Mexico and its reconstruction/Chapter 3

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CHAPTER III

THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO: EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT

Citizens of the United States take a certain pride in stating that the governments of the new world are republican, that they are set up under constitutions, and depend upon popular vote. Probably the great majority, when they make such statements, think of our own political institutions and assume that those of the other republics from the Mexican frontier to Cape Horn are similar in their organization. But republican government, democratic institutions, and popular elections in the sense in which the people of the United States are accustomed to use such terms flourish only under special conditions, conditions that the majority of the republics of the new world have not attained.

Even in the most advanced states the rules under which citizens actually live are determined by the administration of the laws as well as by their spirit; but if republican institutions and democracy mean anything in practical affairs, they mean a rule of practice as well as an ideal to which the leaders of public life profess allegiance. They mean that the standards set forth in the law must correspond at least approximately to those observed in the everyday life of the community, and that neither the executive nor any other part of the government can act contrary to the popular will as expressed in the constitution and the laws. In many states of the New World that standard has not been reached—it has not been reached in Mexico.

It is not necessary to review the history of the various constitutions of Mexico to show that there the fundamental law has outlined an ideal standard of action and not a rule for everyday observance. A comparison of the norm set by the constitution of 1857 under which the republic lived through all the orderly period of its existence with the practice of the government in the same period will illustrate the degree to which even in time of peace the observance of the constitution has continued to be an unrealized ambition.

In its main outlines this constitution, like its predecessors, was very much like the Constitution of the United States of America. There was an attempt to establish a division of powers among three branches of the government. The legislative function was vested in a Congress composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The members of the former were elected for terms of two years by Mexican citizens qualified to vote, from districts of a population of 40,000 or major fraction. Those elected must be at least 25 years of age, residents of their districts, and not members of ecclesiastical orders. The senators were elected by an electorate qualified as was that which chose the deputies, two being selected from each state. The requirements for candidacy were the same as for the deputies except that the senators had to be at least 30 years old. Their term was six years.

The executive power was centered in the President of the United Mexican States, elected indirectly for a term of four years,^[1] and, by an amendment to the constitution of 1857 under date of December 20, 1890, eligible for reelection indefinitely. Candidates for the Presidency had to be native born Mexicans, at least 35 years of age, residents of the country at the time of the election, and not members of ecclesiastical orders. A cabinet assisted the President in the administration of the government. The judicial power was vested in the Supreme Court of Justice and district and circuit courts elected by the people indirectly for terms of six years. The jurisdiction of the federal courts was very similar to that of the federal courts in the United States.

The rights of the citizen against the government were carefully guarded in a bill of rights. All men born in the republic were declared free. Slaves became free on touching Mexican soil. Freedom of thought and of the press were guaranteed. The right of petition was recognized as was the right to bear arms and the right freely to travel in the republic. Private property could not be taken for public use without due compensation, quartering of soldiers in time of peace was prohibited as was search without warrant. Titles of nobility, imprisonment for civil debts, and imprisonment without trial for a period longer than three days were abolished. There could be no cruel and unusual punishments nor monopolies, except certain ones which the state might set up.

A degree of responsibility was given to the individual states similar to that given the states of the American Union. They had like limitations. In law their governments were described as republican, representative, and popular. They had the same general divisions of powers as the central government. The legislative power in the majority of the states was vested in a single representative body called a Congress. The members, in most cases, were chosen indirectly for terms of two years. The executive power was in the hands of a governor chosen almost without exception indirectly and serving four years. The majority of the states had supreme courts with a system of inferior courts and judges.

In short, the Mexican constitution of 1857 set up a frame of government that had all the nominal guarantees necessary for the establishment of a popular government of the sort that had been created north of the Rio Grande in a sister republic, whose constitution Mexican statesmen, almost without exception, have admired. ^[2]

The theory of the Mexican constitution was never put into practice in either the central government or the states. The fundamental concept of the division of powers between the three departments was never observed. In the period of confusion between the issuance of the constitution of 1857 and the Diaz régime, public and private right were so disturbed that it is useless to attempt a discussion of the degree to which the various leaders sought to observe the commands of the constitution. With the coming of Diaz the theoretic balance of power was lightly brushed aside and an executive government was established that used the legislative and judicial branches as its agents.

One of the leading Mexican newspapers, contrasting law and fact, declared in 1878, "The constitution of 1857 is an ideal law, made for an abstract man; it is necessary to make it a Mexican law, adapted to our present condition and endow the state with all the vigor to recover from the long and dolorous experience of a half century of civil disturbances." It concludes, "legal precept is not in consonance with the necessities of life, arbitrary power and despotism are the only regimen possible in societies like ours."^[3] Under the existing conditions perhaps the conclusion was justified and the best that could be done, since the form of the constitution was not changed, was to keep it as an ideal, though not a measure of existing rights. Theoretically, of course, the policy adopted was altogether indefensible. Its justification was that it might keep Mexico from falling to pieces, raise the country in the estimation of the world, and bring to it that solid basis for economic development, which must be the foundation of any consistent national progress.^[4] The first functions of the government in the opinion of those who supported the new régime were the establishment of order and the collection of funds by which the foreign obligations could be met and property protected at home. Policing and taxing were the most important, and, at first, the only important services rendered. Government as an expression of general public opinion, as a factor in the citizen's life because it was a part of him and he of it, that sort of government did not exist. It was not a spontaneous outgrowth of the national character but something imposed from above by a group, whose control was justified by the acquiescence of a people that had no public opinion organized for determining upon whose shoulders the responsibility of governing should rest. A true republican government could not come into existence, it was argued, by the fiat of a constitution. It could not become an actuality until there was born a public opinion resting on education and common ideals. It could not rise until the diverse elements of which the nation was composed developed a solidarity of interest founded on a better basis than common oppositions and the accidents of history.

The degree to which the policing function demanded and received the attention of the government is reflected in the appropriations for military expenditures throughout the Diaz regime. This was a period after the two invasions by foreign troops that the republic has suffered. It was one in which the military problems were almost exclusively domestic yet the army continued to figure largely in the national budget.

In the late '70s the federal government maintained an army of 30,000 men whose demands required two-fifths of the entire revenue. Notwithstanding this the chief item of expenditures of the states was also for military purposes. These forces, usually called state guards, might be expected to be necessary in the outlying regions where the arm of the national government could not be relied upon. In fact even populous states near the capital maintained them. The State of Mexico itself spent about 30 per cent of its revenues on its soldiers. Puebla, Jalisco, and others among the more advanced of the Mexican units did the same.^[5] Doubtless these local forces were at times needed for policing purposes, but their existence made the raising of a revolution against the national government easier. It was the natural impulse of the central government to bring them under its own control as far as possible in order to minimize the chance that its own power might be questioned.

Commenting on a report made to the federal Congress by one of its members a Mexican editor analyzes governmental conditions in 1879 as follows: ^[6]

The vast territory of this country is in its greatest part divided into petty kingdoms, subject to the whims of little local tyrants, who inflict upon their unfortunate subjects every class of outrage and vexation. Neither life nor property, nor any of the other Individual rights, have guarantees of any kind; of

the administration of justice there exists nothing but a vain pretense, and public morality has passed into the category of unrealizable dreams.

To remedy such conditions President Diaz at once set his hand. The army was the instrument on which he relied. One of the developments with which he was best satisfied at the end of his first term was the "great and undoubted progress. . . made in the organization of an efficient police, both metropolitan and rural; the latter being distributed not only in the federal district but throughout the various states of the republic. ^[7] Throughout his period of control the President continued to rely on the military power as the factor that should keep the nation in equilibrium.

The emphasis of the policy of policing the country by forces increasingly under the control of the central government, of itself emphasized the executive functions of that government. The ignorance of the people and their inexperience in self-governing institutions prompted doubts as to the possibility of truly popular elections and as to the advisability of entrusting more than the form of power to legislators or judges who might be selected by them. As a result, to protect itself, the executive and the small circle that surrounded him came to consider it a necessity not only to control the administration local and central, partly through the political organization and partly through the army but also to take from the legislature and the courts any real freedom of action. These became bodies that in practice registered the will of the administration.

Even though a state has not a people who have risen to conditions that may make a true popular government possible, it may have a constitutional government if the small governing class is organized for expressing its own divisions of sentiment and disposed to respect the provisions of the constitution by abiding by the decisions so expressed. Mexico has not arrived at that status. Admirable as are the intellectual qualities of the upper-class Mexican, he has not yet developed a spirit of cooperation and forbearance which leads him to comply with constitutional standards in the choice of public officials even by the small class to which he belongs. He has not shown a willingness to give obedience to the standards that the opinion thus narrowly determined demands. Unfortunately for Mexico her political life has seldom indeed risen above a camarilla stage and the ruling camarilla has seldom been strong enough to control the man who for the moment was at its head.

No government in power in Mexico in the old régime ever failed to control the elections that it called. To be sure there were dissenting groups that did succeed not infrequently in defeating the government candidates in the Congressional elections but they never rose to the dignity of true parties and their success could have been cut down doubtless had the administration felt it necessary or politic to do so.

Even a class government may be a step toward democracy. Mexico, properly speaking, has never had a governing class. She did not have it under Diaz and the failure of the dictator to take effective steps to create either a governing class that could fight out within itself the national policies, or a popular educational system that would prepare the people as a whole for self-government was a signal failure of the government he created.

Under the old dictatorship Mexico drifted on into the twentieth century, into a century in which the changes that had come in her national life and her shortcomings both stood out in sharp relief. It was a new economic Mexico with railroads, telegraphs, newspapers, and an increasing number of foreigners, all of which brought enlightenment through touch with the outside world. But among the advantages that had come from the new day, ability in self-government was not numbered. Economic improvements had been introduced from abroad and had become a vital part of Mexican life. But the political training of the people was given no attention.

In the actual problems of ruling themselves, the rough give and take of political contests properly so called, the Mexican at the winning of independence was still fairly comparable to the Mexican of the conquest. He had seen the light, wanted to follow the ideals that republicanism and self-government stood for in other countries, but he was almost totally inexperienced. To say that in the interval between independence and the beginning of the twentieth century the Mexican had made no advance in self-government would be unfair but it is true that he had not markedly improved his position. Republicanism and self-government had come to mean more in 1912 than they did in 1812 but, relatively speaking, the Mexican people were little if any nearer the standard set by the leading self-governing peoples of the world after a century of independence. Disorder followed by dictatorship had hindered the development of true political institutions or the successful adoption of the examples offered in the experience of other nations. The Mexican had advanced in matters of government but had not gained on the leaders. He had buffeted through a long list of revolutions but without a broadly constructive political experience. He had developed political leaders but no political parties.

The degree to which the government of Mexico was executive can be appreciated by analyzing the way in which public authority was exercised in the first years of the twentieth century—a period when the power of the old regime was well established and when continued peace had developed what for Mexico could be considered normal conditions.

Power continued to rest in the hands of the President of the Republic as it had rested in the hands of the executive in the colonial period. In practice the President controlled the elections, he determined thus whether he should succeed himself and who should constitute the legislatures, federal and state. ^[8] To him the obedient Congress gave power to legislate by decree on specific matters or on entire subjects, or it passed, with only a show of discussion, the drafted legislative measures submitted to it by the President.

The exercise of these wide powers by the executive did not originate with Diaz; it did not end with his fall. By decree even such fundamental matters as tariffs and other forms of taxation were decided upon by the dictator and the same method has been followed by his successors. Congress abdicated to President Diaz the power to issue in his discretion bonds against the credit of the state.^[9] By his authority a controlling interest in railway lines was acquired, Congress merely giving its assent after all the details were arranged. In a word, the powers of Congress had never been recognized as of the nature and extent that the constitution outlined. They had not atrophied, for they had never truly developed.

The Congress, in fact, was never independent either in personnel or in powers.^[10] It was a body composed largely of persons who did not live in the districts they represented, a gathering of carefully selected men often of decided oratorical powers, a dignified body in which true clash of opinion occurred only on such matters as were indifferent to the executive.^[11] Some, at the time of their election, were already state or federal officeholders and by the vote of the indulgent Congress to which they had been chosen were allowed to hold both the old and the new offices at the same time.

The courts have never been a coordinate part of the government in Mexico, though that has regularly been an announced ideal. The federal judges under the old constitution were nominally elected and those of the state courts were generally chosen by the governor. In any case, the executive, state or federal, regularly controlled the selection. Since the federal executive had influence in the choice of the governors of the states, the courts from the highest to the lowest, in practice, were his own creatures.

In its treatment of the courts in the latter part of the Diaz régime the executive seems to have found itself drawn between conflicting impulses. The President was urged by certain of his advisers to make the ideal of an independent judiciary a fact and it is alleged he desired to do so. He is said to have hesitated to put property rights under the unrestricted control of the courts because of the unfortunate effects both national and international which such a step might involve. From the national point of view it was of the greatest importance that the flow of foreign capital into Mexican investments should not cease. If anti-foreign prejudice in the courts, especially the local courts, produced decisions that would discourage investment, it was argued that the economic development of the republic would be hindered. Furthermore if foreigners were denied justice, they might take their claims to their own governments with diplomatic complications as a result. If the executive kept an effective control over the courts, such unfortunate circumstances could be avoided. The traditional policy of concentration of power, so far as it affected the courts, could be bolstered evidently with arguments of a concrete character. To the end of the Diaz régime the often promised freedom of the judiciary remained an unrealized ideal.

The fact is, then, that the government of Mexico, when it has deserved that name, has been an executive government. When the executive has been responsbile and has had effective control, life and property for citizens and foreigners have been safe. If the executive has become irresponsible, life and property have been insecure. When the executive has lost control, Mexico has become a geographical expression and not a government.^[12]

1. The term was made six years in 1904 after "unanimous approval of the legislatures of the States." The final declaration by the Mexican Congress is published in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1904, p. 491. The elaborate inauguration ceremonies are described at p. 493.
2. A cogent criticism of the influence of the example of the United States upon Mexico is found in T. Esquivel Obregón, Influencia de España y los Estados Unidos sobre Mexico, Madrid 1918, passim.
3. Quotations from La Libertad in Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1878, p. 658.
4. See a discussion of federal as opposed to centralized government in Mexico, by L. S. Rowe, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 54, p. 226, July, 1914.
5. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1879, p. 885 et seq.
6. Ibid., p. 826 et seq.
7. Paraphrased from address of President Diaz to the Mexican Congress in ibid., 1889, p. 553.
8. In some cases in the latter part of the Diaz period there seemed to be the elements of an independent party organization. The most important was the development under the leadership of Bernardo Reyes in the north. Sporadic defeats elsewhere in local elections were not unknown.
9. A similar power was conferred upon President Carranza.
10. The constitution is considered by many to have contemplated legislative ascendancy. See R. Garcia Granadas, La Consttucion de 1857 y las leyes de reforma en Mexico, passim.
11. A description of the way in which opposition sentiment was controlled early in the old régime is found in the Nation, vol. 41, p. 894, November 12, 1885. See also T. Esquivel Obregón, op. cit., passim.
12. An article describing the development of executive control in the Gonzalez period is found in the Nation, vol. 34, p. 399, May 11, 1882. The executive influence exercised in modifying the constitution before the last election of Diaz is described in the Nation, vol. 78, p. 448, June 9, 1904.