Barbarous Mexico/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
THE MEXICAN PEOPLE
Since, in the last analysis, all apologies for the Diaz system of economic slavery and political autocracy have their roots in assertions of ethnological inferiority on the part of the Mexican people, it would seem wise to end this book with an examination of the character of Mexicans and a discussion of the arguments upon which Americans are wont to defend a system in Mexico such as they would not for a moment excuse in any other country.
Every defense of Diaz is an attack upon the Mexican people. It must be so, since there is no other conceivable defense of despotism except that the people are so weak or so wicked that they cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.
The gist of the defense is that the Mexican must be ruled from above because he "is not fit for democracy," that he must be enslaved for the sake of "progress," since he would do nothing for himself or the world were he not compelled to do it through fear of the whip or acute starvation, that he must be enslaved because he knows nothing better than slavery and that he is happy in slavery, anyhow. All of which, in the end, resolve themselves into the simple proposition that because he is down he ought to be kept down. Incurable laziness, childish superstition, wanton improvidence, constitutional stupidity, immovable conservatism, impenetrable ignorance, an uncontrollable propensity for theft, drunkenness and cowardice are some of the vices attributed to the Mexican people by those same persons who declare their ruler to be the wisest and most beatific on the face of the earth.
Laziness, in the estimation of the American friends of Diaz, is the cardinal vice of the Mexican. Laziness has always been a cardinal vice in the eyes of the grinders of the poor. American planters actually expect the Mexican to work himself to death for the love of it! Or is it for the love of his master that he expects him to work? Or for the dignity of labor?
But the Mexican does not appreciate such things. And, failing to receive anything more tangible for his work, he "soldiers" on the job. Wherefore he is not only lazy, but stupid! Wherefore, it is right and proper that he should be driven to the field with clubs, that he should be hunted down, forced into enganchado gangs, locked up at night, and starved.
It may be information to some persons to tell them that Mexicans have been known to work willingly and effectively when they saw anything to work for. Tens of thousands of Mexicans have displaced Americans and Japanese on the railroads and in the fields of the American Southwest. As high an authority as E. H. Harriman said, in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times in March, 1909: "We have had a good deal of experience with the Mexican, and we have found that after he is fed up and gets his strength he makes a very good worker."
Note that. "After he is fed up and gets his strength. " Which is saying, in effect, that the employers of Mexican labor, many of whom are estimable Americans, friends of Diaz, starve them so chronically that they have not the actual strength to work effectively. Thus we have a second reason why Mexicans sometimes "soldier" on the job. Worthless, worthless Mexicans! Virtuous, virtuous Americans!
The American promoter feels a personal grievance at the religious bigotry of the poor Mexican. It is because of the church fiestas, which give the Mexican a few extra holidays a month, when he is free to take them. Profits are lost on those fiesta days; hence the anguish of the American promoter. Hence the welcome which the American gives to a system of labor such as we find in Valle Nacional, where the cane of bejuco wood is mightier than the priest, where there are neither feast days nor Sundays, nor any days when the club does not drive the slave to the back-breaking labor of the field.
"They told us labor was cheap down here," an American once said to me in a grieved tone. "Cheap? Of course. Dirt cheap. But it has its drawbacks." He expected every "hand" to do as much work as an able bodied American and to live on thin air besides!
Far be it from me to express approval of the influence of the Catholic church upon the Mexican. Yet it must be admitted that the church alleviates his misery somewhat by providing him with some extra holidays. And it feeds his hunger for sights of beauty and sounds of sweetness, which for the poor Mexican are usually impossible of attainment outside of a church. If the rulers of the land had been enlightened and had given the Mexican the barest glimpse of brightness outside of the church the sway of the priest might have been less pronounced than it is today.
Those fiestas which are such a thorn in the side of the American promoter are useful to him at least in that they furnish him with an excuse for paying the wage-worker so little that it is an extravagance, indeed, for the latter to take a day off. "They're so improvident that I have to keep them at the starvation point or they won't work at all." You'll hear Americans saying that almost any day in Mexico. In illustration of which numerous stories are virtuously recounted.
Improvident! Yes, the starving Mexican is improvident. He spends his money to keep from starving! Yes, there are cases where he is paid such munificent wages that he is able to save a centavo now and then if he tries. And, trying, he finds that providence boots him nothing. He finds that the moment he gets a few dollars ahead he at once becomes a mark for every grafting petty official within whose ken he falls. If the masters of Mexico wished their slaves to be provident they should give them an opportunity to get something ahead and then guarantee not to steal it back again.
The poor Mexican is accused of being an inveterate thief. The way a Mexican laborer will accept money and then try to run away, instead of working for the rest of his life to pay off the debt, is, indeed, enough to bring tears to the eyes of the American grinder of enganchados. The American promoter steals the very life blood of the laborer and then expects the latter to be so steeped in virtue as to refrain from stealing any part of it back again. When a Mexican peon sees a trinket or a pretty thing that takes his fancy he is quite likely to steal it, for it is the only way he can get it. He risks jail for an article worth a few centavos. How often would he do it if the payment of those few centavos would not mean a hungry day for him? American planters steal laborers, carry them away by force to their plantations, steal their families away from them, lock them up at night, beat them, starve them while they work, neglect them when they are sick, pay them nothing, kill them at the last, and then raise their hands in righteous horror when a poor fellow steals an extra tortilla or an ear of corn!
In Mexico plowing is often done with a crooked stick or with the hoe. The backs of men take the place of freight wagons and express vehicles. In short, Mexico is woefully behind in the use of modern machinery. For which the Mexican is accused of being unprogressive.
But the common people do not choose how much machinery shall be used in the country. The master does that. American promoters in Mexico are little more progressive in the use of machinery than are Mexican promoters, and when they are they frequently lose money by it. Why? Because flesh and blood are cheaper in Mexico than machinery. A peon is cheaper to own than a horse. A peon is cheaper than a plow. A hundred women can be bought for the price of a grist mill. It is because the master has made it so. If by some means the price of flesh and blood were suddenly to be shoved up above that of dead steel, machinery would flow into Mexico as fast as it would flow into any new industrial field in the United States or any other country.
Do not think that the Mexican is too stupid to operate machinery when he is put to it. There are some lines in which machine labor is cheaper than hand labor and we have only to look to these lines to learn that the Mexican can handle machinery quite as easily as any other people. Native labor operates the great cotton mills of Mexico almost exclusively, for example. For that matter, mechanical cunning of a high order is shown
Ignorance is charged against the Mexican people as if it were a crime. On the other hand, we are told, in glowing terms of the public school system which Diaz has established. Charles F. Lummis in his book on Mexico remarks that it is doubtful if there is a single hamlet of one hundred Mexicans in all the country that has not its free public school. The truth is that the people are ignorant and that there are few schools. The sort of authority Mr. Lummis is may be gauged by the government statistics themselves, which, in the year Mr. Lummis issued his book, placed the number of Mexicans who could read and write at sixteen per cent of the population. In Mexico there are some public schools in the cities and almost none in the country districts. But even if they were there, can a hungry baby learn to read and write? What promise does study hold out for a youth born to shoulder a debt of his father and carry it on to the end of his days?
And they say the Mexican is happy! "As happy as a peon," has come to be a common expression. Can a starving man be happy? Is there any people on earth—any beast of the field, even—so peculiar of nature that it loves cold better than warmth, an empty stomach better than a full one? Where is the scientist that has discovered a people who would choose an ever narrowing horizon to an ever widening one? Depraved indeed are the Mexican people if they are happy. But I do not believe they are happy. Some who have said it lied knowingly. Others mistook the dull glaze of settled despair for the signature of contentment.
Most persistent of all derogations of Mexicans is the one that the Spanish-American character is somehow incapable of democracy and therefore needs the strong hand of a dictator. Since the Spanish-Americans of Mexico have never had a fair trial at democracy, and since those who are asserting that they are incapable of democracy are just the ones who are trying hardest to prevent them from having a trial at democracy, the suspicion naturally arises that those persons have an ulterior motive in spreading such an impression. That motive has been pretty well elucidated in previous chapters of this book, especially in the one on the American partners of Diaz.
The truth of the whole malignment of Mexicans as a people seems very plain. It is a defense against indefensible conditions whereby the defenders are profiting. It is an, excuse—an excuse for hideous cruelty, a salve to the conscience, an apology to the world, a defense against the vengeance of eternity.
The truth is that the Mexican is a human being and that he is subject to the same evolutionary laws of growth as are potent in the development of any other people. The truth is that, if the Mexican does not fully measure up to the standard of the highest type of European, it is because of his history, a most influential part of which is the grinding exploitation to which he is subjected under the present regime in Mexico. Let us go back to the beginning and glance briefly at the Mexican as an ethnological being and compare his abilities and possibilities with that of the "free" American.
While nearly all persons of more than primary education nominally accept the theory of evolution as the correct interpretation of life upon this planet, not so many of us take advantage of its truths in estimating the people about us. We cling, instead, to the old error of existence by special creation, which supports us when we wish to believe that some men are created of superior clay, that some are inherently better than others and always must be better, that some are designed and intended to occupy a station of special rank and privilege among their fellow men. Forgotten is the scientific truth that all men are shoots from the same stalk, that intrinsically one man is no better than another, that in the fulness of time the possibilities of one race or people are no greater than those of any other. Whatever differences there are between men and races of men are due, not to inherent differences, but to the action of outside influences, to soil and climate, to temperature and rainfall, and to what may be-denominated the accidents of history following naturally, however, in the train of these influences. "A man's a man for a’ that and a’ that."
But there are differences. There are differences in general between Americans, and Mexicans. Let us see if there are any differences which justify the condemnation of Mexicans to slavery and government by a despot.
What is a Mexican? Usually the term is applied to the members of a mixed race, part native and part Spanish, who predominate in the so-called sister republic. Pure natives who long ago left the aboriginal state are also often included in the category and they seem to have a right to the name. In the government census of 1900 the proportion of races is given as 43 per cent mixed, 38 pure native and 19 of European or distinct foreign extraction. The Mexican Year Book thinks that the proportion of mixed peoples has greatly increased in the past ten years until it is far more than half the total today. The Mexican of today, then, is either all Spanish, all native, or a mixture of the two, most often the last; so the peculiar character of Mexicans can be said to be made up of a combination of the two elements.
Take the Spanish element, first. What are the peculiar attributes of the Spanish nature? In Spain we find much art and literature, but on the other hand, much religious bigotry and little democracy. We find a versatile people, but a people with swift passions and fickle energies. In its accomplishments along modern lines Spain stands at the foot of the countries of western Europe.
But—why?
The answer is to the credit of Spain. Spain sacrificed herself to save Europe. Standing upon the southern frontier, she bore the brunt of the Moslem invasion. Retarding the barbarian hordes, she saved the budding civilization of Europe and its religion, Christianity. Long after the issue was settled as far as the other nations were concerned, Spain was still engaged in that fight. And in that death-struggle to preserve their existence, it was inevitable that the power of the State should become more centralized and despotic, that the Church should come into closer union with the State, that the Church should become more unscrupulous of the methods it employed to annex power to itself, more sordid of gain, more dogmatic in its teachings and more ruthless in the treatment of its enemies.
Thus is revealed the prime cause for Spain's position as a laggard in the path of democracy and religious enlightenment. For the rest, it may be said that, while the magnificent scenery of the country has helped to make the Spaniard superstitious, it has also helped to make him an artist; that while the exuberance of the soil by enabling him to secure his living with comparatively little labor, has not forced him to habits of such regular industry as are found farther north, it has contributed to his cultivating the arts of music, painting and social intercourse; that the heat of the summer, by rendering hard labor at that season inadvisable, has also militated toward the same ends.
Of course I am not attempting to go into details on these matters. I am merely pointing out a few principles which underlie racial diversities. On the whole, a close examination of the Spanish people would show that there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that they are specially unfit or unworthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy.
As to the native element, which is more important, inasmuch as it undoubtedly predominates in the make-up of the average Mexican, especially the Mexican of the poorer class, an examination of its peculiar character will prove quite as favorable. Biologically, the aboriginal Mexican is not to be classed with any of the so-called lower races, such as the negro, the South Sea Islander, the pure Filipino, or the American Indian. The Aztec has been a long time out of the forest. His facial angle is as good as our own. In many ways he measures up to us. In some ways perhaps he even surpasses us, while the ways in which he falls below us can all be traced either to peculiar external influences, or the luck of history, or both.
It must be admitted that Mexico is not quite as well favored for the generation of physical and mental energy as is the great portion of the United States. The bulk of the population of Diaz-land lives upon a plateau ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 feet high. Here the air is thinner and for every foot-pound of energy expended there is a greater tax upon the heart and the human machine generally. Americans who take up their residence on that plateau find that they must live a little more slowly than in this country, that it is better to take the mid-day siesta, like the Mexicans. If they persist in keeping up the old gait they find that they grow old very fast, that it does not pay. If, on the other hand, they choose to live in the tropical belt they find that here, too, because of the greater heat and moisture, it is not wise for them to work as fast as they were wont to do at home.
If the average Mexican has less working capacity than the average American it is largely for this reason, and for the other reason that the Mexican laborer is invariably half starved. When the American laborer meets the Mexican on the latter's own ground he is quite often outdone. Few Americans engage in physical labor either on the plateau or in the tropics. The laborer of no nation can outdo the Mexican in carrying heavy loads or in feats of endurance, while in the tropics the Mexican, if he is not starved, is supreme. The American negro, the Asiatic coolie, the athletic Yaqui from the north, have all been tried out against the native of the tropical states and all have been found wanting, while there is no question as to the inferiority of the working capacity of men of European descent under tropical conditions.
So much for the working capacity of Mexicans, which, in this extremely utilitarian age, is placed high among the virtues of a people. As to intelligence, in spite of the fact that it was always the policy of the Spanish conquerers to hold the native Aztecs in subordinate positions, enough of the latter have succeeded in forcing their way to the top to prove that they were quite as
On the whole, the Mexicans seem to exhibit stronger artistic and literary tendencies than we and less inclination toward commerce and heavy mechanics. The mass of the people are illiterate, but that does not mean that they are stupid. There are undoubtedly several million Americans who are able to read but who don't read regularly, not even a newspaper, and they are no better informed, perhaps, and certainly no clearer thinkers, than the peons who pass the news of the day from mouth to mouth on their Sundays and their feast days. That these people are illiterate by choice, that they are poor because they want to be, that they prefer dirt to cleanliness, is absurd.
"They choose that sort of life, so why should we bother ourselves about their troubles?" "They could improve their condition if they cared to make an effort." "They are perfectly happy, anyhow." Such expressions are sure to greet the traveler who remarks upon the misery of the common Mexican. The fact is, the ordinary Mexican chooses the life he lives about as nearly so as a horse chooses to be born a horse. As I suggested before, he cannot be happy, for no starving being can be happy. While as to improving his condition alone and unaided he has about as much chance of doing it as a horse has of inventing a flying machine.
Pick up a poor young Mexican in Mexico City, for example, where the opportunities are the best in the land. Take a typical Mexican laborer. He cannot read or write because he was probably born in a country district ten miles from the nearest school, or if he was born in the shadow of a public school he literally had to scratch the earth from the time he could crawl in order to get something to eat. He has no education and no special training of any kind because he has had no opportunity to secure either. Having had no special training all he is able to do is to carry heavy loads.
Probably at twenty-five he is a physical wreck from under-feeding, exposure and overwork. But suppose he is one of the few who has kept his strength. What can he do? Carry more heavy loads; that is all. He can get perhaps fifty cents a day carrying heavy loads and all the effort of a Hercules cannot better the price, for all he has is brawn, and brawn is cheap as dirt in Mexico. I have seen men "making an effort." I have seen them work until I could see the glazing of their eyes, I have seen them put forth such efforts that their chests rose and fell with explosive gasps, I have seen them carry such heavy weights that they tottered and fell in the street, in which way they are crushed to death, sometimes, by the thing above them. They were putting forth their best efforts in the only thing they knew because they had never had an opportunity to learn anything else, and they were dying just as fast as those others who did as little as possible to live. The point is that they never enjoyed the opportunities at the start that we accept as a birthright. Imagine, if you can, the majority of our American schools being suddenly swept away, imagine a change from your condition of partial work partial leisure to one of all work and no leisure, imagine your earning power as insufficient to feed any mouth but your own, imagine each mouth in the family needing a separate pair of hands to feed it and each new mouth needing its own hands while they are yet the soft hands of a baby—imagine these things and you may faintly appreciate the difficulties which the common Mexican encounters in trying to improve his condition. For all practical purposes they are insurmountable.
And how about the capacity of Mexicans for democracy? The assertion that democracy is not compatible with "the Spanish-American character" seems to be based wholly upon the fact that a considerable percentage of the Spanish-American countries—though not all of them—are still ruled by dictators, and that changes in the government come only through revolutions by which one dictator is succeeded by another. This state of affairs was brought about by the peculiar history of these countries rather than by "the Spanish-American character." Ruled as slave colonies by foreigners, these countries asserted enough valor and patriotism to overthrow the foreigner and expel him. Their struggle for freedom was long and bitter; moreover, being small countries, their national existence was in danger for considerable periods after their independence. Therefore, of necessity the military calling became a dominent profession and militarism and dictatorships followed naturally. Today what Spanish-American countries as are still ruled by dictators are ruled by dictators largely because of the support accorded the latter by foreign governments, which oppose democratic movements sometimes even with arms. Diaz is not the only Spanish American dictator who is supported by the United States at the behest of Wall street. During the past five years several of the most notorious of the Central American dictators have been held in their places only by a military demonstration on the part of this country. But is Mexico ready for democracy? Does she not need to be ruled by a despot for awhile longer, until such a time as she shall have developed capacity for democracy? I repeat this absurd question only because it is so common. The only reasonable reply is that of Macaulay, that capacity for democracy can only increase with experience with the problems of democracy. Mexico is as ready for democracy as a country can be which has no democracy whatsoever. There is no chance of Mexico having complete democracy at this time. These things come only gradually, and there is no danger whatsoever of her suddenly getting more democracy than is good for her. Who will say that Mexico should not at once have just a little democracy, enough, say, to deliver her people from the mire of slavery and peonage?
Assuredly Mexico is behind us in the march of progress, behind us in the conquests of democracy. But, in considering her, be just and consider what the luck of history gave us in comparison to what it gave the Mexican. We were lucky enough not to have the rule of Spain imposed upon us for 300 years. We were lucky enough to escape the clutch of the Catholic church at our throats in our infancy. Finally, we were lucky enough not to be caught in our weakness at the end of a foreign war, caught by one of our own generals, who, in the guise of president of our republic, quietly and cunningly, with the cunning of a genius and the remorselessness of an assassin, built up a repressive machine such as no modern nation has ever been called upon to break. We were lucky enough to escape the reign of Porfirio Diaz.
Thus, whichever way we turn, we come finally back to the fact that the immediate cause of all the ills, the shortcomings, the vices of Mexico is the system of Diaz. Mexico is a wonderful country. The capacity of its people is beyond question. Once its republican constitution is restored, it will be capable of solving all its problems. Perhaps it will be said that in opposing the system of Diaz I am opposing the interests of the United States. If the interests of Wall Street are the interests of the United States, then I plead guilty. And if it is to the interests of the United States that a nation should be crucified as Mexico is being crucified, then I am opposed to the interests of the United States.
But I do not believe that this is so. For the sake of the ultimate interests of this country, for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the millions of Mexicans who are actually starving at this moment, I believe that the Diaz system should be abolished, and abolished quickly.
Hundreds of letters have come to me from all over the world begging to know what can be done to put a stop to the slavery of Mexico. Armed intervention of foreign powers has been suggested again and again. This is unnecessary as well as impractical. But there is one thing that is practical and necessary, especially for Americans, and that is to insist that there shall be no foreign intervention for the purpose of maintaining the slavery.
In Mexico today exists a nation-wide movement to abolish the Diaz system of slavery and autocracy. This movement is quite capable of solving the problems of Mexico without foreign interference. So far it has not succeeded, partly because of the assistance our government has given in the persecution of some of its leaders, and partly because of Diaz's threat—constantly held before the Mexican people—of calling an American army to his aid in case of a serious revolution against him.
Under the present barbarous government there is no hope for reform in Mexico except through armed revolution. Armed revolution on the part of the decent and most progressive element is strong probability of the early future. When the revolution starts American troops will be rushed to the border and made ready to cross in case Diaz is unable to cope with the revolt alone. If the American army crosses it will not be ostensibly to protect Diaz, but to protect American property and American lives. And to this end false reports of outrages upon Americans, or danger to American women and children, will be deliberately circulated in order to arouse the nation to justify the crime of invasion. That will be the time for decent Americans to make their voices heard. They will expose, in no uncertain terms, the conspiracy against democracy and demand that, for all time, our government cease putting the machinery of state at the disposal of the despot to help him crush the movement for the abolition of slavery in Mexico. PUBLISHERS' NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION
Since John Kenneth Turner wrote "Barbarous Mexico" Diaz has fallen, Madero has fallen, and as we go to press with this edition of the book, the "Constitutionalists" under Carranza and Villa in northern Mexico are fighting with considerable success against Huerta, who still holds Mexico City. Until this month President Wilson has resisted the demand of American capitalists that the United States intervene, but the latest dispatches indicate that United States soldiers will soon invade Mexico.
The possibility of war with Mexico on behalf of American capitalists makes it more important than ever that American wage-workers understand the facts which Turner has presented in "Barbarous Mexico."
The trouble in Mexico is not mainly due to the acts of Huerta or any other individual. It is due to the fact that the working people of Mexico are held in virtual slavery by the land system against which they are rebelling. In Mexico there is little machinery as yet, and land ownership is the chief means of exploitation. So the slogan of the Mexican rebels is "Land and Liberty."
From the confused bits of information which trickle through the battle lines, it seems that here and there, in the territory occupied by the rebel armies, the peons are beginning to work for themselves without paying tribute to landlords. Will American workers allow the American army to be used to force these rebels back into slavery?
April, 1914.