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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78600 ***
+
+
+
+
+                         CARRANZA AND MEXICO
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: DON VENUSTIANO CARRANZA AND GENERAL I. L. PESQUEIRA
+
+                   First Chief and Minister of War]
+
+
+
+
+                             CARRANZA AND
+                                MEXICO
+
+                                  BY
+                           CARLO DE FORNARO
+
+                     [WITH CHAPTERS BY COLONEL I. C.
+                     ENRIQUEZ, CHARLES FERGUSON AND
+                     M. C. ROLLAND]
+
+                            [Illustration]
+
+               NEW YORK  ·  MITCHELL KENNERLEY  ·   1915
+
+
+
+
+                          COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
+                          MITCHELL KENNERLEY
+
+                          PRINTED IN AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+                                 _TO_
+
+                      _PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON_
+
+                           _who discovered_
+
+                    _real Mexico to the Americans_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+
+      I The Life of Don Venustiano Carranza                          9
+
+     II Conditions in Mexico During Diaz’ Régime                    34
+
+    III The Madero Revolution, Its Aims and Failures                50
+
+     IV Plotting Which Overthrew Madero                             60
+
+      V Huerta in Power. The Landing of American
+        Marines in Vera Cruz                                        77
+
+     VI Financial Organization of the Revolution                    86
+
+    VII Civil Organization of the Revolution                        96
+
+   VIII Diplomatic Work in Washington                               99
+
+     IX The Constitutionalists in Paris                            102
+
+      X Investigation Work in the United States. By
+        M. C. Rolland                                              106
+
+     XI General Outline of Campaign Against Huerta                 114
+
+    XII Campaign of General Obregon in the West.
+        By Col. I. C. Enriquez                                     118
+
+   XIII Villa and His Campaign in the North                        132
+
+    XIV Campaign of Gen. Gonzalez in the East                      142
+
+     XV Zapata and His Campaign in the South                       146
+
+    XVI One Hundred Years’ Struggle for Land and
+        Democracy against Clericalism                              157
+
+   XVII Attempts at the Solution of the Land Question              166
+
+  XVIII Behind the Scenes of the Carranza-Villa Imbroglio          176
+
+    XIX The Need of a Democratic Finance in Mexico.
+        By C. Ferguson                                             184
+
+     XX The Foreign Policy of Carranza                             192
+
+    XXI President Wilson’s Mexican Policy                          205
+
+        Reflections                                                214
+
+        Appendix                                                   219
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Don Venustiano Carranza and General I. L.
+  Pesqueira                                     _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                  FACING PAGE
+
+  Don Rafael Zubáran Capmany                               99
+
+  Modesto C. Rolland                                      106
+
+  War Map of Mexico                                       114
+
+  General Alvaro Obregon                                  118
+
+  General S. Alvarado                                     132
+
+  General Pablo Gonzalez                                  142
+
+  General Benjamin Hill                                   176
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+LIFE OF CARRANZA
+
+
+DON VENUSTIANO CARRANZA!
+
+Who is this man, practically unknown to the American public a year
+and a half ago, who with the help of the Mexican Constitutionalists,
+overthrew the most cynical, murderous, grafting and powerful military
+dictatorship that ever existed in Mexico?
+
+Concentration of power in Mexico City, the support of the foreigners,
+of the church, the bankers, the landowners, the militarists, of
+foreign bankers and most foreign nations, with the exception of the
+United States Government, were at the disposal of General Huerta and
+his régime, but Carranza and the Constitutionalists eliminated this
+nefarious rule after eighteen months of unbroken victories, sweeping
+finally into Mexico City in a peaceful, orderly manner.
+
+The American public is beginning to realize that such a thorough
+victory could never have been achieved without a popular movement,
+directed by a fearless, statesmanlike chief.
+
+Venustiano Carranza, with the exception of Don Fernando Iglesias
+Calderón, is the oldest of all the Constitutionalists, who have fought
+for the last year and a half, with every means in their power, against
+the rule of General Huerta and his governmental camorra.
+
+Don Venustiano Carranza was born in the State of Coahuila in 1859,
+and is therefore, fifty-five years old. In spite of the assertion
+of one of the correspondents who interviewed him six months ago for
+the _Metropolitan_ magazine, Mr. John Reed, we claim that Carranza
+is anything but a “senile old man,” for he rode over 1,500 miles
+on horseback, through the States of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Durango,
+Chihuahua and Sonora, visiting the military camps, organizing all the
+state and federal governments, and finally settling down in Hermosillo,
+State of Sonora, as his capital. Later, after Torreon had been captured
+from the Federals, Carranza with his staff and soldiers again crossed
+the State of Sonora into Chihuahua on horseback, a distance of nearly
+300 miles.
+
+We must admit that unless Carranza had lived a greater part of his life
+on his farm, he would not have been able to stand the hardships and
+rigors of that famous ride.
+
+His mental training was that of a lawyer, for he studied in the schools
+of Coahuila and finished his law course in Mexico City.
+
+A certain weakness of the eyesight prevented him from practising
+law, so he retired on his farm, dedicating his time to improving his
+“hacienda” and studying history and political economy.
+
+Like the President of the United States, Carranza is one of the
+greatest authorities on the history of his own country.
+
+Just as all student-statesmen, Carranza is the type of man which makes
+no direct appeal to the imagination of the public by a strenuous,
+romantic life--it is the quiet, clear, thinking, organizing brain which
+creates, commands and achieves, without the blaze of trumpets, or the
+help of well-salaried press-agents.
+
+One incident in his life stands out glaringly like a solitary facet of
+a diamond struck by sunlight. Very few Mexicans, and it can be safely
+said even a lesser number of Americans, know that Carranza was the only
+man who started a local revolution against General Diaz, during the
+rule from 1876 to 1910, and succeeded;--that is to say, continued to
+live in Mexico, without sacrificing his life to his bold attempt.
+
+This strange and seemingly incomprehensible incident happened in the
+year 1893, when Don Venustiano was only thirty-four years old.
+
+At that time there ruled over the State of Coahuila a governor named
+Garza Galán. With the exception of Mucio Martinez and General Cravioto,
+he was the worst governor in Mexico. Garza Galán used his great power
+to rob, expropriate lands by all manner of tricks and stratagems,
+imprison, kill those who stood in his way, and went so far as to kidnap
+respectable girls.
+
+Everybody expected that Garza Galán would be eliminated after his
+two years of governorship, but when it was discovered that Romero
+Rubio stood sponsor for another two years of Garza Galán as Governor
+of Coahuila, the inhabitants of that State were in utter dismay and
+protested to the President.
+
+At that time Romero Rubio, the father-in-law of President Diaz, was one
+of his closest advisers. He is the originator of the party which later
+was called the “Cientifico” party, and of which Limantour became the
+successor.
+
+As Romero Rubio insisted on the candidacy of Garza Galán for a
+second term, and as protests were of no avail with General Diaz, Don
+Venustiano Carranza arose in arms with the assistance of his brother,
+Don Emilio, and started on the warpath against Garza Galán. General
+Diaz sent some federal troops to quell the revolt, but Don Venustiano
+and his brother took particular care to avoid coming into armed
+conflict with the federal troops, while they attacked Garza Galán’s
+state troops and defeated them repeatedly. This strange, three-cornered
+fight lasted longer than was expected; very soon, other wiser
+counsellors of General Diaz pointed out to him that a continuation of
+this armed revolt might communicate itself to the other border States
+with disastrous effects to the Federal Government. General Diaz then
+recalled the candidacy of Garza Galán, and it was transformed into the
+one of Señor Musquiz.
+
+Peace followed, but strangest of all, was the immunity of Venustiano
+Carranza and his brother to persecutions and attempts on their lives.
+
+Carranza was not a novice in the politics of his country; he served
+as a member of the legislature of his native State, as Senator of the
+Federal Government in Mexico City and even as a governor of his State.
+
+Maybe the wily old dictator, Don Porfirio Diaz, made a mistake in the
+case of Carranza. For sixteen years after the revolt against Garza
+Galán, Carranza gave further proof of his strength of character, by
+accepting the gubernatorial candidacy offered to him by the people of
+Coahuila and refusing to renounce it in the face of the opposition of
+the “cientifico” group in Mexico City, because Carranza stood for the
+candidacy of General Reyes as Vice-President, as against Ramon Corral
+who was the Mephisto of the “cientifico” party.
+
+The answer of Carranza to the emissary of Diaz, who suggested the
+advisability of his refusal to run for Governor, was as follows: “Tell
+General Diaz, that as long as there is a single person, who will
+propose and work in favor of my candidacy, I shall not renounce it, and
+I shall accept all the consequences of my conduct.”
+
+After such an unequivocal answer, everybody expected that either the
+door of the penitentiary would close upon the bold candidate, or that
+he would mysteriously disappear, in accordance with the policy of
+General Diaz.
+
+What saved Carranza from either of these fates, was the publicity given
+to this incident in the American press, especially a letter of protest
+against the meeting which was to take place in El Paso, between General
+Diaz and President Taft. The passage referring to this incident says:
+
+“Even as I write these lines, the report is wired from Mexico that
+General Diaz has ordered the demission of the Governor of Coahuila,
+as the latter showed a marked tendency in favor of General Reyes’
+candidacy. Imagine the Republican President of the United States asking
+for the resignation of Governor Johnson of Minnesota, because of his
+democratic leanings.”[1]
+
+It is quite logical that a man of the stamp of Carranza should view
+with great interest the movement which culminated in the overthrow of
+General Diaz in 1911.
+
+Francisco I. Madero wrote his famous book “The Presidential Succession
+of 1910,” and published it in San Pedro, Coahuila, in December, 1908.
+
+F. I. Madero, because of his innocence or his fearlessness, tried to
+create a working candidacy, with himself as presidential candidate and
+Dr. Vasquez Gomez as Vice-President, in opposition to General Diaz and
+Ramon Corral. There was however no intention of rising to arms against
+the government of Diaz, but the policy of the President made the
+opposing candidate realize the futility of his efforts.
+
+F. I. Madero was placed in jail twice for his daring, and after the
+second time, he was informed that a third imprisonment would mean his
+complete elimination. Madero took the tip, and fled to San Antonio,
+Texas. The slogan of the Madero revolution was “Effective suffrage and
+no re-election” and not, as many Americans believe, “the land question.”
+
+If any one will take the trouble to peruse the long document of San
+Luis Potosí, of October 5th, 1910, signed F. I. Madero, which contains
+2,500 words, it will be noticed that the land question takes up very
+little space, in comparison to the rest of the Plan.[2]
+
+General Carranza never hesitated for one moment, and was soon over the
+border to join Madero, and formed part of his revolutionary junta.
+He was appointed chief of the Military Division of the States of
+Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, and later Secretary of War in the
+provisional cabinet of F. I. Madero.
+
+The premature cessation of hostilities and the installation of
+the clerical candidate, L. de la Barra, was strenuously opposed
+by Carranza, who said to F. I. Madero, “You are delivering to the
+reactionaries a dead revolution, which will have to be fought over
+again.” These prophetic words were not heeded, so Don Venustiano went
+back to his native State, and calmly awaited the course of events,
+while he offered himself as a candidate and was elected as Governor of
+Coahuila.
+
+One of the accusations which was published in the American papers
+by the Huerta press agents was that F. I. Madero, as President, had
+sent several hundred thousand dollars to Governor Carranza, for
+the purpose of arming and increasing the state militia against the
+Orozco rebellion. About the time of the overthrow of F. I. Madero,
+Don Venustiano had been supposedly asked to give an accounting of the
+expenditure of the money furnished from Mexico City. As he could not
+account for it, it was said, he had decided to start a revolution
+against President Madero. When the Huerta treachery took place and
+Madero was murdered, Carranza took the opportunity to rebel against the
+provisional presidency of General Huerta.
+
+This story may sound plausible to the Huerta type of man, but the facts
+in the case dispose of it. A few months before the plot which overthrew
+Madero, Don Venustiano Carranza paid a visit to the President. His
+watchful eyes and ears detected a very complicated net of plots and
+counterplots brewing against Madero. The President did not believe that
+there were any plots, and doubted any one’s ability to overthrow him.
+Carranza went back to his State and communicated his suspicions to a
+few intimate friends. As soon as he heard of the release of Felix Diaz
+and General Reyes from their jails, he at once sent several hundred of
+the Coahuila volunteers to the assistance of Madero. They took part
+in the assault against the citadel, and the reason why General Huerta
+lingered so long before turning traitor is now clear.
+
+Besides the Coahuila riflemen, there were several hundred Madero
+volunteers who were loyal to the President. General Huerta could not
+arrest Madero and Suarez, and make peace with Felix Diaz until the
+loyal Madero troops had been eliminated.
+
+So he cautiously kept his own federal regiments back, and sent the
+Madero volunteers and the Coahuila riflemen to charge the citadel,
+manned by machine guns, in close formation. The Coahuila volunteers who
+were mostly mounted, and numbered about 1,150, bravely attacked the
+guns, but none of them came back alive; the same happened to the Madero
+volunteers.
+
+As soon as Huerta had disposed of the volunteers, he made his peace
+with Felix Diaz. What remained of the Madero and Coahuila volunteers
+fled to the standard of Zapata after Huerta came into power.
+
+On the 18th of February, 1913, Madero and Suarez were arrested by order
+of General Huerta. On the 19th of February all Mexico had heard the
+fateful news, and nobody doubted the outcome of the imprisonment.
+
+Don Venustiano Carranza never hesitated one hour, one minute; he
+convened at once the legislature of the State of Coahuila, and the
+following decree was the result:
+
+ _Venustiano Carranza_, Constitutional Governor of the free and
+ Sovereign State of Coahuila of Zaragoza, informs its inhabitants: That
+ the Congress of the State has decreed the following:
+
+ The Constitutional Congress of the free, independent and sovereign
+ State of Coahuila of Zaragoza decrees:
+
+ No. 1421: Article I.
+
+ We disavow General Victoriano Huerta in his character of chief of the
+ Executive power of the Republic, which he claims was conferred to him
+ by the Senate, and we likewise disown all the acts and resolutions
+ which he may dictate under such authority.
+
+ Article II. Extraordinary powers are transmitted to the Executive of
+ this State in all the branches of Public Administration, so that he
+ may suppress what he may deem convenient and that he shall proceed
+ by the force of arms to sustain the Constitutionalist order of the
+ Republic.
+
+ To arouse the Governments of the other States and the Chiefs of the
+ Federal, Rural and Auxiliary Forces, so that they may assist the stand
+ taken by the Governor of this State.
+
+ Decreed in the room of the Congress of the State, in Saltillo, on the
+ 19th of February, 1913. A. Barrera, President of the Legislature. J.
+ Sanchez Herrera, Secretary. Gabriel Calzada, Secretary.
+
+ Let this be printed, communicated and observed.
+
+  V. CARRANZA.
+
+  E. GARZA PEREZ,
+  Secretary.
+
+  Saltillo, 19 de Febrero de 1913.
+
+After the imprisonment of President Madero and Vice-President Suarez
+in February, 1913, a year and a half ago, there were twenty-seven
+governors in Mexico, who had the same opportunity to protest against
+the usurper Huerta, and refuse to recognize his “coup d’état,” his
+dictatorship and his cowardly murders. None of the governors dared
+protest. Had all the governors in Mexico arisen together with their
+legislatures and refused to recognize the authority of the czar in
+Mexico, Huerta with all his money, all his soldiers, all his greed and
+ruthlessness, could not have lasted more than three months.
+
+Don Venustiano Carranza was the only governor in Mexico who had the
+audacity and patriotism to challenge the great pirate in Mexico City,
+who had raised the black flag with the skull and the cross bones over
+the national palace.
+
+The chiefs of the States were too terrorized, cowed and frozen by
+the brutality, the cynicism, the power of the man in the provisional
+presidency, and were aghast at the suddenness of the events which led
+to Madero’s downfall. They had not found out what had happened behind
+the scenes, the horror of the events and their natural consequence
+had not dawned upon their paralyzed minds. Carranza as a real leader
+and chief never faltered an instant. Those are the rare and precious
+moments which create the national hero.
+
+As soon as Felix Diaz and Victoriano Huerta heard of the stand taken
+by Don Venustiano Carranza as Governor of the State of Coahuila, they
+realized that a formidable enemy had arisen to spoil their crooked
+game. They put their heads together and penned the following epistle to
+Carranza, signed it together, and sent a trusted friend as emissary to
+find him and convince him:
+
+  MEXICO, D. F. 27 de Febrero 1913.
+
+  DON VENUSTIANO CARRANZA,
+  Gov. of the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila,
+
+  _Dear Sir_--
+
+ By letters of recent date we have informed you of the plausible
+ reasons which have inspired the army against the dissolving régime of
+ Don F. Madero, and we have likewise justified the acts which placed
+ General Huerta in the office of President of the Republic.
+
+ We have been informed that it was your intention to rebel against
+ the legal authority of the Government. We beg to insist, in the name
+ of the country and for its exclusive benefit, that you change your
+ announced attitude not to collaborate with us in the work of peace
+ which we intend to pursue to the end, at any price. If for some
+ personal reason you wish to leave the office which you occupy, and
+ if that can be done without offending or hurting our patriotic end,
+ the Government will give you all sorts of guarantees and will pay your
+ salary up to the end of your term.
+
+ This letter, as you understand, must be absolutely of a particular
+ and private character. On this basis we beg to inform you that on our
+ part there will be no obstacles that could arise between ourselves,
+ which cannot be solved in the manner most suitable to you. It would be
+ advisable for you to retire into the United States (for your greater
+ safety). We shall make all sorts of sacrifices (should you demand
+ them) so as to satisfy all your wishes and demands. Our envoy (agent)
+ will bring you instructions on the subject. He is empowered to arrange
+ matters on the spot.
+
+ We beg you to accept our assurance of admiration and respect.
+
+  (Signed) VICTORIANO HUERTA.
+  FELIX DIAZ.
+
+Carranza’s answer follows:
+
+  11th March, 1913.
+
+  MESSRS. V. HUERTA Y FELIX DIAZ:
+
+ My only answer to the despicable proposals offered to me in your
+ letter dated February 27th, is that I want to inform you that men like
+ myself do not betray, do not sell themselves; that is your function,
+ you who have no other objects in life than the shameful satisfaction
+ of ignoble ambitions.
+
+ Raise the black flag of your tyranny, and over the country the voice
+ shouts: “Treason and Death.”
+
+ On my part, with the help of the Mexican people, I shall lift from the
+ mud into which you have thrown it, the flag of the country. Should I
+ fall defending it, I shall have obtained for my small action in life,
+ the greatest prize which we honest men can aspire to.
+
+  (Signed) VENUSTIANO CARRANZA.
+
+In the month of March, 1913, not satisfied with having defied the
+powers in Mexico, General Carranza published the “Plan of Guadalupe,”
+so called from the fact that the revolutionary plan was signed by the
+officers at the “hacienda” farm of Guadalupe. The plan is the following:
+
+DECLARATION TO THE NATION
+
+Considering that General Victoriano Huerta, to whom the Constitutional
+President, Francisco I. Madero, had confided the defence of the
+institutions and the legality of his government, on uniting with the
+rebel enemies in arms against that same government, to restore the
+latest dictatorship, committed the crime of treason to reach power,
+arresting the President and Vice-President, as well as their ministers,
+exacting from them by violent means the resignation of their posts,
+which is proven by the messages that the same General Huerta addressed
+to the Governors of the States, advising them that he had the Supreme
+Magistrates of the nation and their cabinet prisoners.
+
+Considering that the legislative and judicial powers have recognized
+and protected General Victoriano Huerta and his illegal and
+anti-patriotic proceedings, contrary to the constitutional laws and
+precepts, and considering, finally, that some governors of the States
+of the union have recognized the illegitimate government, imposed by
+the part of the army which consummated the treason, headed by the same
+General Huerta, in spite of the fact that the sovereignty of those same
+States whose governors should have been the first in disowning it, had
+been violated, those who subscribe, chiefs and officials, in command of
+constitutional forces, we have accorded, and shall sustain by arms the
+following:
+
+ PLAN
+
+ 1. General Victoriano Huerta, as President of the republic shall be
+ disowned.
+
+ 2. The legislative and judicial powers of the federation shall also be
+ disowned.
+
+ 3. The governors of the states who still recognize the federal powers
+ forming the actual administration, 30 days after the publication of
+ this plan, shall be disowned.
+
+ 4. For the organization of the army in charge of seeing that our
+ purposes are carried out, we name as first chief of the army, which
+ will be called Constitutionalist, Venustiano Carranza, Governor of the
+ State of Coahuila.
+
+ 5. The Constitutionalist army on occupying Mexico City, the executive
+ power will be provisionally in charge of Venustiano Carranza, first
+ chief of the army, or in charge of that person who might substitute
+ him in command.
+
+ 6. The provisional President of the Republic will convene general
+ elections as soon as peace may have been consolidated, handing the
+ power to the citizen who may have been elected.
+
+ 7. The citizen who may act as first chief of the Constitutionalist
+ army in the States whose government might have recognized that of
+ Huerta, will assume the charge of provisional governor and will
+ convoke local elections, after the citizens elected to discharge the
+ high powers of the federation may have taken possession of their
+ office, as provided for in the foregoing basis.
+
+The plan was signed at the Hacienda of Guadalupe, Coahuila, on the 26th
+of March, 1913. Sixty-four officers of the state troops affixed their
+signatures to the protest. Among the most famous on the list was Lieut.
+Col. Lucio Blanco, who fought in Tamaulipas and initiated the sale of
+lands belonging to Felix Diaz, among Constitutionalist soldiers, and
+Major J. B. Trevino.
+
+As Don Venustiano Carranza was leaving Saltillo to take the field
+against the federals, he said to a friend: “We are going to fight the
+three years’ war over again.”
+
+A coincidence in atavism is that Don Venustiano’s father, Colonel
+Carranza, fought in the north during the three years’ war under the
+leadership of Benito Juarez (1857-60) and assisted him financially
+as well as politically in the struggle. Later, after the
+Constitutionalist government had placed Benito Juarez in the presidency
+through the elections, Colonel Carranza was offered the reimbursement
+of the sixteen thousand odd dollars which he had contributed to the
+liberal cause. He refused the money saying that the victory of the
+party was sufficient payment to him.
+
+A further coincidence, amusing to students of history, is found in
+the case of Gen. Victoriano Huerta, whose father, Gen. Epitacio
+Huerta, fought under the same banner as Colonel Carranza. The history
+of the three years’ war mentions the name of three generals: The
+Constitutionalist Generals Rocha, Huerta and Arteaga.... After the
+clericals had been defeated by the Constitutionalists under Benito
+Juarez in 1860 they invited foreign intervention, which ended in the
+courtmartial and shooting of Emperor Maximilian and Generals Miramón
+and Mejia.
+
+In the present instance, Don Victoriano Huerta, when he perceived an
+early defeat, heaped indignities and insults upon American citizens so
+as to invite an intervention and a quick march of the American troops
+into Mexico City. The clericals which he represented preferred the
+presence of Americans to that of the Constitutionalists in Mexico City.
+Luckily for Mexico, the Chief Magistrate in Washington foresaw the move
+and wisely refused to pull the chestnut out of the fire for a Mexican
+monkey.
+
+The first battle of the revolution was fought between Saltillo and
+Monclova in a small place called “Anhelo,” which, translated from the
+Spanish, means a vehement desire.
+
+The reason for going into certain details of the march of Carranza
+across the northern States, is for the purpose of showing the physical
+endurance, the mental activity, as well as the profound and implicit
+faith that Venustiano Carranza had in the people of Mexico.
+
+The personality of Carranza does not seem to have been sympathetic to
+foreign newspapermen who have visited him. His presence and manner
+seem utterly cold, intellectual; extremely polite, non-committal. When
+talking, his speech is devoid of all the superlatives and amenities
+which made New York reporters say of L. de la Barra, “He talked
+incessantly for fifteen minutes without saying one word for copy.”
+
+Carranza’s talent as a good listener made him the despair of
+journalists, who preferred the generals who fought, talked, gave orders
+to shoot a few prisoners, and between snatches of food, dictated
+incidents from their lives or told what their plans were for the future
+of Mexico. Carranza is more subtle if not sufficiently romantic. The
+careful observer must read between the lines, when the personality
+grows on one, like the taste for olives or the magnitude of the Chief
+Magistrate in Washington. Some leaders are unattractive because of
+their very uprightness, their justice, their integrity, their polish;
+their flawlessness offers no purchase to a sly attack. Aristides asked
+an Athenian citizen, who had voted to ostracize him, if Aristides had
+personally offended him, “No, but I am tired of hearing him called the
+Just!”
+
+Enemies of Carranza have accused him of being too much of an aristocrat
+and a puppet in the hands of his lawyers’ cabinet, or again a jingo for
+effect and a rebel for power. His conduct towards his general staff,
+his generals, his enemies, his attitude towards the United States
+and the foreign powers, his promises or silence on the question of
+interior policy,--his words, speeches, letters and decrees are his best
+witnesses to judge him by.
+
+After the defeat at Anhelo, Carranza went to the border, passing
+through Cuatro Cienegas, which is famous as his birthplace, to Eagle
+Pass.
+
+In the month of July, 1913, when the Arrietas and Contreras were
+attacking Torreon, Carranza joined them in the hope of success, but
+even the second time when Villa attacked Torreon, the victories were
+empty, except for the arms, ammunition and money captured.
+
+Disconsolate but not discouraged, Carranza, accompanied by about
+two hundred men, slowly wended his way across the State of Durango.
+General Huerta was at that period on the highest crest of success and
+power,--orders had been telegraphed all over the north, to the federal
+and counter-guerrilla chiefs, to capture Carranza, dead or alive,
+and be rewarded with a bonus of $150,000. Abraham Gonzalez, Governor
+of Chihuahua, had been arrested and assassinated by order of Huerta.
+Venustiano Carranza, therefore, travelled at night and rested during
+the day; his only pilots were the stars, a small compass and a pocket
+edition of “Mexico-Atlas.” The chief himself recounts how often during
+their night ride, they espied coming towards them in the distance, the
+vaguely outlined forms of peons, men and women carrying their children
+in their arms. Scouts were sent ahead to discover if the peasants were
+only disguised federals in a desperate attempt to assassinate the brain
+of the revolution, and capture a kingly reward.
+
+The phantom shadows were “pacificos,” who had walked for miles to greet
+the chief who was going to battle for their rights and their lands.
+They only wanted to touch his hands, the hem of his coat, to hear the
+voice of the great “Jefe,” and then they turned their weary way sending
+back a salutation: “May God protect you!” or “May God be with you!”
+which rang in the silent night like the voice of the people, the voice
+of God.
+
+As Carranza kept his itinerary secret, the first encounter might have
+been accidental, but it happened so frequently that it seemed almost
+uncanny and supernatural, this triumphant procession accompanied by the
+blessings, the wishes, the yearnings of the Mexican peons. Carranza
+himself confessed that no incident in his life made a more profound
+impression on him, and gave him a deeper insight of the tremendous
+faith of the Mexican people in their champions, pathfinders, and
+saviors.
+
+Across the mountains in Durango to Tepehuanes, into Parral in
+Chihuahua, where he came in contact with General Chao, and from there
+across the Sierra Madre, a mountain range, dividing Chihuahua from
+Sonora, into the small city of Fuerte, where Carranza met for the first
+time General Obregon and his soldiers.
+
+He reached Guaymas, in Sonora, about the middle of September, 1913. The
+little band was tired, and their clothes were in rags, their shoes in
+tatters, but the goal was reached and they began the work of organizing
+the capital of the Constitutional government.
+
+In Mexico the presence of Carranza was known only to the
+revolutionists, and as the federals could not discover the whereabouts
+of the Chief at that time, they heralded his disappearance and death.
+Everywhere that Carranza had passed with his band of followers in the
+small cities, away from the federals who cautiously kept within the
+city limits and near the railroads, he invariably organized small
+local governments until he was able to communicate with his chiefs in
+the middle and east. In the State of Coahuila, his brother Don Jesus,
+and Gen. Don Pablo Gonzalez, had come to an understanding as to the
+great strategic outline of the campaign in combination with General
+Villa in the north and General Obregon on the west. In Guaymas a
+provisional cabinet was organized with Don Rafael Zubaran Capmany, one
+of the keenest intellects of the revolution, a lawyer from Campeche,
+with Francisco Escudero as Minister of Foreign Affairs, as Minister
+of Finances F. I. Villareal, Engineer G. Bonilla as Minister of
+Communications, and General Angeles as Minister of War.
+
+Gen. J. B. Trevino was the chief of the general staff of Carranza; the
+chief secretary was G. Espinosa Mireles; there was also a staff of
+officers attached to his person. It was in Hermosillo that the great
+strategic campaign was outlined with the help of General Angeles and
+the general staff. The orders to the three chiefs, Obregon, Villa and
+Gonzalez, came from Hermosillo.
+
+After the northern States were conquered slowly, all the city and rural
+governments were organized, and although the work was arduous and
+continuous, it was not quite as strenuous as the classic ride across
+the sierras and the deserts. The daily routine at headquarters was very
+simple but efficient. The chief usually got up between five and six in
+the morning, and except when he rode across the mountain took his bath
+and attended at once to the most important work of the day. At 7 A. M.
+there was a light breakfast with whatever could be had, milk, crackers
+with peach preserves, or honey and butter. On the march everybody
+had to be satisfied with the national tortilla, made of cornmeal and
+beans. Sometimes they could get fresh eggs, sometimes not.
+
+In Hermosillo they fared better; Carranza had two Indian attendants,
+one who did the cooking and the other who attended to his horses and
+those of the general staff. The Mexican cooks have the most wonderful
+capacity for being able to light a fire and cook anywhere under the
+most distressing conditions.
+
+Thus they were able to get meals and a few luxuries like boiled
+and fried meal, vegetables, and the famous chile with cheese, and
+a powdered coffee called “Washington coffee,” with milk. Sometimes
+they drank a red wine which is grown in the north of Mexico. Carranza
+invited at almost every meal, some friends who had travelled many
+miles to see him, or soldiers or civilians belonging to his immediate
+surroundings.
+
+Between the hours of 7:30 and 1 P. M. the whole staff was again busy
+taking orders from the chief,--writing, telegraphing and conferring.
+At one o’clock there was a light luncheon and the work was resumed
+until six, when the chief took his daily ride, accompanied by an
+aide or a friend. Ten o’clock was usually the time to retire, unless
+the “Jefe” had been invited to a fiesta or a dance, which happened
+quite frequently as Mexicans are very fond of dancing, theatricals,
+speech-making, and are in general very sociable. Unlike most Mexicans,
+the chief does not smoke, or favor the national drink “tequila,” or the
+Mexicanized cognac, or the excellent Monterrey and Toluca beer which
+was advertised in Mexico as “the beer that made Milwaukee jealous.”
+
+By February the chief and his staff packed their belongings, and the
+state papers, and crossed the State of Sonora into Sinaloa in Culiacán,
+the capital, which had been captured by General Obregon. After the
+organization of Sinaloa, the peripatetic government moved back to
+Hermosillo and towards the border, to Nogales. By that time, Torreon
+had been captured and Carranza, accompanied by 300 cavalry and 400
+infantry, crossed the Sierra Madre range into Chihuahua, to Juarez, an
+excursion which lasted twenty-five days and covered over 400 miles.
+They had come from the tropical heat of the deserts of Sonora to the
+snow on the Sierra Madre.
+
+From Juarez on, the procession of the Chief rolled downward to
+Chihuahua, Torreon, Saltillo, Monterrey, Tampico, down to Tepotzotlan
+near Mexico City. The details of his slow organization of the civil
+government of all the conquered States, of his foreign attitude and
+of the other details of his revolutionary rule, will be discussed in
+separate chapters.
+
+Carranza at first sight makes the impression more of a Saxon
+personality than of a Mexican type. The Spanish blood, which flows
+in his veins three or four generations back must have been of Basque
+origin, which is pure northern European. He is about five feet, eight
+inches high, proportionately built, neither too thin nor too stout,
+and he carries himself erect and in a dignified manner. His white hair
+and beard contrast with the very dark brown complexion which is the
+result of an active, out-of-door life. The eye-glasses give to his
+appearance a slight professional mien. The professorial air is rather
+disconcerting at first, for one expects to behold a type of a man
+different from the quiet, unassuming, very polite, gentleman farmer,
+and instead of a deep, sonorous voice, a rather high and clear tone of
+speech. His eyes are hazel, very open,--his nose straight, his forehead
+very high, and he has the high brow of an intellectual, rather than of
+a fighter, his ears are quite large, denoting a strong constitution and
+a long life. The whole impression is of self-restraint, gentleness;
+nevertheless, the keen observing eyes prove an alert intelligence,
+always watching, weighing, judging and carefully registering all the
+impressions for future use. As all men dealing with people politically,
+Carranza has a very retentive memory for faces and names. Being a
+comprehending and patient listener he always hears a great deal more
+than he says, but when an answer is required, the words come out
+slowly, as if chosen with extreme care to express a thought with as few
+words as possible. While speaking in public, the use of simple language
+denotes a clear mind which can express complicated problems in first
+principles, and Carranza makes himself understood by cultured Mexicans
+as well as by peons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CONDITIONS IN MEXICO DURING DIAZ’ RÉGIME
+
+
+It would appear after all that has been written in the United States
+and Europe concerning Mexico, that the people ought to possess a
+clearer conception of the conditions which brought about the Madero
+and the Constitutionalist revolutions, especially when the latter is
+nothing more than a continuation of the former. But the words of the
+late Joseph Pulitzer, when he said that to instil facts into the minds
+of the people there must be constant repetition, seem undeniably true.
+It is not sufficient to reiterate certain facts; the correlation of
+these facts must be understood and explained.
+
+People heard about the peonage system in Mexico, about the great
+power of Porfirio Diaz, about the abuses of this power, but it was
+not realized how vital, how deep, how intimate the solution of the
+political problems was to the Mexicans themselves. To foreigners the
+Mexican problem was only interesting in so far as it affected their
+interests,--no more.
+
+After all the cruelties perpetrated by the Diaz-Huerta régimes, I
+have heard intelligent Americans exclaim that the Mexicans needed a
+strong man like Huerta, and that Diaz after all had brought railroads,
+schools, higher wages, money, improvements and progress. It makes one
+almost despair of human intelligence to hear such superficial prattle,
+but it proves the axiom of Joseph Pulitzer to be very profound and that
+Porfirio Diaz had used it to its fullest extent.
+
+Known by few people, Porfirio Diaz used for years a secret fund
+amounting to millions solely for the purpose of advertising to the
+world that Diaz was the creator of modern Mexico, that “peace” and
+“progress” were his two watchwords, with which he had put Mexico on a
+permanent basis of greatness. Many small newspapers near the border
+as far as San Antonio were paid as much as $5,000 a year to speak in
+good terms about Diaz and never to mention any trouble or agitation
+which might be started along the border by anarchists who might call
+themselves Mexican revolutionists.
+
+Great newspaper proprietors in the United States were given
+concessions, others were offered special inducements to publish
+special Mexican numbers, which brought from $25,000 to $30,000 worth
+of advertising; well-known individuals, such as judges, congressmen
+and senators, were invited in an indirect way to visit Mexico, were
+received like princes, fêted, dined and were offered mining or other
+concessions as one gives cigars to a guest after dinner. When the
+concessions were not needed or available, Don Porfirio took particular
+care to impress his famous visitor with a set of well chosen phrases
+most apt to impress him favorably as to his greatness, his patriotism
+and his democracy.
+
+One incident, which was related to me, illustrates the Machiavellian
+talent of Diaz. A nationally famous librarian paid his visit to
+General Diaz, who received him very graciously. No concessions were
+asked or wanted and the President did not mention the great battles he
+had fought, which were unknown to the gentle librarian, but he spoke
+at great length of the extensive school system in vogue since his
+ascension to the presidency, and ended the conversation by declaring:
+“It is my greatest ambition to be known as the great schoolmaster of
+Mexico.” The phrase impressed the scholar and many people heard the
+phrase, and many newspapers repeated it until everybody believed it.
+
+_Pearson’s Magazine_ printed six years ago a fulsome life of Diaz. What
+General Diaz thought of it is told in an interview between Ireneo Paz,
+a Mexican newspaperman and the President who were friends for more than
+sixty years. Don Ireneo Paz asked the President: “I have been wanting
+to ask you if that interview which the papers published a few months
+ago was authentic; that one which is said to have taken place between
+yourself and one Creelman, an American journalist?”
+
+“What surprises me is that sagacious men like you should have been
+capable of giving credit to such folly (à semejante paparrucha),”
+replied Diaz.
+
+“Because I did not believe it, I asked you if it was authentic.”
+
+“It’s as true as a dead child. You know me too well to believe that
+I could stroll for hours upon the terrace of Chapultepec, exhibiting
+the white of my eyes and opening my nostrils excessively in order
+that the Yankee reporter may be able to give wings to his fancy. What
+happened was this: A friend of mine, a member of my cabinet, came to
+read me the article which was already manufactured (confeccionado) for
+an American publication. It didn’t seem bad to me, or rather it seemed
+very good, because without compromising me much it lent a lustre to
+my antecedents, and put me on a good footing for the future, so that
+it gave me all the facilities which I desired, whether to continue
+sacrificing myself for the Fatherland, or to shake off the dust thereof
+(zafarme) in time if things should blow into a whirlwind (à ponerse
+turbias). I acknowledge to you that I thought the writing was so well
+dressed up, so much in conformity with what are not but should be my
+profoundest thoughts, so seemly for our luckless proletariat, that I
+accepted it unhesitatingly as if it had been inspired by myself, not
+making more than a very few modifications on some entirely Yankee
+points of view which would have put me in a very ridiculous position,
+and I gave my consent to two things:--that it should be published in
+English and Spanish, and that it should be amply paid for.”
+
+“About how much was the cost of this work?”
+
+“Some fifty thousand pesos.” (Como unos cincuenta mil pesos.)[3]
+
+Toward the end of the Diaz régime and in an effort to refute the
+attacks made in a book by the present writer called, “Diaz, Czar of
+Mexico,” the cientificos inspired James Creelman to write “Diaz,
+Master of Mexico”; whole chapters were also dedicated in an effort
+to discredit the exposé by J. K. Turner in his “Barbarous Mexico.”
+Several books published in the United States and England were bought
+by Diaz. One was “Porfirio Diaz,” by R. de Zayas Enriquez, and the
+other “Yucatan, the American Egypt,” by Tabor and Frost. The Mexican
+government inspired their consul in Cuba, J. F. Godoy, to write a
+book, “Porfirio Diaz,” which had “seventy pages of endorsements of
+Diaz written by prominent Americans.” Here we have the case of a man,
+Mr. Godoy, who actually went about--or sent about--among senators,
+congressmen, diplomats and cabinet officers, soliciting kind words
+for President Diaz.[4] Porfirio Diaz and his cientifico supporters
+thought that they could keep the Mexicans, peons, and the middle class
+workingmen down if public opinion in Europe and in the United States
+was misinformed about the real conditions in Mexico.
+
+The great reputation of General Diaz in America and Europe was
+essentially manufactured through laudatory articles in the press,
+magazines, weeklies and daily papers, by the publication of books,
+interviews of prominent Americans who came back from a visit to the
+“Great Old Man” in Chapultepec, who could have said as Macbeth, “And
+I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.” Judges,
+congressmen, senators, governors, members of cabinets, even presidents,
+princes and kings spoke in reverence and admiration of Don Porfirio
+Diaz.
+
+What chance had any patriotic, democratic, and free loving Mexican
+against the avalanche of lies, deliberate and unconscious falsehoods?
+Whoever heard in the United States of the Massacre of Papantla where
+20,000 Mexican peasants, men, women and children were shot down in
+cold blood, and as a result half a dozen villages wiped off the map of
+Mexico?
+
+What newspaper in America published the story of the revolution of
+Tomochic, when 15,000 mountaineer peasants in Chihuahua were destroyed
+and only forty old men and women were left to tell the tale? And
+the murder of 15,000 men, the whole male population of Juchitan,
+State of Oaxaca, in revenge for the death of Diaz’s brother, and the
+assassination of 750 workingmen of the Orizaba cotton mills?
+
+Workingmen in Mexico were killed if they attempted to unionize or to
+strike, the peasants were slaughtered to take away from them their
+rights under the law; the Yaqui Indians were deported and sold into
+slavery in Yucatan to permit the great landowners in Sonora to sell
+their land to American syndicates. Anybody who protested orally or in
+writing was thrown into jail, where imprisonment was worse than death.
+We reproduce the description by a Mexican of a night passed in the
+prison of Belem, Mexico City.
+
+ May 16.
+
+ I dare not credit the testimony of my senses. I cannot yet believe all
+ that I have suffered in that horrible night which has just passed;
+ a night of horrible dreams, a succession of repugnant nightmares,
+ terrific, phantastic, demoniacal, impossible, inconceivable and
+ nevertheless perfectly and completely real. I thought the night would
+ be endless. I fancied myself in the infernal regions, in a hell as the
+ heated phantasy of the poet of maniacal brain never conceived it.
+
+ The prison is a sort of a room of 50 yards in length by 6 broad and 5
+ in height, that is to say 1500 cubic yards. Within its walls sleep 800
+ individuals according to my calculation. The hygienists claim that 12
+ by 14 cubic yards of air are necessary in a dwelling for each person:
+ in that space we did not even have 2 cubic yards each.
+
+ All the ventilation consists in an iron grating at the entrance at one
+ extremity and a window at the other end.
+
+ How could 800 persons stay in that small space? It is a mystery to me;
+ I have seen it and still I cannot explain it, and I am almost willing
+ to admit the penetrability of the bodies.
+
+ The men lie down in two rows, feet to feet and the head against the
+ wall. Those who arrive first or the strongest lie on the ground,
+ those who follow do as best they can by lying between two bodies
+ cradle-wise. Everybody must perforce sleep sideways. For this reason
+ quarrels and fights are frequent and occasionally they end in wounds
+ and sometimes in death.
+
+ In this prison there are some revolting W. C.’s. They are cleaned
+ in the morning, but as the night advances they are used constantly
+ and as there is no running water, the fecal matter and the urine run
+ over onto the ground soaking those who sleep near them. Some wretches
+ even sleep seated on those barrels, and bitter fights take place when
+ somebody wants to use them and for that purpose they are forced to
+ disturb the sleepers on top of the barrels. Others prefer to commit
+ nuisance where they happen to be, against the companions who happen to
+ be near them and that occasions new fights.
+
+ The atmosphere is so fetid that it almost chokes and asphyxiates you.
+ It is so dense that you can almost cut it with a knife.
+
+ This dungeon is lighted by some electric lamps whose rays can barely
+ penetrate the atmosphere. Eight hundred men habitually dirty, clad in
+ pestilential rags, the respiration of all those lungs, the emanations
+ of all these bodies, the filth of those barrels.... I am horrified at
+ the remembrance of it all and I am wondering that I am still alive.
+
+ Soon after the prisoners have settled to sleep, from the different
+ walls there starts a downward immigration of myriads of parasitical
+ insects. One cannot possibly conceive the innumerable number of
+ bed-bugs, some of enormous size, lice of all classes, fleas,
+ mosquitoes and cock-roaches. They assure me that the prisoners become
+ accustomed to all these parasites and they do not heed them. The truth
+ is that besides myself I did not notice anybody paying any attention
+ to them.
+
+ Only three persons were privileged to use cots; the head keeper and
+ two head men. I could not find a place to lie down. The head keeper
+ saw me standing and understood the reason of my perplexity and
+ authorized me to sleep under his cot. At first I took this offer as an
+ insult; later I understood the full value of that concession which was
+ not gratis but cost me 25 cents.
+
+ It had just struck nine at the prison clock when suddenly and
+ accidentally all the electric lights went out. The darkness was
+ absolute. Immediately a formidable roar arose from that mob and a
+ fearful struggle began. There were heard shouts of hatred, fearsome
+ lamentations, blasphemies, the voices of the head men trying to impose
+ order and shouting to the prisoners to keep silent, but without avail.
+ It was undescribable uproar.
+
+ Soon afterwards footsteps of soldiers were heard nearing the door.
+ An employé arrived with the escort bringing a lantern along. He
+ opened the grated door with a great deal of noise and gave order to
+ the soldiers to fire in case of further disorder. Then everything
+ was silent as if by incantation. The turnkey asked for the oil lamps
+ hanging on the walls, lighted them and distributed them to the head
+ men to place them in their corresponding places. From time to time the
+ silence was interrupted by some stifled groans.
+
+ The turnkey ordered the formation of rows to make ready for the roll
+ call. They brought the register and the prisoners going into the
+ corridor after their names being called. Some did not appear, others
+ answered in a dying voice. All the prisoners able to do so went back
+ to rest. There were three dead and seventeen wounded. Who are the
+ authors of these crimes? They have so far not discovered them, and
+ those who know the way of the prison claim that they never will be
+ found. The prisoners no matter how strict the vigilance and how often
+ they search them succeed in hiding pieces of bones which form part of
+ the meat rations, and these bones they sharpen against the stones of
+ the floor until they become as sharp and pointed as daggers. Those
+ are the weapons used in their fights. They also employ scissors, and
+ spoons and other instruments which are used in their different trades
+ and which they manage to steal.
+
+ Every time that there is a riot as happens when the lights go out
+ then some of the most hardened prisoners take advantage of this fact
+ to revenge themselves or to wound those nearest to them, without any
+ provocation, and it is very difficult to discover the author of the
+ crime as many are spattered with blood owing to the crowded conditions
+ of the dormitory.
+
+ Many of the wounds result from the indiscriminate use of the stick in
+ the confusion and darkness by the head men, who do so in self-defence
+ or in fear.
+
+ After the dead and wounded had been taken to the hospital they locked
+ us up again calling the names anew and leaving two guards at the gate
+ to fire at the first sign of disorder. I went back to my place under
+ the cot of the head keeper thinking to myself that the solitary cell
+ in spite of the “incommunicacion” was preferable to this dangerous and
+ filthy galley. I did not sleep a wink all night long. At 6 o’clock in
+ the morning they opened the gate and all this sickening lee contained
+ was vomited forth.
+
+ I was one of the first ones to go out and I nearly fainted when I
+ felt the fresh air of the morning. Mr. H.... was waiting for me and
+ he invited me to breakfast with him in the department of distinction.
+ Later he asked to see the warden so as to get me a permit to go over
+ to his department.
+
+ Meanwhile I jotted down those notes although I did not know how I
+ managed to do so as my head seems to be a vacuum. I think I have a
+ beginning of fever.
+
+Not only were Mexicans persecuted in their own country, but when
+Mexican liberals fled across the border into the United States,
+thinking that they could tell the truth and publish it in the American
+press, they were persecuted and imprisoned through the orders of
+the Mexican Ambassador in Washington to the Attorney Generals under
+Theodore Roosevelt, and William H. Taft. Some of the liberals were even
+kidnapped across the Mexican border and sent to rot in the fortress of
+San Juan de Ulloa in Vera Cruz. Manuel Sarabia, F. Flores Magon, L.
+Rivera and Antonio I. Villareal were the pioneers of Mexican agitation
+against Diaz. “Mother” Jones by suggestion of the writer before his
+imprisonment for libel against a Diaz official, induced Congressman
+W. B. Wilson of Pennsylvania (Secretary of Labor in the Cabinet of
+Wilson), to investigate the persecution of Mexican liberals in the
+United States by American officials in 1910. The result was a cessation
+of these persecutions and a renewal of agitation in the southwest and
+along the border.
+
+The agitation against the blood and iron rule of Porfirio Diaz
+was begun over six years before the Madero revolution; it was the
+preliminary work of untold numbers of martyrs who died unknown, crushed
+by the ruthless hand of the half-breed Czar.
+
+In every State governors, jefes politicos, and cientificos robbed the
+Indians of the land in their possession. By the year 1892 all the great
+bodies of agricultural land had passed from the possession of more than
+a million small farmers into the hands of less than fifty rich families
+and corporations of the Diaz clique.
+
+The State of Morelos (2,734 square miles) and a population of 179,614
+inhabitants, became practically the property of half a dozen families.
+In the State of Chihuahua one family alone, the Terrazas, owned as
+much land as the combined territory of Switzerland, Belgium and
+Holland. Towards the end of the Diaz régime nearly 3,000,000 Indians
+had been despoiled of their native land and General Diaz had sold over
+83,000,000 acres for the paltry sum of $3,000,000.
+
+The policy of General Diaz was to eliminate the Mexican Indian peons
+from valuable land and from an independent economic life into peonage
+in great haciendas, in great mines and factories where they could
+be more easily controlled by the rurales and the soldiers. At the
+height of Diaz’s rule, in 1908, when all the world was singing the
+pæans to the glory of Porfirio Diaz, the writer found out by personal
+investigation that the average salary for unskilled labor in the mines
+near the city of Pachuca (inh. 40,000) was three cents gold a day, and
+in the haciendas six cents gold.
+
+What was the result of this policy of despoliation and oppression?
+Simply that wages in the great haciendas, mines, and factories were
+kept as low as possible, while prices of food stuffs and necessities
+went up by the help of a rigid system of high tariff. The great
+haciendados, the foreign owners of mines and industrial concerns, the
+same ones who were reaping a golden harvest and singing the praise of
+Diaz’s rule were buying labor in Mexico at a very low Mexican silver
+rate and were selling the result of this labor at a gold rate.
+
+The press agents of Diaz spoke of the perfect school system inaugurated
+at the beginning of his rule. General Diaz never could have crushed
+Mexico in the iron grip of his hand if education had been as general
+as was claimed. The percentage of illiteracy in the thirty-five years
+of the czar’s rule was lowered from ninety to eighty-six per cent.
+but only in the cities. The rural school system was almost completely
+neglected, or was turned over to the care of priests and nuns.
+
+It was this fourteen per cent. of the people who could read and write,
+which organized the agitation in Mexico under tremendous difficulties
+and by unheard-of sacrifices.
+
+The political advisers of Diaz never dreamed that every Indian who was
+expatriated, every workingman who saw the murders of his companions,
+every Mexican who suffered from an unjust imprisonment, became an
+incipient rebel, only awaiting the time that a leader would show them
+their strength and the way to break the chains of their economic and
+political slavery.
+
+It could never be imagined by the rich foreign investors in Mexico
+who had observed the patient and ignorant peons, that no matter how
+pacific, how miserable and subdued a race, the day would come when they
+must rebel and evolve into a daring and independent race.
+
+The same happened in France through the revolution. Read the
+description written by Mirabeau’s father of the savage-looking,
+long-haired, barefoot peasants who came down from the mountains, and
+the older Mirabeau’s prophetic reflections on the subject.
+
+The worst offenders and the greatest enemies to Mexican political
+and economic freedom were the foreigners; they always stood by the
+oppressors with their financial and moral influence in Mexico, in
+the United States and in Europe. Without this powerful help Diaz
+would never have lasted thirty-five years. Foreigners in Mexico were
+treated with a deference and were allowed privileges unknown to the
+average Mexican. Porfirio Diaz always raised the spectre of American
+intervention when he wanted to frighten restless Mexicans.
+
+The only friends of liberal Mexico were the Socialists and the
+organized workingmen in Europe and especially in the United States
+who understood from the beginning the danger of an enslaved, ill-paid
+proletariat across the border. The great agitation which exposed the
+iron rule of Diaz was helped by Socialists and the proletariat in the
+United States, and made it easy for Madero and his friends to plot and
+organize a revolution across the border.
+
+The foreign bankers, concessionaires, “friends of the friends” of
+General Diaz, wanted a continuation of peace at any price, even at the
+price of subjugation of all Mexican liberties, or if that failed, by
+American intervention, and as a result of it either American conquest
+or of American police rule as in Cuba.
+
+The successor of Diaz had been chosen by the invisible rulers of Diaz,
+everything about it was cut and dried, and even the list of members
+of the Cabinet of the successor had been drawn up. When a foreigner
+was asked about the economic and political rights of the Mexicans, he
+shrugged his shoulders and answered that Indians and niggers were not
+fit to rule themselves. The self-same Americans who would have started
+a revolution in their own country if political conditions had been as
+oppressive as in Mexico, spoke contemptuously of the valiant struggle
+of the middle class Mexicans. To my utter amazement I heard an American
+clergyman inform me after he had listened to a lecture of mine in favor
+of the Constitutionalists and the prophecy of a speedy downfall of
+Huerta, that he nevertheless believed Mexico needed strong men like
+Huerta and Diaz.
+
+Americans who invest money in Mexico cannot be blamed for being
+ignorant of Mexican conditions, but how about foreigners who live years
+in Mexico and come in daily contact with the people? Is it a wonder
+that Mexicans are suspicious of foreigners?
+
+Porfirio Diaz sold out his country to foreigners for a pittance, he
+made them rich and prosperous, and he used Mexican labor, freedom,
+and their suffering to raise himself on a pinnacle of fame unheard of
+to any other man of his times. Mexico was only Mexico, but Diaz was
+its prophet, its savior, its creator, its superman, and demi-god. The
+Mexicans were an unknown, negligible quantity and quality, and the
+fatal pseudo-greatness of Diaz was trumpeted across the world by an
+army corps of foreign concessionaries, exploiters and grafters. But the
+great Diaz myth like a monstrous Frankenstein destroyed itself in time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MADERO REVOLUTION, ITS AIMS AND FAILURES
+
+
+In the summer of 1908, when the writer was in Mexico he had heard that
+a man called F. I. Madero was writing a book, in which he discussed the
+advisability of contesting the seventh presidential election of General
+Diaz. The book was supposed to have been written in collaboration with
+a journalist who later was rewarded with the Governorship of Chiapas.
+
+“The Presidential Question of 1910,” the title of the book, had about
+ninety thousand words of written matter, and began with the War of
+Independence down to General Diaz’s régime when he tried to analyze the
+future political conduct of Diaz.
+
+Of the interview of General Diaz in _Pearson’s Magazine_ of 1908, he
+said: “We judge a study of his declarations to Creelman useless, as we
+do not believe they are sincere, for they are in manifest contradiction
+with his past acts, as General Diaz has always made promises which were
+never kept, from the Plan of la Noria down to the last one.”
+
+Although few intelligent Mexicans took General Diaz at his word, they
+nevertheless caught him for the first time in a flagrant political
+“faux pas” for not having denied the interview. They saw a chance to
+take him at his own words and start the work of organizing an agitation
+of the political conscience of Mexico.
+
+Madero’s book was a powerful factor in this propaganda, which was
+followed by a national organization of political clubs and speechmaking
+by a few daring young men of the middle class. This fearless, open
+propaganda copied the campaigning methods of the United States and
+Madero was the head of the movement.
+
+At first, Diaz, his political supporters and even the foreigners
+laughed at their rash, foolish crusade which they thought would soon be
+crushed and destroyed.
+
+The Diaz clique, the cientificos and the old supporters of the czar,
+men like General Reyes, General Naranjo, General Trevino, General
+Izabal, General Torres, General Terrazas, Gen. Mucio Martinez, T.
+Dehesa, R. Corral, J. Y. Limantour, E. Creel, Gen. G. Cosio, O. Molina
+would all have liked to be president, but they were too much in awe
+of the power of the old man in Chapultepec. Their political work was
+all done underground, they were all getting ready for the moment when
+General Diaz should step down gripped by the hand of death. None of
+them imagined that any Mexican, no matter how daring, could shake the
+foundation of the Diaz throne without the help of the middle class
+of Mexico. When the old guard observed the impunity of the Madero
+propaganda they guessed that it was going to be a repetition of the
+events in the presidential elections of 1903-04 when Diaz allowed
+his foolish enemies to come out in the open and then destroyed them
+wholesale and in detail.
+
+The great strength of Madero consisted in his peaceful methods of
+propaganda and his constant advice to Mexicans to be patient under the
+persecutions of the government agents. He advised them to suffer even
+imprisonment and death so as to awaken the interest of the majority who
+would soon follow their example.
+
+Madero was assisted in his campaign by his brother Gustavo and a young
+lawyer Roque Estrada, and was accompanied everywhere by his wife,
+even in jail. Roque Estrada wrote about the evolution of the Madero
+revolution and divided it into four parts:
+
+1. The Awakening of the Mexican political soul.
+
+2. The Concentration of the revolutionary propaganda.
+
+3. The Destruction of the Diaz régime.
+
+4. The Reconstruction of the new government.[5]
+
+The campaign continued under difficulties, when the supporters of Diaz
+awakened to the fact that Madero was growing popular. Then on the 6th
+of June, 1910, came the news of his arrest.
+
+It must be added that one of the reasons for the indifference of the
+authorities to the Madero propaganda was the firm conviction that F. I.
+Madero was a fool, an idiot, who was being used by powerful enemies to
+initiate a counter campaign against Diaz. A second reason was the fact
+that Madero belonged to a wealthy and politically influential family
+of which the head, Don Evaristo, had been Governor of Coahuila during
+General Gonzalez’ term (1880-84). Moreover, the Maderos had financial
+connections in New York, Paris and London.
+
+Besides the head of the family, every member of the Madero clan had
+disowned Francisco I. Madero’s political activities with the exception
+of his wife and Don Gustavo. It was a repetition of the story of Joseph
+in the Old Testament: F. I. Madero like Joseph was sold out by this
+brother’s family. There was a radical wing in the Madero movement
+headed by Gustavo Madero which believed that all the peaceful methods
+of agitation were useless and that the only successful method of
+overthrowing the dictator was to be effected in the same way by which
+he had come into power--by revolution.
+
+F. I. Madero insisted on peaceful methods, so Gustavo without informing
+his brother went to Paris ostensibly to organize a Mexican Railway of
+the Centre. As soon as he cashed the first instalment of the moneys for
+the construction ($375,000)[6] he used it to buy arms and ammunition
+for the revolution which was certain to burst out in a few months.
+
+In San Luis Potosí, October 5th, 1910, Don F. I. Madero, who by this
+time had become convinced of the futility of peaceful propaganda,
+wrote the famous Plan. A few days later he was advised that there was
+an order for his arrest which would be followed by the application of
+the “Ley Fuga.” Disguised as a common laborer he fled into the United
+States on October 7th, and went to San Antonio. Some New York papers
+had long accounts of his flight and plans, sent by their correspondents
+but the news was not published.
+
+The Plan of San Luis Potosí was a direct challenge to Porfirio Diaz,
+and it used almost the same slogan which General Diaz had written on
+the Plan de la Noria against Juarez and later his Plan de Tuxtepec and
+Palo Blanco which was: “Effective suffrage and no re-election.”
+
+A great deal has been published about the great promises of land reform
+and distribution of great estates by F. I. Madero and which he could or
+would not fulfil.
+
+The exact wording of that famous Article 3d of the Plan has either been
+forgotten or misinterpreted. We reproduce the Article:
+
+_Article 3d_: “As a result of the abuses of the lands, numerous small
+proprietors, mostly Indians, have been despoiled of their lands by
+common consent of the ministry of Fomento or by the decisions of the
+Mexican courts. In justice to the old proprietors, they should be given
+back lands which have been taken away from them in such an arbitrary
+manner. The decisions of the Ministry of Fomento and of the courts
+will be subject to revision and it will be demanded of those who acted
+in such immoral fashion, to return the land to their original owners,
+besides paying them an indemnity. Only in case that the lands should
+have passed to a third party before the publication of this plan, will
+the original owners receive an indemnity from those whose spoliation
+benefitted them.”[7]
+
+Thus it will be seen that the Plan of San Luis Potosí aimed first of
+all to destroy the régime which had made the land robbery possible.
+
+After the capture of Juarez the whole Diaz Government was practically
+destroyed as a political force and the Reconstruction would have been
+easy with a new government. But the reactionary forces were at work to
+arrest the impetus of the revolution. Limantour came back from Paris
+and prepared the way to an entrance of the reactionaries by threatening
+to arrest Gustavo Madero for the misappropriation of money to the use
+of the revolution.
+
+Madero’s father and brother had to accept his conditions and went
+post haste to confer with F. I. Madero at the border. Limantour’s
+conditions were the cessation of hostilities and a constitutional
+transfer of the presidential power on the shoulder of the clerical
+L. de la Barra. Limantour’s clever, strategic movement arrested the
+radical impulse, put a few Maderistas in the Cabinet, and others in the
+Governorship, but the inexperience of the new men and the conscious
+inertia of ministers, like Ernesto Madero, Secretary of Finance
+and Rafael Hernandez, Secretary of Fomento, checked all effective
+attempts at reforms. The two radical brothers, the Vasquez Gomez, were
+eliminated. Limantour went back to Paris to watch from a distance and
+to direct the tactics of the policy of inertia.
+
+Meanwhile plots were hatched against the life of Madero. One almost
+succeeded at this time. While L. de la Barra was provisional President
+they sent F. I. Madero to confer with Zapata who agreed to meet him on
+condition that no federal troops should accompany Madero in Cuautla.
+General Huerta, who was in charge of the federal troops in Morelos
+broke the promise, and attacked Cuautla in hopes that Zapata would kill
+Madero for his supposed treachery. The common sense of Zapata saved
+Madero’s life.
+
+The first conspiracy against Madero happened when he was in Juarez and
+the cientificos had plotted his destruction by inciting the suspicious
+anger of men like Orozco and Villa against him. But Madero’s bravery
+saved him again. The cientifico plotters were said to be T. E.
+Obregon, F. Carbajal and Oscar Braniff. T. E. Obregon later became
+a member of Huerta’s cabinet and Carbajal the provisional president
+following the flight of General Huerta. As soon as Madero was elected
+the cientificos captured Orozco with money and started him as the head
+of a counter revolution before the President had been seated a month.
+Then they pushed General Reyes and later Felix Diaz and Vasquez Gomez
+to revolt against Madero.
+
+These movements although they failed, were kept up so as to show the
+world the incompetence and lack of popularity of the Madero régime.
+Zapata started on the war path incited by the cruelties of the federal
+generals and all over the country rich haciendados (ranchers) gave
+money to guerrilla leaders to keep up the anarchy and by attacks on
+American property and American citizens to invite American intervention.
+
+Twice the Taft régime attempted or threatened an invasion of Mexico
+and once they almost succeeded. The failure was due to the exposé of
+the little plot which resulted in the resignation of Dickinson, then
+Secretary of War.[8]
+
+It must be remembered that the Attorney General under Taft was a lawyer
+who had been a personal representative of Diaz in the United States,
+and among some of the lawyers who had been his partners was a brother
+of the President of the United States. All were interested in Mexico
+financially and politically.
+
+The threats of invasion by the Taft régime had a disastrous effect
+on the reorganization of the new government. Madero was surrounded
+by enemies at home and abroad. The army, the cientificos and the
+clericals were plotting at home. The Mexican Ambassador Calero had
+formed an alliance with the American Ambassador, hoping to step into
+the presidency as L. de la Barra had done. Calero went so far as to
+telegraph to some French bankers who were negotiating a loan to Madero,
+to stop until further orders; the further orders were supposed to come
+from the new government which Calero hoped to head.
+
+But meanwhile there should not come any financial assistance to Madero.
+In Congress men like F. Bulnes, Q. Moheno, J. M. Lozano headed the
+opposition which interfered with any plans of reform, by cutting off
+all financial help. Madero was just beginning to reap the fruit of his
+policy of conciliation.
+
+With few exceptions all the old Diaz appointments in the courts, in
+the States, in the consular and diplomatic service were kept in their
+places, and as a result the old methods were kept in vogue. All the
+army officers who had ruthlessly fought the revolutionists were left in
+their positions and the rebel chiefs were dismissed with thanks.
+
+With the new interests created by the Madero ascension to power there
+sprang up a hungry crowd of office seekers and a neo-cientifico
+régime headed by Ernesto Madero and Rafael Hernandez. It would not be
+supposed even as a fantastic flight of a poetical imagination that the
+neo-cientificos would sincerely attempt a reform of the government. E.
+Madero is reported as having said that the financial system left by
+Limantour worked like a Swiss watch. The only reform to men of great
+interests can be achieved in their favor, not against them.
+
+Zapata could only be induced to stop his rebellious activity by a
+solution of the agrarian problem in Morelos. The Cabinet Minister under
+Madero only incited the exasperation by sending men of Huerta’s stamp
+in their midst.
+
+It can be safely asserted that all the government officials in Mexico
+were inimical to reforms beginning with the Madero clan (excepting
+F. I. and Gustavo Madero), down to the lowest officials. The men
+who had fought for the revolution watched in disgust and dismay the
+disintegration of the revolutionary ideals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PLOTTING WHICH OVERTHREW MADERO
+
+
+We have seen in the foregoing chapter the mistakes which had been made
+by Madero. Being surrounded by enemies, he was too lenient with them,
+and it proved disastrous.
+
+Orozco, one of his chiefs of guerrilla, should have been
+court-martialled and shot in Juarez according to military rule. The
+same drastic penalty could have been applied without injustice against
+two other high officers in the Mexican army, who had rebelled against
+the authority--Felix Diaz and General Reyes. But Madero, besides being
+too humane for such methods, sincerely believed that leniency was a
+sign of strength. Assuredly it was, but only in case the cabinet and
+the government in general had been loyal to him. Some cabinet members
+plotted quite openly against him--A. G. Granados, for instance. The
+headquarters of the plotters were in Paris and Geneva, with a branch
+office in the New York Consulate. In Mexico Rodolfo Reyes was the soul
+of the movement. In Paris, Limantour and L. de la Barra worked together
+with General Mondragon to unravel the threads of the conspiracy in
+favor of Felix Diaz, who would represent the old Porfirista crowd, with
+the assistance of the clericals and the great landowners, and bankers,
+Americans as well as Mexican and French.
+
+In New York the plotters supported General Reyes as representing the
+army, especially the younger element. To all appearances the conspiracy
+was essentially a military mutiny backed by the científicos, the
+landed interest and the clericals. The most prominent army plotters
+were General Mondragon, General Reyes, General Blanquet, Gen. Felix
+Diaz, General Beltran, General Navarrete and General Huerta. Among the
+civilians were: M. Calero, A. G. Granados, T. E. Obregon, Vera Estañol,
+A. R. Gil, L. de la Barra, J. M. Lozano, Q. Moheno and Dr. Urrutia.
+The political and military heads, exemplified in the above mentioned
+names, represented the army, the científicos, the clericals, the landed
+aristocracy,--in fact, all the reactionary powers and none of the
+liberal or revolutionary tendencies of the people.
+
+In utter blindness, innocence and optimism, call it what you please,
+Madero scoffed at the idea of a plot which could overthrow him. He
+firmly believed that the Mexican people were behind him and would
+support him. He forgot that all the powers of reaction were well
+organized and that the Mexican people who supported him were not
+organized,--that they were at the mercy of a few political bandits
+without principles and without country.
+
+These unpatriotic politicians knew from experience that the foreign
+bankers, the foreign corporations, the American government and
+especially the American ambassador, were inimical to Madero, and
+hostile to liberal ideas, and would help them to resist any attempts to
+reform the land question or change the financial “status quo” as left
+over by J. Y. Limantour.
+
+When Gustavo Madero discovered the plot on February 4th, and learned
+of the conspirators, he took it to his brother, who laughed at him.
+The mutiny started on Sunday morning, the 9th of February. During five
+days Madero continued playing with fate, and when the rebellion, which
+was dated for the 16th of March, burst out on the 9th, he was taken by
+surprise. The plotters were scared into action six weeks before the
+date set, because they suspected treachery in their own ranks. On one
+side there existed the ambition of General Reyes, who was under the
+political management of his son Rodolfo, on the other side the ambition
+of Felix Diaz, whose mentor was General Mondragon. General Huerta’s
+ambitions were always latent, but were kindled and managed by his
+political tutor, Dr. Urrutia, who represented the clerical interests,
+as far back as the Diaz time.
+
+In the year 1908 a young painter, Dr. Atl, had to undergo an operation
+and went to the sanatorium of Dr. Urrutia. There he found General
+Huerta, who was then unknown to anybody except his own officers and
+soldiers. Dr. Atl was a “compadre” of Dr. Urrutia, and although a
+radical of the extremest type, Dr. Urrutia and General Huerta only
+laughed at him, humored him, but took him into their confidence.
+One afternoon as they were discussing political events, Dr. Urrutia
+exclaimed that ambitious and able men should prepare the way for the
+presidency after the death of General Diaz. Finally Dr. Urrutia said to
+General Huerta: “General, you look like presidential timber, you are
+capable and fearless and you control half of the army. Why don’t you
+begin to get ready?” General Huerta looked at Dr. Urrutia and Dr. Atl
+through half closed eyes, expressionless as a graven image, and after a
+long pause he said: “It is difficult, but it is not impossible.”
+
+During the Reyes-Diaz mutiny in Mexico City, General Huerta was in
+charge of the troops. He was making a great noise and killing off
+as many volunteers of Madero and non-combatants as possible. His
+ambition was to sap the strength of the Maderists and to terrorize the
+population of the city into acquiescence to any future pact.
+
+During these strenuous ten days Dr. Urrutia was seen going back and
+forth constantly between the house of the Bishop of Mexico and General
+Huerta. He was advising the soldiers and tying the strings which would
+lift the less experienced Huerta into the presidential chair, backed
+by the money and the prestige of the Church. During the ten days of
+constant bombardment, the citadel where Felix Diaz was entrenched was
+touched but twice by the Huerta guns, and the National Palace only
+twice also. An American officer who happened to be in Mexico City,
+backed the claim of General Angeles, that the citadel could have been
+taken in a few hours if Huerta had really been sincere in his attack.
+General Angeles proposed to carry the citadel if F. I. Madero would
+only place him at the head of the government troops. Madero refused for
+fear of hurting Huerta’s vanity, and hoped thus to prove that he had
+faith in his loyalty.
+
+We publish the account of events which followed the arrest of Madero
+and Suarez, by Mr. Marquez Sterling, who tried his best to save
+Madero’s life.
+
+ DECLARATION made by the Minister of the Republic of Cuba in Mexico,
+ Mr. Manuel Marquez Sterling, to the _Herald_.
+
+ It was exactly twenty-nine days after I presented my credentials to
+ President Madero, when the revolt in the City of Mexico started. I
+ shall not refer to the tragic scenes which took place during the
+ struggle in the city, from the 9th of February to the ruin of the
+ government, as the same are now well known to all the world; I shall
+ only refer to the fall of Mr. Madero, after ten days of terrible
+ disorder, during which, automobiles of diverse legations constantly
+ crossed the streets of the city.
+
+ On the morning of February 18th, in a conference which I had with the
+ Secretary of Foreign Relations, Pedro Lascurain, he assured me that
+ in the afternoon the revolt would receive a decisive blow, and that
+ the city would return to the hands of the government. Precisely at
+ two o’clock in the afternoon, I received notice that General Blanquet
+ had made the President and his cabinet prisoners. A short time later
+ we were called to the American Embassy by Mr. Henry Lane Wilson and
+ informed of this extraordinary event.
+
+ General Blanquet verified the arrest by order of General Huerta, and
+ as a consequence, the sharpshooting in the streets ceased. In the
+ evening, the Ministers of Chile, Brazil and I visited the American
+ Embassy, looking for further news. We there met General Huerta and
+ Gen. Felix Diaz, who for several days had fought in the streets of
+ Mexico. They were accompanied by other persons, such as the actual
+ Minister of Justice, Lic. Rodolfo Reyes. Reyes then read in a loud
+ voice, in our presence, a document in which both Generals agreed
+ upon the ceasing of hostilities. Huerta and Diaz later signed this
+ document, embracing immediately afterwards, while their companions
+ applauded; the diplomats did not applaud, remaining as mute witnesses
+ of a scene which was unexplainable to us.
+
+ On the 19th, in the morning, I left the Cuban Legation and went
+ through several streets, in order to get an idea of the popular
+ sentiment. I heard the death of Gustavo Madero discussed, of whose
+ capture I had already heard, they saying that he had been assassinated
+ in the arsenal, and that in the afternoon Huerta would execute
+ the president himself. They also stated that the Vice-President,
+ Pino Suarez, had tried to escape. While I listened to all this,
+ a distinguished Mexican gentleman, whose name I shall not state,
+ detained me and said: “You and the members of the Diplomatic Corps are
+ the only ones who can save Madero.”
+
+ On returning to the Legation, this idea had taken possession of my
+ mind, and for that purpose I immediately sent a note to the American
+ Ambassador, communicating the matter to him and proposing to him that
+ the Diplomatic Corps should take charge of the same. In the name of
+ my government, I offered the services of the Cruiser _Cuba_ (which
+ some days previous I had requested from my government, and which was
+ anchored in Vera Cruz) to save them from danger, taking them away from
+ the country, in case they should obtain their liberty. I immediately
+ went to the Japanese Legation to see the parents of the President,
+ who had heard of the death of their son, Gustavo, and which they did
+ not credit. They begged me therefore, to go to Mr. Wilson and beg him
+ to aid us with General Huerta, to save the lives of their two sons.
+ The Chargé d’Affaires of the Japanese Legation accompanied me to the
+ American Embassy and we made our proposition known to the Ambassador.
+
+ We there met the Spanish Minister, and he and I agreed that the
+ situation was more serious than we had thought, and therefore
+ determined to personally see General Huerta, asking him for the lives
+ of the prisoners. We went in my automobile, flying the Cuban flag, but
+ we were not able to see Huerta. Instead, we were received by General
+ Blanquet, who treated us with great courtesy, assuring us that they
+ would respect the lives of the prisoners, and while this was passing
+ the Minister of Chile arrived, telling us that Madero had consented to
+ resign as President of the Republic, and that the Secretaries of State
+ and other persons who had been made prisoners with Madero and Pino
+ Suarez, had been set at liberty.
+
+ On the morning of the 19th nevertheless, a representative of Huerta
+ urged Madero to resign. Madero replied to this messenger that he
+ was now resolved to resign, provided that he who had usurped his
+ place should govern according to the Constitution. While they were
+ explaining this, Mr. Lascurain went to see Madero, as a mediator, to
+ whom Madero expressed the conditions under which he would resign.
+ Lascurain, in Huerta’s name, accepted. These conditions were: that the
+ resignation should be delivered to the Minister of Chile, who would
+ retain it in his possession until Madero and Pino Suarez should be
+ safely aboard the _Cuba_ in Vera Cruz. Madero stipulated also that
+ in the trip to Vera Cruz, they should be accompanied by the Chargé
+ d’Affaires of Japan and myself, Madero insisting principally in that,
+ before delivering the resignation to Congress, Huerta should sign a
+ letter, in which he would promise to comply with the terms of same.
+
+ That same afternoon Madero signed his resignation, and further, as
+ Lascurain was present, he granted, at his indication, that the affair
+ should be ventilated among Mexicans, handing the resignation to
+ Lascurain, instead of delivering it to the Minister of Chili. It was
+ then stipulated that at ten o’clock that night Madero and Pino Suarez
+ would leave for Vera Cruz in a special train, together with their
+ families, and accompanied by myself and an official of the Japanese
+ legation, and escorted by a powerful guard.
+
+ Having communicated this arrangement to the office of General
+ Blanquet, I ascended to General Huerta’s department to see him, but
+ I was informed that he was sleeping. I immediately returned to the
+ office of General Blanquet, where the Ministers of Chile and Spain
+ awaited me. We then asked for permission to see Madero and same was
+ immediately conceded to us, going to the four first rooms, in which he
+ was confined.
+
+ Madero warmly expressed his gratitude to me, begging me to accompany
+ him to Vera Cruz, which request I was pleased to accede to.
+
+ “When you are ready,” he told us, “come to the palace in order to go
+ to the station. It would be well if you could come at eight, but at
+ any rate I shall wait for you until ten o’clock.”
+
+ I then left, and immediately went to telegraph to the Commander of the
+ _Cuba_ that he should expect us, being ready to sail from Vera Cruz,
+ and that he should do what was necessary in order to receive aboard
+ the Heads of the Government and their families.
+
+ At eight o’clock I was punctually at the Palace, making my proposition
+ known to General Blanquet. He ordered one of his aides to accompany
+ me; the four rooms occupied by Madero and Pino Suarez were connecting.
+ The door of one of the rooms faced the yard, and there were many
+ soldiers and officials in the entrance; there were also sentinels in
+ the interior of the sparsely furnished rooms, sentinels who, according
+ to what I knew were replaced each moment. General Angeles, one of the
+ official favorites of Madero, was also a prisoner in these rooms.
+ Ernesto Madero was there visiting his nephew.
+
+ Receiving us affectionately, Madero asked me if I knew anything about
+ his brother Gustavo, and it could be seen that he did not know of his
+ death. I evaded the question to the best of my ability. Suddenly,
+ Madero asked about the letter that he had to give to Huerta. None
+ of us had it, and then Ernesto Madero said that he would go and get
+ it from Huerta. Almost immediately he returned without it, but with
+ the news that Lascurain had gone to present Madero’s resignation to
+ Congress.
+
+ On knowing this, Madero became very excited, and from that moment
+ lost all hope of salvation. “I have fallen into a trap for the second
+ time,” he said, indicating to his uncle that he should go and tell
+ Lascurain that he wished him to come immediately. Then Ernesto Madero
+ confessed the truth to him, telling him that the resignation had
+ already been presented and accepted by Congress. “This is a felony
+ of Lascurain,” said Madero. “The agreement was that the resignation
+ should not be presented until I was aboard the _Cuba_.”
+
+ In those moments, we knew by the conduct of an official that Huerta
+ had just been designated as Provisional President by Congress.
+
+ “This has been the second trap into which I have fallen,” Madero
+ finally said to me. “I am now convinced that I shall not leave Mexico
+ alive. They will conduct me to prison this same night, and on the
+ trip, they will shoot me, or else they will assassinate me right here,
+ as soon as we are alone.”
+
+ Ernesto Madero begged me to remain with him, telling me that if they
+ succeeded in surviving that night, that probably the Diplomatic Corps
+ would be capable of saving them. I decided to accompany them, for how
+ could I have the heart to take my hat and leave them, being persuaded
+ that these men would be dead as soon as I was in the street? Ernesto
+ finally left us, Madero, Pino Suarez and I remaining in these gloomy
+ rooms.
+
+ At one o’clock in the morning he invited me to rest, indicating to me
+ that he was very sleepy, and without the least agitation, this man who
+ had just been deposed from the Presidency, commenced to prepare two
+ beds with chairs, one for himself and the other for me.
+
+ He had finished his labor, when an official sent by General Huerta
+ arrived, he having ordered him to tell us that the train arranged to
+ conduct the prisoners out of the country was conveniently ready, but
+ on account of circumstances which he would explain later, it had been
+ impossible to despatch it. The same official invited me to retire and
+ wait. And as, previously, something had been said in regard to the
+ train being ready to leave at five o’clock in the morning, I asked the
+ official if this was in the programme, but he replied that he did not
+ know anything. As soon as I saw Madero sleep, I went to keep company
+ with Pino Suarez, first giving a glance at Madero, who slept like a
+ child. At this moment, the guards entered and turned out the lights.
+
+ From the upper crevices of the windows some rays of light penetrated,
+ but they did not molest us. We were so closely guarded, that any
+ phrase which passed between Pino Suarez and myself had to be spoken
+ in a very low voice.
+
+ At 9:30 in the morning breakfast was served to us. Pino Suarez did not
+ wish to take the coffee, fearing that it might be poisoned, but Madero
+ and I took it. Then Madero gave the boy who had served us a dollar,
+ and told him to bring us the morning papers. We did not permit this,
+ fearing that he might find out about Gustavo’s death. Madero became
+ resigned, lying down on his bed of chairs, where he slept for twenty
+ minutes.
+
+ When he awakened, he said he was prepared for everything that might
+ happen, but he indicated to me that I should approach the diplomats in
+ order to save him, which I promised to do with pleasure. He also asked
+ me if his wife had also made any petition personally to Huerta.
+
+ About ten o’clock in the morning, the wife of Pino Suarez arrived,
+ accompanied by a gentleman, and I then took leave of them.
+
+ The balance of that day, February 20th, and the two following days,
+ we worked to save Madero. I asked Huerta why he had not given his
+ consent in this respect, to which he replied that he did not dare send
+ Madero to Vera Cruz, until he could have confidence in the military
+ authorities of that place. I, in turn, indicated to him that he might
+ be sent to Tampico, where I could have the _Cuba_ sent. He further
+ showed himself irresolute. Almost all the foreign ministers saw
+ Huerta personally that day, and interceded for the life of Madero.
+
+ On the morning of the 22d, the ministers thought the lives of Madero
+ and Pino Suarez to be out of danger, although we had heard the rumor
+ that they schemed to place Madero in an insane asylum. At night
+ all the ministers approached the American Embassy to celebrate the
+ anniversary of the birth of Washington. Huerta and all the Ministers
+ in his Cabinet were present and they all appeared very calm.
+
+ On the morning of the following day, Sunday, I was very urgently
+ called to the telephone. It was Mrs. Madero, who was very excited
+ on account of the news she had received that her husband had been
+ wounded. I answered that this could not be true, but a little later I
+ read in the morning papers the event of the death of Madero and Pino
+ Suarez at 11:15 the previous night, on being taken to the penitentiary.
+
+ Ambassador Wilson finally tried to obtain permission for Mrs. Madero
+ to see the body of her husband. We then believed that the balance
+ of the family were in danger, and I hastily proposed to take them
+ from the country. I personally sent in a secret manner to Vera Cruz,
+ Francisco Madero, father of the assassinated president, and his
+ brother Ernesto, and they embarked on the _Cuba_.
+
+ I later conducted the mother, widow and sister of the President to
+ the _Cuba_, leaving Vera Cruz on February 25th.
+
+Mr. Marquez Sterling has belonged to the Diplomatic Corps of the
+Republic of Cuba several years, and has occupied the post of Minister
+in Argentine, Peru and Brazil. During the administration of President
+Palma, he was counsellor of the Department of State. He presented his
+resignation as Minister of Mexico after the murder of Madero and Suarez.
+
+In the account of the events leading to the murder of Madero
+and Suarez, Mr. Marquez Sterling mentions the excitement of the
+prisoner-president when he discovered that Don Pedro Lascurain had
+turned over the written resignation of Madero into Huerta’s hands.
+
+What happened was told by Lascurain himself. As soon as General Huerta
+heard that Pedro Lascurain had Madero’s resignation in his possession,
+he asked to see him and begged him with great insistence to give him
+the valuable paper. Don Pedro Lascurain was obdurate, so the cunning
+old Indian, knowing that Lascurain was a devout Catholic, fished
+out the holy medallion hanging by a chain to his neck. “See this
+medallion,” said Huerta. “It is the most precious thing I possess; it
+was given to me by my mother when I was a little boy. I promise you
+on all that is holy and sacred to me, I swear on the white head of my
+sainted mother, the memory of this holy image, that if you give me
+the President’s resignation, I shall guarantee his life,” and as he
+finished the sentence he kissed the holy medallion.
+
+Don Pedro Lascurain, convinced, handed him the paper with the
+resignation of Madero and Suarez. The next day General Huerta was
+visited by the Belgian, Spanish and Japanese Ministers who asked him
+to guarantee the life of the ex-President and Vice-president. Huerta
+answered:
+
+“Gentlemen, will you guarantee to me that if I permit Madero and Suarez
+to go out of Mexico, that they will not start another revolution
+against my government in the United States?” The three diplomats
+declared that they could not give such promises.
+
+“Then,” he exclaimed, “gentlemen, how can I be made responsible for
+their lives?” The diplomats left the general without answering.
+
+As the price of blood, the generals and the civilians demanded the
+heads of Madero and Suarez; the most insistent of all was Don Rodolfo
+Reyes, who called for victims to avenge the death of his father in
+front of the National Palace. Adolfo Basso’s life was also sacrificed
+with that of Gustavo Madero’s. The Huerta Cabinet went into power like
+a Black Hand Cabinet, after the assassination of its enemies. This
+infamous list should be remembered by all who are interested in the
+reconstruction of Mexico, and who speak of amnesty.
+
+  General Huerta, Provisional President.
+  L. de la Barra, Foreign Affairs.
+  A. García Granados, Interior.
+  Rodolfo Reyes, Justice.
+  T. Esquivel Obregon, Finance.
+  General Mondragon, War.
+  J. Vera Estañol, Instruction.
+  A. Robles Gil, Fomento.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HUERTA IN POWER--THE LANDING OF AMERICAN MARINES IN VERA CRUZ
+
+
+When we speak of revolutions we must consider three facts. First,
+that in Mexico’s history there have been only three real revolutions:
+the revolution which overthrew Spanish rule, the three years’ war
+(1857-60), and the Madero revolution, which began with the overturning
+of the Diaz régime and was continued by the Carranza revolution and
+the flight of Huerta. Secondly, it must be remembered that all other
+political and military upheavals, of long or short duration, cannot be
+called revolutions but are in fact either mutinies or revolts or coups
+d’état or as the Mexicans call them “cuartelazos.” And lastly, that
+no revolution can hope of success unless it is backed by the majority
+of the middle class, and no successful revolution can be organized
+with foreign and especially American money with concessionary strings
+attached to it.
+
+General Huerta with a soldier’s training and temperament, and an
+unsympathetic knowledge of his country’s history, thought that for the
+sake of getting and staying in power the control of the army was the
+only possible road. Not only Huerta, but his most prominent supporters
+made the mistake of confusing cruelty, brutality and treachery with
+power.
+
+Huerta’s cunning was believed to be statesmanship, but very soon his
+Machiavellian “double crossing” of Felix Diaz, Rodolfo Reyes and
+General Mondragon, pointed to his methods of procedure. The elimination
+of his more powerful enemies and the mysterious disappearance of the
+less known enemies, showed that wholesale assassinations were as
+frequent as under Diaz’s rule. Nevertheless, if Diaz was ruthless he
+was at least more careful of public opinion. The foolish excuse that a
+rescuing party had been responsible for the accidental death of Madero
+and Suarez, laid bare to the world the inner circumvolution of Huerta’s
+political brain.
+
+A simpleton could have advised him that Madero murdered was much more
+to be feared than Madero alive. Madero the martyr was remembered
+through his virtues and ideals, and all his faults, weaknesses and
+blunders were forgotten. What Madero alive could not achieve, Madero
+dead, united under one idea, one effort, one banner.
+
+Huerta’s supporters lacked what is essential in politics, psychological
+perception of public opinion. Huerta, the double-edged sword of the
+clericals, destroyed by his blunders the last vestige of clerical
+power which supported the militarists and reactionaries. Terrible
+sacrifices were enacted to strike terror into the hearts of political
+opponents. Secret agents lured the political victims into automobiles
+to a solitary spot near Mexico City, close to Guadalupe; then they were
+stabbed to death and hastily buried on the spot.
+
+The Huerta executioners were themselves in danger of being murdered for
+knowing too much, but their suspicion enabled them to escape death, and
+during Carbajal’s short rule they were caught and lived to tell the
+details of their gruesome work.
+
+Dr. Urrutia, once minister of the interior in Huerta’s cabinet was
+the chief executioner of the dictator. Senator Dominguez because he
+had attacked Huerta in the Senate and accused him of the murder of
+Madero and Suarez, and Mr. Rendon were driven gagged to Dr. Urrutia’s
+sanatorium in the suburbs. They were put to sleep under the influence
+of ether, their bodies were atrociously mutilated and when awakened
+to consciousness, they died of the loss of blood and the tremendous
+nervous shock.
+
+Such savage methods accelerated the disruption of the reign of terror
+and drove all elements into active co-operation under the leadership
+of Carranza. Secret agents were also sent to murder Carranza, Villa,
+Obregon, Gonzalez, but the game was too risky. The federal General
+Rabago succeeded in catching Abraham Gonzalez, governor of Chihuahua
+under Madero, and he was murdered by being pushed under the wheels of
+a moving train.
+
+A supporter of General Huerta when he foresaw the end of his friend
+went into exile. He claimed that he had escaped two dangers by leaving
+Mexico, one was a term in jail and the other a portfolio in Huerta’s
+cabinet.
+
+There was never a period in the history of Mexico when such a
+congregation of incompetents, of grafters, and murderous fools held
+sway; even in the world’s history there is difficulty in finding a
+parallel. We have to go back to Nero and Caracalla to find such a depth
+of infamy, cowardice and Sadism.
+
+Victoriano Huerta appeared as a demoniacal clown let loose on the
+political circus of Mexico City, in an infernal saturnalia of gore,
+drunkenness and prostitution. Huerta was the Avatar of greed, lust and
+alcoholism, a moral hyena laughing diabolically at the amazed world,
+a white-livered soldier pickled in cognac, a mental baboon grinning
+inanely at his own political antics.
+
+His own cabinet was chosen from among the best saloons, in the houses
+of prostitution and from the prisons. A meeting of the Cabinet was like
+a confab between maniacs, idiots and drunkards. A prominent Mexican who
+asked to be heard by the members of the Cabinet reported that he was
+interrupted by a minister before he could finish: “This is no time for
+reforms,” said he; “we must drown the whole country in blood.” Another
+suggested American intervention as the best method of uniting the
+warring revolutionary elements. “Then,” he added, smiling, “the fool
+gringos will do the dirty work for us and our lives and property will
+be respected.” A third member advised a repetition of the system of
+reconcentration as was inaugurated in Cuba by General Weyler.
+
+Cabinet meetings took place in a house several miles from Mexico
+City and later in the red light district and the famous Café Colon,
+whose proprietor was made a general. All the ministers were also made
+generals and had to appear in their uniforms. Everybody in the employ
+of the government was created an officer in uniform, even the teachers
+and clerks. Bartenders were made sergeants and it was reported that
+Doña Lupe of the Salto del Agua was appointed honorary Rear-Admiral of
+a squadron of cruisers. The sons of the ministers, especially those of
+General Blanquet and the sons and relatives of General Huerta received
+concessions for running gambling houses, for the sale of human beings
+into the army at so much per head, and contracts for the sale of arms,
+ammunition, uniforms and victuals to the War Department.
+
+A naturalized American named Ratner was indirectly responsible for the
+landing of the marines in Vera Cruz. Ratner was the president of the
+Tampico News Co.; during Madero’s time he was caught selling arms to
+Zapata and was deported under Article 33 of the Constitution.
+
+When General Huerta became dictator Ratner came back. Being fertile and
+unscrupulous in expedients, he became a favorite of the general. One
+day he advised the dictator to buy all the arms and ammunition for sale
+then in the United States, and for six months ahead so as to prevent
+the Constitutionalists from getting any at any price. It was discovered
+that the sum required for the purpose was too great so the order was
+limited to machine and field guns and ammunition. Twenty-five million
+dollars in gold was the price for this corner in war engines. Ratner
+engineered the whole scheme and shipped the material to Odessa in
+Russia. From Odessa they were sent to Hamburg and there reshipped for
+Vera Cruz.
+
+The United States secret service agents, who had been watching closely
+the sales of American manufacturers, did not at first understand the
+meaning of the elaborate and expensive shipping and reshipping.
+
+When the _Ypiranga_ headed for Vera Cruz the whole matter became
+clear. Huerta’s idea was to get first all the field guns in the
+United States so as to prevent the revolutionists from getting them;
+thereupon to force the United States to intervene in Mexico, counting
+on the patriotism of the Mexicans to fight the invaders. His idea was
+to concentrate all the revolutionary chiefs in the battles against
+the Americans and to eliminate them one by one when they could be
+reached more easily and without arousing suspicion. If that plot did
+not succeed, he had decided to permit the Americans to occupy Mexico
+City, knowing that they would respect the lives and properties of all
+factions.
+
+The Huerta conspiracy fell through because the Constitutionalists
+believed in the word and friendship of President Wilson and they
+mistrusted the word and patriotism of Huerta. It was soon afterwards
+that the dictator made up his mind to resign. By the acceptance of
+the A.B.C. mediation, the game was ended and he had decided to retire
+before it was too late. Ratner had succeeded in his undertaking and his
+commission was a million and a half in gold.
+
+Señor Don Fernando Iglesias Calderón related that while he was a
+prisoner in the castle of San Juan de Ulloa he heard that an order had
+been telephoned from the Commander of Vera Cruz to the Commander of the
+fort, to release, arm and dress about 300 convicts in civilian clothes.
+They were landed in Vera Cruz the night before the landing of American
+marines. In the morning General Maas, his officers and soldiers hastily
+retreated to the hills near Soledad.
+
+The blue jackets found no Federals, but the Mexican snipers who made
+such a desperate resistance were mostly ex-convicts who were promised
+their liberty if they fought the Americans. The shooting which emanated
+from the Naval Academy was directed by ex-prisoners and a few cadets
+who fought very bravely.
+
+Two days after the landing of the marines General Navarrete of the
+staff of General Maas passed through the American lines into the fort
+of Ulloa, where he tried to induce F. Iglesias Calderón to join Huerta
+in Mexico City and publish a manifesto uniting all factions against the
+hated Americans.
+
+Don Fernando Iglesias answered that he could not believe any
+promises made by Huerta and that he was quite certain that the
+Constitutionalists would not join the dictator even if they were
+forced to resist an American invasion in the north. A few days later
+the Commander of the fort under the advice of Don Fernando Iglesias
+released all the political prisoners.
+
+The Vera Cruz incident showed up the Federals as a despicable, cowardly
+lot,--they had to arm a few hundred ex-convicts and civilians to do the
+fighting for them.
+
+The retirement of the Federals to Soledad likewise proved that there
+was no serious intention to resist an advance of American soldiers to
+Mexico City, as the general line of march could never have been taken
+by way of Soledad, but only through the Cerro Gordo on the road to
+Jalapa by the Interoceanic Railroad, the same itinerary used by Scott
+in 1847. By advancing through the Cerro Gordo, Jalapa, Perote and
+Puebla, the American troops could have ignored or driven the Federals
+at Soledad into the mountains and by the capture of Esperanza cut off
+their communications in the rear. That would automatically have forced
+them to evacuate Soledad, Cordoba, and Orizaba. The whole campaign
+would have been a repetition of the treachery of Santa Anna in 1847.
+Fortunately for the Americans and Mexicans, President Wilson was too
+wise to fall into such a trap, and the Constitutionalists were too
+patriotic to play into the hands of Huerta.
+
+ NOTE.--The details about the arming of prisoners in Ulloa and the
+ landing of American marines in Vera Cruz were given to the writer by
+ Don Fernando Iglesias Calderón.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+Interested observers among the Americans and foreigners were wondering
+how the Constitutionalists could keep up a revolution against an
+organized military dictatorship like Huerta which had millions at
+its disposal; and strange to relate instead of getting weaker the
+revolutionists grew stronger and better organized; they seemed to have
+money to buy arms and ammunition, to run their local governments and
+even to send representatives to the United States, and Paris, London,
+Madrid and Barcelona, as well as social and political investigators
+into America and Europe. The Huerta Government was as surprised as
+the foreigners; they were certain that after a year of fighting, the
+backbone of the revolution would be broken, but instead, the offensive
+became so dangerous that General Huerta invited American intervention
+so as to save himself as well as his partisans from complete political
+annihilation.
+
+The Huerta agents in America accused the Constitutionalists of having
+borrowed money from great trusts or syndicates, and a New York paper
+published stolen letters to prove that Carranza had succeeded in
+getting loans from corporations. The letters served no other purpose
+than to advertise the lawyer who had been in the service of the Madero
+revolution, but as far as the source of financial support, it was as
+mysterious as ever.
+
+“How can they fight, eat and dress without money?” was asked. “How can
+they get the fighting material across the border when it is patrolled
+by American soldiers?” Everybody asked the question and nobody could
+answer it satisfactorily. But the suspicion was in the air that the
+revolutionists with their agents in the United States had received
+millions at a high rate and bartered in return for it oil, mining and
+railroad concessions. The senatorial investigation which had labored
+for months and published its results in a voluminous report did not
+prove that Madero had financed the revolution of 1910 with the help
+of American money. The money used by Gustavo Madero to finance his
+brother’s revolution seemed so small that the senators looked for
+greater sums borrowed from the United States to convince them in their
+suspicion that all Central American revolutions were started in Wall
+Street. But they forgot that Madero’s revolution was not initialed in
+New York’s financial centre, and that no great movement can succeed
+unless the lower or middle class fight for it.
+
+The fact is clear that no Mexican political leader or military chief
+could afford to be linked in any shape or manner with any foreign
+corporation, as that would have discredited him forever in the eyes of
+his countrymen.
+
+As a convincing example illustrating this assertion, the Madero
+revolutionary loan can be referred to. When Francisco I. Madero came
+into power his brother, Gustavo, put in a bill for 750,000 pesos
+($375,000) for expenses incurred by him during the revolution. As no
+vouchers or explanations were offered as to the origin of the money,
+accusations were made against Gustavo Madero that he had borrowed
+money at a high rate of interest from an American oil company and
+given in exchange valuable oil concessions to the detriment of a
+British oil company. After Gustavo’s death it was discovered that he
+had misappropriated $375,000 from the funds of a railroad company,
+organized in Mexico and financed in Paris to build a railroad from
+Camacho to Gomez Farias, and instead of using the money for railroad
+construction he had sunk it to buy arms and ammunition for his
+brother’s revolution. By his desperate and bold action, Gustavo Madero
+had risked his reputation and liberty and was saved in the nick of time
+from extradition proceedings by the success of the revolution.
+
+Later, instead of telling the truth, Gustavo Madero kept silent and in
+Mexico his enemies went so far as to accuse him of having practically
+delivered his brother’s government into the hands of a Yankee
+corporation. Those accusations cast a shadow on the whole Madero
+régime and were a great handicap to its success.
+
+Carranza, who is an older man of political and financial experience,
+realized from the beginning that he could not borrow money from
+American or foreign companies and decided to rely entirely on the
+resources of his own country. Impoverished as Mexico was by two
+successive revolutions, the work was slower and entailed great loss of
+lives and foreign property. Nevertheless, Carranza reasoned that if
+Mexico could not organize a revolution without foreign help it might
+as well give up the task and bend under the yoke of the dictator. The
+faith of Carranza in the resources of his country proved that he was
+right.
+
+It demonstrated first, that Mexico would go to any length rather than
+submit to the murderous régime of Huerta; secondly by forcing his
+adherents to organize local governments in every conquered state and
+city for the purpose of contribution and order, Carranza facilitated
+and accelerated the final political reconstruction of the government
+when his troops should enter Mexico City, and third and last he would
+create for himself and his supporters an impregnable position from the
+foreign as well as the Mexican enemies of his cause.
+
+Carranza is fifty-five years old, young enough to take the field
+personally and wise enough not to walk into pitfalls and mistakes
+excusable but not pardonable in a younger man. The blunders of the
+Madero régime were not lost upon him. Two of the most grievous mistakes
+committed by the Madero revolutionist leaders were the acceptance of
+foreign financial assistance and a compromise with the power which was
+being overthrown.
+
+As revolutions cost money and none was forthcoming or could be had
+after the murder of President Madero and Vice-president Suarez,
+Carranza convened the state legislation of Coahuila demanding from
+it the refusal of allegiance asked by General Huerta, and a vote to
+turn over to him the money of the state treasury for revolutionary
+purposes. Then he rode with a few followers on horseback through the
+federal lines across the mountains of the States of Durango and Sinaloa
+into Sonora, a State not connected directly by rail with Mexico City.
+Being more free there from molestation by federal soldiers than the
+other border States he helped to organize the government and made
+his headquarters for a while in Hermosillo, Sonora. The seizure of
+the border towns of Nogales and Agua Prieta opened the way to the
+importation of arms and ammunition and to the receipts of the custom
+houses. As the revolutionary troops on the border States captured more
+custom houses, as happened in Juarez, Ciudad P. Diaz, Nuevo Laredo,
+Matamoros and finally the seaport of Tampico, the revenues increased as
+well as the facilities for the importation of foodstuffs, clothing and
+ammunition.
+
+Carranza and his sub-chiefs had five different methods of acquiring
+financial support in northern Mexico.
+
+1. The interior war tax, which was paid by Mexican and foreign
+commercial mining and industrial firms doing business in the northern
+States, besides the taxes paid by the “haciendados” or land owners,
+farmers.
+
+2. Custom house duties at all the border towns on imports and exports,
+that is to say on foodstuffs, cattle, ore, metal, clothing, etc., which
+were paid in gold as arms and ammunition bought by the rebels had to be
+paid in gold.
+
+3. Forced loans from the enemies of the Constitutionalists.
+
+4. Voluntary loans by the friends of the revolution such as rich
+Mexican landowners, capitalists and miners.
+
+5. The creation of an interior debt by the issue of paper money to be
+circulated in all the territory under the power of the revolution and
+the prohibition to circulate the bills issued by the Banco Nacional of
+Mexico City on February 18th, 1913, at the order of General Huerta.
+
+In a pamphlet of recent date there will be found the decrees and other
+transactions of the Constitutionalist army. The official publication
+born in Chihuahua, 1914, prints the date of each one of the decrees
+permitting the printing of paper money. The first issue of paper money
+was emitted for 5,000,000 pesos on the 26th of April, 1913, the second
+one for fifteen millions on February 28th, 1913, and the third one for
+ten millions on February 12th, 1914, for bills of five, ten, fifty and
+hundred pesos denominations. As the circulation of those three issues
+tended to raise prices in general by paralyzing the transactions with
+fractional money, Carranza authorized three more issues of paper money.
+One for two hundred thousand, the second for eight hundred thousand and
+the third for one million, for five and ten cents denominations, on the
+26th of April, 28th of December, 1913, and on February 12th, 1914.
+
+Up to May, 1914, altogether thirty-two million pesos in paper money
+were issued to cover the expenses of the revolution.
+
+The governors and military chiefs were empowered to do the same in
+the States under their jurisdiction: Generals Villa and Chao in the
+State of Chihuahua, Governor Riveros in Sinaloa, General Caballeros in
+Tamaulipas and Villareal in Nuevo Leon.
+
+When it is considered that the Constitutionalists had almost 100,000
+men under arms, the Madero revolution by comparison will seem an
+amateurish and insignificant affair.
+
+General Obregon was supposed to have 20,000, General Villa another
+20,000, General Gonzalez 22,000, General Carrera 20,000, General
+Natera and the Arrietas 6,000, without counting the Zapatistas with
+over 20,000 men.
+
+On an average and in fairly round figures the revolution cost about
+$200,000 a week or $800,000 a month. For a revolution which has lasted
+over a year and three months the performance is quite wonderful and
+shows remarkable organizing qualities in Carranza and the amazing
+vitality of Mexico.
+
+When General Huerta waded through Madero’s blood into the dictator’s
+chair he was able to get over fifty million dollars in gold from
+American and French bankers, besides voluntary and enforced
+contributions from the Catholic clergy, foreign corporations and
+commercial and industrial concerns with headquarters in Mexico City and
+unwilling loans from Mexican haciendados. Huerta had all the power of
+the government concentrated in Mexico City in his hands, the support of
+all the foreign powers with the exception of the United States, and in
+spite of all he failed.
+
+American bankers who had hastily but unwisely loaned several millions
+to General Huerta in the forlorn hope that he could prove a second
+Diaz to subdue Mexico, lost faith in the dictator’s ability and sent
+an agent to offer six million dollars to Carranza if he would promise
+to guarantee Huerta’s loans. It goes without saying that the offer was
+rejected.
+
+Another committee of American bankers sent an emissary to Mexico City
+to offer General Huerta three million dollars if he would only resign
+and get out. In the first case the aforementioned banker learned to his
+surprise that the revolutionary chief was a man of principles and could
+not be bought; the mistake would have been avoided if the American
+financier had read the answer of Carranza to Felix Diaz and General
+Huerta offering him a huge bribe to retract his challenge against the
+dictatorship. In the second instance they offered Huerta three millions
+when he had decided to throw up the sponge, and instead of accelerating
+his exit from Mexico, only retarded it long enough for Huerta to pocket
+their money.
+
+In both cases the American bankers have shown a fundamental lack of
+knowledge of the Mexican situation and of Mexican ways.
+
+The Mexican revolution was essentially a Mexican affair and even a
+superficial review of Mexican history would have revealed a great
+similarity between it and the Three Years’ War. It took the name of
+Constitutionalist Revolution from the Constitution of 1857, for which
+the Liberals of that period were fighting as against the clerical
+dictatorship.
+
+Even if General Huerta had been able to borrow 150 million dollars
+in Paris as he expected to do, he would have been defeated in the
+end; it would have taken longer to destroy his power, but the result
+would have been the same. It would pay American bankers to seek the
+advice of unbiased observers, men who are in sympathy with Mexican
+aims and ambitions, who have a thorough knowledge of the people and
+their history, and not from agents or individuals who are interested
+concessionaires and foreigners or Americans who in spite of their long
+residence in the country are as ignorant of Mexican conditions as on
+the first day of their arrival in Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CIVIL ORGANIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION
+
+
+One of the causes which defeated the work of the Madero revolution,
+was the lack of organization of civil governments within the States
+conquered by the Maderistas. Rebel bands wandered hither and thither,
+taking anything they needed and signing vouchers to be repaid at the
+end of the revolution.
+
+The Judges, “Jefes Políticos” and minor officials, with the exception
+of marked men, stayed in office during the revolution, and after Madero
+came into power. The machinery of Diaz remained, the army and all the
+officials, with the exception of the President, cabinet members and the
+governors.
+
+Carranza learned a lesson and decided to organize the local government
+wherever he went and wherever the Constitutionalists were masters of
+States. As the chief of the revolution, Carranza directed the movement
+of the three army divisions, that is to say, the great strategic
+lines, and the generals took care of the tactical movements. Thus was
+the first chief able to devote his energy to the creation of civil
+government, instead of personally directing or fighting battles. Many
+critics have wondered what Carranza had done in the Revolution. It is
+quite comprehensible that the patient, unremitting task of organizing
+the civil government of conquered States, does not appear in the same
+romantic light as the attacking and storming of a city, although it is
+as important and useful, and more enduring work.
+
+In many States in the south--Morelos, Guerrero--where the Huerta
+officials had all fled and the only rulers were the Zapatista soldiers,
+the Indians had instinctively organized a patriarchal and tribal
+rule of their own. Very significant of the patience, and law-abiding
+sentiment of the average Mexican, is the fact that in those regions,
+where for over two years no government existed, crimes were less
+frequent than where the government held sway.
+
+Carranza began to organize the postal and telegraph systems in Durango,
+Sinaloa and Sonora. Headquarters were in Hermosillo, as the federals
+always kept either to border towns or seaports,--the rest of the State
+was under the control of the Constitutionalists. Wherever possible
+the trains were run on schedule time,--telegrams and mail were sent
+and received. Judges and all the municipal governments of the larger
+and smaller cities were created. When the border towns were taken, a
+simple system of tariff was enacted working both ways, for exports
+as well as imports. The Minister who helped Carranza as Secretary of
+the Interior, was Rafael Zubáran Capmany, who afterwards was sent to
+Washington as a confidential agent for the Constitutionalists.
+
+Those who have had an opportunity to follow the operations of Carranza
+through the official paper, _El Constitucionalista_, and the pamphlet
+which contains his decrees, can pursue step by step all his official
+acts and his reconstructive policy.
+
+Don F. Iglesias Calderón, after escaping from the fortress of San Juan
+de Ulloa, told the writer that he crossed the border at Juarez for
+Chihuahua, Torreon, Saltillo, Monterey, and back to the border, and
+very much to his surprise he travelled on schedule time. At that time
+the whole north was in the hands of the Constitutionalists.
+
+The foreign press could not understand why Carranza did not hasten at
+once to Mexico City after the flight of Huerta. Carranza could not
+leave a single State between Mexico City and the border unorganized,
+that is to say, without placing Constitutionalist officials in charge.
+Otherwise the Huerta officials would later have created local strife.
+The first Chief had to put new wine in new bottles, in order to succeed
+in any future reform which might be enacted by Congress.
+
+With Carranza it was not only a question of conquest. His idea was to
+rebuild, reconstruct Mexico, not merely conquer it.
+
+[Illustration: DON RAFAEL ZUBÁRAN CAPMANY
+
+Minister of Foreign Affairs with Carranza, also Representative of
+Carranza in Washington]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DIPLOMATIC WORK IN WASHINGTON
+
+
+From the inception of the Constitutionalist revolution, Carranza
+appreciated the necessity of having a representative in Washington.
+Alberto Pani and Roberto V. Pesqueira organized a junta which would
+counteract the campaign waged against the Constitutionalists by the
+Huerta agents in conjunction with the American interests, in the
+vain hope of a recognition of the Huerta régime by the Democratic
+administration. Pesqueira paid the expenses of the office out of his
+own pocket until Carranza was able to devote some of the money at the
+disposal of the revolution, to other purposes besides the buying of
+arms and ammunition.
+
+The intelligent and effective work done by the two constitutionalist
+ambassadors concentrated the attention of the American public upon a
+struggle which had appeared one-sided and hopeless.
+
+After a succession of defeats by the federal generals in the
+north, Huerta recognized that the great army at his disposal was
+swiftly crumbling to pieces, and the three divisions under the
+Constitutionalist generals were determinedly closing in upon him,
+he became afraid, and with the same unscrupulousness of former
+reactionary despots in Mexico, he plucked a leaf from the history of
+Mexico, attempting to repeat the feat successfully carried out by the
+clericals in 1847, when American intervention was forced, and in 1861
+when French intervention was deliberately invited, to save clericalism
+from utter annihilation.
+
+Carranza foresaw the move, as the members of Huerta’s cabinet had
+openly boasted to bring about American intervention to save their
+interests and their lives. With Carranza in Hermosillo was a Mr. Rafael
+Zubáran Capmany, a young Mexican lawyer from Campeche, who acted as his
+Secretary of the Interior in the Provisional Cabinet. Carranza picked
+out Mr. Zubáran as the one man in Mexico to play the diplomatic game in
+Washington which would ward off American intervention, even after the
+American troops had occupied Vera Cruz.
+
+It is quite true that the landing of American marines meant
+intervention, but President Wilson had declared that it was done
+against General Huerta, the Dictator, and not against the Mexican
+people; that American soldiers would be satisfied to occupy the Mexican
+port until the usurper was driven out.
+
+To make the average Mexican understand this complicated situation,
+and to convince the Americans that Carranza’s protest was not only
+necessary but was the only manly and patriotic act possible for any
+Mexican leader, was the task which befell Sr. Zubáran.
+
+The lifting of the embargo on arms and ammunition at the border,
+without arousing the hostility of the War Department in Washington, was
+another difficult mission.
+
+To prevent the Mexican constitutionalists from crossing the American
+border, thereby playing into the hands of Huerta, was as perilous and
+risky a game as putting out a lighted fuse near a powder magazine.
+
+A talented writer and lawyer, Don Luis Cabrera, ably assisted Rafael
+Zubáran. The sympathetic attitude of President Wilson and Secretary
+Bryan helped to crown the efforts with success. Also, the unofficial
+and friendly co-operation of ex-Governor Lind was of incalculable value
+to the Mexican diplomats.
+
+But any other less experienced and less discreet personality, a mind
+less acute, keen and masterly, would have failed ignominiously.
+Americans as well as Mexicans are discovering that diplomatic
+victories, although silent and modest, are as effective and useful as
+military achievements.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS IN PARIS
+
+
+Although the diplomatic and financial battle for great loans of the
+Huerta régime was waged and lost in the United States, as a result of
+the attitude of the Wilson administration, Huerta was nevertheless
+enabled to make a loan in Wall Street, ostensibly to pay the interest
+on the Railroad Merger. The real battle for financial assistance,
+however, was fought in Paris.
+
+The Parisian bankers were always favorably inclined to the existing
+governments of Mexico. Diaz had always been considered financially
+solvent, with Limantour at his side.
+
+The French and English bankers, who had made fortunes on Mexican loans,
+always spoke with regret and almost pique at the overthrow of “the
+grand old man.” Foreign bankers not being by nature sentimental or
+radical, had no sympathy or understanding for the tremendous popular
+upheaval in Mexico. The whole great libertarian movement was quite
+misunderstood or ignored. The Huerta régime seemed like a reversion
+to the good old fat times under Limantour. Huerta exhibited all the
+ear-marks of the strong man on horseback. To the superficial bankers,
+the Mexican Caracalla was bound to stay and ask for more loans, and
+offer more profits.
+
+In London, the press did not pay much attention to the
+Constitutionalists, as the English oil interests saw to it that stories
+were circulated about the bandits, cut-throats and robbers who were
+infesting Mexico under the excuse of fighting against the _de facto_
+government.
+
+As the English oil interests were closely connected with the English
+government, they having signed a contract to supply the British
+navy with oil, Huerta gladly gave all the concessions asked for,
+and confirmed the previous ones. Although the English oil interests
+denied in the press that they were involved in politics, certain facts
+came to the notice of the Constitutionalists in Paris, which proved
+the contrary. Dr. Atl, who was living in Paris, vouches for the data
+furnished.
+
+Dr. Atl had been very friendly to Dr. Urrutia years ago, as the
+famous surgeon politician had saved his life. While Dr. Atl was in
+the hospital, he became intimate with General Huerta, and being a
+“compadre” to Dr. Urrutia, there were no secrets between them. After
+the assassination of Madero and Suarez, Dr. Urrutia bethought himself
+of the friendship and gratitude of his friend, and without much ado
+telegraphed Dr. Atl that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars were
+at his disposal at the Mexican legation in Paris: he was to use it to
+influence the French press. Although Dr. Atl was broke, as befits a
+sincere artist, he sent an answer which is not fit for publication, but
+which does credit to his patriotism and his integrity.
+
+Dr. Atl discovered that in spite of the fact that he was considered
+almost a confrère among the French journalists, owing to the fact
+that he published an art paper in French, and wrote for most literary
+magazines and papers in Paris,--when it came to offering material on
+the subject of the Constitutionalist cause of Mexico, the pages of the
+periodicals were without exception closed to him. Finally reporters
+admitted to him that the English oil interests had been paying enormous
+sums of money, aggregating the sum of seven million francs. He was even
+pointed out an agent of the same oil interests, who had left to the
+editor of the paper the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand francs as
+a friendly reminder.
+
+After the refusal of Dr. Atl to work for the Huerta régime, a brother
+of de la Barra took up the task. Not a word could slip into the French
+papers about the defeats of the Federals, and strenuous efforts were
+being made to finance a loan of one hundred and fifty million dollars
+for Huerta. Dr. Atl had heard that the loan would be effected within a
+week. In despair he walked from one office to the other and succeeded
+only in getting snubs and rebuffs. To make matters worse, it rained
+cats and dogs. Our peripatetic artist, soaking wet, tired and hungry,
+not having eaten a morsel of food for two days, was on the point of
+giving up the struggle, when he decided to try the only newspaper in
+Paris which was above venality, the socialist paper, _L’Humanité_. He
+presented himself at the office, and insisted on speaking to Monsieur
+Jaurès, who was the editor. The veteran socialist finally consented
+to see him. “I am not representing any financial interests,” spoke
+up Dr. Atl, “I am only a poor Mexican artist, who expects you to
+tell the truth about a matter of interest, not only to Mexico, but
+especially to French investors. Huerta is expected to wind up a loan
+of 750 million francs; I want to inform you that Carranza, Chief of
+the Constitutionalists, has communicated a letter to the press in
+the United States, and to us, that if the revolution is successful,
+the French loan to Huerta will not be recognized by the successful
+Constitutionalists. As I know that you are honest and do not want to
+see the French investors risk losing their money, I beg of you to
+publish the statement made by Carranza.”
+
+Jaurès published the letter the next day. Mexican bonds went down ten
+points, and the loan fell through. Dr. Atl is now Director of the
+National Art School in Mexico City.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+INVESTIGATION WORK INTO THE MUNICIPAL CITY GOVERNMENTS AND THE RURAL
+SCHOOL SYSTEM, FACTORIES AND INDUSTRIAL CENTRES IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+BY MODESTO C. ROLLAND
+
+
+Putting aside my humble personality, not of much importance to the
+reader, I am going to relate my life since the Mexican revolution, for
+in this manner I can more clearly place in relief something of the
+history and social conditions in Mexico, which should be known by all
+who desire information on what has taken place and what we wish to do.
+
+Convinced as we were of the tremendous social inequality that has
+existed in Mexico under the authority of the capitalists and of the
+clerical party, before the apparition of Madero, the idea was launched
+of not permitting a re-election with a view to compelling Porfirio Diaz
+to verify the necessary evolution, fearing as we did the effects of a
+revolution.
+
+[Illustration: MODESTO C. ROLLAND
+
+Engineer, School Teacher, Member of the Cabinet]
+
+We thought, inexperienced sociologists, that it was possible to
+conquer a tyrant by persuasion, so as to permit the democratic
+practices necessary to choose the President. We made a mistake, and the
+anti-re-electionists had to combat a revolution. Madero expounded the
+doctrines which were spread over the country, and was at the head of
+the revolution that imperiously triumphed.
+
+Many of us Mexicans thinking it was time to take part in public
+affairs, united and formed an Engineers’ Club with a view to studying
+national problems. In a word, we worked for the nationalization of the
+National Railways, and for the establishment of postal savings. Nearly
+all of our efforts were shattered by reason of the inertia displayed
+by the Secretary of the Treasury, headed by Messrs. Ernesto Madero and
+Jaime Gurza.
+
+The Catholic party, seeing the approach of an epoch of social reforms
+which they could not admit, conspired with the army and taking
+advantage through Huerta, for Felix Diaz turned out to be weak, finally
+assassinated Madero and grasped the power.
+
+Then they enjoyed their clerical rule and their laws regarding public
+instruction. The army served them to kill the people and to defend
+their great estates. The war was kindled with more fury, headed by
+Venustiano Carranza. We in the capital suffered day by day from the
+insults of the soldiery. All persons who did not favor the government
+were known to the authorities, and at any moment were likely to be
+detained.
+
+After the ten days’ tragedy, I went to the Military College, where I
+was a professor, with the intention of speaking for the last time to
+my pupils. I explained to them the course that the army would pursue,
+and that they would be the instrument of a traitor to shed the blood of
+Mexicans. That same afternoon I was dismissed from my charge. From that
+time on I was persecuted.
+
+Being independent and my ideas being known, I could not long remain
+free. The idea contrary to the dictatorial system was what they
+persecuted most. At length one day they took me out of my office and
+conveyed me to the penitentiary where they held me in a dark dungeon
+for a month in solitary confinement.
+
+My friends arranged for Minister Garza Aldape to speak with me. I
+explained to him frankly why I could not be with the Huertistas
+for I could not conform with the politics of the outbreak, and the
+consequences of the same. I made him understand that I was not an
+active conspirator, for having to keep in favor with two parties is
+truly crazy and like throwing oneself into the wolf’s mouth.
+
+He permitted me to go out into the street, but it was impossible for me
+to work. My business affairs were shattered; every move was constantly
+watched, and at any time I might be sent back to the penitentiary, as
+were many others.
+
+I decided to get out of the country. I went to Vera Cruz and with some
+difficulty boarded a boat as a contraband, and it was in the position
+of table-steward that I finally arrived in this country.
+
+This is the history of thousands of men in Mexico. Thousands of
+families remained until they had nothing left to live on, and even the
+women were in danger of being put in jail, as many were.
+
+With great eagerness I went toward the north of the republic with
+a view to putting myself in contact with the revolution. There I
+met many friends who had travelled the path ahead of me, and under
+various conditions were serving the cause. There I could speak with
+Carranza, first chief of the revolution. It was in Juarez City where
+I was presented by the Hon. Mr. Zulara, Minister of Communications.
+Mr. Carranza spoke with me of the reconstruction of Mexico. At that
+period of the struggle so much confidence was felt in the triumph of
+the revolution that the first chief looked ahead to prepare the era of
+reconstruction.
+
+He talked with me of the agrarian problem, as a touchstone of all the
+social unbalance of our people, and I was convinced that that serene
+man, economist by experience and liberal by conviction ought to be the
+personification of the national unity.
+
+He spoke to me above all else of the schools. The great desire of
+Mr. Carranza is to develop a school system in Mexico. He expressed
+himself with the enthusiasm of the man who has long been in contact
+with the needs of the people, and I was convinced still further of the
+necessity of working without hesitation under the influence of such
+a man. The supreme chief being convinced that another soldier was not
+needed in the battlefield, and taking advantage of my experience as a
+schoolmaster and as an engineer, he arranged for me to go to the United
+States with a view to studying municipal and school systems. In this
+way I joined a body of students of Administrative service, which Mr.
+Carranza had been forming in this country and in Europe. I have put my
+heart in my work, and happily I have found in this nation the greatest
+facilities for attaining our object. I have visited the principal
+cities of the East. New York particularly has served me practically.
+
+
+SCHOOLS
+
+The Department of Education furnished me with all the methods for
+studying the schools, and in this manner I obtained most interesting
+information regarding the organization and educative systems of
+these schools, where from the first step a child takes, he is taught
+something about democracy. The impression which this spirit of the
+American schools made upon me will never be forgotten. The continued
+effort of the teachers to form the free will of the child is excellent.
+The soul of this nation palpitates in its schools. There the body
+and the mind are fortified, intensifying the customs of sociability.
+These things are facts, not theories, in the American schools. The way
+in which all this educative labor is consummated with ingenuity and
+honesty, was what impressed me above everything.
+
+Regarding the material organization it is already known how able
+Americans are. Organization is nearly always the secret of success, and
+that is above all what the Latins need to learn.
+
+The organization of the Department of Education is notable, which
+makes possible the co-ordination of an infinity of data, so as to see
+schematically the working of the mechanism. I can judge at sight of
+the weak point so that the same may be perfected. The weak spot in the
+Mexican school system being the rural school system, I was asked by
+Carranza to investigate especially that phase in the United States.
+The result of my inquiries brought forth the fact that the States of
+Wisconsin and Massachusetts have the best organized rural system for
+schools in America. These two States are going to be the pattern which
+will be used for Mexico’s Minister of Education to work from.
+
+It is well-known that the scholastic family is amiable over the entire
+world, but I believe that the American teacher especially is a model of
+courtesy. Wherever I went I was treated with such kindness that I shall
+always remember my visits with pleasure.
+
+
+MUNICIPAL SERVICES
+
+The revolution was eager to change the social state of Mexico and that
+naturally comprised the sanitary condition of the people. In Mexico it
+is necessary to change the hygienic state of the people who have been
+always treated with a spirit of exploitation by the privileged castes.
+
+We know that sunshine on the earth does away with the services of the
+doctor, for which we shall work so that the sewers called _casas de
+vecindad_ may be dispensed with; in these tuberculosis prospers, while
+the rich owner assisted through the lenity of the laws is occupied only
+in collecting the rents. Pure water, air and light,--the people need
+these and Mexico will give them.
+
+New York has given me great experience and has furnished a wide field
+of observation, in respect to the Municipal services; and I wish to
+set forth my report so as to profit by the many good subjects I have
+studied. Naturally, here as in other places there are many matters
+which have not yet been satisfactorily settled, as for example that
+relative to the “casas de vecindad,” but anyway the efforts of this
+people, so materially progressive will help us in a high degree.
+
+The resolution of the problem of the “casas de vecindad” as it is
+understood in Glasgow, is our ideal and we shall feel proud on the day
+that we can present a city with comfort for the poor.
+
+In the conscience of all the revolutionaries is the profound conviction
+that to guarantee the triumph of the revolution it is necessary to
+change the social status of Mexico, and for that reason they will
+not hesitate to pass laws affecting the land to further works of
+irrigation, to establish schools and to contribute to hygienic homes.
+
+The example of this nation is valuable for us and we shall not fail to
+utilize the same. We are anxious to push our people forward through
+more democratic paths, and are certain that this nation knows how to
+appreciate our efforts.
+
+In Mexico, where it may be said that humanity is making a trial of
+adaptation, we shall make a trial of what this country has shown us,
+and if I myself put into practice what I have learned here I shall
+consider myself happy, welcoming all the annoying details, for nothing
+is worth more than the esteem of a nation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HUERTA
+
+
+To get a clear conception of the strategic work achieved by the three
+divisions of the East, North and West, it is advisable to look at the
+map of Mexico.
+
+Mexico is broadest at the American border and tapers exactly like a
+cornucopia at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Mexico City lies in a valley
+7,400 feet high, within twelve hours’ ride from Vera Cruz, and being
+the centre of all the railroads of Mexico, is therefore of the utmost
+strategical importance.
+
+Huerta, from Mexico City, could reach all his troops anywhere in
+Mexico, either by rail or water. The Constitutionalists in Sonora were
+separated from the Northern division by a high range of mountains,
+and the Northern division from the Eastern division by another range.
+Zapata could not communicate very easily with the three northern
+divisions, and was not able to assist them directly.
+
+[Illustration: WAR MAP OF MEXICO.
+
+STRATEGIC R.R. LINES.]
+
+Huerta’s strategy consisted in keeping his soldiers in the large
+cities, at the border towns, always hugging the railroad lines. The
+federals very seldom attacked in the open, as the lack of horses
+detracted from their mobility.
+
+The Western division had for its object the control of the railroad,
+starting from Nogales, through Hermosillo to Guaymas in Sonora, then to
+Culiacán, Mazatlán in Sinaloa, through San Blas, Tepic into the State
+of Jalisco, to the capital Guadalajara. Once Guadalajara was captured,
+the aim of the campaign was achieved, and Obregon had only to wait for
+the arrival and junction of the Northern and Eastern division near
+Celaya, to march to Mexico City. The difficulties encountered by the
+Western and Eastern divisions were trebled by a condition which did not
+exist in the case of the Northern division under Villa, the fact that
+the seaports on the Pacific and Atlantic which were always at the mercy
+of the federals, could feed and supply and augment the contingent of
+soldiers in the ports.
+
+On the Pacific side, the Federals controlled Guaymas, Topolobampo,
+Altata, Mazatlán, San Blas and Manzanillo,--and on the Atlantic side
+they controlled Matamoros, Tampico, Tuxpan, Vera Cruz and Puerto Mexico.
+
+The Western division, under Obregon, captured one by one all the border
+towns, and later most of the seaports,--and in spite of the fact that
+Guaymas stuck to the last, the Western division had so effectively
+cooped up the Federals in that port, that they were not interfering
+with their downward course towards Guadalajara. General Gonzalez
+acted on the same principle. He first captured the border towns, and
+then Victoria the capital of Tamaulipas. With the fall of Tampico, the
+Federals in San Luis Potosí were outflanked.
+
+General Villa did the same. After he controlled the border cities, he
+concentrated all his energies on the capture of Torreon.
+
+The three chiefs of divisions, East, North and West, co-operated with
+one another under the direction of Carranza. They were supplied with
+money, arms and ammunition by the organization created by Carranza in
+the different States, and directed by the efforts of the members of the
+provisional cabinet.
+
+Zapata by his activity, aided by that of Genovevo de la O and several
+other chiefs in the South, forced Huerta to keep about forty thousand
+soldiers in the South.
+
+The railroads created new strategic lines--
+
+1st. From Nogales at the border, the railroad goes almost
+uninterruptedly through Sonora, Sinaloa and Tepic, with the exception
+of a gap between Tepic and Guadalajara.
+
+2d. From Juarez the railroad runs through Chihuahua, Durango and
+Zacatecas into Aguascalientes.
+
+3d. From Ciudad Porfirio Diaz through Coahuila into Nuevo Leon, and to
+San Luis Potosí, and from Monterrey to Tampico.
+
+They represent the lines which had to be controlled by the three
+divisions. Then there were lines connecting Torreon with Saltillo and
+Monterrey,--and Aguascalientes with San Luis Potosí.
+
+The assertion that either one of the three chiefs of the divisions was
+solely responsible for the success of the revolution is absurd and
+inexact.
+
+Let us admit for instance, that Obregon had reached Guadalajara, and
+tried to march through Celaya to Mexico City alone, before Villa had
+taken Aguascalientes, or General Gutierrez taken San Luis Potosí. He
+would then have been attacked in the rear by the Federals.
+
+In Villa’s case, if he had captured Aguascalientes and tried to march
+south to Mexico City, without waiting for Obregon to take Guadalajara,
+or General Gutierrez, San Luis Potosí, he would have also been attacked
+in the rear.
+
+General Gonzalez in his turn, could not march south as long as San Luis
+Potosí was in the possession of Federals.
+
+The three chiefs had to work together, and the utter defeat of either
+of the three separately, spelled disaster for the rest. It is fortunate
+for Mexico that this campaign should have created four strong soldiers
+“on horseback” for the danger to Mexico’s liberties always appeared
+with one man as the hero, who subsequently turned to be the “villain.”
+When there is more than one savior or liberator, they are apt to be so
+busy watching one another, that Mexico’s liberties are more likely to
+be respected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL OBREGON IN THE WEST
+
+BY COL. I. C. ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+Perhaps the most interesting chapter of the Constitutionalist revolt
+against the dictator Huerta is the campaign of rebellion led by the
+brave citizens of the State of Sonora. When they decided to fight the
+bloody dictator and resist his murderous deeds, they were confronted
+by a very strong and well organized army. The Federal troops were
+well equipped with ammunition and guns. Their positions were well
+established, while the Constitutionalists had nothing more than desire
+of justice, backed by reckless bravery. They had neither guns nor
+ammunition, and certainly no trained army, and in spite of all this,
+they were the victors.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL ALVARO OBREGON
+
+Chief of the Western Division]
+
+After the assassination of Señor Francisco I. Madero and Señor José
+Maria Pino Suarez, a dreadful feeling of fear spread through the
+country. This was especially evident among the civilians. What but
+death had they to expect from such a brutal dictator as Huerta? For
+this reason alone, there were at the beginning very few men who were
+willing to take up arms against him. Even among the governors,
+twenty-seven in number, only _one_ dared to throw down the glove of
+challenge to the assassin. He was Don Venustiano Carranza, at that
+time governor of the State of Coahuila. Half an hour after the news of
+the assassination reached him, he called the state legislature into
+session, denounced the dictator Huerta and demanded that they should
+not recognize Huerta’s authority. He was the only man with sufficient
+moral courage to openly revolt against Huerta.
+
+At that time, Carranza was not the only one who had the historic
+opportunity of coming out as a defender of his country’s honor. The
+same message was transmitted to Señor José M. Maytorena, then the
+governor of the State of Sonora, but unlike Carranza, he did not take
+up the cause of his downtrodden countrymen. He saw at a glance the
+danger of such a move, and realized that the struggle against Huerta
+would be a very unequal one. Thinking of his own safety first, he left
+Deputy Ignacio L. Pesqueira as acting governor, and fled to the United
+States.
+
+At that time, in Hermosillo, capital of Sonora, there were five hundred
+men under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Obregon, who later in
+the campaign became a famous general under Carranza. Major Salvador
+Alvarado, now general, had command of four hundred troops of the Yaqui
+region, while in the southern part of the State, five hundred men were
+under the command of Generals Juan Cabral, Benjamin Hill and Sosa.
+Many of the officers and soldiers of this army had participated in the
+revolution of 1910, consequently they were opposed to the dictatorship
+of Huerta. This marked the beginning of the Sonora revolution.
+
+Even before the assassination of Madero, there were a number of chiefs
+who waged a relentless war. They were Col. Pedro F. Bracamonte, Col.
+Plutarco Elias Calles, and Major Campos. They began to recruit people
+on their own authority in the northern part of the State, and the
+cutting of railway communication. They also began an open attack on the
+Federals in many places. When the Sonora revolution was started, the
+chiefs became united, and opened hostilities.
+
+At the beginning of the Sonora revolution, the Federals had a force of
+2,650 troops distributed throughout the State, from the frontier to
+the coast. Bearing this in mind, the Constitutionalists mapped out a
+careful campaign. General Obregon was appointed to direct the military
+operations, as he had distinguished himself in the campaign of 1912
+against the Orozquistas.
+
+The difficult task that the Constitutionalists were confronted with,
+was the prevention of the concentration and the union of the entire
+Federal army. They knew that as long as the Federal army was divided
+and spread throughout the State, their chances were more than equal.
+Thus they had a double task: first, to prevent the union of the
+Federal troops, and secondly to fight them in small groups. The main
+object of the Constitutionalists was to secure the border positions of
+the State.
+
+As the revolution progressed and the fighting continued, the
+Constitutionalists found their plans perfectly suited to their needs.
+They marched from one city to the next, sometimes under terrible
+difficulties, but always victorious. All those in command, and also
+the troops, fulfilled their duties admirably. Soon, however, they were
+confronted with new and unexpected troubles.
+
+The taking of Naco, as also the greater part of the towns on the
+frontier, involved many unnecessary dangers. As it was situated on
+the international line, it could only be attacked from the east and
+west,--if it was assailed from the south many projectiles would pass
+over to the American side. The Constitutionalist chiefs were always
+careful to respect the rights of the American people, and avoided as
+much as possible the damage and troubles that a war waged at such close
+quarters, would be likely to occasion them. The Federal generals,
+realizing the position of the Constitutionals, took advantage of
+their noble intentions and stuck close to the international line.
+The Constitutionalists did not wish to attack them in the town--but
+were anxious to meet them in the open country, where there would be
+no danger of inflicting suffering to families, especially those of
+American citizens.
+
+Knowing that the Federals intended to join their comrades of Chihuahua,
+the Constitutionalists decided to lay in wait for them. For more than
+a week, they lay concealed behind ridges and in the mountains, but the
+blow they had suffered a few days before was a lesson General Ojeda
+could not forget, and all the attempts of the Constitutionals to lure
+them out in the open country failed.
+
+The chiefs of the Constitutionalists then decided not to wait any
+longer. They demanded of General Ojeda, who was in charge of the
+Huerta troops, that he come out of the city. They explained to him
+the injustice of fighting near a town, where many innocent people and
+non-combatants might be injured, but Ojeda’s reply was characteristic
+of all the Huerta generals. As long as he was safe, General Ojeda said,
+the whole human race might be slaughtered. Furthermore, he would not
+come out of his fortified town position--the Constitutionals could
+attack him there if they wanted to.
+
+The Constitutionals, realizing that they would have to attack, although
+he was entrenched in a position very disadvantageous to such action
+on their part, began preparations for the battle. The Federals were
+located in a position occupying a semicircle. Their six hundred men,
+cannon and rapid-fire guns, could easily defend their positions.
+They could sweep the open country with a deadly fire, there being no
+protection for the assailants.
+
+After a few days of reconnoitring, during which small skirmishes
+took place, the final decisive battle took place, on the night of the
+1st of April. It lasted more than twenty-four hours, after which the
+Federals were forced to their barracks for protection, while General
+Ojeda fled to the American side. The remaining troops surrendered, and
+the fighting stopped. This victory gave the Constitutionals complete
+control of the frontier towns, assuring them a base of operations.
+
+One of the remarkable features of the Sonora Campaign was the wonderful
+manner in which the Federals after each battle, left behind ammunition,
+guns and equipment which the Constitutionalists so badly needed. The
+reply of the Constitutional chiefs to their complaining soldiers
+usually was: “Never mind, boys, Huerta himself will give us arms and
+ammunition to fight him with.” This statement has proved true all
+through the revolt.
+
+Before the Constitutionals had a chance to recover from the hardships
+of the Naco victory, a still greater danger threatened them. A strong
+force of Federals, four thousand in number, well-equipped, was coming
+from the south by way of the Pacific coast, General Luis Medina
+Barron was in charge of them. Before leaving Guaymas, he pledged on
+his “military honor” that he would be in Hermosillo in fifteen days.
+He said he would have the head of Obregon stuck upon the point of
+his sword and that he would banquet at the Hotel Arcadia. But the
+Constitutional chiefs were not frustrated by the boastings of General
+Barron, and quickly reorganizing their army, they took positions
+between Ortiz and Guaymas at Santa Rosa, a flag station on the Southern
+Pacific Railroad of Mexico.
+
+Confident of their ultimate victory, the Federals marched towards the
+Constitutionalists. Early in the morning of the 9th of May they opened
+a vigorous fire. The attack lasted three days.
+
+The Constitutionalists realizing the value of the springs and wells in
+that torrid zone, fought desperately for their possession. Once the
+water supply was captured, it meant the defeat of the Federals. On
+the second day of the battle, this was accomplished and the Federals
+were forced back to the Railroad tanks, which could supply them with
+water no longer than one day. After the third day’s fighting, the
+Federals, worn out with thirst, retired, leaving a large number of dead
+and wounded. In their hasty retreat they left behind a great quantity
+of armaments and provisions. The boasting General Barron escaped to
+Guaymas, wounded by the enemy, while many of his chiefs were taken to
+Hermosillo as prisoners of war.
+
+While Obregon was fighting against General Barron, General Hill had not
+remained idle. He was appointed to carry on operations in the southern
+part of the State. This he accomplished admirably, especially the
+wiping out of the “Battalion of Death.” This battalion carried a black
+flag, with a skull and cross bones upon it and their method was to
+terrorize the townspeople by killing innocent women and children. When
+they met General Hill in open battle they were completely wiped out.
+
+Later General Hill drove 450 from the town of Torin, forcing them back
+to Guaymas, thus clearing the southern part of the State. After his
+successes in this locality, he joined General Obregon, in the hope
+of attacking Generals Ojeda and Barron. The following move of the
+Constitutionalists is one of the most effective of the whole campaign.
+It was a decisive battle for the main water supply, which the troops
+were badly in need of and took place at Santa Maria.
+
+The plans of Generals Obregon, Alvarado and Dieguez once more proved
+very effective. The Federals, finding the water supply taken, were
+forced to assume the offensive. They felt confident of success, and
+burdened themselves with all kinds of unnecessary impediments. But
+the Constitutionalists were not to be taken by surprise; instead of
+waiting for the Federals to advance, they went out to meet them: by
+this manœuvre the Federals found themselves face to face with the
+Constitutionalists much sooner than they had expected.
+
+For the Federals, it was a fight for existence. They were face to face
+with death from thirst, and felt that unless they regained the wells a
+miserable death would be their lot. With them, it was not a fight for
+the honor of Huerta--they fought from sheer desperation. Under such
+conditions, the battle could not last long. Four desperate assaults
+were made upon the Constitutionalists’ positions, and were repulsed.
+One of these assaults lasted more than twenty-four hours, resulting in
+a hand to hand fight. In those hand to hand frays one could not help
+admiring the remarkable way in which the Yaquis handled their daggers.
+The Federal army was wiped out completely in a very short time.
+
+While much credit is due to the soldiers who fought in the ranks of the
+Constitutionalists, many of their victories are due to the remarkable
+strategy of the generals. One instance will illustrate this. General
+Alvarado, realizing the terrible thirst of the Federal soldiers, drove
+them into a watermelon field. He knew fully well the result of such a
+move. No sooner had they reached the watermelon field, when all the
+fighting on their part ceased. The Federal officers had to force them
+to fight at the point of their bayonets, but even that did little good.
+Once they had entered the melon field, they were the easy victims of
+the Constitutional fire. At the close of the battle, General Ojeda fled
+from the scene, abandoning his officers and soldiers. He was followed
+by the officers, while a small group of soldiers, braver than their
+chiefs, kept on fighting till they reached Guaymas.
+
+The Constitutionals did not realize how great a victory they really had
+won, and waited a whole day thinking that the retreat of the Federals
+was nothing but a trap set for them. But when they marched forward
+they found nothing but dead and wounded, and a great quantity of
+ammunition and supplies. They had left behind all the cannons, twelve
+rapid-firing guns and sixteen hundred rifles, also a large number of
+horses and trappings. But the Constitutionalists had no time to lose,
+and they immediately went in pursuit of the enemy.
+
+While I was overjoyed at our tremendous victory, pity and sorrow
+embittered the cup of joy. The scenes of horror and misery which I saw
+are still engraved in my memory. I saw the disastrous results brought
+about by a tyrannical dictator who, in his effort to perpetuate himself
+in absolute power, was willing to sacrifice everything and everybody.
+It was dreadful to see the battlefield littered with the dead and
+wounded, men who meant well but who understood little.
+
+On the other hand there were the patriotic, well-intentioned men, full
+of self-sacrifice, willing to die for liberty and the prosperity of
+their native country. Alongside these sturdy young fighters were also
+the poor women and children, innocent sufferers in the great strife.
+They were the greatest sufferers,--they bore the greater burden.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The campaign of General Obregon through the State of Sonora, marks
+only the beginning of the great struggle which led him victoriously
+to the city of Mexico. This campaign, although never mentioned by
+the newspaper correspondents, was nevertheless as important as the
+campaign of General Villa. General Obregon not only had to fight an
+army much larger than his own, but the geographical location of his
+territory constantly endangered his rear wings. Unlike Villa, he was
+constantly compelled to guard from rear attacks, as well as from
+frontal attacks. This ever existing danger made the campaign much more
+difficult, multiplying the dangers which constantly confronted him.
+
+The remark of General Obregon to Don Venustiano Carranza when the First
+Chief marked out the three lines of struggle, illustrates the nature
+of the fighting General Obregon. When Carranza was about to depart
+from Nogales, in February, 1914, Obregon said to him: “First Chief,
+tell Generals Villa and Gonzales to hurry up in their march, for I am
+going to get busy and get to Mexico.” And true to his word, several
+months later, although beset by many more difficulties than the other
+generals, he reached Mexico City before any of them. After the Federal
+troops were routed and driven back in great disorder to Guaymas, the
+State of Sonora was practically cleared from Huerta troops. But that
+only meant the beginning of the great fight.
+
+During the months of July and August, General Obregon was preparing for
+his advance South. He had little time to waste, for even before he was
+through with his preparations, he was forced to advance on San Blas,
+Sinaloa. A strong detachment of Federals were sent up from Mexico City
+to reinforce the defeated Huerta troops who landed at Topolobampo. But
+General Obregon was not taken by surprise. Having assigned Generals
+Hill and Iturbe to proceed against the Federals, he himself continued
+his march further south. His objective point was the city of Sinaloa.
+In the meantime Generals Hill and Iturbe had succeeded in defeating the
+Federal troops which landed in Topolobampo, and joined General Obregon
+in his attack upon the city of Sinaloa.
+
+The storming of Sinaloa was one of the fiercest battles of the entire
+campaign. It lasted nearly five days and again, as in all the previous
+battles, the Federals retreated so hastily that they did not have
+time to take their guns and ammunition with them. A great quantity
+of ammunition and provisions were left behind by them, of which the
+Constitutionalists were much in need.
+
+One of the great difficulties which constantly confronted General
+Obregon was the guarding of the frontier and the positions all along
+the coast. The slightest error in the guarding of those positions might
+have caused the annihilation of his entire army by a rear attack. So
+that, whenever he took a city from the Federals, he was confronted with
+the question of protecting that point. He was forced to always leave
+troops behind him, to guard those conquered cities. Had he not done
+so, the Federals might have sent up new forces by way of the Pacific
+and re-taken the conquered posts.
+
+The most important of all the battles of the entire campaign was the
+storming of Culiacan. The Federals, realizing the dangers of Obregon’s
+swift march, massed a strong force of troops in that city, numbering
+about seven thousand. Needless to say, they were much better equipped
+than the Constitutionals, who always had more men than rifles and guns.
+When General Obregon, who personally conducted the battle, reached the
+city, the Federals were well fortified in their positions. The fight
+lasted a whole week, and fighting continued day and night, almost
+without cessation. At the end of that time, the Federals were badly
+beaten and were forced to retire to Mazatlan. The taking of Culiacan
+meant to the Constitutionalists more than just an ordinary victory.
+It meant the success of the operations towards their goal, and the
+weakening and disintegration of the Huerta troops. The winning of this
+battle enabled the Constitutional forces to move further south to the
+Territory of Tepic, where General Obregon took the city of Acaponeta
+and San Blas by storm.
+
+The rapidity with which he moved and the persistency of his attacks
+won him most of his battles. He lost no time,--he did not wait. As
+soon as he had taken San Blas, he did not even wait long enough to
+give his tired soldiers a good rest. He moved on to his destination
+immediately. With his characteristic rapid fire action, he moved
+towards Guadalajara in the State of Jalisco. The most interesting thing
+about the storming of that city was the capture of fifty-six train
+loads of supplies. Never before had they had such luck. The trains
+were packed with all kinds of provisions, guns, rifles, cannon and
+ammunition. It was one of the richest hauls they ever made.
+
+The conclusion of his march towards the capital was marked by a series
+of successful battles, in spite of the difficulties he had in guarding
+his base of supplies and the frontier towns. After his victory at
+Guadalajara, he marched on towards Irapuato, where he again succeeded
+in routing the Federal troops, and thence proceeded to the city of
+Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+VILLA AND HIS CAMPAIGN IN THE NORTH
+
+
+So much has been written about Francisco Villa that only a few
+preliminary remarks are necessary to describe the personality of the
+famous general. The enemies of Villa made the accusation that the rebel
+chief was not respectable because he had been an outlaw under the Diaz
+régime.
+
+Those who have studied the Diaz rule with a mind unbiased by profits
+and interests, will have discovered that if Villa was a bandit under
+the Diaz reign, he certainly must have been an honest one; for almost
+without exception all the officials from the President down to the
+lowest Jefe Político, were robbers, cut-throats and grafters.
+
+Villa is not better nor worse than the average Mexican, but his
+weaknesses are those of his unfortunate countrymen, and his strength is
+the latent strength of his people.
+
+Villa, although directly responsible for the mutiny at Juarez in 1911,
+when with Orozco he almost succeeded in eliminating F. I. Madero,
+discovered that the three cientifico agents in El Paso were the
+instigators of the plot. Ever since then Villa remained loyal to
+Madero and continued to fight against Huerta, in memory of Madero.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL S. ALVARADO
+
+Second in Command under General Obregon]
+
+All the biographers of Villa spoke of him as a Napoleon, who had
+created an army out of nothing. It must not be forgotten that out
+of one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers who fought against the
+military dictatorship, there were at least forty generals who created
+armies out of nothing. They, too, were without money, ammunition, arms
+and with even less experience than Villa.
+
+During his ten or more years as an outlaw, Villa was roaming all over
+the States of Chihuahua and Durango, as a leader of lesser outlaws, and
+his guerrilla experience was invaluable to him later.
+
+In the case of most other Generals, like Obregon, Gonzales, Gutierrez,
+Natera, Herrera, Chao, Calles, Hill, Caballero, their experience was
+insignificant. Most of the chiefs who fought the Federals were either
+farmers, lawyers, engineers, clerks who had never before handled a gun
+in their lives till the last revolution.
+
+When Villa crossed the American border into Mexico in the spring of
+1913, he marched up and down the States of Chihuahua, Coahuila and
+Durango. He gathered men, attacking small cities and doing very much
+the same as other revolutionists did--surprising small detachments of
+Federals in outlying districts, and capturing the arms, ammunition,
+and horses which were so badly needed. With him were co-operating the
+Herrera brothers, Chao, Rosalio Hernandez, and in Durango, the Arrieta
+brothers, Contreras, Triana, Carrillo and Urbina. They looted the banks
+to buy arms and ammunition from the United States, and stole horses and
+saddles to creat a mobile force and killed cattle to feed themselves.
+
+The first important battle won by Villa was fought in San Andrés with
+eight hundred men against fourteen hundred Federals, who were defeated
+on October 4th, 1913. He attacked, captured and sacked Torreon. Near
+Chihuahua he again defeated the Federals, but as Juarez was still in
+their power, he had to take the border towns before attempting to fight
+towards the south.
+
+How he outwitted the commander of Juarez by stealing a ride north of
+Chihuahua on a train loaded with coal, and surprised and drove the
+commander across the border, has been told before.
+
+The battle of Tierra Blanca, when he defeated five thousand Federals
+who came from Chihuahua to relieve Juarez, was his first important
+strategical battle, and as far as the campaign is concerned, is the
+most important, even without excepting the battle of Torreon, in April,
+1914. Without the battle of Tierra Blanca, no other successes could
+have had any decisive value. In Torreon, Villa had all the men, arms
+and ammunition he wanted, and with great recklessness, he sacrificed
+his men, counting only upon results.
+
+After the capture of Torreon, Saltillo and Monterrey automatically
+fell into his power, for Torreon was the strategic key which opened the
+way south to his army, i. e., the Northern division.
+
+In another chapter, the causes and details of the Carranza-Villa
+quarrel will be discussed. The character of General Villa must be
+studied, in order to understand the underlying causes of the quarrel.
+
+Villa, like Zapata, is a man of the peasant class. Physically strong,
+with great will power and a good deal of horse sense. In men of this
+type, due to their utter lack of education, and inexperience in
+politics, they are an easy prey to their secretaries, friends, advisers
+and hangers-on. Being fundamentally honest, they take it for granted
+that their entourage is likewise, and being unable to read or write,
+they are constantly deceived by their secretaries. In the case of the
+other generals, like Obregon, Gonzales, etc., their education and
+political experience put them on their guard against petty, scheming
+politicians, and unscrupulous tools of the reactionaries.
+
+Villa’s ideas outside of stratagems, spoils and the game of war,
+are primitive, and not always clear. His appetites and his contempt
+for human life is equal to that of the Apaches and Comanches; his
+attitude toward life is anarchistic, rebellious. Towards people he is
+cunning, suspicious, ostensibly good-natured and at times tyrannical.
+An uncontrollable temper is softened by a keen sense of humor, and a
+lavish generosity is encouraged by a propensity to acquisitiveness.
+
+Villa is so terribly suspicious of everything and everybody, that
+he has been accused of being not quite so brave as he wants to
+appear. General Maclovio Herrera is admired for his courage and
+is nicknamed “the Lion”: Villa has an unbounded respect for him,
+tinged with a little envy. Villa’s enemies claim that he went to
+Aguascalientes escorted by eighteen thousand soldiers, because he was
+afraid,--although the other generals had none but bodyguards.
+
+When Obregon was sent by Carranza to join Villa in a solution of the
+Sonora controversy between Maytorena and Hill, he went alone. Villa
+soon lost his temper and had Obregon arrested, and threatened to have
+him shot by his soldiers unless he acceded to his demands. Obregon,
+calm and cool, answered: “My life belongs to Mexico,--if you believe
+that my death is necessary to the solution of the question, I am
+ready to sacrifice it. I came here to meet Villa the patriot: I find
+a savage Villa who calls himself the savior of Mexico.” The manly and
+courageous attitude of Obregon conquered Villa, who instead of ordering
+an execution, gave a ball in his honor.
+
+When Carranza was in Chihuahua with Villa after the fall of Torreon, he
+heard that Villa had ordered the execution of General Chao, Governor
+of Chihuahua. Villa was asked to appear before Carranza, who demanded
+an explanation. “I have shot Chao,” grinned Villa. Carranza was very
+indignant, and protested vehemently. Then Villa laughed, and admitted
+that the order had not been carried out. Carranza ordered him to
+free Chao immediately, and said to him: “You have no right to arrest
+and shoot an official not under your immediate command, without my
+authority, especially a governor who is under my jurisdiction. Am I
+the chief of the revolution or am I not?” Villa was impressed and he
+ordered the release of Chao. He excused himself by saying that Chao had
+grafted. Later it was discovered that Villa’s secretary had sent orders
+to Chao, Villa not being able to read what he had signed, and the whole
+scheme was engineered by Villa’s secretary to get rid of Chao, who was
+his personal enemy. Villa embraced Chao as a result.
+
+One of Villa’s many wives was enterprising enough to induce Villa to
+let her sign some treasury notes, which were honored by the officials,
+who did not dare refuse.
+
+Once, Villa gave an order for the exportation through Juarez of
+$5000 worth of material. The Secretary changed the order from five,
+to fifty thousand, which without his knowledge had been telegraphed
+to the official in charge of the Custom House in Juarez. The honest
+official refused to let the goods pass the border, and the irate Villa
+almost shot him for disobedience. Finally the matter was cleared up,
+and Villa declared that he had ordered five, and not fifty, thousand
+dollars’ worth. “But here is the order signed by you,” said the
+official. Villa had been deceived again, as he has been all along by
+his secretaries. The two following telegrams, one from Villa, and
+the answer of the Arrieta Brothers, will throw a very clear light on
+the attitude of Villa toward Carranza. It will also prove that the
+majority of the generals do not sympathize with Villa, as he is making
+a personal question, or better said, an alleged insult to his division,
+a pretext to overthrow Carranza, and become the political dictator of
+Mexico.
+
+ TELEGRAM.
+
+  CHIHUAHUA, General Headquarters,
+  Sept. 23d, 1914.
+
+  _Urgent._
+
+  GENERALS MARIANO AND DOMINGO ARRIETA.
+
+  Durango, Dgo.
+
+ Venustiano Carranza having deeply offended the honor and dignity of
+ the Northern Division under my command, and not being able to tolerate
+ any longer his whims and inconsequences, which would have sunk our
+ country in ruins, disseminating anarchy, while creating distrust with
+ foreign nations,--since yesterday, all my generals and myself have
+ decided to repudiate him as Chief of the Nation.
+
+ For we are convinced that because of his alliance with the
+ cientificos and his noted tendencies to favor a certain personal
+ group which surrounded him, and prevented the solution of the real
+ revolutionists, and to fulfil the promises made to the people.
+
+ As a consequence we have decided to fight only against the personality
+ of Venustiano Carranza, and to drive him out of the country, without
+ antagonizing or molesting the other chiefs who have fought to
+ overthrow the usurping government which has just fallen. Therefore
+ we repeat that our movement is solely against the personality of
+ Venustiano Carranza.
+
+ As we have always understood that you have been animated by patriotic
+ sentiments, like ourselves, we address ourselves to you, showing you
+ the matter clearly, and we hope that in view of the right which is on
+ our side, you will be with us, and will help by offering your services
+ to the cause of the people.
+
+ Already the Governor of the State of Sonora and his forces, have
+ repudiated Venustiano Carranza, and we hope that you will act likewise
+ and will define your position informing us if you are with us or with
+ Carranza.
+
+ We beg you to answer as soon as possible. Greetings.
+
+  The General in Chief,
+  FRANCISCO VILLA.
+
+Answer to the above telegram.
+
+  DURANGO TO CHIHUAHUA, Sept. 24th, 1914.
+
+  SEÑOR GENERAL DON FRANCISCO VILLA,
+  Chihuahua.
+
+ We are in receipt of your telegram, in which you declare that
+ the division under your command has repudiated the authority as
+ Provisional President, of Don Venustiano Carranza, because of insults
+ to the dignity of said Division and for not having fulfilled the
+ promises made to the people.
+
+ We discover in your telegram a certain ambiguity, as we have no
+ knowledge of the insults to which you refer.
+
+ Concerning the promises made to the people, we consider your
+ pretentions premature, as a convention has been named to meet on the
+ first of October, in which clearly and explicitly the programme of the
+ government will be discussed and studied, so as to solve the various
+ problems which will benefit the proletariat.
+
+ Therefore we would be grateful, if you would communicate to us the
+ nature of the insults to which you refer, and the cause of the people
+ which has been frustrated, so that we can intelligently come to a
+ decision.
+
+ And lastly we appeal to your patriotism and the interest of the
+ country which through this break would be more weakened, and be at
+ the mercy of the American nation, which has not retired its troops
+ from Vera Cruz. We beg of you if you are a real patriot, to calm your
+ temper and meditate on the evils which would befall our country with
+ this civil war--which would bring about as a consequence a foreign war.
+
+ 1st. We are of the opinion that you should sacrifice your self-love
+ for the good of the country, and you should not take notice of said
+ insults, even if they existed.
+
+ Secondly. That we hope that the Convention which is to take place on
+ the first of October, when all the Constitutionalist forces will be
+ represented, to solve the great problems of our country, will put
+ them into effect with the assistance of the arms which we will not
+ relinquish until our ideals have been fulfilled.
+
+ Hoping for an answer to give our definite resolution, we salute you
+ affectionately.
+
+  GENERAL DOMINGO ARRIETA,
+  GENERAL MARIANO ARRIETA.
+
+As an answer, Villa sent General Urbina against the Arrieta Brothers.
+Urbina and his forces were defeated, and the general badly wounded.
+Innocent, well-meaning, but utterly deceived Villa! If he only knew
+that the Cientifícos whom he accuses of having affiliated with
+Carranza, are really pulling their wires from New York, and using him
+(Villa) as the tool to eliminate Carranza, and this because the first
+chief intends to carry out all the radical reforms of the revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL GONZALEZ IN THE EAST
+
+
+Like most of the campaigns in the north of Mexico, where the strategic
+objectives are the border towns, so the campaign of General Gonzalez
+was fought, first for the possession of Piedras Negras (Ciudad Porfirio
+Diaz), Nuevo Laredo, Camargo and Matamoros, and later for the control
+of Tamaulipas.
+
+The first battle of the revolution against Huerta was fought at Anhelo
+and ended in a defeat. Then Venustiano Carranza, with his brother Jesus
+Carranza, and Pablo Gonzalez, took Piedras Negras.
+
+Huerta, as well as his generals, were of the opinion that if Carranza
+was captured and shot, it would end the constitutionalist revolution
+then and there. Therefore, they concentrated all their efforts upon
+Piedras Negras, which was defended by four hundred men. More than 9,000
+Federals were sent against them, and although the revolutionists were
+forced to leave, the enemy did not succeed in capturing the leaders.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL PABLO GONZALEZ
+
+Chief of the Eastern Division]
+
+Then Pablo Gonzalez, with the help of Jesus Carranza, roamed all over
+the States of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon defeating over twenty Federal
+garrisons and capturing the much needed arms and ammunition, which were
+so scarce and hard to get at the beginning of the struggle.
+
+It is a fact worth noticing that, in the three campaigns in the North,
+Centre and South, the revolutionists captured many cities, and then
+departed. To the lay mind it seems absurd to fight so hard to capture
+a city, and then to let it go almost immediately without even waiting
+for the Federals to retake it. Nevertheless, it was good tactics. The
+Federal garrisons offered big stores of war material, while the cities
+supplied them with food, clothing and money.
+
+Monterrey was attacked twice without success, and there was no chance
+of victory until Torreon, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros
+and Tampico were in the hands of Pablo Gonzalez. When that was done,
+Monterrey was automatically evacuated by the Federals.
+
+Tampico was attacked several times and besieged by Caballero. The
+Federals had a great advantage, as they controlled the city with their
+gunboats. Another drawback was the presence of foreign warships, of
+foreign Consuls and representatives of the great oil corporations. The
+Dutch, English and American Oil Companies protested most vigorously
+against the attack on Tampico, and the Federals took good care to use
+this protection to great advantage.
+
+When Pablo Gonzalez was ordered to take Tampico at all costs, he did so
+after only four days’ battle. When the Federals began their retreat,
+they threatened to burn and destroy all the oil tanks and property of
+the foreigners, if they were followed by the Revolutionists.
+
+Like many of the important moves in the campaign against Huerta, the
+great significance of the capture of Tampico was pointed out by a
+civilian. In this instance, the Secretary of the Interior in Carranza’s
+revolutionary Cabinet, Don Rafael Zubáran, was the wise counsellor.
+
+The first reason given was that Huerta had practically given away many
+very valuable oil concessions to an English company, in return for
+cash. That the export tax on each barrel of oil was doubled from sixty
+cents to $1.20 and calculating that over half a million barrels of oil
+were exported daily, it will be seen what a rich source of income would
+have been taken away from Huerta.
+
+The second reason was that the seizure of Tampico would eliminate
+a great source of friction between the foreign powers and the
+revolutionary government, besides relieving the anxiety felt in
+Washington as to the constant danger of foreign marines landing in
+Tampico to protect the interests of their countrymen.
+
+The third reason was that Tampico, besides being the most important
+seaport in Mexico after Vera Cruz, was also a great strategic point.
+It cut off Monterrey and Saltillo from the coast, and endangered
+and flanked their communications. Huerta considered the possession
+of Tampico of such value that when it was threatened by the rebels,
+and he knew that it was lost to him, he decided to force American
+intervention by arresting some marines who had landed at the Tampico
+wharf on routine business. The action was deliberate and was meant to
+concentrate the attention of the revolutionists on American aggression,
+so that they would discontinue their attacks. The State and Navy
+Department very wisely kept the American warship outside of the Panuco
+River so as to offer as few pretexts as possible for attacks. It can be
+asserted that the fall of Tampico sounded the end of Huerta’s rule in
+Mexico.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ZAPATA AND HIS CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH
+
+
+Undoubtedly there is no Mexican who has been talked about, described,
+praised and vilified more than Emiliano Zapata, in the last four years.
+Now everybody can pronounce his name in America, for it has become a
+byword of the revolution in Mexico.
+
+Innumerable articles have been written in America on Zapata but I have
+only met two men who had seen him,--one was a Mexican newspaperman and
+the other was a federal major who slept in the same room with him,
+unconscious of the fact that a few feet from his bed there was the
+man he was supposed to capture dead or alive for Huerta, with three
+thousand soldiers. When he did discover this interesting fact, Zapata
+was miles away. This incident proved conclusively that the southern
+chief could not be caught by force, and that the Indians in Morelos
+would as soon think of committing suicide as to betray him.
+
+The nature of the volcanic country in the State of Morelos makes it
+very hard for a body of soldiers to march through it without danger of
+being surprised and ambushed almost every hundred yards. Every peon in
+Morelos and many other southern States is a Zapatista.
+
+No man could have held such power as Zapata over the population of
+almost three States, by offering in return only the spoils of war
+or brigandage. No bandit ever controlled thirty thousand men on the
+mere results or promise of loot or theft. The Zapatistas, with few
+exceptions, are all for the abolition of all forms of slavery and for
+the distribution of lands. Although Zapata is not the intellectual
+leader of the Zapatistas, his name has become a legend. Many people
+claim that he never existed, others claim that Genovevo de la O was the
+braver and more intelligent of the two, and the real leader.
+
+There were several leaders who fought Diaz before Zapata became
+prominent, but the Morelian chief represented the deepest yearnings,
+the most profound aspirations and all the unspoken desires of a
+miserable, downtrodden, but patient, long-suffering and kindly race.
+Any one who has visited that Garden of Eden of Mexico, the State of
+Morelos, will bear testimony to the simplicity, morality and patience
+of the Morelian Indians, their love of the soil which is almost a
+passion, their sterling qualities.
+
+The injustices, robberies and cruelties perpetrated on the Indians are
+almost incredible, and almost unbelievable in our century. Until the
+European war started, civilized people did not believe that soldiers
+could be so cruel, reckless and ruthless against an enemy.
+
+Zapata’s and Villa’s wholesale shooting of prisoners, the looting of
+haciendas, banks and stores in captured cities, their retaliation
+against federal officers, now seem like kid-glove, pink-tea affairs,
+after the stories of German atrocities. In the light of these
+atrocities, Villa might be a Mexican Chesterfield, and Zapata a
+scrupulous Morelian hidalgo of the most fastidious tastes. Strange
+to relate, the most virulent attacks against Mexican civilization,
+methods of warfare and revolutionary barbarities, were written by
+German editorialists. The Mexicans had no Treitschkes, Nietzsches,
+von Bernhardis to sing the pæans of war, of the destruction and
+annihilation of enemies, and inoffensive non-combatants in the name of
+a higher culture and a greater civilization.
+
+The precedents of cruelties and wanton destruction were created by the
+federal officers under Diaz and Huerta. Where the Federals passed, they
+left a trail of death and desolation. To prove that they had fought
+valiantly the Federals killed peaceful peons and sent the ears of the
+Indians as vouchers to the War Department.
+
+Whole villages passed through fire and sword--in others all the men
+were impressed into the army, and the women and children concentrated
+in the cities. Thousands of fruit trees that had been growing for
+years, bearing fruit, and which were the sole source of income of
+families of peons, were ruthlessly cut down to be sold for firewood by
+greedy Jefes Políticos. A whole population was decimated because it
+would not stay under the leash of the slave driver on the sugar and
+tobacco plantations owned by half a dozen rich families.
+
+Their day of reckoning has almost arrived, and no matter what Zapata or
+any other leader may do politically, the peons of Morelos know that the
+lands are theirs for the taking.
+
+Morelos is one of the smallest States in Mexico, and one of the
+richest, and has an area of 2,734 square miles and a population of
+179,114. As many as thirty thousand soldiers with machine guns and
+cannon were sent to conquer Zapata and his army, but Zapata remained
+unconquered. All the generals, including Huerta, who had won laurels in
+many battlefields, invariably lost them in Morelos. The Federals fought
+according to book-strategy, while Zapata and his chiefs fought with
+the same fabian tactics which defeated Hannibal in Italy and Napoleon
+in Spain. When the patient, ignorant, but physically powerful Indians
+discovered that they could shoot and fight as well as the trained
+Federals, and that a few thousand Indians banded together could keep at
+bay a whole army of Federals, the struggle for land was won.
+
+But there is the reverse of the medal. As all strong people have their
+compensation in some flaw, so has Zapata a great weakness which
+prevents him from becoming the greatest factor for good in his country.
+His illiteracy, coupled with a lack of knowledge of politicians of the
+middle and higher class, make him an easy prey to all sorts of schemers
+and intriguers.
+
+For years Zapata kept up his guerrilla warfare, accompanied by a staff
+of officers and several secretaries. One of the most famous was a
+certain Montaño, a school-teacher who wrote the first plan which Zapata
+endorsed. The second plan, which was written by a certain Palafox,
+another secretary, and was named the Plan of Ayala, which acknowledged
+Orozco as the provisional president, when he rebelled against Madero,
+assisted by Científico money.
+
+After Madero’s murder, Orozco joined the standard of Huerta, who, true
+to his usual methods, tried to use Orozco’s influence with Zapata, to
+eliminate him. Orozco went to Morelos for the purpose of conferring
+with Zapata, but the wily Morelian had discovered that the meeting was
+not meant to bring peace, but to facilitate his capture and murder. As
+Orozco was not very brave, and his conscience not very clear, instead
+of going personally to the meeting, he sent instead his father and
+two other agents. As an answer to the contemplated plot, Zapata took
+Orozco’s father and his two agents as prisoners. Later they were found
+dead, after an attack by the Federals.
+
+Orozco vowed vengeance, but he left Cuernavaca in great haste under
+the pretext of going North to fight the Constitutionalists, where
+he was defeated at every encounter. Any one who had read Mexican
+newspapers would have known how discredited Orozco’s personality was,
+but Zapata’s secretaries wanted a continuation of conditions wherein
+they would run the Morelian chief for their own benefit.
+
+When Carranza arrived in Mexico City with the constitutionalist
+government, he sent two agents to Zapata, with power to settle the
+agrarian question in Morelos, once for all. The following letter by
+Gen. A. I. Villareal will show how Zapata’s secretaries spoiled the
+settlement.
+
+ MEXICO, Sept. 5th, 1914.
+
+ GENERAL EMILIANO ZAPATA:
+
+ Cuernavaca, Mor.
+
+ _Esteemed General_:
+
+ I had the pleasure of receiving the last letter, which you were kind
+ enough to send through Mr. Reyes and in which you express the fact
+ that you were to blame for the incident at Huitzilac. I must advise
+ you that this matter was not one of much importance, and it seems
+ that they gave you exaggerated reports of the same. What we consider
+ a grave affair, and was really a sad one regarding which we went to
+ consult you with the object of arriving at an agreement between the
+ revolutionary elements of the North and the South, was the unjustified
+ conduct and belligerent attitude of your secretary, Mr. Manuel
+ Palafox, in respect to whom I intend to speak in this letter with the
+ most absolute and honest frankness; believing in this way that I may
+ do you a good turn, not alone yourself personally but also the cause
+ of the well-being of the public which we must all defend and also the
+ peace of the nation.
+
+ If you critically analyze the happenings which occurred during our
+ visit in this city, and to which I beg to call your attention, you
+ will discover in a moment that all the difficulties, all the petty
+ misunderstandings, all the threats of war, emanated principally from
+ Mr. Palafox supported by Mr. Serratos, who also in our opinion is
+ carrying on work right in your office that is very far from being
+ patriotic and loyal.
+
+ It is always the case that when various people come together to
+ settle great or small differences which may exist between them, it
+ is understood if they work in good faith and the matters treated
+ of are thoroughly talked over, that some points are ceded by one
+ party and some by the other party; there must be reciprocity in
+ the arrangements, and a definite conclusion reached regarding the
+ subject under discussion. To continue, conferences held with regard
+ to any matter must not be reduced to the party on one side imposing
+ a settlement and the parties on the other side accepting the same
+ without discussing the propositions for and against and coming to a
+ mutual agreement.
+
+ Unfortunately, in our case this which was the rational and just
+ method of procedure did not take place, because as you will remember
+ Mr. Palafox, who was the spokesman during the discussions almost
+ prevented us from setting forth our side of the subject, and attempted
+ to impose upon us certain conditions which would have to be accepted
+ unconditionally as preliminaries before arriving at a resolution.
+
+ You will recollect that Mr. Palafox demanded as a first condition
+ that as revolutionaries of the North we should accept without
+ discussion the Plan of Ayala as the Supreme Law of the Republic,
+ declaring that otherwise it would be impossible to treat of other
+ matters.
+
+ This is in direct contradiction to your declarations, that you had no
+ ambition for power; for in one of the clauses of the Plan of Ayala
+ it states that General Pascual Orozco is recognized as leader of
+ the revolution, and in case he is not able to discharge that task,
+ you will be eligible; and as our complete submission to the Plan of
+ Ayala is demanded it would intimate that we ought to place you in the
+ position of the Supreme Chief of the Nation and in a more or less
+ covert manner, you would be Provisional President of the Republic.
+
+ I believe in the sincerity of your words when you say that you have
+ no ambition to command, that all you want is the settlement of the
+ agrarian question and the economic betterment of the lower classes for
+ which you have struggled so bravely. But back of this is Mr. Palafox,
+ who has the ambition to rule, and who is desirous to see you raised
+ to supreme power so that he may enjoy a privileged position in your
+ office in his character of Secretary and Councillor. The same object
+ animated Mr. Serratos more or less who also enjoys a certain amount of
+ influence regarding your affairs, and doubtless awaits the auspicious
+ moment of utilizing the same for his own benefit.
+
+ You will remember that Don Luis Cabrera and I set forth very clearly
+ that we were authorized to accept essentially the Plan of Ayala; that
+ is, the land question, the satisfaction of the popular needs, the
+ betterment of the poor. We hereby declare that we agree fully with the
+ principles set forth in the Plan of Ayala, and only desire that its
+ form may be modified, and that there may be added to the gubernatorial
+ programme which we might draw up some clauses relative to the
+ needs of the Northern States and the States in the centre of the
+ Republic, which are not in the same condition as those of the south.
+ Messrs. Palafox and Serratos refused to accept our cordial and just
+ propositions, and insisted in a blind, unquestionable, despotic manner
+ that the Plan of Ayala be accepted, without the change of a word or a
+ comma.
+
+ Convinced that the influence of Messrs. Palafox and Serratos over
+ you would make sterile all our efforts for coming to an agreement
+ in the form which we proposed, we declined to start a discussion
+ which only might have served to embitter our souls and to give rise
+ to more ill-feeling than what we suffered in the course of our
+ conversation with you. For our part we found ourselves in a visibly
+ hostile atmosphere, and we lacked the liberty necessary for the free
+ expression of our opinions.
+
+ When Mr. Sarabia spoke with you for the first time, he wrote me
+ stating that your attitude was cordial and that he saw that your
+ propositions of peace were sincere. On the occasion of our meeting
+ with you our surprise was great to find you different from what Mr.
+ Sarabia had represented. This may be easily explained that the first
+ time you spoke with Mr. Sarabia you were guided by your own impulses
+ and by your good intentions, and the second time you were under the
+ influence of the unhealthy machinations of Mr. Palafox.
+
+ The question then is reduced to the following facts: On our part the
+ greatest and most sincere cordiality, the recognition of the justice
+ of your cause, the acceptance of the principles of the plan of Ayala
+ relating to the division of lands and the social betterment; on your
+ part, good impulses, no ambition for power, and the exclusive desire
+ for the welfare of the public; and on the part of Mr. Palafox and
+ Mr. Serratos a spirit of intrigue that distorts the best intentions,
+ ambitions for power in your hands with a view to thriving in your
+ shadow, and a decided object of provoking war if their ambitions
+ should not be satisfied.
+
+ Is not this sad, General Zapata? Is it not deeply to be lamented that
+ all the patriotic efforts of honorable men shall go to pieces before
+ the caprices of two intriguers? Is it not bitter and even shameful
+ that a movement as great and unselfish as yours after four years of
+ struggle should degenerate by reason of an instrument of vile ambition
+ and in an ignoble weapon for bringing war a second time on a country
+ already exhausted in its struggle for independence?
+
+ I make a supreme appeal to your honor, to your patriotism, to your
+ love of the people, who would be in the last analysis those who would
+ suffer most from a war, that you take into consideration what we said
+ when we were with you, and which I again repeat in this letter, that
+ we may arrive at a good understanding with the revolutionaries of the
+ north and the south, who in reality are brothers.
+
+ We know that we have done all in our power to arrive at a peaceful
+ solution, and if at length it might be found impossible to reach it,
+ it will not be through our fault.
+
+ God grant that to-morrow I may not have to tell you that through
+ attending to the intrigues of an ambitious party more than to the
+ dictates of patriotism, you may be to blame for the beginning of a war
+ which would be thoroughly unjustifiable, which no one wants and which
+ would do no one any good!
+
+ I believe that after what I have said it is only necessary to add
+ the following: That while Palafox continues at your side enjoying the
+ influence that he does, it will be impossible for us to return to see
+ you at Cuernavaca, nor for us to send other representatives, for we
+ consider that we would not have, as we did not, the necessary liberty
+ to treat with frankness and amplitude the transcendental subject which
+ is under our discussion.
+
+ We would be very thankful to know that you had resolved to act
+ independently of your harmful counsellor; and in such a case we
+ consider that it would be easy enough to arrive at a settlement.
+
+ In place of Mr. Palafox you should be able to consult your principal
+ chiefs, who have struggled faithfully for the cause, and you will
+ surely find among them better standards and better counsel than from
+ your ancient secretary.
+
+ I know that the majority of your chieftains hold Mr. Palafox in scant
+ esteem and do not care for him; and if they have not so expressed
+ themselves to you it has been perhaps through lack of opportunity or
+ excess of discipline. Now it would be convenient that you consult them
+ regarding this matter.
+
+ I trust, Mr. General, in your good judgment and sense of right, to
+ kindly bear in mind with a spirit of serenity and justice what we
+ have set before you, and unite your efforts to ours with a view
+ to realizing the peace which our Republic needs so much, without
+ lessening the agrarian ideals for which you have struggled for so long
+ a time.
+
+ I am happy to sign myself,
+
+  Yours affectionate and loyal friend,
+  ANTONIO I. VILLARREAL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ONE HUNDRED YEARS’ STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND DEMOCRACY, AGAINST CLERICALISM
+
+
+In August, 1521, Cortez consummated the conquest of New Spain and in
+August, 1821, under Iturbide, the independence of Mexico was wrested
+from the mother country.
+
+For exactly three hundred years Spain governed Mexico with soldiers
+and priests. Ten prelates of the Dominican order, out of a list of
+sixty-two viceroys, had ruled New Spain, which was surrounded with a
+ring that was mightier than a Chinese wall.
+
+Education, outside of religious teaching, was discouraged.
+Communication with the outside world was forbidden. Spain fed New Spain
+commercially, politically and intellectually.
+
+The Mexican born was allowed no privileges, no rights. The Spaniards,
+soldiers, priests and aristocrats monopolized everything; all the
+offices, the commerce, the property, were theirs. Four-fifths of the
+lands were in the hands of the Church.
+
+In 1811 an ex-priest, Hidalgo, unfurled the banner of the revolution by
+the shouts of: “Long live Religion! Death to bad Government! Death to
+the Gachupines!” (Spaniards).
+
+The revolution for freedom from Spanish rule was initiated by an
+ex-priest. Morelos, Matamoros, Dr. Cos, and Navarrete, who continued
+the struggle, were all ex-priests. Great personalities appeared in the
+ten years’ revolution, such as Alvarez, Guerrero, Bravo, Victoria. The
+Mexican revolutionists were battling for political liberty and land.
+
+When the Church realized that Mexico was lost to Spain, it put forward
+a Spanish officer, Iturbide, as the Liberator. Iturbide betrayed his
+own king, and after accepting the first Constitution, betrayed the
+revolution and became emperor by means of a military “cuartelazo”
+(mutiny).
+
+The Mexican liberals fought continuously the encroachments of the
+Church, which used the army to support it politically. The military
+strength created by the Church and landowners was maintained, not to
+protect the nation from foreign aggression, but to guard the government
+from the assaults of the people.
+
+The climax of the struggle took place during the three years’ war,
+1857-1860, when the liberal leaders enforced the laws of the reform,
+which entitled the nation to possess all the properties of the clergy,
+both religious and secular, and the Church was denied the right to own
+real estate.
+
+Religious orders as contrary to public welfare were dissolved. Church
+and State were absolutely separated, and religious freedom was fully
+and firmly established.
+
+Benito Juarez, a pure-blooded Indian, continued the strife of the
+Liberals, initiated by Gomez Farias, Melchior Ocampo and other martyrs
+of the cause. After the three years’ war, the Church was ostensibly
+eliminated as a political power. The land which had been absorbed
+by the Church from the Indians, and known as “egidos,” communal
+lands, reverted to them, and over three million Indians became small
+landowners.
+
+Defeated but not discouraged, the clericals then brought about French
+intervention and placed on the throne of Mexico a clerical, Emperor
+Maximilian, who met his defeat and death in Queretaro in 1867.
+
+Porfirio Diaz came into power as a liberal through a revolution, and
+ended as a clerical. Under his régime of spoliation, all the lands
+which belonged to the Indians were taken away from them by trickery
+and legal frauds, and distributed among Diaz’ generals and political
+supporters. Government land was sold to foreigners.
+
+Through the influence of Carmelita Diaz, the wife of General Diaz, the
+religious orders, foreign priests, friars and nuns, came back to Mexico
+and acquired property, and the clericals began reorganizing themselves
+and taking breath for another struggle which they knew was coming soon.
+When Diaz was tottering to his fall, the Church placed the clerical,
+De la Barra, in the provisional presidency. The Madero cabinet was
+composed of clericals and neo-Científicos who sat tight in a passive
+policy of non-intervention in Mexican internal affairs, as if the
+government reforms were none of their business.
+
+Meanwhile, the clericals were very active politically and financially;
+they contributed millions of dollars to the downfall of the Madero
+government. As usual, the clericals corrupted the army chiefs, and
+succeeded in having the reform government overthrown.
+
+Dr. Urrutia, a pupil of the Jesuit College, was the instigator and
+chief plotter. He picked out Huerta as the most convenient tool for
+the Church. Huerta, although a Catholic, was a most unscrupulous and
+ambitious man, and used the Church as a stepping-stone. He received
+millions of dollars from the clergy, from the landowners, and the
+foreigners, such as bankers and mining and oil interests. During
+Huerta’s régime, Dr. Urrutia was the Mephisto and Iago of Huerta.
+
+As soon as Huerta was in power and the higher clergy began to notice
+the unpopularity of the dictator, they began plotting his assassination
+or overthrow. Huerta, who trusted Dr. Urrutia more than any other man
+in Mexico except General Blanquet, made him Minister of the Interior,
+and upon his shoulders fell the responsibility of the murder of
+scores, nay, hundreds, of political enemies of the Huerta régime.
+
+As long as Dr. Urrutia and his friends, Mora the Archbishop of
+Mexico, Jenaro Mendez, Archbishop of Michoacan, Eulogio G. Gillow,
+Archbishop of Oaxaca, Ramon, Archbishop of Puebla--in fact, almost
+all the archbishops of Mexico, were plotting with Dr. Urrutia for the
+elimination of the enemies of the dictatorship, Huerta seems to have
+made no objection. The following letter, addressed to Dr. Urrutia,
+Minister of the Interior, by the Archbishop of Mexico City, silences
+the statements made by Catholics in America and Mexico, that the Church
+was neutral and did not play politics.
+
+
+LETTER FROM ARCHBISHOP MORA TO URRUTIA
+
+ MEXICO, July 11th, 1913.
+
+ _My dear Minister and friend_:
+
+ Thanking you for the kind terms of your favor of the 9th inst. which I
+ received yesterday, I beg to assure you once more THAT ALL THE CURATES
+ AND PRIESTS UNDER MY JURISDICTION, in compliance with their duty, will
+ make every effort in order to bring about as soon as possible, the
+ fulfilment of the aspirations of all the good people in this republic,
+ who desire the peace and tranquillity of the beloved country.
+
+ I say that they do so in compliance with their duty because the Church
+ desires peace, and to avoid bloodshed, and that all co-operate to
+ the ultimate object of society, which is the well-being of all its
+ members.
+
+ In this sense, I shall continue to animate them to lose no opportunity
+ to exhort their parishioners to help to obtain this great boon.
+
+ In order to proceed in all justice, I would like, if you have no
+ objection, to know the name of the person who is working against the
+ government. _One word from you on the subject will be sufficient._
+
+ I enclose a Memo. of something which may be of use to you, and which
+ has come to my knowledge from trustworthy sources.
+
+ With kindest greetings, and assuring you of my thankfulness,
+ friendship and respect, I beg to remain,
+
+  Very respectfully,
+  JOSÉ, _Archbishop of Mexico_.
+
+Dr. Urruita, emboldened by his success in eliminating so many enemies
+by assassination, and in his formidable and terror-inspiring position
+as official executioner of Huerta, became ambitious. The high clergy
+of Mexico encouraged his pretentions, and began sending out feelers
+to discover if he would be willing and ready to oust Huerta and place
+himself in Huerta’s stead as dictator. But Huerta was wide-awake, and
+as soon as he discovered the plot, he gave orders to have Urrutia
+arrested. Urrutia escaped by the skin of his teeth; disguised as an
+Indian peon he crossed the American lines to Vera Cruz, where he was
+almost lynched by the infuriated Mexicans.
+
+The following letter from the Archbishop of Michoacan proves
+irrefutably that the Mexican clergy had plotted to place one of the
+most dastardly, cruel and infamous men in Mexico, in the culminating
+position of Chief Executive of the Republic, as a protégé and tool of
+the Church in Mexico.
+
+
+LETTER OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF MICHOACAN TO MINISTER URRUTIA
+
+ September 11th, 1913.
+
+ _My dear compadre_:
+
+ The timely measures taken by you saved this city from being ravaged by
+ the rebel gangs which have been concentrating in these localities to
+ the number of over a thousand strong, but now, I think I can assure
+ you that if the detachment which has just arrived, pursues them, this
+ part of the State will soon be pacified.
+
+ The principal object of this letter is to ask you to relieve me of a
+ great anxiety under which I am laboring, and which has been caused by
+ the aggressive and almost scandalous attitude taken in public by Mr.
+ Calero and a small group of porristas, against your good self. I can
+ well see that their object is to tarnish the glory which you have so
+ justly won, and to alienate your adherents all over the republic.
+
+ But they will not accomplish anything, because all the sensible men
+ know very well the envy and intrigues that animate these degraded
+ people. Although I am at ease on that score, my profound sympathy and
+ affection for you make me fear that these men’s intrigues might put
+ obstacles on the path that Our Lord and His Blessed Mother HAVE PUT
+ BEFORE YOU TO CLIMB TO THE CULMINATING POSITION OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE
+ OF THE REPUBLIC, which position will require of you the greatest
+ sacrifice, but will at the same time lay before you a vast field in
+ which to exercise your activity for the glory and honor of God, and
+ for the benefit of our beloved country.
+
+ In the meantime I beg of you to tell me confidentially if this threat
+ of Calero is to be feared, or whether you think it will be easy for
+ you to humiliate the efforts of these upstarts.
+
+  Your compadre etc.,
+  JENARO MENDEZ,
+  _Archbishop of Michoacan_.
+
+The flight of several archbishops from Mexico was not due so much to
+their fear of the persecutions of the Constitutionalists but more to
+the terror of the retaliations of General Huerta. The Mexican clergy
+enlisted the sympathy of the American Catholics and of the Pope
+in Rome, in their appeals for protection. The impression has been
+given that the Mexican clergy is a victim of the persecutions of the
+Constitutionalists, who want to destroy religion.
+
+What the Mexican liberals, as well as the leaders among the Indians,
+are after, is the elimination of the clergy from the political
+arena. The political activities of the clericals will only result in
+disastrous effects--their abstention from it will only enhance their
+spiritual supremacy.
+
+At Aguascalientes, one of the delegates of Zapata, Paulino Martinez,
+said before the assembled generals: “The Indian, the peon, the
+workingman of all the factories, the artisans in the cities, were all
+exploited by that odious trinity formed by the cacique, the military
+man and the priest.
+
+Carranza never said a more profound truth, than when he stated, at the
+beginning of the revolution against Huerta-- “WE ARE FIGHTING THE THREE
+YEARS’ WAR ALL OVER AGAIN.”
+
+The religious question in Mexico has to be settled once for all by
+the Mexicans themselves, and the pernicious interferences by the
+Mexican clergy, which tries to enlist the sympathy, influence and
+intervention of the American or foreign Catholics, will only revert to
+the disadvantage of all the fair thinking, just Catholics, who, if they
+are sincere in their claims that they do not mix in politics, will find
+that the safest and most practical thing to do is to keep neutral in a
+family quarrel. Otherwise they might burn their fingers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ATTEMPTS AT THE SOLUTION OF THE LAND QUESTION
+
+
+Several attempts have been made during the last four years to solve
+the land problem in the States of Morelos, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua.
+Other States have followed in the wake in a more or less radical
+manner according to the conditions of the peons and the necessity for
+cultivating the land to feed the population.
+
+The most interesting of all attempts was initiated by Gen. Lucio Blanco
+who was fighting under Gen. Pablo Gonzalez in the division of the East.
+Any one taking the trouble to look up the map of Mexico will observe
+that the State of Tamaulipas touches the border of the United States
+from the mouth of the Rio Grande (Matamoros) to Nuevo Laredo. Along the
+line of that strip, on the most fertile parts which can be irrigated
+by the waters of the Rio Grande, were lands which belonged to small
+tenants and in many cases were communal lands “egidos” belonging to
+Indians.
+
+Under the Diaz régime in the last ten years of his rule, Felix Diaz,
+the nephew of the dictator, was able to expropriate most of those
+lands with the assistance of the governor and the jefes políticos of
+Tamaulipas. The company which expropriated the lands and paid the
+expenses was under the patronage of Felix Diaz. Roughly speaking there
+were about 75,000 acres under the control of that company.
+
+As soon as Gonzalez’s and Blanco’s troops had driven the Federals and
+the jefes políticos from the border, Lucio Blanco originated the idea
+of selling the lands of Felix Diaz to the peons of Tamaulipas.
+
+He asked the engineers fighting under him to survey the land in
+question and divide it into small lots from ten to sixty acres. Then
+he offered them at public auction, giving the preference to the
+soldiers under his command. The effect was surprising; peons came from
+everywhere to watch the proceedings. Most of the land was sold to the
+highest bidder at a very low price, on the installment plan, with a
+small sum to be paid in cash. The most astonishing and significant
+result of the experiment was that over 400 peons bought the land
+besides a great many soldiers who, having acquired small lots, refused
+to continue fighting. Their logic was irrefutable: they had taken up
+arms to get back the land and now that they were in possession of it,
+why fight any longer?
+
+The problem was perplexing in the extreme. If all the generals in the
+revolution acted on the same principle as Lucio Blanco then all the
+Constitutionalist soldiers would stop fighting.
+
+This incident proves quite conclusively that the revolution in Mexico
+is an economic more than a political upheaval.
+
+Carranza was informed of this land distribution and its disastrous
+results in as far as it touched the military question and the result
+was that Gen. Lucio Blanco had to shift his command to the western
+division under General Obregon.
+
+In the State of Chihuahua General Villa began a distribution of lands.
+Unlike General Blanco, he went at the problem in a haphazard, personal
+way.
+
+As the Terrazas were personal enemies of his and owners of almost
+one-third of the State of Chihuahua, he proclaimed the Terrazas estates
+confiscated. The distribution was made among some of his officers,
+civilians on his staff and personal friends.
+
+In Mexico wherever there is cultivation of any kind there will be found
+a farmhouse (hacienda) built like a fortress. The hacienda proper is a
+small village, sometimes a small city in itself, containing the house
+of the proprietor, the manager, the servants and the peons, a church,
+buildings for gathering the crops, often a factory, enclosures or
+stables for horses, cattle, sheep. The whole is surrounded by a high
+and very thick wall which can stand a prolonged siege and can defy
+capture by armed forces. Everything for its protection is found within
+its walls: gatling guns, rifles, ammunition, food, clothing, and even
+wells of water.
+
+Formerly some of the haciendados were able to arm and organize as many
+as 30,000 men under their command from their haciendas.
+
+Most of the haciendas are now in the hands of the Revolutionists,
+generals, officers and peons who work the farms for their own benefit.
+
+Land without a farmhouse has not the same value, as the farmer coming
+into a piece of land would have to build a house, unless the land
+allotted to him happened to be near his abode. Besides, the haciendas
+contain everything needed for the cultivation, such as plows,
+agricultural implements, seeds, horses, cattle.
+
+When Villa gave land away he incorporated with it a farmhouse. In that
+sense he was creating another landed aristocracy to take the place of
+the old one. Another factor which is important in the land question is
+the climatic condition of the State. In Chihuahua with the exception
+of the western part the rest is dry and needs artificial irrigation to
+bring satisfactory results. Artificial irrigation has to be done by the
+State or the federal government and cannot be carried on by private
+individuals unless they are very rich or backed by capitalists or
+corporations.
+
+Most of the Terrazas estates thereupon fell into the hands of a few
+scores of individuals instead of one single family.
+
+When it is taken into account that the population of Chihuahua is about
+405,500, it will be found that the distribution of the land by Villa
+only touched an infinitesimal percentage of the population. Even if it
+is calculated that it is necessary that one-third of the population
+of Chihuahua may be needed to sustain the State by agriculture,
+then 135,000 people or a third of the State would have to come into
+possession of land. Admitting that Villa should succeed in giving away
+land to all the soldiers and officers who have fought under him or
+about 25,000 men, still there would be left over 110,000 landless peons
+who very likely would have to go to work for the fortunate soldiers of
+the northern division. The peons could justly claim that the revolution
+was fought for all the Mexicans and especially for the peons and not
+solely for the soldiers of the northern division.
+
+The solution of the land question by Villa is therefore unequitable and
+is likely to bring further trouble.
+
+Zapata on the other side solved the problem in the most drastic and so
+far in the most practical manner.
+
+The State of Morelos is a very small State and has a population of
+about 180,000 inhabitants. The land is very fertile, needing no
+irrigation, as the periodical rainy season and the rivers irrigating
+the whole State makes the growth of every kind of fruit trees,
+vegetables, coffee, sugar cane, tobacco, corn, etc., luxuriant in the
+highest degree. In fact several crops can be gathered every year.
+
+Zapata did not only include the officers of his staff and army in the
+land distribution but every soldier who had fought for him and every
+peon and every family of peons in the State of Morelos.
+
+In the case of the big sugar plantations Zapata levied a ransom which
+was calculated on a certain percentage of the profits; to feed, clothe
+and arm his soldiers. The salaries of the workers were increased and
+the proprietor of the plantation was protected against depredations and
+destruction. If the sugar planter refused to pay, then his machinery,
+the buildings and the crops were burned. The constant threat of and
+fear of Zapata’s army eliminated the worst form of slavery: peonage.
+
+The rest of the population was empowered to appropriate and cultivate
+the land surrounding the villages or near their dwellings.
+
+In this fashion Zapata’s soldiers were fed, clothed and armed--every
+ablebodied man, every peon had his rifle and his ammunition and was
+always ready to fight the aggressions of the federal army. Practically
+the whole male population between the ages of twenty and thirty was
+under arms; when the Federals were away it attended to the crops; when
+soldiers invaded its territory they were driven out of it or forced to
+keep within the limits of the cities.
+
+Without having any knowledge of French history the Zapatistas followed
+in the footsteps of the French revolutionists.
+
+While the leaders Marat, Danton, Robespierre were fighting their
+and their parties’ supremacy and eliminating one another with the
+assistance of the guillotine; while the French armies were fighting
+the foreign invaders, the French peasants after burning a few chateaux
+and driving away the aristocratic landowners settled down to work the
+land for their own profits. As long as the aristocrat could not come
+back to claim the land, the peasant cared not who ran the government.
+Napoleon was able to become Emperor because he wisely left the peasants
+in possession of lands which they had confiscated from the aristocrats.
+
+In Mexico the identical thing has happened and continues and will
+continue until some sort of government will be created to satisfy the
+needs of the country. The basis of future democracy in Mexico will be
+founded on municipal self rule in all the cities and rural settlements.
+
+When that is a fact there will be little trouble with the other
+branches of the government. The landowners in most of the States have
+been driven out and meanwhile the peons are working on the land in
+Morelos as well as in most of the other States. The rich haciendados
+have left and the poor peons have stayed behind.
+
+We hear only about battles, the capture of cities, the ambitions of
+leaders, the quarrels among the generals, but we hear nothing at all
+of the peons working to feed the 15,000,000 inhabitants in Mexico, of
+the thousands of artisans and workingmen who help to complete the work
+of the farmer.
+
+There may be 140,000 or 150,000 men under arms in Mexico, but what
+is that in comparison to the 15,000,000 people who continue to live
+without fighting, who have to be fed, clothed and even amused? The
+longer the revolution lasts the happier will be the lot of the average
+peons, for every added day will decrease the chances of the reactionary
+landowner to come back and through legal means deprive the Indian of
+this land.
+
+The French revolution lasted almost ten years. When the Bastille was
+stormed about 25,000 aristocrats and prelates owned all the land in
+France. When Napoleon came into power as Emperor over half a million
+people owned land in France.
+
+In Mexico over 65,000 haciendados are in possession of the country,
+but a great majority of them are not on their haciendas, many are in
+exile. The revolution has lasted about four years. The longer it lasts
+the more chances there are that the original proprietors will stay away
+and the latifundiæ will be divided automatically. The peons are more
+interested in the ownership of the land than the question of peace,
+the ballot, or who is going to be president or governor; they are
+indifferent as to who will loan or will not loan money to the Mexican
+government; if the Mexican consols are rising or dropping in value, as
+long as the haciendados keep away long enough to give him a chance to
+claim the land as his own. A little cultivation will give him all the
+food he needs, what he does not need he will sell and buy with it a few
+necessities.
+
+For the success of the revolution it is vital that it should continue
+until every reactionary element, the clergy, the landowner, the
+army chiefs have been so thoroughly beaten that they will have no
+opportunity to come back and play a political game of which they know
+all the tricks. The reactionary elements must be so fearful of the
+wrath of the revolutionists, must be made so poor, that they will never
+come back again.
+
+Carranza is right and so is Cabrera when they say that the land must
+be taken wherever it can be found; that the revolutionists must carry
+out the reforms with the power of their bayonets or they will never be
+consummated. That those who speak of a constitutional government and of
+elections are the reactionaries who want to play the game and arrest
+the triumphant march of the revolution.
+
+Madero was elected constitutionally, so was a congress, so were the
+senators and the governors. The ministers sat in council. What happened
+to the reforms of the plan of San Luis Potosí? Reactionaries like
+Ernesto Madero and Rafael Hernandez who sat in the cabinet for two
+years, very effectively canned all the reforms. The revolution had to
+be fought all over again.
+
+If Villa backed by the reactionary elements should control the
+destinies of Mexico, then it would be only a question of a few months
+until a new revolution would overthrow his régime.
+
+Revolutions are the maladies of nations, they cannot be arrested in
+their course with impunity, for then the disease will crop out in a
+more virulent form.
+
+Mexico at the end of the Diaz régime was as feudal as France under
+Louis XVI. Mexico had the aristocratic landowner, the political
+clergy and the military chiefs as well as in France. They will have
+to be eradicated as thoroughly as noxious weeds from a field before
+cultivation. After a while order will come out of chaos. Meanwhile the
+peon is slowly coming into his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE CARRANZA-VILLA IMBROGLIO
+
+
+To make the story very short we could say that Mexican and American
+reactionary interests were behind Villa, in an endeavor to exclude
+Carranza as a factor in Mexican politics. But the story will be more
+interesting and revealing if we point out some of the methods used to
+engineer the conspiracy.
+
+During the first six months of the revolution against Huerta (1913),
+few authentic stories were published about the revolution. Most of the
+news came from Mexico City. There was no other political personage
+who could get more space in the first page of the newspapers than
+Victoriano Huerta.
+
+In Europe, the oil interests very effectively silenced the press as to
+the progress of the revolution; in Paris the press was bought outright.
+
+[Illustration: GENERAL BENJAMIN HILL
+
+(Defender of Naco), under General Obregon]
+
+Although the American press cannot be bought, there are ways of
+circumventing it and cheating it of the truth. The Huertista press
+agents knowing the curiosity of the American people, fed them with
+stories about Huerta, and with details of his official and
+unofficial actions, and more than once his very thoughts were reported
+and published. The refrain was always: No matter how bad Huerta may
+be, he is nevertheless President de facto,--he is the strongest
+man in Mexico and he should be recognized. A Mexican and a foreign
+newspaperman spent four thousand dollars a week on publicity work,
+while another supporter of Huerta is known to have spent ten thousand
+dollars for the same purpose.
+
+The Huerta agents came in contact with the felicista and científico
+agents, and they put their heads together to devise a means of breaking
+up the successful revolution. The reactionary junta watched the events
+with keen interest. As soon as Villa had proved his ability as a
+general, he was chosen at once as the easiest and most convenient tool
+to break up the harmony between the revolutionists.
+
+All the efforts were concentrated on Villa. He was furnished
+with money, ammunition, friends and advisers. Villa’s sincerity,
+impulsiveness, his violent temper and cruelty, his utter lack of
+scruples and his ignorance, were splendid instruments in the hands
+of the past masters of intrigue. On May 13th, 1911, during a mutiny,
+Pascual Orozco and Villa almost succeeded in murdering Francisco I.
+Madero. This incident pointed out to the científico element, the man
+who might be induced to repeat, more successfully, the elimination of
+another leader of the new revolution.
+
+The Villa press agents began to fill the magazines and Sunday papers
+with romantic stories about the bandit general, the Napoleon bandit,
+the Washington, the Lincoln of Mexico. The life record of Villa, his
+personality and ignorance, forbade his ever becoming a presidential
+possibility. That just suited the junta, as Villa’s presidency would
+have been fraught with too many dangers for the científico element.
+Huerta worked very hard to bring about a break between Villa and
+Carranza, while he was in power, but he did not succeed. Nevertheless,
+the work of corrosion and strife was continued by the exiled
+huertistas, felicistas and científicos.
+
+During the summer of 1913, the Villa publicity reached its zenith.
+As much as two hundred dollars was paid to a writer to get a story
+on Villa into a New York Sunday paper. At about that time everybody
+began to suspect that Huerta would resign. Carranza was approached
+by the interests which had loaned money to Huerta, to discover if he
+would recognize the loan, and as Carranza would not countenance such a
+proposition, the foreign interests united with the Huerta, felicista
+and científico exiles, with the addition of some of the Madero clan, to
+work together, against the Constitutionalists.
+
+Villa, with all his ability as a guerrilla general, became a
+marionette in the hands of politicians who pulled the strings. Even
+the Aguascalientes Convention became a Punch & Judy show managed from
+New York, and it was used as a convenient lever to oust Carranza and
+place a puppet in his stead. The original suggestion to acclaim Don F.
+Iglesias Calderon as provisional president missed fire, because of the
+refusal of that very fine and integral personality to take orders from
+a single military division. Suggestions were telegraphed from New York
+to the junta’s representatives in Aguascalientes, who, under the guise
+of radical counsellors, were really dictating what Villa should do.
+
+In fact, all the interviews passed through the hands of an American
+press agent of Villa, and his manifestos, proclamations and letters
+were written by the agents, and signed by Villa, who was absolutely
+ignorant of the contents of the documents.
+
+The Aguascalientes convention was to be represented by all the generals
+who had fought in the revolution. Only one civilian was present: Luis
+Cabrera. No soldiers outside of the personal staffs of the generals
+were supposed to come near Aguascalientes.
+
+Nevertheless, Villa sent ten thousand soldiers to the city and had
+it surrounded by troops, while he sat in a caboose on a railroad
+track at the outskirts. For all practical and illegitimate purposes,
+the Convention was imprisoned--the deliberations were not free and
+independent, and were not meant to be so. Many generals who tried to
+escape outside of the ring formed by Villa’s soldiers were sent back
+to the city; while others managed to slip through and joined their
+commands.
+
+A perusal of the cabinet members supposed to be named by E. Gutierrez,
+shows that the list was drawn up in New York. F. Iglesias Calderon,
+although perfectly honest and independent, stands very high among the
+members of the Científico Junta. He refused the honor of a portfolio.
+José Vasconcelos is known to the American public through the stolen
+Hopkins letters, where his name was mentioned as a recipient of
+American oil money. E. C. Llorente, who is to represent Gutierrez in
+Washington, was a porfirista who plotted against the Madero régime at
+the border.
+
+One of the most important reasons for Villa’s caution in not rushing
+into a fight against Carranza’s generals, is that he did not feel
+strong enough to cope against the constitutionalist forces. Fighting
+veteran Constitutionalists is a different proposition from fighting
+Huerta’s raw recruits and ex-convicts, or boys. The defection of
+Villa’s best generals, Generals Luis and Maclovio Herrera, and the
+Arrieta brothers, could not be supplanted by the support of J. M.
+Maytorena.
+
+In his anxiety to fight Carranza, General Villa went so far as to
+enlist many federal Huerta generals, whom he had fought so bitterly
+and denounced so roundly, and who had escaped from Mexico in fear of
+Villa’s wrath. Poor Villa seemed unconscious of the fact that he was
+slowly being surrounded by all the reactionary elements in Mexico--the
+same element of which he was a conspicuous victim during the Diaz
+régime. When these interests that now surround him have achieved their
+purpose, they will try to corrupt him, and if they cannot buy him they
+will assassinate him.
+
+Villa’s blindness could not go any farther. No reasoning, no arguments,
+no sense of patriotism or decency can rouse such an innocent fool,
+and therefore, force will have to decide once more the question of
+supremacy.
+
+As Luis Cabrera said in a speech before the Convention, “In all
+probability, the only solution at which the Aguascalientes Convention
+will arrive, will be another war, another military action,” the name
+of Aguascalientes (hot waters), is very significant as to the trouble
+which the Convention has brought Mexico face to face with.
+
+The Científico-Huerta-Madero junta in New York decided a few months ago
+that if Carranza could not be eliminated through the Convention, he
+could be forced out by another revolution within the revolution proper.
+
+When it was discovered that the appeal Villa had sent out to the
+revolutionary generals on September 23d before the Convention, had
+not succeeded in bringing about the desired result, it was decided to
+induce the doubtful element in the Convention to join in a supposedly
+legal procedure. After Carranza’s resignation had been refused at
+the Convention in Mexico, the delegates suggested the Aguascalientes
+meeting as a means of settling all the questions of reform. Villa’s
+supporters, instead of keeping to the business on hand, jammed through
+the Gutierrez election, published the list of the Cabinet members, and
+sent Carranza an ultimatum.
+
+In this way they expected to give a legal appearance to their
+action, and thus accelerate the secession, throwing the loyal
+Constitutionalists on the side of the Villa contingent.
+
+Neither Villa nor Zapata ever harbored the intention of handing over
+their forces to the generals designated by the convention--their
+hope was that Carranza might resign, and then they would control the
+situation by the mere threat of force, backed by their success.
+
+It can be safely asserted that if Villa should succeed, he would be the
+president maker, the virtual dictator of Mexico. Then Villa and the
+científico faction would fight for supremacy ... and destroy each other.
+
+However, no matter what the result of the struggle may be, the Mexican
+people are tired of “strong men on horseback” and the succession of a
+Villa tyranny would not be much more advantageous than a Huerta or Diaz
+dictatorship.
+
+The Mexican people, the 15,000,000 who have suffered so much from
+military liberators, will very effectively overthrow the pretorian
+rule of one or more guerrilla czars, when they discover that the
+strings are managed by Mexican and foreign reactionary interests.
+
+Villa will only repeat Orozco’s treachery and defection, and he will
+pay the price of his foolishness and ignorance with the contempt and
+ostracism of the real revolutionary element.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE NEED OF A DEMOCRATIC FINANCE IN MEXICO
+
+BY CHARLES FERGUSON
+
+ During the summer of 1914, while Mr. M. C. Rolland was studying the
+ financial system of the United States for Carranza, he came in contact
+ with Mr. Charles Ferguson, who had devoted a year to investigating
+ financial conditions in Europe. Mr. Rolland suggested the need of a
+ democratic finance in Mexico, so as to liberate it from the financial
+ system left over by J. Y. Limantour. The Mexican and the American
+ investigators exchanged their views, and as both were on mutual and
+ sympathetic ground with a perfect understanding of the subject, Mr.
+ M. C. Rolland begged Mr. Ferguson to crystallize his ideas into an
+ article. The following chapter is a simple outline of the idea which
+ is behind the revolutionary reforms of all vital questions in Mexico.
+
+ Mr. Charles Ferguson was for a time one of the leading editorial
+ writers of a well known Metropolitan paper. He was sent abroad by
+ President Wilson to investigate the banking system of Europe. Mr.
+ Ferguson is considered one of the greatest authorities on the subject
+ of finance and banking in the United States.
+
+
+Under the conditions of capitalistic and corporate organization and of
+universal banking and exchange that have spread throughout the world
+during the last two or three generations, the problem of democratic
+politics has become an entirely new problem. The old solutions, the
+ideas of Rousseau, Jefferson, Juarez, have become, in large part,
+inapplicable.
+
+The change is mainly due to the strength of the modern business
+organization. The business organization tends to become stronger than
+the democratic state, because it deals more directly with the forces of
+nature and with the every day interests of ordinary men.
+
+Everywhere in Europe, in the modern States of Asia and Africa, and
+in North and South America, there is a struggle going on between the
+business organization and the economic rights of the people.
+
+This world-wide struggle has shown its acutest phases in Mexico.
+
+The Mexican problem cannot be solved merely by the establishment of
+land reform, a wide suffrage and a representative parliament. These
+things are good and necessary, but they are not enough. If the banking
+and credit system of Mexico is left to settle back into the general
+lines approved by Diaz and Limantour, or by the orthodox financial
+opinion of Europe, the banks of Mexico will contravene the work of the
+political revolution.
+
+And since the revolution cannot be wholly crushed, Mexico will continue
+to be a house divided against itself, and will utterly exhaust itself
+in a continuing series of revolutions and counter-revolutions.
+
+The modern business system centres in the bank. If the democratic
+revolution is to prevail and stand fast, the business system of Mexico
+must be democratized. It is impossible to make business democratic
+otherwise than by making the bank democratic.
+
+The leaders of the Mexican revolution shall seize upon the control
+of the capitalistic forces of the country. This can be done by
+improvising--perhaps by executive decree, perhaps otherwise--a central
+bank and a banking system that shall monopolize the banking function.
+
+The existing banking systems of the world are in general based upon
+public debts and are motived in their operation by the interest of a
+creditor class. Mexico should have a banking system based first, upon
+the property rights of the nation--the sum of the material values
+that belong not to individuals but to the Commonwealth; second, upon
+a capitalization of the productive powers of the people to the extent
+that these can be developed by the civilizing projects of the bank.
+
+Under existing banking systems the National estate is either not
+represented at all or else stands as debtor or claimant on a footing
+no higher than that of private estates. But the bank of the revolution
+should be the responsible legal trustee of the public estate,
+exclusively devoted to the improvement of that estate--_i.e._, to the
+betterment of the material status of common citizenship.
+
+Under most banking systems the bankers have no direct interest or
+concern with the development of the natural and creative resources of
+a country. Their interest in the processes of production is at best
+indirect and incidental. What the bankers aim at is the accumulation
+of certificates of indebtedness against society at large. They are
+indeed concerned that the assets of Society at large shall equal
+its liabilities. But they make no effort and take no risk for the
+enrichment of society beyond bare solvency.
+
+The general tendency of their finance is to load the working
+organization of the world with as heavy a weight of bond and mortgage
+as it will stand, and to vest the ownership of the securities in a
+comparatively small class of creditors.
+
+The unsocial and unscientific character of the world’s banking systems
+is the main cause of that universal conflict between the business
+organization and the democratic state, which has reached its most
+poignant crisis in Mexico. If Mexico can work out a congruity between
+modern business organization and the economic rights of the people,
+it will solve the essential social problem of our times. It will
+win economic leadership in the family of nations. It will achieve
+unparalleled wealth and power.
+
+The bank of the revolution should be governed by a board of directors,
+got together with a minimum of racial bias in the spirit--let us
+say--of the university--that is, of the arts and sciences.
+
+There should be a dozen men, more or less, having the highest
+reputation and credit as engineers, agriculturists, sanitarians,
+administrators, and so on. They should be paid perhaps on the scale
+of Cabinet Ministers, but should derive no other income from Mexican
+sources. Their control of the bank should be disinterested and
+impersonal--like that of men in high public office.
+
+Every detail of the banking business will undergo a marked change
+because of this change of motive. Yet there need be no serious division
+of opinion as to the financial technique that will best promote the new
+purpose.
+
+The changes of practice concerning discount rates, note issues,
+metallic reserves, etc., will follow logically and obviously from the
+conception that the business of the bank is not the accumulation of
+enforceable claim against the public, but rather the husbanding of the
+public estate.
+
+Banking, under any and all systems, is chiefly a matter of exchanging
+specific personal claims for general social claims. The bank receives
+personal debt-certificates and gives back certificates of social-debt
+or documentary claims against society at large. Personal credits at the
+bank are, in effect, charges against the public. Sound banking consists
+in not overcharging the public.
+
+The mystery that shrouds all banking problems is due to the
+obscuring of the fundamental fact that banking has become, under
+modern conditions, the most vital social function; it determines the
+obligations owed by society to the individual and so fixes every man’s
+status and power.
+
+It is absurd that such a social function should be performed without
+social responsibility and solely for the sake of a speculative private
+profit. The proposal is, therefore, that the revolution shall establish
+in Mexico the first banking system in the world deserving to be called
+modern. For no excellence of banking machinery can atone for the fact
+that throughout the whole circle of commerce, private credits and the
+corresponding public obligations are being measured and registered by
+men whose interest is quite separate from that of the public.
+
+The proposed identification of the banking interest with the public
+interest does not necessarily imply that banks should be administered
+by political officials. It is indeed necessary, as an exigency of the
+revolution, that the new bank of Mexico should be backed by the highest
+political authority. But the real point is that modern banking will
+reach a normal development only when banking has become a responsible
+profession--in the analogy of law and medicine at their highest level.
+In the long run it will be found that a sound, democratic, financial
+system is to be regarded as the creator rather than the creature of
+democratic government.
+
+The new Mexican government should take its bank managers from any
+quarter--as one might choose world-famous engineers or physicians to
+conquer a devastating plague, or to accomplish a constructive public
+work of extraordinary difficulty. These men should be chartered as
+directors of a corporation to set up a central banking institution
+in the City of Mexico and a system of branch banks in provincial
+towns. The basic capital of the bank should be a trust deed executed
+by the Mexican Government and conveying to the banking corporation
+such portions of the national estate as are not needed for the
+administrative uses of the government. The State would, of course,
+retain its right to annul if necessary the bank charter and trust
+deed--after reasonable notice and with due adjustment of the equities
+involved.
+
+The Bank should be the general fiscal and economic agent of the
+Government for the enhancement of its revenues, the funding and
+amortizing of outstanding public debts and the development of the
+wealth of the country.
+
+Through the bank, the government should take good care of the soldiers
+of the revolution--giving them possession of lands on easy terms and
+assistance in capitalizing farms and small business undertakings.
+
+Legal means should be taken to cancel or compound uneconomic
+commercial concessions made to foreigners and other private persons by
+reactionary governments in the past. The inordinate foreign profits
+derivable from such concessions might be scaled down by a system of
+export duties.
+
+It should be understood that the new bank in all its branches is
+not to be regarded as a passive or merely regulative factor in the
+economics of Mexico. It should, on the contrary, embody the highest
+possible organization of intelligence and will for the expansion of the
+productive life of the people. Much may be learned for this purpose
+from a study of the working methods of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+CARRANZA’S FOREIGN POLICY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NATIONAL SPIRIT
+
+
+From the beginning of the Constitutionalist revolution the attitude
+of Carranza as the first Chief toward the Foreign Powers, was very
+bitterly criticised. His uncompromising stand as regards the European
+nations was corroborated by interviews given out to the press.
+Several reasons can be given for Carranza’s conduct as well as for
+the criticisms. The first one is that Foreign Cabinets, Ministers and
+Consuls have been so used to the servile, cowardly and undignified
+behavior of Diaz and his Ministers toward Foreign Representatives that
+the proud, independent behavior of Carranza and his Ministers was a
+shock to European courts.
+
+The foreign policy of the Great Powers towards small and weak nations,
+with the exception of the United States, has been as a rule, that of
+polite bullies and buccaneers. Great nations committed political acts,
+which private individuals would not dare perpetrate. If the average
+standard of the individual has been raised, that of the nations in
+their international policy, has advanced very little from the times of
+the cave dwellers.
+
+Mexico being weak and torn by civil war since the inception of
+her independence, has always suffered as much, if not more, from
+foreigners, than from her own enemies. The French in the thirties and
+sixties, the Americans in the forties, the Spaniards intermittently,
+have brought trouble to Mexico. The Mexicans are always suspicious of
+the international policy of the European powers.
+
+When Huerta committed murder in the persons of the President and
+Vice-President of Mexico, France, England, Germany and Spain rushed
+to recognize him, so anxious were they to get in at the trough of
+concessions. It was this conscienceless, greedy, sordid behavior which
+disgusted Carranza in particular, and Mexicans in general. No action
+in the history of the United States has created more sympathy for the
+feared Yankees in Mexico and South America, than the refusal of the
+recognition of Huerta on moral grounds. Carranza’s refusal to give an
+account or to allow Villa to permit an investigation into the murders
+of Benton and Bauche, was correct from an international standpoint.
+England, who had so hastily recognized the murderer of a Mexican
+President and Vice-President, became very indignant at the murder of a
+naturalized Britisher who got into trouble through his own fault, and
+expected the United States to demand satisfaction for it. Carranza, as
+the first Chief, insisted that England should protest to him, as the
+representative of the revolution, not to Villa or the United States.
+The attitude of England, France, Germany and Spain towards Mexico, was
+very arrogant and insulting; their protests to the United States were
+quite expressive of their anxiety to have the United States intervene
+and police Mexico in the same manner as had been done in Cuba.
+
+The European powers were quite too busy watching their own frontiers to
+embark on a foolish expedition like the threatened march and occupation
+of Mexico City by the allied powers. The American papers came out time
+after time announcing the landing of European marines in Mexico, in
+case that the United States should not deem it expedient to protect
+their interests. Any one familiar with European politics could have
+guessed that the alarmist’s warning came either from the innermost
+circles of the American military clique which had been itching for
+intervention for the last four years, or from foreign chancellorships
+who wanted to frighten the United States into a war with Mexico.
+
+The European powers foreboded a general conflagration at the end of
+1914. Some of them felt that the northern republic should do their
+police work in Mexico while they would be busy fighting for their own
+existence in Europe; others more charitably inclined, hoped that the
+United States might easily get into a wasps’ nest, by intervening in
+Mexico,--especially as Japan stood on the other side of the Pacific,
+as a warning of the brown peril, and as a sympathetic, though selfish
+supporter of Mexican integrity. In spite of contrary assertions,
+Mexican statesmen and level-headed thinkers dread an American invasion
+into their country; be it for the purpose of conquest or an unselfish
+police-work.
+
+A military offensive or defensive alliance with Japan is much more
+dreaded by the Mexicans than an American intervention. The American
+Colossus, as the United States is called, does not represent the
+brutal, military, imperialistic methods of the Japanese, but a danger
+of elimination by military conquest or absorption by political,
+commercial, and financial attrition and suction.
+
+All the Mexican politicians, writers and statesmen fear American
+meddling in their internal affairs, and although their admiration for
+the United States and its greatness is unbounded, nevertheless, their
+patriotism is still greater than their neighborly love. The whole
+spirit of South America, south of the Rio Grande, is not Spanish nor
+Indian--the spirit is essentially latin and gallic. The mental attitude
+of the Zapotec Indian Juarez was neither Iberian nor Aztec, but
+essentially of the roman type of the republic.
+
+The intellectual radicalism of the liberals, Gomez Farias, Melchior
+Ocampo, Leandro del Valle, was of the same pattern as that of the
+French revolutionary Jacobins--the clearest, most advanced and
+progressive ideas in politics have been absorbed from Gallic and Latin
+sources. The French revolution, the Napoleonic epos, are the text
+books of the liberals and the ambitious politicians. Roman and French
+history was admired and unconsciously imitated. The one for the civic
+virtues, courage and greatness of its citizens,--the other for the
+daring, patriotism and intellectual clearness of its most prominent men.
+
+Spanish history and philosophy is a closed book to Mexican
+thinkers--for Spanish thought was always in the rear guard of
+intellectual Europe. The Spanish spirit is found in reactionary types,
+like Lucas Alaman,--the Don Quixotic characteristic in a Lopez de
+Santa Ana,--the Castilian cruelty in a Miguel Marquez. As a Mexican
+writer once said: “Spain has brought us only priests, money-lenders,
+bull-fighters and dancers.”
+
+Americans were astonished at the outburst of hatred made manifest in
+the persecution of Spanish priests in Mexico, and Spaniards in general,
+especially in the State of Morelos, by Zapata, and the deportation of
+Spaniards in Chihuahua by Villa. They do not know that the Spaniards
+have always been on the side of the dictators, the oppressors, never
+with the liberators, and that the active co-operation of Spaniards
+in politics has outlawed them. After the assassination of Madero and
+Suarez, the Spaniards in Vera Cruz gave a banquet in honor of the
+tragedy. The Mexicans are not likely to forget this incident. The
+Mexicans of the middle class and the Indians despise the Spaniards. On
+the other hand, they do not dislike the Americans, but they dread the
+proximity of the Colossus, and the constant threats of American armed
+invasion.
+
+The American public was shocked by the reported cruelties of the
+revolutionists in Durango, and other captured cities. Many reports
+were exaggerated, but the Durango stories were utterly false. Several
+Americans who came to New York after the capture of Durango declared
+that they had witnessed the entry of the Constitutionalist soldiers,
+and their behavior in Durango, and could vouch for the inaccuracy of
+the news--not only in the general outline, but in all its details.
+
+The American public, as well as the editors in the American press, did
+not suspect then that Huerta had press agents in New York, who made
+it a point of disseminating false reports about the revolutionists,
+so as to discredit the movement and pave the way for recognition
+of Huerta. Governor Hunt, of Arizona, wrote a letter to the first
+Chief, protesting against the alleged cruelties. Venustiano Carranza
+answered, and the following letter is quoted as a fair example of the
+attitude of the Chief and the Mexican revolutionists on the question of
+retaliations and shooting of prisoners.
+
+  HERMOSILLO, November 27th, 1913.
+
+  GOVERNOR GEORGE W. P. HUNT,
+  Phoenix, Arizona.
+
+  _Esteemed Sir and Friend_:
+
+ I am pleased to acknowledge receipt of your interesting letter of
+ the 17th inst., written on account of the occupation of Ciudad Juarez
+ by the Constitutional forces under the immediate command of General
+ Francisco Villa,--and to manifest to you my gratitude for the kind
+ phrases which you express in same, regarding myself.
+
+ Recognizing with pleasure in the spirit of frank friendship which
+ animated your letter, the personal sympathy of yourself and of the
+ people of the United States for the struggle of civilization and
+ justice, which we are sustaining, I can only lament that a not
+ entirely perfect knowledge of the peculiar conditions of the Mexican
+ problems may be propitious in certain cases (and in spite of that
+ excellent disposition) to a bad intelligence of some of our acts.
+
+ This is probably due to the fact that the criminal acts with which
+ the struggle was initiated, and the cruel proceedings employed to
+ sustain it, have been forgotten. When Mexico had realized the highest
+ democratic prerogative to elect its mandataries, and we had the right
+ to expect in the midst of peace and tranquillity, the periodical
+ renovation of the public powers, for the expression of the national
+ will only, the most corrupt balance of the conquered classes have
+ tried to destroy our political institutions for all time and by
+ violence or force only have they disposed of the life, the rights and
+ interests of our countrymen. They have perpetrated bloody executions
+ without subjection to any law; they assassinate the Constitutionalists
+ who fall wounded, battling with arms for the liberty of the
+ people,--and deputies and senators who defend our democratic
+ institutions by word, they drag peaceful men and even children from
+ their homes, obliging them to take up arms against us, and instil
+ terror throughout, burning entire towns. It has been crimes of this
+ nature which have made the cause that I represent, constitute not only
+ a corrective political revolution but also that it should have the
+ character of an act of peace, and severe justice which will chastise
+ the guilty, and provide for the salvation of the Mexican family.
+
+ To fill these purposes, within the spirit of our Constitution, without
+ any sentiment of passion, but meditating with reflection up to what
+ point clemency and magnanimity can arrive, before an imperious duty
+ of justice and the high necessity of assuring peace and the future of
+ the nation, I have determined that the law of Juarez of January 25th,
+ 1862, which defines and chastises crimes against the public peace,
+ shall be put into force.
+
+ With strict subjection to that pre-existent law, the Huerta officials
+ were tried and executed, among whom were some who had been apprehended
+ in Torreon by the same General Villa who, in addition to pardoning
+ them, then acceded to the fact that they should become incorporated
+ in our forces, in which they tried later, but in vain, to make the
+ men whose command was entrusted to them, desert--they finally running
+ away, in order to relapse into their crimes.
+
+ It is true that the principles established in international wars agree
+ to give pardon and immunity to the prisoners, but in civil struggles
+ the most civilized nations in all epochs have employed proceedings
+ still more rigorous and bloody than those which we have been obliged
+ to adopt. In the case of executions of officials in Ciudad Juarez, the
+ chastisement according to the law, of delinquents against peace and
+ public security must be viewed, as a just punishment, rather than a
+ cruelty to prisoners of war.
+
+ The Mexican people, exhausted in the first phase of this civil war,
+ headed by Francisco I. Madero, all their clemency and all their
+ pardon, experiencing as only fruits of this magnanimity, tyranny in
+ the interior and the loss of prestige in the exterior. To-day it
+ wishes to assure the operation of its institutions and re-establish
+ peace for all time, by means of a definite and official guarantee of a
+ national organism.
+
+ The events of Ciudad Juarez have been very far from revesting
+ the individual importance which the intemperance of our enemies
+ have wished to give it, in the same manner as was calumnious the
+ statement published by them, that in Durango more than forty women
+ and young girls committed suicide, for fear of the excesses of the
+ Constitutionalists, as I could personally verify that in Durango, as
+ in all parts, our forces have been disciplined and respectable, giving
+ guarantees to the towns which have fallen into their power.
+
+ Before concluding, it gives me great satisfaction to advise you that
+ I am animated by the same sentiments of humanity that you possess,
+ and that if I have placed the law of Juarez in force, in respect to
+ an exigency of national sentiment, of justice, of public convenience,
+ and the necessity of bringing peace to my country,--I have at the same
+ time tried to have this law applied to unscrupulous enemies within the
+ limits of the most absolute necessity, always authorizing pardon and
+ immunity to the unconscious ones.
+
+ I hope the preceding declarations will be sufficient to establish
+ the attitude of the well understood justice and humanity of the
+ Constitutionalists, in order not to detract the personal sympathy and
+ favorable opinion of the North American people from our cause, and you
+ may be sure that I shall take into consideration your noble ideas, in
+ order to recommend greater clemency toward our enemies, always within
+ the respect of the law.
+
+ Assuring you of my highest estimation and respect, and asking that you
+ will consider me an affectionate and sincere friend, I remain,
+
+ (Signed)
+
+ V. CARRANZA.
+
+It would be too much to have asked of the revolutionists to pardon
+and release the federal officers captured by them. The experiment was
+tried, and every time they repeated their treacheries, cruelties and
+infamies. They were trained in the school of Diaz and Huerta--with
+few exceptions they were men without conscience, honor or patriotism.
+They represented militarism in its lowest, most despicable and sordid
+form. A federal officer who had been fighting in Morelos against Zapata
+was interviewed on his arrival in New York. He asserted candidly that
+the only manner to eradicate the land problem in Morelos consisted
+in killing the whole male population of the State and that any other
+solution was Utopian.
+
+When the American marines landed in Vera Cruz, the news caused a
+sensation in Mexico. A gentleman who was present at the headquarters of
+Carranza describes the excitement of all the Mexican civilians as well
+as the soldiers in the camp. Without a doubt it was the most critical
+moment of the revolution; everybody was discussing the news and the
+agitation was intense. The only calm and cool person was Carranza; he
+was sitting immobile and silent, looking straight ahead, without seeing
+anybody or paying attention to the noise, bustle, gesticulations and
+the shouts of the people.
+
+He was thinking very hard and the only gesture which gave a clue to
+his agitation was a slow movement of the hand, stroking his beard in a
+mechanical fashion. When the Carranza protest was published there was
+like an universal sigh of relief after a tense situation.
+
+The Mexicans felt that Carranza had embodied in his protest their
+outraged sense of national dignity and pride.
+
+The protest was a safety valve which prevented a dangerous national
+explosion. Huerta, who had cunningly contrived to bring about American
+intervention, worked feverishly to use this patriotic wave, and to
+attract it under his guidance in a foreign war, which would save him
+and his army from annihilation.
+
+In the United States many persons were disgusted at what they called
+the ingratitude of Carranza. They forgot to enquire if Carranza had
+asked for intervention, and that an unbidden gift is an unwelcome
+gift. They should have demanded the thanks of Huerta instead.
+Subsequent events have proven the assertion of Mexican observers that
+the occupation of Vera Cruz by the Americans, instead of helping the
+revolution, assisted in keeping Huerta several months longer in power.
+
+Vera Cruz could easily have been captured by the revolutionists, and
+Huerta would have hastened to flee by the way of Puerto Mexico. The
+occupation of Vera Cruz by the Americans prevented the revolutionists
+from attacking the railroad connecting Mexico City with Puerto
+Mexico,--as Vera Cruz had to be used as a base. If the occupation of
+Vera Cruz was achieved to prevent the cargo of war material of the
+Ypiranga from reaching Huerta, then it failed in the purpose. It did
+not accelerate the resignation of the dictator, nor did it calm the
+Mexican troubled waters.
+
+If, as it is claimed, the occupation of Vera Cruz was the climax or
+punishment for a series of insults to Americans, and the upholding of
+national honor, would it not have been more in keeping with military
+traditions to capture or sink Mexican gunboats in the Atlantic and
+Pacific without attempting to land marines in any port, and to blockade
+both coasts of Mexico?
+
+The A B C Peace Commission would have arrived at Niagara Falls by the
+same road and achieved the same results. The meddling in Mexico would
+not have cost the American tax payers five million dollars. The most
+charitable description of the incident is that it was a hasty and
+costly blunder of the Navy Department.
+
+Let us put ourselves in the place of the Mexicans themselves. The
+touchiness of their national pride and their dignity is well known, as
+well as that their patriotism and love of country is as great as that
+of the greatest nation. Why criticise a characteristic of a weak nation
+which is considered a virtue in a strong one?
+
+Consider for instance the question as applied to the United States.
+If during the Civil War British marines had landed and occupied New
+Orleans for some reason or other, what would have happened? Would the
+northerners have protested against British intervention, or acclaimed
+it? Would not the northerners as well as the southerners have fought
+British occupation?
+
+If it is a question of the Monroe Doctrine, we beg to differ--the
+Monroe Doctrine, to reach its highest value as a political tenet,
+should work both ways,--in the interests of the United States as well
+as Central and South America. If the Monroe Doctrine is expedient,
+in the case of the United States, it should be acceptable to Latin
+America. Latin America rebels against a one-sided view of the Monroe
+Doctrine.
+
+When Villa gave out his interview on the occupation of Vera Cruz,
+he was evidently inspired by his American adviser and Mephisto. He
+was giving out the American side of the question,--not the Mexican.
+Unconsciously Villa acted as Porfirio Diaz or any other Cientificos
+would have done, if they had been in his place. Carranza represents the
+Mexican people, although Carranza has never been anything but a friend
+and admirer of the United States. It must be considered that no true
+friendship can exist without self-respect on Mexico’s side and mutual
+respect on both sides.
+
+The occupation of Vera Cruz has been a source of irritation for the
+Mexican and American, and a constant element of danger. It was a
+mistake which turned into a costly blunder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON’S MEXICAN POLICY
+
+
+The attitude of President Wilson towards the Huerta régime was attacked
+not only in the European press but likewise in the American newspapers.
+The French, German, English and Spanish daily and weekly papers sneered
+at what they dubbed the moral policy of a puritan school teacher.
+
+The American papers were divided in their opinion; the Republican
+organs laughed at the reversal of their beloved “dollar diplomacy,” and
+many so-called Democratic papers attempted to uphold the blustering
+“big stick” policy. With the exception of the labor and socialistic
+press there was a great deal of doubt and misgivings expressed as to
+the outcome of the new diplomacy.
+
+Even the average American, who is always on the side of justice
+and fair play, was rather taken back by this radical departure in
+American and foreign relations. For American diplomacy, although
+usually equitable, always took into consideration the interests of the
+Americans in a foreign country first and last, even if they clashed
+with the fundamental rights of the natives.
+
+In the case of American interests in Mexico, it was long suspected
+they had been playing politics and throwing their all powerful
+influence in favor of the government which could give them the best
+advantages in a business way, which were in opposite relation to the
+liberal principles and the welfare of the majority of the Mexicans.
+
+The great corporations have always received extraordinary favors from
+dishonest governments. The mining and oil syndicates, the railroad and
+land concessionaires, acquired great privileges and gave very little in
+return for them. For example, an American oil company in Mexico made
+as high as 450 per cent. profit on its original investment and doubled
+the selling price of oil and gasoline. As soon as an English company
+invaded the field they fought each other for a while, then realizing
+that it was an expensive affair which redounded to the benefit of the
+Mexican consumer, they came to an agreement by dividing the territory
+among themselves and right away the price of oil and gasoline went up
+again.
+
+Scores of cases can be cited to prove that all the advantages are in
+favor of foreign investors. The salaries of the Mexican workingman or
+peons are not raised, but the prices of commodities are never lowered.
+The great Orizaba cotton mills, all the factories, the great mining
+corporations have always paid the lowest salaries. Whenever there was a
+strike for higher wages or for better conditions, the Diaz and Huerta
+régimes always protected the foreigners and at the slightest pretext
+massacred the strikers. In the rare cases when the government was
+fair to the strikers, as happened under Madero and Carranza, then the
+foreign investors protested to their governments that their interests
+were in danger of destruction.
+
+With the Mexican laborer and peons it has become a conviction that
+foreign interests are always on the side of dictators as against the
+Mexican people. In Central and South America the new democratic policy
+was watched with keen interest; the Latin Americans shrewdly guessed
+that the attitude of the Democratic administration would be a test
+stone of their relations with the State Department.
+
+So much had been written about the famous Monroe Doctrine by successive
+American statesmen that the original meaning of this doctrine had been
+entirely lost to view.
+
+The original Monroe doctrine was uttered as a warning to the Holy
+Alliance in its well known designs to attempt the reconquest of the
+provinces lost by Spain.
+
+The Monroe doctrine was never meant to be an excuse to collect debts
+for American or foreigners or a pretext to police unruly republics.
+
+With the exception of some Central American States there has never been
+a case in a hundred years when South America and Mexico could not cope
+successfully against foreign invaders.
+
+As far back as 1806-07 England attempted to conquer Argentina and
+Uruguay when they were still under Spanish rule. The Spaniards and the
+natives fought very bravely and repelled the invaders, who had already
+occupied Buenos-Ayres. The native South Americans did not intend to
+exchange masters and soon afterwards they overthrew the Spaniards.
+
+In the early forties France fought the Argentinian dictator Rozas,
+but after a two years’ war she was defeated. Later, in 1845, France
+and England pretended that Rozas should open the interior rivers to
+international navigation. Buenos-Ayres was blockaded and the war lasted
+for five years; but England and France were defeated.
+
+Brazil and Argentina tried to conquer the little republic of Paraguay.
+The war lasted five years (1865-70). The result was that forty-five per
+cent. of the male population was killed in battle, but Paraguay was not
+conquered.
+
+The Latin American republics feel that they can take care of
+themselves, and their nationality against their neighbors as well as
+against Europe. No matter what the ambitions, intentions or plans
+of conquests of certain European powers may be they know fully well
+that there is not the slightest chance for a permanent occupation by
+European armies, and that any conquest by any Asiatic or European
+nation is an absurd dream.
+
+It is understood that the Monroe doctrine was once a very useful moral
+protection, but it did not prevent attacks and occupation of South
+American territory by Spain, France and England. The only reason
+which interfered with the territorial designs of European powers was
+not the help of the United States, when it was most needed, but the
+heroic resistance of the Latin American nations themselves. The fear
+is rampant that the Monroe doctrine might be used as a pretext for
+aggression by the United States.
+
+Latin Americans follow this line of argument; the great American
+corporations can invest a great deal of money in South America. They
+can very easily send agents to foment revolutions which necessarily
+would destroy American property and then a pretext would be found for
+American intervention, as happened in Nicaragua.
+
+There is a very short step from temporary to permanent occupation,
+tending to create a very dangerous precedent in favor of American
+occupation in any country where there is a great deal of invested
+American capital.
+
+The thought was expressed by a great many South American statesmen that
+President Wilson’s Mexican policy would be a good illustration of the
+future policy towards South America. At the beginning the expressions
+of neutrality and non-intervention in the internal affairs of Mexico
+were considered rather suspiciously.
+
+Had the President of the United States declared war on Mexico and sent
+troops to Mexico City on any pretext whatsoever, the Latin American
+nations would have closed their doors to American capital, commerce,
+and would have boycotted American goods. The thought would have always
+been present that the Americans would always use their interests as a
+wedge for interference in their national affairs.
+
+The entrance of Argentina, Brazil and Chile in a solution of the
+Mexican-American incident at Tampico was a characteristic move
+exemplifying the new trend of thought on statesmanship in Washington.
+
+Under a republican administration, England, France and Germany would
+have been asked to settle the question with the United States instead
+of the A B C powers. Without fear of contradiction it can be stated
+that Argentina, Brazil and Chile’s entrance into Pan American affairs
+with the co-operation of the United States proves that the State
+Department has finally learned the A B C of Pan American statesmanship.
+Likewise, that the Monroe doctrine can only reach its highest
+efficiency in co-operation with the whole of America from Patagonia to
+Canada.
+
+When the Americans create a Pan American doctrine, then there is no
+doubt that Europe will not dare to challenge it.
+
+At present a challenge to the Monroe doctrine is in reality a challenge
+to the American navy. With a new Pan American doctrine the challenge
+would include all Latin American countries, with the United States
+and Canada in an offensive and defensive alliance against one or
+more European powers. At present it appears as if the defence of the
+territorial integrity of all America was shouldered upon the United
+States alone. The Latin Americans feel that they should have a share of
+this responsibility, for they believe themselves capable and ready to
+do so.
+
+There was a great deal of excitement and indignation in South America
+when the American marines landed in Vera Cruz. Huerta was not made more
+popular by this incident, but the national instinct of preservation of
+the Latin races made them unconsciously understand that the landing of
+American blue jackets was only a wedge to achieve American occupation
+and that as long as Vera Cruz was occupied, it was only a question of
+time until American soldiers would march to Mexico City.
+
+When Roosevelt was in South America he was fêted and banqueted by the
+most prominent men in the A B C republics. They were too polite to
+inform him what they thought of his speeches on the Monroe doctrine.
+The articles and editorials commenting Roosevelt’s theories were
+very plain if courteous: that either Mr. Roosevelt had forgotten the
+original meaning of the Monroe doctrine or that he was deceiving
+himself into an imperialistic meaning of the doctrine.
+
+The Latin Americans and Mexico hope fervently that the unselfish,
+humanitarian and democratic diplomacy of President Wilson will bear the
+brunt of the tremendous influences that are brought to bear upon it.
+
+It is a well known platitude that certain American mining, railroad
+and oil interests are subterraneously working against this idealistic
+policy; that the War Department has been itching for a war of conquest
+or police work in Mexico. An officer of the United States army in an
+expansive moment volunteered the information that intervention in
+Mexico would mean an increase from 80 to 350,000 men in the American
+army and make it possible to organize it more in proportion with its
+population. That there being always a danger of a war with Japan, and
+the United States not being ready for it, a war with Mexico would
+prepare the army for that eventuality.
+
+President Wilson has more admirers in Mexico and South America than
+any other President or statesman in the whole history of the United
+States has ever had, not even excepting the martyr President Lincoln,
+or Washington.
+
+The popular thought has been deeply imbedded with the conviction that
+if the dictator Huerta could not exasperate and inveigle President
+Wilson into a war with Mexico, that no power for evil can achieve the
+purpose in the future.
+
+Far seeing Mexicans did not expect a prompt solution of the vital
+problems after the elimination of Huerta. The dictator was only the
+greatest impedimenta to a realization of liberal ideals; once Huerta
+eliminated the work was a little less arduous, but still of tremendous
+purport.
+
+The participation of England, France and Germany in a struggle for life
+in Europe has luckily relieved Mexico of three great mischief makers.
+The great and sombre powers which have kept Mexico in a turmoil for a
+hundred years are still at work: the clericals, the landowners and the
+militarists; in the last twenty years the American interests have been
+added to the list.
+
+A Mexican thinker concreted the thought thus: “The great powers for
+evil in Mexico are: The Church, the Latifundiæ and the Trusts; their
+great victims will be President Wilson, Carranza and the Mexican
+people.”
+
+
+
+
+REFLECTIONS
+
+
+In the beginning of the revolution against Diaz, as public opinion
+seemed to be favorable to what was called “The Great Constructive Work
+of Diaz,” there was a vague and superficial impression that the United
+States should repeat the policy which had been inaugurated toward Cuba;
+a sort of political tutelage which left the independence of the island
+in the hands of the natives.
+
+Subsequent events have revealed to the Americans that although the
+Mexicans were still groping for a Constitution more in keeping with
+their racial characteristics, that they had had, in opposition to
+Cuba, which gained its independence from Spain in 1908, a national
+history for one hundred years, with great national heroes, martyrs and
+political ideals which could not be infringed and trespassed upon by an
+uncalled for intervention in their internal affairs.
+
+Thoughtful and well-informed statesmen and politicians have come to the
+conclusion that a political tutelage as in Cuba will never be tolerated
+in Mexico, any more than military aggression for the sake of conquest,
+or under the hypocritical name of peace.
+
+The average American knows that a Mexican war would be a war without
+heroes or glory for American arms.
+
+The Mexicans are intensely grateful to President Wilson for insisting
+on keeping hands off in Mexico. The internal struggle of the liberals
+fighting against the reactionary powers in Mexico must be settled by
+the Mexicans themselves, or it will have to be settled all over again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The impression of a great many Americans is that Mexico is going
+towards political disruption, that is to say, a secession into three
+entities: the North, the Centre and the South.
+
+Northern secession is encouraged by the great mining, oil, railroad,
+and land interests in the United States and by the reactionaries in
+Mexico. Southern secession is not only encouraged, but fomented, by the
+ambitious and able dictator of Guatemala.
+
+The northern republic would comprise the border states, as well as
+Lower California, which, even if independent, would be more friendly to
+the United States than a united Mexico. That is the conviction of those
+interested in a Northern secession.
+
+A Southern republic would mean the absorption of the States of Yucatan,
+Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and the Territory of Quintana Roo, under
+the leadership and hegemony of Guatemala.
+
+Working towards that end, and in co-operation with the Guatemalan
+dictator, is a gentleman in the State Department, who was once U. S.
+representative in Guatemala.
+
+American interests are allied with the Mexican interests, whereas, the
+American radicals, socialists and the labor party are in sympathy with
+the Mexican liberals. The American and Mexican capitalists are opposed
+to the American and Mexican middle class and proletariat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same class trouble is going on in the Church in Mexico. The native
+Mexican clergy is opposed to the high or foreign clergy. All the
+oppressions, cruelties, and treacheries in the fight of the clericals
+against the liberals have emanated from the foreign or high clergy,
+which used the military element for that purpose. The unselfish,
+libertarian struggle on the other hand, was always actively assisted by
+the native priests; by men like Morelos and Hidalgo. The poor Mexican
+priest, or better said, the low Mexican clergy, is first a Mexican,
+and if that agrees with his belief, he will be a good Catholic; but if
+his faith is pitted against the welfare of his country, then he will
+invariably prefer to be a good Mexican and a poor Catholic, to being a
+poor Mexican and an obedient Catholic.
+
+The higher clergy in the United States, by attacking the liberal
+policies in Mexico, and waging an active campaign against the Mexican
+revolutionists, is placing itself in direct opposition to the lower
+Mexican clergy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the Mexican point of view, three principles have been laid down to
+face and combat American aggression, or absorption. The elimination
+of predatory American capital, the curtailment of American immigration
+schemes, and the advancement of European immigration. American methods,
+on the other hand, will be encouraged in all the active expressions of
+life, such as business organizations, farming and school methods.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is no doubt that ten years of a complete and practical rural
+school system in Mexico will change the whole social and political
+character of the republic. The advancement of woman in life will also
+gain a decided advantage for the Mexican, for no nation can be greater
+or better than its women.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Oriental immigration cannot be encouraged, as being dangerous to
+the best interests of Mexico, not because of the inferiority of the
+Orientals, but because of their superiority, which would tend to
+segregate them into colonies.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Mexican engineer suggested a plan to cut a canal in Lower California,
+from Enseñada to the Rio Colorado, a distance of ninety miles. By this
+method Lower California would be made into an island, and the passage
+of ships from the Pacific Ocean at Enseñada, through the Canal into
+the Gulf of California would double the importance, commercially and
+politically, of the States of Sonora, Sinaloa and the Eastern side
+of Lower California. Irrigation, and later immigration, in Lower
+California, would change the barren island into a garden.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Mexican revolutionists are socialists without knowing it; their
+actions in the economical and political field have proven it; the
+Marxian theorists in Europe showed by their attitude in the war, that
+they were not socialists, but political trimmers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The French revolution is being repeated in Mexico. Bare feet are
+pattering up on one side of the stairway, while patent leathers are
+descending on the opposite side.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Mexican problem is like a sand-bar in the path of the American Ship
+of State.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+THE PLAN OF SAN LUIS POTOSÍ
+
+By F. I. MADERO.
+
+DECLARATION TO THE NATION
+
+
+The people, in their constant effort to bring about the triumph of
+their ideals of liberty and justice, have deemed it necessary at
+certain historical moments to make the greatest sacrifices.
+
+Our dear country has arrived at one of these times; a tyranny which
+the Mexicans had not been accustomed to endure, since we gained
+our independence, oppresses us in such a manner that it has become
+intolerable. In exchange for that tyranny, peace has been offered us,
+but a shameful peace for the Mexican people, as it is not based on
+right but on might; for it does not have as an object the advancement
+and prosperity of the country, but only the enrichment of a small group
+who, abusing their influence, have converted the public positions into
+fountains of benefit exclusively personal, exploiting without scruples
+all the concessions and lucrative contracts.
+
+The legislative power as well as the judicial are completely under the
+executive; the division of power, the State sovereignty, the liberty
+of the municipal government and the rights of the citizen only exist
+as they are written in our Magna Charta; but as a fact, in Mexico it
+can almost be said that martial law reigns constantly; justice instead
+of imparting protection to the weak, only serves to legalize the
+plundering committed by the strong; the judges instead of being the
+representatives of justice are agents of the executive, whose interests
+they serve faithfully; the House of Congress of the Union has no other
+will than that of the dictator; the State Governors are appointed
+by him, and they in their turn appoint and tax in the same way the
+municipal authorities.
+
+From this it results that the administrative gear, judicial and
+legislative, obeys with one will the caprice of Gen. Porfirio Diaz,
+who during his long administration has demonstrated that the principal
+motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power at all costs.
+
+For many years deep uneasiness has been felt throughout the republic,
+due to the above form of management of the Government, but General
+Diaz, with great astuteness and perseverance, had well-nigh crushed
+out all independent elements, so that it was impossible to organize
+any kind of a movement to deprive him of the power, which he had so
+misused. The mischief was constantly aggravated, and the decided
+eagerness of General Diaz to impose on the nation a successor in the
+person of Mr. Ramón Corral, brought matters to a crisis and determined
+many Mexicans, although lacking political affiliations because it
+had been impossible to form them during the thirty-six years of
+dictatorship, to throw themselves into a struggle, intending to regain
+the sovereignty of the people and their purely democratic right to the
+land.
+
+Among other parties which had the same object, the National
+Anti-Re-electionist Party was organized, proclaiming the principles
+of EFFECTIVE SUFFRAGE AND NO RE-ELECTION as the only ones capable
+of saving the republic from the imminent danger which menaced from
+the prolongation of a dictatorship each day becoming more and more
+onerous, more despotic and more immoral.
+
+The Mexican people actively seconded that party and responded to the
+call which was made, sending its representatives to a convention, in
+which also was represented the National Democratic Party, which also
+interpreted the popular desires. The said convention appointed its
+candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the republic,
+those nominations devolving upon Dr. Francisco Vásquez Gomez and on
+me, for the respective charges of Vice-President and President of the
+republic.
+
+Although our situation was extremely disadvantageous owing to the fact
+that our adversaries received the sanction of all the official element,
+on which they did not hesitate to rely, we believe it our duty to
+accept an honorable appointment like this in order to best serve the
+cause of the people. In imitation of the wise customs of republican
+countries, I travelled over a portion of the republic, calling upon
+my compatriots. My passing from one town to another was like a real
+triumphal march, for everywhere the people, electrified by the magic
+words Effective Suffrage and No Re-election, gave evident proofs of
+their irrevocable resolution to obtain the conquest of such secure
+principles. At length, the moment arrived when General Diaz began to
+notice the true situation of the republic, and understood that he could
+not advantageously struggle with me in the field of democracy, and
+sent me to prison before the elections, which were consummated while
+excluding the public from the primaries through violence, filling the
+prisons with independent citizens and committing the most shameful
+frauds.
+
+In Mexico, as a democratic republic, the public power cannot have
+any other origin or base than the national will, and this cannot be
+subordinated to formulas consummated in a fraudulent manner.
+
+For this reason the Mexican people have protested against the
+illegality of the last elections, and wishing to employ successively
+all the recourses which the laws of the republic offer, in due form
+they requested the annulment of the elections before the Chamber of
+Deputies, notwithstanding the fact that in that body a legitimate
+origin was not recognized, and it being known beforehand that the
+members of the same were not representatives of the people and only
+respected the will of General Diaz, to whom exclusively they owed their
+investiture.
+
+In such a state of affairs the people, who are the only sovereign, also
+protested in an energetic manner against the elections, in imposing
+manifestations consummated in different parts of the republic, and if
+these did not spread through all the national territory, it was due
+to the terrible pressure exercised by the government, which always
+smothers in blood any democratic demonstration, such as passed in
+Puebla, Vera Cruz, Tlaxcala, Mexico and other parts.
+
+But this situation so violent and illegal could not last long.
+
+I have understood very well that if the people have appointed me as
+their candidate for President it is not because there may have been
+an opportunity of discovering in me the faculties of a statesman or
+a governor, but only the virility of a patriot resolved to sacrifice
+himself if necessary in the cause of liberty, and to help the public
+free itself from the odious tyranny which oppresses the nation.
+
+From the time when I threw myself into the democratic struggle I knew
+very well that General Diaz had no respect for the freewill of the
+nation and the noble Mexican people, and upon attending the primaries I
+knew also very well the attacks that awaited them; but notwithstanding
+these facts, the public gave to the cause of liberty a numerous
+contingent of martyrs when these were necessary, and with admirable
+stoicism met at the polls to receive all sorts of annoyances.
+
+But such conduct was indispensable to demonstrate to the world at
+large that the Mexican people are ready for democracy, that they are
+thirsty for liberty, and that their present governors do not meet their
+aspirations.
+
+Besides, the attitude of the people before and during the elections, as
+well as after them, demonstrates clearly that they opposed with energy
+the government of General Diaz, and that if their electoral rights had
+been respected I might have been elected as President of the republic.
+
+Taking this into consideration and echoing the public sentiment, I
+declare illegal the past elections, and as the republic for that reason
+is without legitimate governors, I assume provisionally the Presidency
+of the republic, while the people appoint according to law their
+governors. To attain this object it is necessary to hurl from power
+the audacious usurpers, who for all the titles of legality boast a
+scandalous and immoral fraud.
+
+With all honor I declare that I would consider it a sign of weakness on
+my part and treason to the public who have confided in me, not to place
+myself in front of my fellow-citizens who anxiously call upon me from
+all parts of the country, to compel General Diaz by force of arms to
+respect the national will.
+
+The present Government, although it originated in violence and fraud
+from the moment that it was tolerated by the people, yet can hold for
+foreign nations certain titles of legality up to the 30th of the coming
+month, in which their tenure expires; but as it is possible that the
+new government emanating from the last fraud, may not by that time be
+in power, at least because the greater part of the nation is making
+an armed protest against that usurpation, I have appointed SUNDAY, the
+20th of next November, from 6 o’clock in the afternoon on, for all
+the towns and villages in the republic to take up arms against the
+government under the following
+
+
+PLAN.
+
+
+1st. The elections for President and Vice-President of the republic,
+Magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and Deputies
+and Senators, held in June and July of the present year, are hereby
+declared null and void.
+
+2nd. The present government of General Diaz is not recognized, nor the
+power of any authority emanating from the popular vote, for not having
+been elected by the people, they have lost what little title they did
+have of legality, aiding and favoring for their own interests the most
+scandalous electoral fraud ever known in the history of Mexico, with
+the money placed at their disposal by the public.
+
+3d. To avoid as much as possible the upheavals incident to all
+revolutionary movements, all the laws promulgated by the present
+administration and the rules pertaining to the same, with the exception
+of those which are found to be decidedly opposed to the principles
+set forth by this plan, are declared to be in force, until such as
+require adjustment may be reformed according to constitutional methods.
+Also, exception is made of laws, sentences of courts, and decrees
+which may have been sanctioned regarding the accounts and handling
+of funds of all the functionaries of the Porfirista administration,
+in all their branches. For as soon as the revolution triumphs the
+formation of commissions of investigation will be initiated to decide
+on the responsibilities which the functionaries of the State and city
+federations may be able to incur.
+
+In all cases the obligations contracted by the Porfirista
+administration with foreign governments and corporations before the
+20th of the coming month, will be respected.
+
+Abusing the law of waste land, numerous small proprietors, mostly all
+quite poor, have been despoiled of their possessions, through the
+connivance of the Secretary of Public Welfare, or by decrees of the
+courts of the republic. It being only just to restore to their former
+owners the lands of which they have been despoiled in such an arbitrary
+manner, such dispositions and decrees have been declared subject to
+revision, and there will be demanded of those who acquire them in such
+a lawless manner, or of their heirs, to make restitution to their
+former proprietors, who will also pay an indemnity for the injuries
+suffered. Only in cases where such lands have passed to a third person
+before the promulgation of this plan, the former owners will receive
+indemnity from those in whose benefit the spoliation was accomplished.
+
+4th. Besides the constitution and laws in force, the supreme law of
+the republic is declared to be the principle of NO RE-ELECTION of the
+President and Vice-President of the republic, Governors of the States
+and Municipal Presidents, while the respective constitutional reforms
+may be made.
+
+5th. I assume the character of Provisional President of the United
+States of Mexico, with the necessary faculties to make war on the
+usurping government of General Diaz.
+
+As soon as the capital of the republic and half of the States of
+the Federation may be in the power of the army of the nation, the
+Provisional President will call for extra general elections for a month
+thereafter, and will deliver the power to the President who may be
+elected, as soon as the result of such election may be known.
+
+6th. The Provisional President, before handing over the authority, will
+give account to the Congress of the Union of the use which has been
+made of the faculties which the present plan confers upon him.
+
+7th. The 20th day of the month of November, from the 6th of the
+afternoon on, all the citizens of the republic will take up arms to
+hurl from power the authorities which at present govern them. (The
+towns which are situated away from the railway lines will take up arms
+from the evening on.)
+
+8th. When the authorities present armed resistance, they will be
+compelled by force of arms to respect the popular will; but in this
+case the laws of war will be rigorously observed, attention being
+specially called to the prohibitions relative to not using expansive
+balls, nor shooting prisoners. Also attention is called respecting the
+duty of all Mexicans to have consideration for all foreigners and their
+interests.
+
+9th. The authorities who oppose resistance to this plan will be sent to
+prison so that they may be judged by the courts of the republic, when
+the revolution may be over. As soon as each city or town recovers its
+liberty, there will be recognized as legitimate temporary authority the
+principal chief at arms, with the faculty of delegating his functions
+to any other citizen, who may be confirmed in his charge or removed by
+the Provisional Governor.
+
+One of the first measures of the provisional government will be to put
+at liberty all the political prisoners.
+
+10th. The nomination of Provisional Governor of each State that may
+have been occupied by revolutionary troops, will be made by the
+Provisional President. This Governor will be under strict obligation
+to convoke the elections for the Provisional Governor of the State,
+as soon as it may be possible to do so, according to the judgment of
+the Provisional President. There is excepted from these rulings the
+States that for two years have sustained democratic campaigns for a
+change of government, for in these the man who was the candidate of the
+people will be considered as Provisional Governor, of course it being
+understood that he is expected to adhere strictly to this plan.
+
+In case that the Provisional President has not made a nomination
+of Governor, or the nominee has not arrived to take charge of his
+position, or if the person so honored does not accept for any reason,
+then the Governor will appoint by vote among all the chiefs of the army
+who may operate in the territory of the respective State, with the
+understanding that his nomination may be ratified by the Provisional
+President as soon as it may be convenient.
+
+11th. The new authorities will dispose of all the funds that are found
+in the public offices for the ordinary expenses of the administration
+and for the expenses of the war, keeping account scrupulously. In case
+that these funds may not be sufficient to meet the expenses of the war,
+loans are to be contracted, either voluntary or forced. These last to
+be consummated only with citizens or national institutions. Account
+will also be carefully kept of these loans, and receipts will be
+tendered in due form to the interested parties, with a view to making
+restitution to those who have loaned, the revolution having triumphed.
+
+TRANSITORY. A. The chiefs of the volunteer army will hold the rank
+which may correspond to the numbers of forces on hand. In case of
+operating military forces and volunteers together, the chief of the
+highest rank will take command of them, because in the event of both
+chiefs holding the same rank, the command will be for the military
+chieftain.
+
+The civil heads will profit by said rank while the war lasts, and once
+terminated, these appointments on petition of the parties interested,
+will be revised by the Secretary of War, who will confirm the various
+ones in their charges, or remove such as he may see fit.
+
+B. All the chiefs, civil as well as military, will keep their troops
+under the strictest discipline, as they will be held responsible by the
+Provisional Government for any misbehavior of which the soldiers under
+their command may be guilty; excepting in such cases where they may
+justify themselves by proving that it was impossible to restrain the
+troops, and to have imposed on the offenders the merited punishment.
+
+The severest punishments will be inflicted on any soldiers who sack any
+town or kill defenceless prisoners.
+
+C. If the army and the authorities sustained by General Diaz shoot
+prisoners of war, the same procedure will not be observed with those
+who fall into our hands, as reprisals; but on the contrary, the civil
+or military authorities in the service of General Diaz, who may,
+after the initiation of the revolution, have ordered, decreed in any
+form, sent an order, or shot any of our soldiers, will be shot within
+twenty-four hours after a court-martial.
+
+From this sentence the highest functionaries will not be exempted; the
+only exception will be that of General Diaz and his ministers, who in
+case of their ordering shootings or permitting them, will receive the
+same punishment, though after having judged them in the courts of the
+republic, when the revolution may have terminated.
+
+In such cases where General Diaz may decree that the laws of war may
+be respected, and the prisoners who fall into his hands are treated
+with humanity, his life will be safe, but he must explain in the courts
+as to how he has handled the funds of the nation, and as to how he has
+complied with the law.
+
+D. As it is an indispensable requisite of the laws of war that the
+belligerent troops may wear some uniform of distinction, and as it
+would be difficult to uniform the numerous forces of the people who are
+going to take part in the contest, there will be adopted as distinctive
+of all the liberating army, whether they be volunteers or regular
+soldiers, a tricolored ribbon, in the cap or on the arm.
+
+FELLOW CITIZENS. If we are called to take up arms and overturn the
+government of General Diaz, it is not only for the offence committed
+during the last elections, but only to save the country from the dark
+future which awaits her, if she continues under his dictatorship, and
+under the government of the abominable scientific oligarchy, that
+unscrupulously and with great rapidity are absorbing and wasting the
+national resources; and if we permit them to continue in power, within
+a very brief space of time they will have completed their work; they
+will have carried the nation to ignominy and degradation; they will
+have absorbed all of her riches and left her in total misery; they
+will have caused the bankruptcy of our finances and the dishonor of
+our country, which, weak, impoverished and manacled, will find herself
+unable to defend her frontiers, her honor and her institutions.
+
+With respect to me, I have a tranquil conscience, and no one can accuse
+me of promoting the revolution for personal interests, for the whole
+nation understands that I did all that was possible to arrive at a
+peaceful arrangement, and was disposed even to renounce my candidacy
+if General Diaz would only have permitted the people to appoint the
+Vice-President of the republic; but dominated by incomprehensible
+pride and by unheard of haughtiness he was deaf to the voice of the
+country, and preferred to precipitate the nation in a revolution before
+conceding one jot toward returning to the people an atom of their
+rights, before executing, although it might be in the last stages of
+his life, a part of the promises he made in Noria and Tuxtepec.
+
+The present revolution was justified when he said: “That no citizen may
+be charged with and perpetuated in the exercise of power, and this will
+be the last revolution.”
+
+If in the mind of General Diaz there had been more attention paid to
+the interest of the country than the sordid interests of himself and
+his counsellors, this revolution might have been avoided by making some
+concessions to the people; but it has not been so--so much the better!
+The change will be rapid and more radical, for the Mexican public in
+place of lamenting like a coward, will accept the challenge like a
+hero, and even if General Diaz pretends to depend upon brute force to
+imposing his ignominious yoke, the public will rely on the same force
+for throwing aside this yoke, for hurling this dismal man from power
+and for reconquering liberty.
+
+FELLOW CITIZENS. Do not hesitate a moment: Seize the arms, throw the
+usurpers from power, recover your rights as free men, and remember that
+our predecessors bequeathed us an inheritance of glory which we must
+not stain. Remember how they acted: invincible in war, magnanimous in
+victory.
+
+
+EFFECTIVE SUFFRAGE. NO RE-ELECTION.
+
+  SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, October 5, 1910.
+
+  (Signed)             FCO. I. MADERO.
+
+ NOTE. The present plan will circulate only among the co-religionists
+ of the greatest confidence up to November 15th, from which date it
+ will be re-printed; the plan will be prudently divulged from the 18th
+ and profusely from the 20th on.
+
+
+PROTEST AGAINST MEETING OF DIAZ AND TAFT
+
+(Reprinted from _The Evening World_, September 3, 1909.)
+
+ _To the President of the United States._
+
+ SIR: The national press has lately startled thoughtful men with the
+ most unusual of announcements. We are told we may shortly expect to
+ witness the meeting of the popularly elected President of this great
+ Republic with the uncrowned Czar of Mexico. Calculated to inspire
+ enthusiasm in the minds of the ignorant or the falsely informed, this
+ piece of news brings dismay to those who know the truth and honor
+ American traditions. For the last thirty years the world has only
+ heard unchallenged reports of the genius, the equity and the kindness
+ of Porfirio Diaz. All this being true, it would only be fitting and
+ proper that the two neighboring chiefs should exchange international
+ courtesies.
+
+ But as a matter of history Porfirio Diaz represents in Mexico what
+ Abdul Hamid was to Turkey. On his white head rests the responsibility
+ for the massacres of over 50,000 Mexican Christians; the slavery
+ of thousands of Yaqui and Maya Indians who escaped fire and sword;
+ the destruction of all liberties, personal as well as public; the
+ corruption of the judiciary; the creation of a financial system
+ which has mortgaged Mexico to European and American bankers; for the
+ persecution of all the Mexican liberals in the United States, which
+ reached a climax of brazenness and impudence when a Mexican liberal
+ was kidnapped across the Rio Grande from an American jail by the help
+ of American detectives in the payroll of the Czar.
+
+ Therefore, I protest in the name of humanity, common decency and
+ national dignity as distinguished from political expediency and
+ international courtesy against such an exchange between the deeply
+ trusted and patriotic President of the United States and the
+ treacherous, unpopular and bloody-handed Nero of Mexico.
+
+ You might retort that it is no business of mine to couple your name
+ with an attack seemingly so unwarranted.
+
+ My answer is that I speak no more than truth and not otherwise than
+ I have spoken in a recent book on the real political conditions in
+ Mexico. I am moved to repeat these truthful characterizations of
+ Mexico’s president and the rule he stands for, because this pamphlet
+ has been suppressed by an indictment against me in an American court
+ brought about by the Mexican Government, which used your own brother,
+ Henry W. Taft, as their lawyer against me, transparently to gain for
+ their case the weight of an implied connection between it and the
+ Administration.
+
+ You might reply that the American Government cares nothing about the
+ internal policy of the Mexican government as long as it behaves and
+ protects American interests.
+
+ I answer that if a neighbor be a good neighbor it might be sufficient
+ unto you; but if your neighbor should torture or attempt to kill his
+ children would it not be your duty to protest?
+
+ If the excuse for meddling in another nation’s affairs is only found
+ in the destruction of American lives and their property, under what
+ pretext did the American Government protest against the Armenian
+ massacres? What brought about armed intervention in Cuba? Why did the
+ State Department undertake to refund the unjust Chinese indemnity?
+ And how are you to explain the wherefore of the tremendous struggle to
+ stamp out slavery?
+
+ The reason for this system of intervention lies deeper than in
+ financial and political interests. It proves to the civilized world
+ that the American nation is something mightier than a rich, powerful
+ and progressive republic; that it is likewise a moral entity backed by
+ the conscience of a people.
+
+ The propaganda about Mexico has its source in the knowledge of the
+ real history of Porfirio Diaz. At the beginning of his career he
+ concealed his real political face, but the higher he rises in power
+ and statecraft, the more he uncovers his fundamental lack of principle.
+
+ Even as I write these lines the report is wired from Mexico that
+ General Diaz has ordered the demission of the Governor of Coahuila
+ as the latter showed a marked tendency in favor of General Reyes’s
+ candidacy. Imagine the Republican President of the United States
+ asking for the resignation of Governor Johnson of Minnesota because of
+ his Democratic leanings!
+
+ Political evolution in Mexico will move faster in the next twelve
+ months, inasmuch as the new generation is impelled by cleaner, more
+ honest and patriotic motives than those of the malevolent Czar and his
+ infamous camarilla. Porfirio Diaz is fashioning the tools of his own
+ destruction and as a last resort is using the handshake across the
+ Rio Grande to countenance in advance the arbitrary repressions and
+ assassinations which are sure to take place in the false elections of
+ next year.
+
+ When that period is passed the mask of this master Machiavelli will
+ have been torn aside. The American people will then realize with
+ humiliation that their honored President has exchanged an intimate
+ greeting with the basest slave-driver of modern times.
+
+  CARLO DE FORNARO,
+  National Arts Club.
+
+
+_Translation._
+
+LETTER FROM ARCHBISHOP GILLOW TO URRUTIA.
+
+  HACIENDA DE CHAUTLA, July 11th, 1913.
+
+  SR. DR. AURELIANO URRUTIA,
+  Minister of the Interior, Mexico.
+
+  _Esteemed Sir and Friend_:
+
+ I returned to this hacienda yesterday and was informed that up around
+ Huejotzingo, capital of this District, things are rather unsettled,
+ due to a few disturbers who molest the authorities, and consequently
+ disturb public peace. Having in mind the kind offers which you made
+ to me during my recent visit in that city, I now take the liberty of
+ addressing you.
+
+ The disturbers of Huejotzingo are a certain Luis Pinto and his
+ brother. They own real estate and small houses to the amount of may
+ be Three Thousand Dollars each, in that locality. They put on airs of
+ caciques, and have for some time even gone so far as to pretend to
+ subordinate the local authorities. They have become more overbearing
+ since the time of Madero.
+
+ While Mr. Alberto García Granados was Minister of the Interior, the
+ referred-to Pinto brothers attempted to overthrow Mr. Enrique Acevedo
+ from his position as Governor of the Province. Mr. Acevedo has
+ maintained the peace and well-being in this district ever since he
+ came into office. As Mr. Granados, owner of the Hacienda de Chagua,
+ near Huejotzingo, knows Mr. Acevedo, he maintained Mr. Acevedo as
+ Governor, and the Pinto brothers did not molest him any more until Mr.
+ Granados resigned the secretaryship.
+
+ As Mr. Acevedo is well acquainted with the intrigues of the Pinto
+ brothers, he has kept them well watched, and they, resenting this,
+ have hostilized him, to the degree of having trumped up false
+ accusations against him before the municipality of Puebla. They did
+ not however, obtain their end, for they were unable to obtain his
+ removal, though he was for a time suspended from office, much to the
+ regret of the honest contingent of Huejotzingo. The Mayor replaced him
+ during this time.
+
+ On the other hand, Mr. Ramon Vargas, Judge of the Primary Court of
+ Claims of Huejotzingo, has been for three months working unceasingly
+ to put to date all pending cases, which had been accumulating, due to
+ the fact that his predecessors, partly due to indifference and partly
+ to fear of the Revolution, often absented themselves, abandoning their
+ offices. Among those who most distinguished themselves of these last
+ mentioned, was a certain Felipe Ramirez, whose wife is a Huejotzingo
+ woman, on which account he was of course interested in holding that
+ position in Huejotzingo. The mother of the lady in question also found
+ a way to take advantage of the situation, and arranged things so that
+ those who wished their cases attended to, had to have a recommendation
+ from her, if they wanted a favorable judgment. For this she was of
+ course paid a certain sum, and she managed to derive quite a fine
+ income.
+
+ This by-play came to the knowledge of Mr. García Granados, and he
+ managed to obtain the Puebla Municipality to offer the Judge Felipe
+ Ramirez to transfer him to Matamoros, which offer he declined, staying
+ in Huejotzingo and exercising his profession of lawyer. This Mr.
+ Ramirez works in harmony with the Pinto brothers, and the three of
+ them, openly antagonize Acevedo the Governor, Ramon Vargas, the Judge
+ and Sidronio Primo, Commissioner of the Ministry, who is an old
+ employé in this locality and who works together with the other two
+ last mentioned.
+
+ With the foregoing details, and prompted by the desire to maintain
+ order and peace in this district, I beg you to exert your good
+ influence with the government of Puebla, to have Mr. Acevedo return
+ to his post, and to have Mr. Ramon Vargas the present Judge, and also
+ Mr. Sidronio Primo, stay in their positions. The presence of Mr.
+ Felipe Ramirez, who still pretends to occupy the position of Judge in
+ this District, is very harmful to public interests, as is also the
+ presence of the Pinto brothers, so that although I harbor no feelings
+ of personal enmity towards them for I do not know them except from
+ hearsay, I beg to suggest the advantage of their being removed from
+ this locality, in whatever way you may deem most appropriate.
+
+ Kindly forgive the length of this letter, but I feel justified in
+ giving you all these details, for the sake of the preservation of
+ peace in this region, which has some importance due to its relations
+ to Puebla and Mexico.
+
+ Thanking you in advance for whatever you may deem fit to do in
+ the interests of the honest citizens who have given me the above
+ information, and which I transmit to you confidentially, I beg to
+ remain,
+
+  Very respy., etc., etc.,
+  EULOGIO G. GILLOW,
+  Archbishop of Oaxaca.
+
+
+LETTER FROM MINISTER URRUTIA TO ARCHBISHOP MORA.
+
+  MEXICO, July 9th, 1913.
+
+  _Very illustrious Sir_--
+
+ Kindly allow me to acquit myself of the pleasant duty of expressing,
+ to you, very sincere thanks for the good assistance you have been
+ lending to the Government in the re-establishment of peace,--a task
+ the more useful because accomplishing it, as you are doing, with
+ intelligence and common sense, it might be able to effect a durable
+ benefit to the country.
+
+ In the name of the government to which I belong and with which you are
+ happily connected, I earnestly beg of you to continue your good work,
+ if possible, with more energy than before.
+
+ In this connection and prompted by the confidence which your kindness
+ invites, I take the liberty of telling you that some memorial services
+ held in honor of the Madero brothers, made a bad impression in social
+ circles, and especially on the Government, and therefore I would ask
+ of you to take such measures as you may deem necessary, to prevent a
+ repetition of demonstrations of this nature, which might contribute to
+ retard the success of the work undertaken by the Government in order
+ to put an end to our internal wars.
+
+ I also must call your attention to the necessity of stopping at all
+ costs, a certain person in the clergy, from continuing his propaganda
+ against the Government, and this for the same reasons as above
+ expressed. With your intelligence and tact, I am sure you will find
+ an efficacious means to put a stop to the workings of the person in
+ question.
+
+  I remain, etc., etc.,
+  URRUTIA.
+
+
+
+
+GLOSSARY OF SPANISH WORDS.
+
+
+  CARRANZISTA                 Political follower of Venustiano Carranza.
+
+  CASAS DE VECINDAD           Tenement houses.
+
+  CIENTIFICO                  A group of politicians headed by J. I.
+                              Limantour, who took as a basis of
+                              their political party some of the Comte
+                              theories. They believed in a scientific
+                              government. The term cientifico
+                              is now applied to political
+                              exponents of graft in politics.
+
+  CIUDADELA                   Citadel.
+
+  COLORADOS                   Reds, red-flaggers. Name given to the
+                              guerrilla troops under Orozco, because
+                              besides carrying a red flag they
+                              carried destruction everywhere by fire
+                              and sword.
+
+  COMPADRE                    Godfather, an expression which means
+                              protector, benefactor,--and implies
+                              great obligations and great sacrifices.
+
+  CUARTELAZO                  A military mutiny. From cuartel, a
+                              military barrack.
+
+  DON                         Title of courtesy given to people of the
+                              better class. Formerly in Spain,
+                              when addressing a person of aristocratic
+                              lineage, it was customary to
+                              write before the name,--De origen
+                              noble--(of noble origin). It was
+                              afterwards abbreviated to D. O. N.
+                              One should be careful to use the Don
+                              only before the first name, or together
+                              with first and second names,
+                              for instance--Don Porfirio Diaz, never
+                              Don Diaz, as it implies an insulting
+                              meaning.
+
+  EGIDOS                      Communal lands surrounding villages
+                              and cities in Mexico.
+
+  FELICISTA                   Political follower of Felix Diaz.
+
+  FIESTA                      Holiday, merry-making.
+
+  FOMENTO                     Excite, encourage. Ministerio de Fomento:
+                              the department for the development
+                              of the country, industrially
+                              and commercially.
+
+  GACHUPINES                  Nickname given to Spaniards.
+
+  GRINGO                      Nickname used in Mexico and South
+                              America to designate Americans.
+
+  HACIENDA                    Plantation, ranch, farm.
+
+  HUERTISTA                   Political follower of Victoriano Huerta.
+
+  INCOMUNICACION              Incommunication. The position of a
+                              man in prison who is not permitted to
+                              communicate with his friends, lawyers
+                              or any one from the outside.
+
+  JEFE                        Chief.
+
+  JEFE POLITICO               Political chief. Head of a district
+                              under the jurisdiction of the Governor.
+                              Under Diaz they had almost unlimited
+                              power for mischief.
+
+  LEY FUGA                    The Runaway Law--which was resorted
+                              to for the purpose of doing
+                              away with obnoxious political enemies
+                              or agitators; while they were
+                              taken from one prison to the other,
+                              they were shot from the back, and
+                              the pretext was that they had tried
+                              to run away.
+
+  MADERISTA                   Political follower of F. I. Madero.
+
+  MOCHO                       Contemptible term to designate members
+                              of the clerical party in Mexico.
+
+  NEO-CIENTIFICO              New scientist. A political party which
+                              was a continuation of the old cientifico
+                              party. They came into power
+                              under Madero, and were headed by
+                              Ernesto Madero, uncle of Don F. I.
+                              Madero, and by Rafael Hernandez, a
+                              cousin of the president.
+
+  PACIFICO                    A peaceful Indian, one that cultivates
+                              the land and does not carry arms.
+
+  PELADO                      “Skinned.” Term applied to a very
+                              poor Indian.
+
+  PEON                        Indian worker on plantation or mines.
+
+  PLAN DE AYALA               Written by a school-teacher, Montaño,
+                              for Zapata. It was aimed against
+                              the neo-cientificos in the Madero cabinet,
+                              --the provisional president was
+                              supposed to be P. Orozco, and in case
+                              of his absence Emiliano Zapata. The
+                              Plan was essentially an agrarian plan,
+                              local in its ideas of reforms.
+
+  PLAN DE GUADALUPE           A Manifest written by V. Carranza to
+                              rally the Mexicans in the overthrow
+                              of the Huerta dictatorship. It did
+                              not attempt to bring about any reforms,
+                              --only the elimination of
+                              Huerta and his supporters.
+
+  PLAN DE SAN LUIS POTOSÍ     Was the political plan written by F. I.
+                              Madero against the Diaz régime on
+                              October 5th, 1910.
+
+  PORFIRISTA                  Political follower of Porfirio Diaz.
+
+  PORRISTA                    A member of the Porra, a political club
+                              created by the friends of F. I. Madero,
+                              supposed to be headed by Gustavo
+                              Madero, to fight and intimidate the
+                              enemies of the Maderistas.
+
+  RELIGION Y FUEROS           Battle-cry of the clericals since the
+                              revolution. “Religion & Privileges.”
+                              The Church and the army under
+                              Spanish rule had special courts composed
+                              of either religious clerics or of
+                              soldiers, which judged members of
+                              the church or soldiers in criminal
+                              cases. The Clericals now demand a
+                              return of their old privileges.
+
+  VILLISTA                    Political follower of F. Villa.
+
+  ZAPATISTA                   Political follower of Zapata.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Full text of letter will be found in Index.
+
+[2] Full text of the Plan of San Luis Potosí will be found in Index.
+
+[3] From “Mexico the Land of Unrest,” by Henry Baerlein.
+
+[4] “Barbarous Mexico,” J. K. Turner.
+
+[5] “The Revolution and F. I. Madero,” Roque Estrada, 1912.
+
+[6] “The Political Shame of Mexico,” E. I. Bell, 1914.
+
+[7] See Plan in Index.
+
+[8] The New York _Call_ published the first article of the exposé, May
+5, 1911.
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's Notes:
+
+  Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
+
+  Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78600 ***