil. Americans have often reproached Carranza with his failure adequately to police the border. As to this it must be noted that the border is 1,756 miles long from Tia Juana to Brazos San- tiago, a distance as great on the Mexican side as on ours. Greater, really, for on the south there are neither roads nor 9 railroads, and Mexican soldiers can be transferred from place to place along the boundary only by using the trains of the Southern Pacific in Texas and New Mexico. ,.., In the mining states of Durango, Zacatecas, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Sinaloa, there is disorder and starvation, because railways are broken, mines and smelters are closed and thousands and thousands of men are out of work. In the great oil regions of Tamaulipas, doubtless the richest field in the world, there has never been real order. In Morelos, Zapata, I am told, has virtually expelled or killed every property holder, though it is now asserted that his power has been broken. In Oaxaca, a small reactionary revolution- ary has been started by the ill-starred Feliz Diaz. Among the wealthy upper caste of Mexico, Spanish and foreign, there are very many cultivated people, men and women of a high type. Many of these have been banished by the Revolution and are now domiciled in the United States. Their supporters denounce it as unjust that a million intelligent, cultivated and wealthy people should be domi- anted by fifteen millions of ignorant peasants. The plea is old in human history. Men of culture cannot rule as a separate caste. They must get down to help lift up the mass. Because they have never done their part toward the training of the peon, he has become a terrible menace. Caste divisions are themselves a menace to human welfare and the ultimate future of every nation is bound up with democracy. "Too long have histories looked on the rich and noble as marking the fate of the world." But citizens of the United States, among them men of high character and purpose, have been murdered in Mexico. Properties large and small have slipped from American hands during the Revolution. Yes, because it was revolution, not often because the victims were Americans. A difficult period lies ahead when some tribunal, perhaps International, shall decide on the equity of foreign holdings in Mexico. The greatest enemy of honest investment is the dishonest exploiter. In the words of a well-known mine- owner (in a private letter, July 7, 1916) : "No province of the old Roman Empire was ever looted by corrupt proconsuls more shamelessly than Mexico has been by the grabbers of 10 all nations, amongst whom those of the United States stand facile princeps." Moreover, it is well to remember that neither in Inter- national Law nor in morals is there any warrant for the use of armies of invasion for the purpose of safeguarding individuals in foreign countries, or of protecting their ven- tures abroad. All that we can claim for them, if we re- spect the sovereignty of the nation in question, is the pro- tection that nation affords to its own citizens. Such pro- tection is as precarious in a period of Revolution as it now is in the war zones of Europe. Some holdings are doubtless valid. Very few of them have ever paid their proper share of taxes. The present impecuniosity of the Carranza gov- ernment has its cause in inability to collect just taxes and unwillingness to pay exorbitant interest to the pawn-broker banks these same interests have set up. My mining friend continues: "I am not sure that the rich mines in which I am myself interested are not part of an ancient steal under the flimsy disguise of a Diaz concession. Whether they are or not I will see them all in northeast Hades before I ever give voice or vote for this Government to make war on the unfortunate victims of greed in its most shameless form, and of the most arrant tyranny that has disgraced the American continent since the days of Cortez." In a similar vein Colonel Daniel M. Burns, for thirty years a mine-owner in Mexico, writes to the San Francisco Bulletin (August 5, 1916) : "Various groups of foreign interests which have ex- ploited Mexico and fattened in the process now desire Inter- vention. But their point of view is not mine. I do not wish to see Mexico blotted out in blood by this nation because it is the stronger — or to have tens of thousands of my fellow countrymen slaughtered because I chance to have some dollars invested there." The doctrine assumed by Lord Palmerston that any in- vestor or adventurer may call on the armed forces of his nation to extricate him from trouble in foreign lands has been, in Asia and in Africa, behind many of the indefensible acts of the Great Powers of Europe. The legal remedy for unfair treatment should be sought in channels of diplomacy 11: 015 833 522 ( and arbitration. Our rights find their limit in demanding that our citizens be treated as justly as those of the nation in question. The assumption of the right or duty of in- vasion followed by annexation is the basis of Imperialism. The present war and most others in recent years is largely the result of the clash of rival imperialistic schemes. From the point of view of democracy the whole process is danger- ous as well as dishonorable. In any event we must conclude that the conflict almost forced on the United States in June by ardent exploiters and their journalistic allies would have led us into most un- worthy lines of action. The apparent crisis was due ap- parently to serious misunderstandings on both sides, now happily for the time at least, allayed. Our country has at present no just reason for intervention and conquest, and I personally see no prospect of it in the future. "There are no people", as Lincoln once observed, "good enough to rule over other people against their will." What Mexico wants of us is not more war, Roman fashion, "making a desert to call it peace", but our understanding, our confidence and our help. Education first and flowing from it justice, sanitation, industry and thrift. 12 ■t^JB&'iniSiSm ■'■■■' • • '■ '■ ' UK ■ ■ ■ v;^.^- v ^,&k{;v^ o OREGON RULE CO. 1 U.S.A. 2 3 'arm BBRl 5 j^HMtfaK ■ HJfflBllHl ■1 ^5 OREGON RULE CO. U.S.A. 6 7 ■ ■ ■ t . 'I 9 10 11