the country is divided into ten military zones, three commanderies and fourteen jefaturas. One sees soldiers everywhere. There is not an important city in the country that has not its army barracks, and the barracks are situated in the heart of the city, where they are always ready. The discipline of war is maintained at all times, the presence of the soldiers and their constant drilling are a perpetual threat to the people. And they are used upon the people often enough to keep always fresh in the memories of the people the fact that the threat is not an empty one. Such readiness for war as is maintained on the part of the Mexican troops is not known in this country. There is no red tape when it comes to fighting and troops arrive at a scene of trouble in an incredibly short time. As one example, at the time of the Liberal rebellion in the fall of 1906 the Liberals attacked the city of Acayucan, Veracruz. Despite the fact that the city is situated in a comparatively isolated part of the tropics, the government concentrated 4,000 soldiers on the town within twenty-four hours after the first alarm.
As an instrument of repression, the Mexican army is employed effectively in two separate and distinct ways. It is an engine of massacre and it is an exile institution, a jail-house, a concentration camp for the politically undesirable.
This second function of the army abides in the fact that more than 95 per cent of the enlisted men are drafted, and drafted for the particular reason that they are politically undesirable citizens, or that they are good subjects for graft on the part of the drafter. The drafter is usually the jefe politico. A judge—at the instance of the executive authority—sometimes sentences a culprit to the army instead of to jail, and a governor—as at Cananea—sometimes personally superintends the
