The Mexican Problem (1917)/The Contrast
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM
CHAPTER I
THE CONTRAST
Appeals in behalf of Mexico have been before the people of the United States for more than one generation.
Fifty years ago the appeals were from returned missionaries collecting money to help spread truth and light before our fellow man and brother over our southern border.
Nearly forty years ago came the appeal for railroads. The good people of the North, and especially of New England, responded with millions and declared: "We think the investment will be profitable, but we take pleasure in the thought that the railroads will be the best missionaries. They will open opportunities for mutual and profitable development in trade, commerce, mining, and manufacturing. There is much that we can do for Mexico, and much that she can do for us."
The nickels and dimes of my early savings that had not gone to the Mexican missionary in response to Bishop Butler's heart-moving appeals were now taken from the savings bank and subscribed for bonds of the Mexican Central and Sonora—Railways the one to open up the great tableland of Mexico from El Paso to Mexico City and the other to carry the Atchison development of the Southwest to the beautiful mountain-locked port of Guaymas on the Gulf of California. Here opened vistas for New England capital and California enterprise down the Pacific Coast and through the heart of Mexico.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MEXICO
In conjunction with Thomas Nickerson, the great pioneer builder of the Atchison and the railroads of Mexico, I journeyed to California; and at San Diego listened to one of the best addresses I ever heard, and from a man who never made addresses. Thomas Nickerson told the Chamber of Commerce at San Diego that he was not in agreement with the Southern and Central Pacific people whom he had visited in San Francisco and who had declared that there was nothing in San Diego or Southern California except invalids, "one-lungers," and bees, and that the only prospective traffic from the harbor of San Diego was a few boxes of honey in the comb. Nickerson declared his faith and the faith of the people of New England in the development of Southern California and closed by saying that he was sure of one thing: that if the road did not pay, the people who had put in the money could afford to lose it.
There was no such doubt regarding the railroads of Mexico. In Mexico were mines with long records of production, fertile soils, tropical fruits, millions of people. In Southern California there were no mines, few people, and only sunshine and honey bees as a basis for American enterprise.
Although Thomas Nickerson was well along in years, we took to the saddle and rode up through Temecula Cañon and the Temescal Valley over the line of the proposed Southern California Railway and on to the irrigated gardens of Riverside, with not a house or habitation between that town and the seacoast, although sheep grazed peacefully in the broad valley of Temescal.
A few days later I was in Sonora, journeying toward Guaymas. We made "Uncle Thomas," as we affectionately called him, a pallet of straw in the stable of the ranch of Jesus Maria, and then outside, before we said good-night to the stars and rolled up back to back in our blankets on buffalo robes, I interrogated the engineers, not only concerning mines and mining history, but as to how they knew the volume of water that might one day, in Southern California, seek to pass through that seventeen-mile narrow gorge known as the Temecula Canon. They explained in detail how they determined the watershed area in those hills and the probable rainfall and then built the bridges and tracks at elevations in the valley well above future waters.
DISASTER AND RECOVERY
Not long after our little party reached home the rainy season began in Southern California, and the beautiful valley where the sheep had been so peacefully grazing was a lake, several feet deep and twenty miles long; out of which roared through the Temecula Cañon a river, twenty and forty feet deep, vomiting forth ties, spikes, rails, and bridges, as man's poison to be cast forth upon the plains by the seacoast.
The California Southern Railroad was gone, but the energy of the white men who built it remained. More rails were ordered, a new location, or pass, through the mountains found, and to-day the Southern California is the bright gem of the great Atchison system. In Sonora we shot blackbirds and jackrabbits, where grasses waved high as cornfields and the hills showed mineral values. The people at Hermosillo and Guaymas welcomed us as opening for them and their country the opportunities of a broader civilization. The rails were already laid for forty miles from Guaymas, which has a harbor more beautiful than California's Golden Gate.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
A few days later we went out on the Mexican Central from El Paso to the end of the track, which was just then starting on its path toward the City of Mexico, to lift this great land of the Aztecs and its people into fellowship and commercial life with the "Big Brother" of the North. The future of Mexico seemed as clear as the sunshine, although Southern California seemed a doubtful proposition.
Returning to Boston, I published as follows, February 15, 1882, thirty-five years ago:—
No one realizes what government, or the absence of government, can do for a people until he sees Mexico, in comparison with the United States. Arizona and the Southwest, upon an almost waterless and comparatively barren soil, are prosperous from extensive grazing and minding interests, while Sonora, just across the border, far richer in water and soil and mineral, has slumbered for years, devastated by incursions of Indians from the North, and then rent with internal political dissensions, yet all the while hoping for the morrow to bring forth peace and prosperity. No wonder the Mexicans love the word mañana, for in to-morrow has lain their hope for years. But Sonora and Mexico are rapidly passing into a new day whence all that has been will be as yesterday, and to-morrow will be bright with promise.
The world now touches the sunshine of Southern California, eating its sun-kissed oranges, its sun-dried figs, its new seedless raisins, and the fruit of its alligator pear trees, transplanted from Mexico. Its deep valleys are raising the finest cotton; its motor highways are jewels in the crown of a State promoting intercourse over wide reaches betwixt its peoples.
HONEY AND THISTLES
The honey of human bee life is in California. In Mexico are yet the thistle, the nettle, and the hornet, the prickly cactus, sheltering the serpent, the poisonous herb shading the centipede and the political centipede.
I was surprised a few years ago to be notified that the Mexican Central forty-year bonds, to which I had so early subscribed, were coming due. They had been scaled down from seven per cent interest to five per cent, then to a lower rate, and now whatever has succeeded them is a wanderer in Europe with no return, and the property they are supposed to represent is sliding backward. Its rolling-stock goes into the mire, and bandits tear up the rails, shooting the soldiers of Carranza and looting and shooting the native and foreign passengers.
Scarcely a day passes that reports do not reach my desk from personal and sometimes confidential sources, of banditry, looting, and shooting, concerning which not a line can be found in the general press of the day. The almost daily occurrences in Mexico would be sensational and call for glaring headlines if the happenings were north of the Rio Grande; but nobody will buy a paper to read about lawlessness in Mexico.
RESTRICTED BUSINESS
It is generally known that the copper mines and smelters are only partially operating in the north, that travel is nowhere safe in that country, and that only in the oil fields around Tampico and south is there any real business progress. Even at Tampico every oil refinery has this spring been closed down for a greater or less number of days, interfering with oil supplies now so necessary in the world's progress through war.
It is difficult to place the blame as between I.W.W. agitators drawing pay from German agents and petty Mexico authorities, some of whom do and some of whom do not recognize any national authority.
Washington and Mexico City do not want these disturbances reported; nor do the business interests dependent upon American credit, and whatever protection may be afforded Mexico, invite publicity concerning Mexican disturbances.
Ask any director or official of a foreign enterprise in Mexico concerning the situation and he will give evidence only behind locked doors or with the understanding that his statements are confidential and his company is not to be mentioned. He knows that he is managing the property of others in a country where there is to-day no constitution and no law; but he dare not say so publicly, for there are several alleged constitutions in Mexico, many alleged laws, and very many decrees, and there is to-day the power to suspend every constitution, law and decree. Taxation has become only a matter of pressure to get something from anybody who has it.
A SIMPLE PROPOSITION
Yet, aside from the question of order and justice, Mexico is a simple proposition. The national expenses are less than $100,000,000 American gold, yet a little more than half must go to the national defense. The revenues have been but seventy-five per cent of the expenses, and because it never had any credit it never piled up any outside debt. Diaz not only built up Mexican foreign trade from $15,000,000 American gold to $250,000,000, but he built up the national treasury from emptiness to $30,000,000 American gold.
More than thirty years ago John Bigelow warned us that, notwithstanding the apparent peace and prosperity in Mexico under Diaz, it was a republic only in name, a slumbering volcano with a government by gunpowder only. At that time I refuted many of Mr. Bigelow's errors in his citation of facts, but history proved his main indictment. The people of Mexico have never had a chance, and the moment Diaz attempted to broaden the governing base in Mexico he was overthrown. The people have ever since been ground between political and social theorists both in the United States and their own country.
There are seventeen million people in Mexico ten million pure Aztecs, five million of partially Spanish origin, and two million pure Spanish and other foreigners. Where formerly it was estimated there were fifty thousand Americans there are not now five thousand.
The fact that the Spanish invader married the Aztec woman is not the curse of Mexico. The curse of Mexico is the faith that might makes right. Every schoolboy has heard the phrase "Conquest of Mexico." The idea of conquests, nationally and individually, is so strongly rooted in the world that Europe is now bathed in blood to uproot it.
THE RULE OF MIGHT
When Dr. Dernberg, formerly Colonial Minister in Germany, was in New York after the breaking-out of the Great War, he tried to convince me of the injustice of denying to Germany the right of conquest in foreign parts. He said: "What did England do a hundred years ago? What have they all done? Because Germany comes late into the family of nations, are we to be denied our part in conquering the earth, in the acquisition of new territory, in colonial empire?"
The idea was so barbaric to my freeborn American blood that I could only laugh at Dr. Dernberg and refer him to the dark ages. Yet the only army in Europe that has ninety-nine per cent of its soldiers able to read and write supports the right of conquest and territorial expansion. Have not Paris and London within three years been promised as compensation to a fighting people, that they might possess them or hold for ransom? What is the difference when Villa promises loot as compensation to those who will attack under his leadership? Sound government is by character and not by intellect. The redemption of Mexico can never be accomplished by conquest or loot.
GOVERNMENT BY JUSTICE
India is taxing herself and fighting for European justice because this alone has given her security where before in a hundred years a hundred different dynasties rose up and attempted rule by might. That country was redeemed only when government by justice came in.
It is said that between 1821 and 1868 more than fifty rulers attempted the government of Mexico. Mexico is too large a territory to be handled by legislative enactment from one city. Diaz himself never really ruled the whole of it. Mexico is largely composed of territories misnamed states. In these distant territories, of late, especially in the north, revolutions start and get under way before they can be reached or dealt with by the central authorities.
A just and lawful government should be established in the heart of Mexico with insured safe connection with the seacoast. From this, groups of states can be knitted in and distant parts should be treated as Mexican territory until its people can be educated and trusted with local self-government and show capacity to deal with the larger problems of nationality.
THE MEXICAN CHARACTER
At the present time the larger part of the good people of Mexico are children who want to be in debt and at the same time care-free. They want to work laughing. If they cannot laugh as they work, fighting is the next best thing. They have no other understanding of a revolution than that it is a sporty lark. They are exactly in the stage of the American country boy who on attending a new school must first find out who among the pupils can "lick the teacher." If the teacher is the stronger—sometimes by moral force and sometimes by brute force—there is order and discipline. But if the teacher enters a contest and is downed, he is no longer head of that school and, if he is to remain, some "big boy" must keep law and order for him.
On many a hacienda in Mexico, and over many years, a skirmish, even with pistols, between the manager and his peon workers was regarded as a proper lark. If the manager got the better of it, the belligerents went peacefully back to work and everybody was happy because the boss had sustained his position.
Mexico is not a difficult proposition when once you understand the Mexican character. He is the same childlike, dependent, trusting fellow whether at work, play, or revolution. He is simply in need of a strong helping hand.
DEBT AND CITIZENSHIP
The Mexican peon is not thirsting for land or rule. There never yet were twenty thousand votes cast in Mexico for a president. The ballot will not redeem the Mexican from the peonage system in which alone he has confidence. Singular as it may appear, his independence and his self-respect he finds in this system. If you try to give him financial independence, he is fearful and rebellious. He is afraid that you are going to discharge him; that he will lose his job without being transferred to another.
In brief a Mexican peon in agriculture, or on a hacienda, is a self-sold slave. He will not accumulate and spend his money. He must borrow of his employer and spend; and when his money is gone he is contented and happy to work under debt. But if you deny him credit or try to get him out from under the debt system, he becomes suspicious, will not work, and loses his own self-respect; you have not trusted him, you have no confidence in him; you are not his real friend, and he would like to be transferred with his "account" to some other hacienda or employer where his credit will be unquestioned.
While the peonage system may be the safely of agricultural Mexico, it can never produce independence, citizenship, and self-government.
The redemption of Mexico must be from the invasion of business, forcing upon the natives— the good people of Mexico— technical training, higher wages, bank accounts, financial independence, and the rights of citizenship and accumulation.