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DIAZ 




PRESIDENT PORFIRIO DIAZ 



MAKERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
Edited by BASIL WILLIAMS 



DIAZ 



BY 



DAVID HANNAY 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1917 



Z> 5. 



Printed in Great Britain 



GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE 



THE author of this volume has here combined 
an appreciation of a man remarkable in his genera- 
tion with a lively picture of an American republic, 
still little known to us in Europe ; thus fulfil- 
ling two objects of this series. President Diaz's 
achievements as a statesman, though important to his 
contemporaries, appear to have had only a passing 
value. But he is worthy of note by the student of the 
nineteenth century, since he brought his country to a 
more respectable prominence and to greater prosperity 
than it had enjoyed since its original conquest by the 
Spaniards ; and he also induced many outside its 
borders to take an interest, however mercenary and 
uninformed it may have been, in the country he 
governed so absolutely and for so long a period. For 
his own corner of the world, indeed, he was truly a 
maker of the nineteenth century. He is also interest- 
ing as a type, a particularly favourable type, of the 
condottieri who flourish and then vanish so rapidly on 
the Central and South American scene. Mexico itself, 
though so near a neighbour to the United States, is 
still the most mysterious to us of all the American 
countries. Perhaps it has never yet outlived the 
wonderful tales brought back to Europe of Aztec 
cities and civilisation and the exploits of Cortes, the 

359344 



vi GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE 

most chivalrous of all the Spanish adventurers. 
Mr. Hannay has kept for us some of the mystery in 
his descriptions of the country's wild rolling uplands 
and of the mediaeval adventures of his hero and his 
hero's adversaries in this land of sudden surprises. 
He has also made the people and the land more real 
and living to us at a time when they have become 
specially interesting in the politics of the world. 

BASIL WILLIAMS. 

September , 1916. 



CONTENTS 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



PACE 



GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE v 

CHAP. 

I. INTRODUCTORY I 

II. THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER. ... 29 

III. THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 53 

IV. THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK ... 86 
V. THE POLITICIAN 117 

VI. THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY . . . 144. 

VII. THE FIRST TERM 177 

VIII. AN INTERIM 207 

IX. PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 237 

X. THE INDIAN PROBLEM 265 

XI. ANARCHY WELLS UP 290 



307 



CHRONOLOGY 309 

INDEX ? 



DIAZ 

CHAPTER I 

I NTRODUCTO R Y 

JOSE" DE LA CRUZ PORFIRIO DIAZ, known to all the 
world as President Porfirio Diaz, was born in the city 
of Oaxaca, capital of the State of the same name, in 
the Republic of Mexico, on, or within a few days 
before, the I5th of September, I83O. 1 He was 
baptised on that day in the cathedral. No Spaniards 
nor Spanish-Americans of that time would willingly 
have incurred the least risk that their child should die 
unregenerated by the water of baptism. It is highly 
probable that the future President was born on the 
day on which he was baptised, or not more than three 
days earlier. 

His father, Jose de la Cruz (Joseph of the Cross) 
Diaz, is said to have been a pure-blooded Spaniard, 
but in the former Spanish colonies everyone in whom 
a strain of Indian blood is not too marked to be over- 
looked ranks as white. fWhen Porfirio had become 

1 The letter " x," which is now used by the Spaniards only in words of 
Greek or Latin origin adopted late in the history of their language, was 
formerly employed to represent the sound " sh," which does not exist in 
Castilian, but is common in the Indian tongues. The Indian pronunciation 
of the President's birthplace would be Oashaca, and of his country Meshico. 
But the Spaniards do not like the sound and have in practice replaced it by 
the guttural " j," which is a strong " h." They write Oajaca and Mejico. 
We keep the spelling we first knew and therefore mispronounce both ways, 



2 DIAZ 

the foremost man in Mexico, his flatterers discovered 
that Jose de la Cruz descended from one of the con- 
quistadores. The ^President's enemies indeed were 
ready to affirm that he was the bastard of a priestj 
The first assertion is only an example of a world-wide 
folly, and the second may be dismissed as a specimen 
of Spanish-American political polemic. In an account 
of his " Parents, Childhood and Youth," published 
with his consent and aid by Genaro Garcia in 1906, 
the President's father is stated to have been a poor 
and illiterate man who worked as the " dependiente " 
of a firm of traders. The word would be applied to a 
porter or workman of that level. He ranked, in fact, 
a little above the class of the " peones " or agricultural 
labourers, who in colonial times were, and in practice 
still are, serfs in Mexico. He was at least personally 
free. In 1808 he married Patrona Mori, the daughter 
of Mariano Mori, an immigrant, or son of an immigrant, 
from Asturias in Old Spain, and of his wife Tecla 
Cortes, a pure-blooded Mixteca Indian. The marriage 
was performed at the village of San Sebastian Etla in 
Oaxaca. After working for some years in the Sierra 
de Ixtlan, Jose took his half-Indian wife to Xochistla- 
huaca in the province of Tlaxcala and the bishopric 
of Puebla de los Angeles. Here he became a squatter 
or homesteader on a piece of virgin soil. In one respect 
at least Jose resembled his son. He was a hard worker. 
Though he had no capital, and could neither buy 
machinery nor hire much help, he contrived to plant 
his little holding with sugar-cane, and he added a 
small store to his cane-growing. After a few years he 
had something saved and something to sell. With 
the proceeds of his hard work he returned to his native 
province Oaxaca, bought a little piece of ground 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

which he planted with " maguey," the aloe from which 
the native liquor pulque is tapped. To provide an 
outlet for the produce of his " magueyera " he opened 
a wayside inn, a " meson," at the town of Oaxaca, 
and further undertook to act as farrier and veterinary 
surgeon. Jose de la Cruz, who is also said to have 
been at some time farrier in a cavalry regiment, was 
plainly a handy man. 

Porfirio, who does not appear ever to have used his 
father's " font name " (nombre de pila), was the sixth 
child and eldest surviving son of these worthy people. 
Another son, Felix, who in later years shared his 
fortunes, was born after him. But in 1833 the father 
died. No man not a politician or capitalist and usurer 
had much chance of making money in Mexico in that 
age of anarchy. The death of the laborious father 
plunged his family into years of hard struggle with 
sheer hunger. Patrona Mori made an effort to keep 
the " meson " going, but had to give it up. If it were 
not that the Mexican needs little and that the widow 
had inherited some small handful of money from her 
husband, it would be hard to see how they survived. 
By untold miracles of thrift and work, aided by the 
kindly heat of the sun, which makes fires rarely 
necessary and warm clothes a superfluity in Oaxaca, 
Patrona kept her own head and the young heads 
dependent on her above water. She had relatives 
among the beneficed clergy, then the wealthiest class 
in Mexico, but they do not appear to have given her 
much help, if any. 

By one means or another, at the cost of sacrifices 
more or less cruel, Porfirio was able to get some 
primary education. He was placed with a carpenter 
whose trade he picked up while attending school, 



B 2 



4 DIAZ 

probably not for long hours nor with exact regularity. 
At the age of fifteen he was placed in the local 
seminary (Seminario Pontificial). The mother, be- 
sides wishing, as was natural, to see her son " wag 
his pow in a pulpit," knew that it was far easier to 
provide for ten men in the Church than for one out of 
it. The licentiate Dominguez, his godfather, who 
was then a canon of Oaxaca, and who later on was the 
bishop, appears to have given Porfirio some aid. But 
the lad, who was somewhat restive in the seminary, 
had to eke out his allowance by doing odd jobs of 
carpentry. During the years of studies in the seminary 
he had an interval of military drill. 1846 and 1847 
were the years of the war with the United States, 
and Oaxaca raised a militia battalion. It was known 
by the not very martial name of the " Peor es Nada," 
which may be translated as " nothing would be still 
worse." It consisted wholly of boys. At this time 
Porfirio had the advantage of attending a course of 
lectures on " tactics " and " strategy " given at the 
local Institute of Science and Art by Lieutenant- 
Colonel Ignacio Uria. In the hope of seeing more 
service than was offered to this corps he tramped to 
Mexico, but too late to share in the war. On the whole 
he showed himself a lad of spirit and resource, as when 
he provided himself with a fowling-piece by buying 
a rusty gun barrel from a rag and bone shop, fitting to 
it the flint and steel of a broken horse pistol, and 
mounting it on a butt of his own construction. The 
historian does not record whether he ever fired his 
patchwork weapon, or if so, what happened. As 
Porfirio survived to use more scientific weapons, it is 
probable that he never put his handiwork to a hard 
test. He drilled his fellow - schoolboys, as other 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

warriors are said to have done, maintained discipline 
by rough and ready methods, and used his command so 
as to render himself a serious pest. Imprisonment 
for a month in the seminary cell was the reward of one 
of his achievements. In short, he was as absolute a 
nuisance as only a healthy boy ought to be. 

In 1849 he had finished his course at the seminary. 
What he had learnt was no doubt a trifle, but he had 
decided that he was not of the wood of which priests 
are made even in Mexico. To the great wrath of his 
godfather, the Canon Dominguez, he refused to take 
orders. His mother wept and argued in vain. 
Porfirio had his way, and the last ten Mexican dollars 
of his father's poor hoard were spent in buying law- 
books for him. He had decided to take to the law. 
The intention was so far put into execution that he 
attended the lectures of his future chief in war and 
politics during many years, the Zapoteca Indian 
Benito Juarez, then professor at the Institute of 
Oaxaca. He even passed his first examination in 
Civil and Canon Law in 1853. But in that year events 
occurred which decided that the future of Porfirio 
Diaz was to be spent in winning fame, power, and 
wealth in the saddle and by the sword. If the story 
is not to be a meaningless series of unintelligible inci- 
dents, we must first understand what was the condi- 
tion, social and political, of Mexico when his career 
began, and this we shall never be able to do if we do not 
go back to the antecedents of the Republic, not of 
course for the purpose of giving a history of the colonial 
period, but in order to comprehend what were the 
inherited beliefs and tendencies which inevitably 
conditioned the minds and acts of the republicans. 

Englishmen and Americans have often been less 



6 DIAZ 

than just because they have expected what was not 
to be hoped for from the Spanish-speaking peoples of 
the New World. They have generally begun by 
assuming that if the Mexicans have not behaved as 
they themselves would have done, the explanation of 
the difference is to be sought in the mere vice or folly 
of individuals. Vice and folly have abounded in 
Spanish America, but when we are judging the conduct 
of persons, fair criticism requires that we should allow 
for what they have inherited in thought and habit 
from the three centuries during which they were 
colonies of Spain. 

A Spanish colony was everything which an English 
colony was not. 

The men who founded the English colonies in 
America differed in origin and character. But there 
were certain points, and those of the most vital order, 
on which they were similar. They came from a 
country which had for centuries been a true common- 
wealth, a united nation. They had been accustomed 
if not to actual participation in the work of self- 
government, at least to the sight of it. They were 
equally accustomed to the thought that they had a 
share first in the making, and then in the administra- 
tion of the law. And then they came under a certain 
influence of a religious character. Their doctrines, 
their dogmas, their ideas and preferences in Church 
government were not the things which mattered. 
Beliefs and theories might die, or undergo inward 
changes in spirit, without affecting the radical unlike- 
ness which divided the English from the Spanish 
colonist. If we except the few Roman Catholics who 
found a refuge in Maryland, the English colonies, 
north, middle, and southern, were settled by men 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

who, whether they came from England or from Scot- 
land, or were Palatines or French Huguenots, had all 
alike crossed the line between the Holy Roman 
Catholic and Apostolic Church and the Protestant 
world. For them the Reformation in all its manifes- 
tations had swept away the rising circles of teachers, 
rulers, intercessors the Heavenly Host and the earthly 
hierarchy which hung over the mediaeval man and 
spread between him and God. Salvation to them was 
not to be won by acceptance of an ancient divinely 
inspired authority, by obedience to its orders, and 
humble reliance on its wisdom, but by each of them 
by their own faith and conduct and the will of God 
acting directly on them. That the types of character 
produced and fostered by this revolt against authority 
in the infinitely important sphere of religion were often 
unamiable and sometimes eccentric to absurdity, are 
propositions nobody need take the trouble to deny. 
Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt. The essential 
truth is that Protestantism tended to foster the 
capacity to think and act for yourself on all sides of 
life. The men and women who would not throw the 
task of saving their souls on an inspired priesthood, 
who read a book and drew their own deductions, 
would not be the passive flock of a mundane authority 
in the business of government. 

These colonists, predisposed as they were to develop 
and act freely, came to an open field. The thinly 
scattered tribes of Indian warriors and hunters whom 
they found in front of them could neither assimilate 
with them nor resist them effectually. Therefore 
they could exercise no influence on the European 
intruders on their forests and their hunting grounds. 
A further and a most vital difference was that the 



8 DIAZ 

English colonists came with their wives and children 
to form communities, and to till the soil. 

When we turn to the Spanish colonies we meet at 
once with the exact opposite of every one of these 
conditions, moral or material. Spain was not a 
commonwealth, a nation. It is only becoming one in 
our own time. In the age of the conquest it was 
a collection of kingdoms, countships, and lordships 
which were held together because the same prince 
was the sovereign of each of them. And these various 
parts were socially divided into classes of nobles 
and non-nobles, town and country, Old Christians and 
New Christians, who came from converted (for the 
most part forcibly converted) Jews and Moors. The 
old Christians were clean in blood, and the new were 
unclean stained by admixture of Jew or Moor. 

The reader, who may have heard of the power of the 
mediaeval Spanish cortes, the vigorous municipalities 
and provincial institutions of old Spain, may be 
surprised to hear that the people had no practice in 
self-government. But it is true. Whatever may 
have been the case in the earlier Middle Ages (and a 
good deal in the way of restriction would have to be 
said on that point), the confusions of the later four- 
teenth and the whole fifteenth century till the acces- 
sion of the Catholic sovereigns had disintegrated 
cortes and municipalities alike. The Spaniards had 
been saved from mere anarchy by the royal authority 
alone. The town councils were little more than 
ornaments, self-electing, or confined to a few families. 
All effective power was in the hands of royal officers. 
As for the law, it was an art and mystery confined to 
the lawyers, who were the most useful agents of the 
King. There was no jury in Spain. 





INTRODUCTORY 9 

When we turn to the Church as it had developed in 
Spain, we see an art and mystery belonging to the 
clergy. The laymen, with the exception of a few who 
were effectually weeded out by the Inquisition, left 
the doctrines and the dogmas to the clergy. For 
themselves, they were taught to believe explicitly in 
the Church and implicitly in all the Church held to be 
true. What the King wills is the law. What the 
Church propounds is the truth. These were the two 
fundamental principles of Spanish government. When 
a Mexican viceroy told his subjects that their duty was 
not to think but to obey, he was stating the accepted 
orthodox rule. Religion for the Spaniard was in the 
main the performance of certain acts and ceremonies, 
the participation in certain material means of salva- 
tion which the priest alone could provide. To suppose 
that this double yoke was imposed by force on a 
reluctant people would be to misunderstand Spanish 
history altogether. The royal authority was accepted 
because it was their one protection against anarchy. 
The Church was obeyed because it alone by its wonder- 
working sacraments and its absolutions could save 
them from hell fire. Orthodoxy was the honourable 
distinction of the old Spaniard of clean blood. 
Heterodoxy was the brand of the inferior race, the 
unclean class. No submission to the Church was other 
than honourable. To dare to think for yourself was 
dangerous and shameful. 

Now if a people with these ideas and rules of conduct 
ad come to " the Indies," as the Spaniards always 
called their possessions in America, bringing their 
wives and children for the purpose of tilling the land, 
they would not have brought with them the elements 
of a self-governing polity. But they came as soldiers, 



io DIAZ 

as adventurers in search of fortunes to be made rapidly 
by the sword, and to be taken back to be enjoyed in 
Spain. With few exceptions the first comers laid 
their bones in the New World after begetting a larger 
or a smaller number of children by their female Indian 
captives. The Government was so far from encourag- 
ing real settlement that it put obstacles in the way of 
the colonist after the first work of the conquest. It 
feared the formation at a distance of strong com- 
munities, because they might be tempted to consult 
their own interests rather than those of the home 
Government. The very merchant who wished to go 
in order to look after his affairs had to obtain a permit, 
which was given him for a time, and only on the pro- 
duction of a written certificate from his wife that she 
consented to his absence. He was not to be allowed 
to take her lest he should be tempted to remain. The 
aim of the State was to found a dominion wherein 
officials and soldiers should direct the labour of a native 
population so as to produce a great revenue for the 
Crown. That Spaniards continued to go is true. 
Sometimes the King was tempted to allow emigration 
to develop some mining industry and augment the 
royal share of the bullion. Sometimes he was weak. 
At all times his officials were corrupt and could be 
bribed. Men who shipped as sailors or soldiers in 
the galleons deserted and escaped up country, where 
they knew they were sure of good pay. 

There were differences between the colonies, though 
they were not great. As our business is with Mexico, 
it will be enough to speak of " The Kingdom of New 
Spain," to give the proper official title. When it was 
finally settled it extended from Central America in the 
south to a vague frontier on the north, from Upper 



INTRODUCTORY n 

California across to Florida. Five distinct elements of 
population were scattered over this vast territory 
the Creoles, the Mestizos, the Mulattos, the Zamba- 
higos, and the native Indians. 

By the Creoles are to be understood the descendants 
of Spaniards who had, or were by general consent 
considered as having, no mixture of Indian or negro 
blood. " Criar " in Spanish is " to breed," and, 
properly speaking, whatever the Spaniard brought to 
the Indies and cultivated there his own race, his 
horse, his ass, his cattle, pigs, poultry, and plants 
was criollo. The combination of Spaniard and Indian 
was mestizo (mixed). When the diminution of Indian 
labour and the desire of the home Government to 
spare the native population led to the introduction 
of negro slaves, there came the mixture of Spaniard 
and black, who is the mulato. The zambahigo was the 
half-bred Indian and black. Mulattos and Zambahigos 
(from which comes our Sambo) were less important in 
Mexico than in some other Spanish colonies. Finally 
there were the native Indians of over a hundred 
tribes speaking dialects of sixteen languages. For 
long they formed the bulk of the population. 

The Spaniard did not find a free field when he came 
to Mexico. The native civilisations of America were\ 
no doubt, as Gibbon says, " strangely magnified " by 
the conquistadores who first saw them. Still the 
Mexican Indians cultivated the land, built towns, and 
had a social order not very inferior, if it was at all:) 
inferior, to that of the Spaniards themselves. Mere'j 
hunters and savages, " Indianos bravos," were met 
only in the far north and south. In the central mass \ 
of the kingdom of New Spain the natives were 
" Mansos " (tame) or " Pueblo " (village) Indians. 



12 DIAZ 

They diminished before the Spaniard, but they did 
not perish utterly, and after a time they began again 
to increase. They were in various degrees capable 
of some civilisation, and not all were at any time 
enemies to the Spaniard. On one point the histories 
of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the British 
conquest of India touch one another. Cortes won by 
combining under his banner many tribes which were 
in revolt against the tyranny of the Aztecs, just as the 
East India Company always found native allies and 
willing subjects. The army which took the Aztec 
Tenochtitlan, the city of Mexico, consisted mainly of 
Indians. Friendly relations and a certain interpene- 
tration of the races, not only in blood, but in character, 
were possible as between Spaniard and Indian. Some 
of the native races maintained a measure of national 
existence. This was particularly the case with the 
Zapotecas of Oaxaca, to whom Benito Juarez belonged 
entirely, and the Mixtecas, from whom Diaz descended 
through his mother. It should be noted, too, that a 
mixture of Indian blood is held to fortify in Spanish 
America and in modern times carries no stigma. The 
mixture of negro blood was always a discredit, for it 
was considered less natural. 

So far we have considered only those parts of the 
population which belonged by birth to Mexico. But 
there was another, and one of commanding impor- 
tance by its direct action and by the consequences of 
its work. This was the " Peninsular " or Spaniard 
from Old Spain, who came generation after genera- 
tion, partly to recruit but mainly to govern as civil 
officials, as soldiers, and as Churchmen. In the 
eighteenth century, when the Bourbon dynasty had 
modified the policy of its predecessors, they came freely 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

as traders. Then they commonly married in the 
country, and their children recruited the Creole or the 
Mestizo elements. But it is as a governor, an official, 
or a priest that the Peninsular best deserves notice. 

The mere framework of Spanish colonial govern- 
ment need not be described at large. There was a 
viceroy, commonly a great noble, who was preferred 
because his rank, his family connections, and his 
estates at home were guarantees that he would not 
try to make himself king. Beside him, rather than 
below him, was the audiencia (the " hearing "), com- 
posed of lawyers, the oidores (or " hearers "). It was 
the viceroy's privy council, and it was a law court 
from which there was an appeal to the Supreme Council 
of the Indies at Seville. When it sat as privy council 
the viceroy presided. When it sat as a law court its 
president was its chief. When the viceroy's term of 
office was over, the audiencia had a right to inspect 
and pass his accounts. It could make a report on his 
conduct while in office. The audiencia was in fact a 
check on the viceroy, and if he died in office it ad- 
ministered until his successor came. Under these 
two was an organisation of officials who need not be 
named. They were necessary subordinates and could 
easily be paralleled from British India, or any Crown 
colony. The Church was fully organised with arch- 
bishop, bishops, lesser clergy, monastic orders, and 
Jesuits. No more need be said of it now except that, 
by grants from the popes, the regalities of the Crown 
were great in Mexico, and its control of the Church 
was complete. The King was " Lord High Constable 
of the Christian Army." 

The machine was after all but a machine capable of 
being used for good or for evil. The spirit of the 



i 4 DIAZ 

direction was the vital question. The first truth about 
it is that the Spanish colonial Government was the 
very faithful representative of the distrust felt for all 
the elements of the Mexican population by the rulers 
at home. It may be said to have been wholly composed 
of Peninsulares with a few exceptions. The natural 
love of the Spaniards for a place under Government 
was a strong influence no doubt, but the main reason 
why the Spanish Crown filled all offices by men it sent 
out was the abiding dread lest the colonists should 
render themselves independent. There was a real 
reason for this distrust. The Spanish Law of Trade, 
like our own Navigation Laws, aimed at restricting 
the whole trade of its colonies to the mother country. 
This was of course a grievance, and led (as the Naviga- 
tion Laws did in New England) to wholesale smuggling. 
But there was another reason and a more potent one. 
When the Government of the King in early days had 
to settle its hold on the Indies with few troops it made 
use of a very old device. It handed the Government 
of the Indians to encomenderos. The encomendero 
held his power as a trust in commendam for life, or for 
a term of years, or during pleasure. He was in fact 
a zemindar who controlled the Indians for the King, 
raised revenue, and took his dues. By a process with 
which Europe was once very familiar, the life or 
temporary office became an hereditary property. That 
the King was the only owner of the soil by grant from 
the Pope and by conquest was a maxim which figured 
in law-books. That he had the right to revoke the 
encomiendas singly, or altogether, no lawyer doubted. 
But the right was one thing, and the might was 
another. Whenever there was the merest suggestion 
of a revocation, a threat of rebellion was automatically 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

produced. The encomendero was so completely the 
master of his Indians that they would follow him in a 
revolt. He did not wish to rebel if he was let alone, 
but if he was to be deprived of his holding he would 
make a fight. The King of Spain was nearly as 
helpless in the presence of the opposition of the united 
encomenderos as any king of the eleventh century 
would have been if faced by a universal refusal of 
homage by the Crown vassals. When menaced by 
that peril the Spanish kings yielded. They made a 
struggle. Their Laws of the Indies have been praised 
for the provision they contained to protect the Indians 
from ill-usage. The intention was honourable, and 
every credit may be given to the good-will of the King. 
In Mexico the laws did produce some effect. They 
helped to save some Indian communities from 
extinction by forced labour in the mines. They 
secured some measure of protection for Indian towns 
and endowed them with communal lands known as 
" ejidos" i.e., exits. But no injustice is done to the 
King if we assume that he and his advisers were quite 
as anxious to clip the wings of the encomendero as to 
protect the Indians. Now, if the Indies were to be 
governed by the Creoles, the officers must, for lack 
of any other body from which to take them, be sought 
in that very class. Therefore all offices were filled 
from Spain. The encomenderos, predecessors, if not 
actual ancestors, of the " hacendados," the overgrown 
Mexican landlords of to-day, with their five million or 
even twenty million acres of land, were left in posses- 
sion of their power over the rural Indians, and the 
Government was directed by officials from Spain. 

Mexico was not without the germs of what might 
have been, or perhaps only looks on paper as what 



16 DIAZ 

might have been, a political organisation. There 
were town councils (cabildos), and there were occasions 
in Spanish colonial history when delegates from a 
number of these councils were assembled in a con- 
vention or a cortes. But cabildos and cortes alike 
were the reflections of the worn-out institutions of the 
mother country. The town councils were self- 
electing. The outgoing members at the end of their 
year of office named their successors, who at the close 
of their term repaid the compliment. So a quiet 
rotation of office was kept up between a select number 
of privileged families. Such as they were, they would 
have provided the machinery of a vigorous colonial 
system of self-government if there had been any wish 
for one. But there was not. Segregation, isolation, 
a secretive life for family and town, have always been 
notes of the Spaniards. They have never shown a 
good capacity to combine for any political purpose 
have always been inclined to personal, family, and 
local rivalries and distrusts. Their virtues are indi- 
vidual, not social, and every effort at combined action 
brings out their vices. Therefore they have been 
passive items in the hands of King and Church while 
the monarchy and the hierarchy were vigorous. 
When the life ebbed from these institutions there was 
nothing to take their place except the absolute 
necessity for some form of rule among gregarious men. 
Therefore a Spanish colony fell into anarchy qualified 
by the temporary predominance of some man with a 
stick. The tragedy of the whole race at home, as in 
the Indies, has been that many of the best and most 
honest among them could find nothing better to do 
than to fight contumaciously and pitilessly for the 
only kind of social and political principle they knew 



INTRODUCTORY 17 

the King and the Faith in other words, for the dead 
and the dying. Old Spain was at least directly 
influenced by the great living communities about 
her in Europe. In the isolation of the kingdom 
of New Spain there was nothing to counteract the 
faults of the race, and everything to exaggerate 
them. 

Education could hardly be expected to exist in such 
conditions. There were universities in Mexico, but 
they were limited to droning over the scholastic 
philosophy in its dotage. A few exceptional men 
here and there might apply themselves to botany or 
some other scientific subject. But there was no 
training for the community, nor even for a class. It 
would have been no great evil that the mass of the 
population learnt nothing except to repeat their 
catechism and " Ave Maria " by rote, if those who 
were supposed to be schooled had had a substantial 
education. But except in the Jesuit schools, where 
the upper class was taught some Latin, there was 
nothing beyond an endless ringing of the changes on 
" Ens " and " Essentia," a perpetual rattle of dis- 
putation over unrealities, in phrases which the Inquisi- 
tion had tested and found orthodox. The candidate 
for a licentiateship of laws had to read the text-books 
and codes, at least after a fashion. But his training 
was also one in mere disputation on points, and in 
terms laid down for him. *The debauching loquacity 
of the modern Spaniards and Spanish-Americans, the 
deadly readiness of all of them to pour out torrents 
of grammatical sentences which express no genuine 
conviction and mean nothing, and the predominance 
among them of the " attorney species " are the ruinous 
inheritance left by generations of a so-called education 



1 8 DIAZ 

in mere gabble to the exclusion of thought and of the 
study of things? 

Where in all this conglomeration of fragments were 
to be found the elements of a polity ? Only in the 
royal authority, which all by virtue of an inherited 
instinct revered even when they were provoked into 
resistance by a personal grievance. Outbreaks of 
disorder were not uncommon in Spanish America 
during the eighteenth century. A vague tendency to 
think that the land belonged to those born in it was 
to be noted from time to time the forerunner of the 
revolt which began in 1810. But these outbreaks 
were not directed against the monarchical principle of 
the State. Men took up arms and rioted when a trade 
monopoly granted by the King became intolerable. 
In Mexico city there was one triumphant explosion 
when a reforming viceroy attempted to stop the sale 
of " pulque " in the interests of sobriety. But when 
the grievance was removed all went back to the old 
order. The nature of these transient outbreaks may 
be illustrated by an incident which occurred some 
thirty years ago in Spain. **It was a year of drought, 
and the inhabitants of a village in Valencia were 
menaced not only by a total failure of their harvest, 
but by the drying up of the wells of drinking water. 
Their church possessed a crucifix of peculiar sanctity. 
It was taken out and carried through the fields by a 
procession with candles burning and singing of hymns. 
No rain came. At last on the third or fourth day of 
these pious exercises the villagers became overwrought. 
Being now worked into a " rabieta," a spasm of mad 
rage, they stood the crucifix upside down in the market 
place, they covered it with filth, they kicked it and 
threw stones at it, they abused it in the choicest terms 



INTRODUCTORY 19 

of Spanish blasphemy, which is not mere cursing and 
swearing, but truly blasphemous. In the middle of 
this crazy scene down came the rain as it does in 
those parts, advancing in sheets and spouts and hurl- 
ing the dust up before it. And then the people saw 
how useless the image was, and they were prepared 
to listen to a Protestant missionary ? Quite the 
contrary. The people of that village only concluded 
that the Lord had been moved to pity by the sight 
of the extremes to which their suffering had driven 
them and had at last sent the rain. They were more 
persuaded of the miraculous virtues of the image than 
they were before. So the discontented colonists who 
forced the King or his viceroy to give way remained 
as convinced as they ever had been of the royal good- 
ness^. 1 

But now suppose that the belief in the sanctity of 
the royal authority the medium which held together 
the individuals, classes, and races which made up the 
pudding-stone of a Spanish colony began itself to 
disintegrate, what would, what must, follow ? The 
whole mass would have of course crumbled, and when 
the process had gone far enough the pebbles or flints 
once embedded in the worn-out medium would sink 
into a heap. And that is precisely what happened in 
Mexico. Various causes had been at work all through 
the eighteenth century to dissolve the bond. There 
was an increasing sense of grievance in the Creole and 
Mestizo classes. As they were recruited by immigrants 
from Old Spain and grew stronger, they began to 
resent the exclusive possession of office by the 
Peninsulares and the insolence of the official class. 
It was a common observation down to the day when 
Spain lost the last fragment of her colonial empire 

C 2 



20 DIAZ 

that the non-official immigrants soon came to 
sympathise with the Creoles, and that their children 
were Creoles out and out. The official Peninsulares 
were not only harsh administrators and generally 
corrupt, but they were socially insolent. In the 
seventeenth century they already avowed their 
doubts whether any of the elements of the native 
population were entitled to be considered as rational 
beings (gente de razon). The Creoles, they said, sucked 
in the Indian vices with the milk of their Indian nurses. 
The Mestizos were the offspring of vicious women a 
bastard race. The Indians were children. Resent- 
ment of this official insolence began to extend timidly 
to the royal authority itself. Then Charles III. 
struck a terrible blow at the loyalty of the leading 
Creoles when he suppressed the Jesuits. The company 
in Mexico, as elsewhere, had aimed with great success 
at monopolising the education of the moneyed classes. 
The arbitrary cruelty of the treatment meted out to 
them shocked their old pupils. The mass of the 
population was not much affected, and the Jesuits 
had many enemies among the bishops and the other 
religious orders who helped to destroy them. The 
King had ample support at the time, but the sanctity 
of the whole Church suffered by this brutal crushing 
of a great order, and the King's authority was 
inseparable from that of the Church. Then came the 
example of the revolt of the English plantations and 
the help given to them by the King of Spain in alliance 
with France. Wealthy Mexicans who visited Europe 
and immigrants from Spain began to spread the ideas 
of the French philosophes. The Inquisition strove 
to exclude the writings of Rousseau, Voltaire, Raynal. 
The community was against it, and the " enlightened " 



INTRODUCTORY 21 

officials whom Charles III. sent out were no friends 
to the Inquisition. The King honestly desired to 
remove the worst faults of his colonial administration. 
Something was done, and a real stimulus was given to 
the material prosperity of the colonists. But it is an 
old observation that resentment against evils always 
finds expression when the sufferers are beginning to 
enjoy relief. Charles, a man besotted by a convic- 
tion of the divinity and omnipotence of his office, was 
always sawing the branch between himself and the 
trunk of the tree. In order to improve his means of 
defending his colonies against British attack he per- 
mitted the formation of a Creole and Mestizo militia. 
Spanish army officers, who had as little right as they 
well could have to look down on any kind of troops, i 
laughed at the " milicianos." But these bodies pro- 
vided the framework of the " patriot " armies of the 
immediate future. 

The French Revolution re-echoed in the New World 
and found discontent stirring below the surface. 
There was still no actual disloyalty to the Crown. 
" Viva el Rey y muera el mal gobierno " (" Long live 
the King and death to the bad government ") was the 
first watchword of the insurgents throughout Spanish 
America. In the King there was no help. The 
wretched exhibition of themselves given by Charles IV. 
and his family covered the once sacrosanct royalty 
with contempt. Spain was dragged along by France. 
War with England cut Mexico off from the peninsula. 
Unmistakable signs that the Spanish rule was nearing 
its end began to appear. One of the later viceroys, 
Iturrigaray, entered into a plot with the Creoles to 
establish a colonial self-government. The system of 
administration elaborated by Charles V. and Philip II. 



22 DIAZ 

was for the last time justified of its children. The 
audiencia suppressed the viceroy and sent him back 
to Spain, where he died in prison. When Napoleon 
endeavoured to seize Spain in 1808 Mexico remained 
loyal to Ferdinand VII. But it began to act for 
itself, and there was nothing to prevent its inde- 
pendence. Spain had no troops in the colony. The 
armed forces were composed wholly of native militia. 
The old colonial Government had become a skeleton i 
held together by wire. When the French invaded I 
Andalusia in 1810, and the conquest of Spain seemed 
to be inevitable, Mexico might very well have fallen 
away as did Buenos Ayres. It remained loyal for 
another ten years because the Creoles and Mestizos 
were suddenly threatened by a revolt of the Indians. 

The explosion was directed, indeed, by a Creole who 
was acting in combination with other men of his own 
class the priest Hidalgo. He had been much in- 
fluenced by the philosophy and the " sensibility " of 
Rousseau. He had worked for his Indian flock and 
had great popularity among them. Some schemes 
which he framed for their good were brutally destroyed 
by the colonial Government. It was on that provoca- 
tion that Hidalgo began to organise his conspiracy. 
The Government got wind of what was going on and 
made some arrests. Hidalgo, seeing that it was now 
or never, revolted at the head of his Indian followers 
not nominally against the King, but against the 
Administration. What was to have been a general 
colonial movement became a race conflict. Hidalgo 
himself went through the evolution familiar enough 
in the terrorist time in France. In the passion of the 
struggle and in rage against the injustice of his oppo- 
nents he became convinced that the only way to 



INTRODUCTORY 23 

protect the oppressed was to slay the oppressors. ' 
His philanthropy turned bloodthirsty, and he led his ' 
Indian followers into a general massacre of Creoles 
and Mestizos. In the presence of this peril the 
menaced classes rallied to the audiencia and the royal 
Government. The Indian revolt was put down and 
Hidalgo executed. His enemies said that he died 
asking pardon of God and man for his sin in letting the 
mischief loose. It is equally likely that in the reaction 
of feeling probable in so emotional a man he made this 
confession of sin, or that his enemies invented it for 
him. 

Whatever Hidalgo may have said or felt, it is only 
too true that his insurrection was the beginning of 
infinite misery for Mexico. He was succeeded as a 
patriot leader by another priest, the Mestizo Morelos. 
When he too was put down and executed, other chiefs 
were found to continue a partisan warfare in the 
mountains till 1820. 

The legend of Mexican history is that this struggle 
was a fight for freedom against Spanish oppression. 
The sober truth is that the ten years from 1810 to 1820 
were filled by the first Mexican Civil War. Spain 
could for long send no troops, and she never sent more 
than a few. Her resources were almost wholly 
devoted to attempts to hold or to reconquer South 
America. The combatants of the ten years' war were 
Mexican parties. If that statement is disputed, the 
proof of its truth can be conclusively given by a mere 
statement of the circumstances in which the inde- 
pendence of the country was finally declared. 

In 1820 a Spanish army, which had been collected 
near Cadiz for transport to South America, revolted 
at the instigation of Liberal officers. The Constitu- 



24 DIAZ 

tion drawn up by the Cortes in 1812 during the 
Peninsular War and suppressed by Ferdinand VII. 
was restored. Now this instrument of government 
was odious to the clergy chiefly because the men who 
made it were known to aim at the secularisation of 
the Church land. So far the higher clergy in Mexico, 
who were generally Peninsulares, had been loyal, 
though a large proportion of the parish priests, who 
were often Mestizos, and the friars of native origin 
were patriots. But when they found themselves 
threatened by a Radical and " godless " Government 
in Spain the higher clergy also became patriots. In 
combination with the Creole military leaders, whose 
loyalty had worn away to nothing, they proclaimed 
the independence of Mexico. The Spanish Govern- 
ment fell without a blow. A few soldiers from Old 
Spain held the fortress at San Juan de Ulloa for a 
time simply because the Mexicans had no navaTforce, 
and the castle stands on an island opposite Vera Cruz. 
But the viceroy himself had to sign the document 
which announced the end of the Government he 
represented. 

If the Creole landowners had possessed any of the 
qualities of an aristocracy they could have made them- 
selves masters of Mexico in the years between 1810 
and 1820. But they were a mere class of persons of 
fine manners who at their best were amiable and 
admirable in their family relations, while at their worst 
they were debauched and addicted to gambling to the 
verge of insanity. There was no institution in Mexico 
except the Church, and that also was divided and 
lacking in faculty for government. If a revolution 
is the substitution of one Government by another, 
then the declaration of independence did not accom- 



INTRODUCTORY 25 

plish a revolution in Mexico. It was simply a formal 
recognition of the already patent fact that the only 
principle of government known to the Mexicans of all 
shades was dead, and that nothing was left save the 
innate gregarious instincts of the human animal. On 
that foundation a new social and political order was 
to be built? 

The thirty-five years which passed between the 
declaration of the independence of Mexico and the 
beginning of the career of Porfirio Diaz cannot be said 
to have seen even the first steps in the progress of the 
work. They were full of mere anarchy. Presidents 
rose and fell at the rate of about one a year. It 
could not well have been otherwise. No Mexican was 
any longer aware of a reason why he should obey what 
was supposed to be the Government for one moment 
longer than he saw occasion, or than he was restrained 
by lack of means, or by terror of instant death, from 
setting out to become himself a Government. After 
the ten years of war, between 1810 and 1820, the land 
was full of armed factions. They had a free field in 
a thinly-inhabited country full of mountains which 
invited the guerrillero and the bandit. Even if a 
history of a chronic state of disorder were possible, 
this is not the place to make the attempt. 1 But, 
when we look steadily across the confusion, certain 
tendencies, if not exactly political principles, are seen 
to have been implied in the conflicts of contending 
factions. 

The words " Federalist " and " Centralist " which / 
figure largely in the controversies of those times did 

1 The reader who wishes to become better acquainted with the barren 
contentions of little self-seeking men may be referred to Vols. VIII. and IX. 
of " The History of the Pacific States," by Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft. 



26 DIAZ 

really stand for something. The framers of the first 
Mexican Constitution made a slavish imitation of the 
Constitution of the United States. They were the 
Federalists. From the beginning there were Mexicans 
who foresaw that this form of government would not 
suit their country, if only for the sufficient reason that 
there were in Mexico no " States." Its provinces 
were not political entities, each with its own history, 
character, and training in self-government, as were 
the thirteen British colonies which combined to form 
the Union. These critics maintained that the only 
government the Mexicans understood was one by a 
strong central authority. What they really wanted 
was a continuation of the Spanish viceroyalty and 
audiencia, but composed of Mexicans working in the 
interests of Mexico. Here was a genuine political 
issue very fit to be settled by political methods and 
argument. The career of President Diaz goes to show 
that these dissenters, who were known as Centra- 
listas, were right. If Mexico could have produced 
Jays, Jeffersons, and Hamiltons they would in all 
probability have written, not a " Federalista," but a 
" Centralista." 

The issue was not debated politically, but was 
turned into a downright scuffle of kites and crows. 
It is substantially accurate to say that whoever was 
at the head of affairs for the time being (having put 
himself there by armed revolt) tended to be " Centra- 
lista " because the name went easily with the widest 
possible exercise of authority. The Spaniard is 
naturally " mandon" We may translate the word 
by " Jack in office," but only with partial truth. 
The " mandon " is not only a conceited creature who 
makes the most of his office. He is always a potential 



INTRODUCTORY 27 

tyrant to whom no words come so easily as " Aqui 
mando yo " (" I command here "), and who enforces 
obedience by the most brutal or even bloodthirsty 
methods. Every " mandon " is persuaded that the 
whole abstract authority of the State resides in his 
person, and that not only all opposition, but all 
independence of judgment, is rebellion to be punished 
by death. The history of Mexico is full of bloodthirsty! S 
" Jacks in office." But a perfect readiness to suppress \ 
and to kill is not enough to make a strong Govern- j 
ment. It is quite capable of promoting sheer anarchy 1 
by provoking, or absolutely terrifying, men into armed 
resistance for their safety's sake. Mexico offered a 
fine field for insurrection. The natural answer to the 
Centralist " mandon " was the provincial Federalist, 
who raised the standard of revolt, of course in the 
name of Freedom. When beaten he fled into exile 
if he escaped being shot. When he was victorious he 
tended to become Centralist and " mandon." 

In so far as real political parties existed the Centra- 
lists may be said to have consisted of the landowners 
of Spanish descent and the Church, which was natur- 
ally on the side of authority. Now there were certain 
conditions which did tend to solidify the Mexican 
hurly-burly into a fight over material things. The old 
Spanish rule, working by class and private laws to 
divide that it might govern, had established its Fuero 
(forum) Militar, and its Fuero Eclesiastico (the mili- 
tary and the Church franchises). The reader must 
remember that in its original sense the word " militar " 
had nothing to do with the professional soldier, the 
member of a standing army. The Brazo Militar of 
the mediaeval Spanish Cortes the Military arm was 
composed of the nobles. In Mexico the landowners 



28 DIAZ 

had been assimilated to the Brazo Militar of Spain. 
They were justiciable only in their own " forum." 
But so great is the power of a name that the army, 
because it is " militar " in quite another sense, had 
been allowed to share the franchise of the nobles of 
the Middle Ages. We are sufficiently familiar with 
the rights and immunities of the Church in our own 
history to make it superfluous to explain what was 
meant by the Fuero Eclesiastico. Mexican Church- 
men claimed all that the Churchmen who resisted our 
Henry II. had called their rights, and they actually 
possessed their privileges. The separation from Spain 
had even increased their power, for it took the autho- 
rity of the King, which in Spanish America was great, 
from off their necks. Army officers and priests could 
not even be sued for debt except in their own courts. 1 
Army and Church were always more or less " Cen- 
tralista." Therefore it became a great object with the 
Federalists to abolish their franchises. As the Church 
was immensely rich, owning, it was calculated, a third 
of all the wealth of Mexico, hostility to its legal privi- 
leges inevitably went hand in hand with a longing to 
secularise its property. The conflict had risen to its 
acute stage when Diaz entered public life as a follower 
of Benito Juarez. 

1 The British reader may be surprised to be told, what is none the less the 
fact, that these class franchises survive in Spain itself. An army officer can 
be sued for debt only before a military court. A very few years ago a 
retired army officer who had committed a murder in very horrible circum- 
stances was tried by a military court which sentenced him to death. 



CHAPTER II 

THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 

WHILE the day on which he could begin his active 
career was approaching Diaz continued to work at the 
law, taking pupils to support himself and his mother. 
In the meantime he had before him a proof that men 
could rise to power by the pen and word as well as by 
the sword in Mexico, though the country was given up 
to military violence. There also the story of Bertrand 
and Raton has been known in public life. The craft 
of the " attorney species " has not seldom made a 
tool of the mere fighter. In after years and when he 
was President he was always ready to confess that his 
first "patron" was Don Marcos Perez, a pure-blooded 
Indian, a judge and a professor of law at the Insti- 
tute of Oaxaca. By the friendly offices of Perez he 
became well known to the leader whom he was 
destined to succeed as ruler of Mexico, the Zapoteca 
Indian, Benito Juarez, who had risen wholly by the 
way of the law. Juarez had been, and when Diaz first 
knew him was, governor of the State. It must 'be 
borne in mind that the foundation of the power of a 
party leader in Mexico has commonly been a local 
influence. He becomes what is known in the slang 
of Spanish politics as a " cacique." He practises 
" caciquismo," and on that fulcrum he works his 
lever. The cacique and his caciquismo are not of 
necessity evils. Given a sound moral atmosphere and 
good political instincts, and there can be no better 



3 o DIAZ 

taking-off place for a public career than the support of 
a man's neighbours in his native place or his chosen 
home. Mr. Chamberlain might quite fairly have been 
said to have been cacique in Birmingham, Pym and 
Hampden were caciques before him, and when Crom- 
well was called King of the Fens nothing else was 
meant. But when the moral atmosphere is bad and 
the politics are faction the case is altered. A local 
leader rises by intrigue, corruption, or violence. 
Specimens of both kinds abounded in Mexico. Many 
of the chiefs who figured in the ever-recurring crises 
of the chronic anarchy were no better than brigands 
who levied blackmail in money or votes at the head of 
their following of " plateados," so called because their 
clothes and the harness of their horses were adorned 
with silver (plata). A plateado was a Claude Duval 
highwayman, or gentleman brigand, as distinguished 
from a low footpad. Intriguer and blackmailer might 
unite in the same person. 

Juarez is allowed to have gained his power by 
exceptionally fair methods. The fact that he de- 
spoiled the Church has perhaps created a prejudice in 
his favour in certain quarters. But it is generally 
allowed that he had been an honest lawyer, that his 
political course was consistent, and that, unlike the 
majority of his contemporaries, he, though not 
indifferent to his interests, did not accumulate a 
fortune in office. His Indian blood no doubt helped 
him, but it was a legitimate advantage. The Zapo- 
tecas of Oaxaca had not been degraded to the miserable 
level of serfdom as the native tribes of Central Mexico 
were. They were hillmen, robust and courageous 
often yeomen landowners working for themselves. 
Fr ench officers who campaigned among them during 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 31 

the " intervention " found them less servile than other 
Indians, and saw in them a better appreciation of law 
and order and common honesty. We are entitled to 
believe that if they trusted Juarez they did so for 
creditable reasons and that their preference was to 
his honour. 

In the company of these Indians Porfirio found 
himself happier than under the control of the clerical 
authorities of the seminary. He records in his diary 
that " My intellect first expanded under the heat of 
Liberal principles, and I developed and improved in 
philosophical studies." 

In 1854 Diaz could not enjoy the advantage of 
direct personal guidance from Juarez. The Governor 
of Oaxaca had been driven into exile in the United 
States by the " mandon " who was then at the head 
of the Government, so called, of Mexico. This was 
the once notorious and, if he had not been so greedy 
and so capable of brutality, the amusing Antonio 
Lopez de Santa Ana. This personage was the per- 
fection of his type. He had the dignified personal 
appearance, the grave gesture, the innate faculty for 
bearing himself with an air of good manners, which in 
the men of Spanish race (he was a Creole) often cover 
the most complete intellectual and moral nullity. 
There was nothing in his handsome head save the kind 
of cleverness which can be wholly disassociated from 
judgment. In his character there were vanity, greed, 
and an element of animal courage which increased his 
powers for mischief. In 1853, when Mexico was smart- 
ing from the disasters of the war with the United States 
and was sick of incapable anarchists, he had been 
invited to make himself Dictator in the wild hope that 
he would give the tortured country its long-desired good 



32 DIAZ 

government. He had never shown the least proof ot 
ability to satisfy that wish, but the others had been 
every whit as bad, and none of them had lost a leg 
in fight against a foreign enemy. Now Santa Ana 
had, and on the strength of that superiority he had been 
accepted as Dictator with the quality of " Highness." 
In some villages he was even proclaimed as the Em- 
peror Antonio I. A hankering after monarchy had 
never died out in Mexico among those who were more 
concerned to enjoy the protection of a strong Govern- 
ment than to upset whatever Government there was 
for their own advantage. Once in the saddle he 
applied the only methods of administration he under- 
stood suppressions and military executions. He 
quarrelled with some of those who helped him to rise, 
accusing them, truly enough no doubt, of corruption, 
and driving all opponents out of the country as far 
as he could. The familiar reaction followed. A 
Centralist was hectoring in the capital. The 
Federalists took up arms in the outlying provinces. 
The first blow which Diaz struck in a civil war was 
given in opposition to Santa Ana. 

In 1854 his Highness the Dictator was busy putting 
all dissentients within his reach under lock and key. 
The friends of the exiled Juarez were the natural 
victims of these measures of precaution. No one of 
them was more distinctly marked out for arrest than 
Don Marcos Perez, and he was accordingly confined in 
a tower of the convent of San Domingo. The Dic- 
tator's vigilance was not unreasonable, for already the 
Liberal opponents of his rule were in arms in the Mix- 
teca hill country to the west of the city of Oaxaca 
under the command of one Herrera. The mass of 
townsmen in Mexico habitually behave as our own 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 33 

ancestors did in the Wars of the Roses. They 
recognise the armed man who is in possession for the 
time being, reserving their right to go over to the other 
side if only it can make a successful forcible entry. 
Political partisans who are temporarily reduced to 
silence by hostile force within the city plot to intro- 
duce their own friends from the outside. At such 
times those who, like Don Marcos Perez, are " carac- 
terizados " that is to say, marked men must expect 
to be subjected to precautionary arrest. At such times, 
too, young and active men like Porfirio Diaz earn the 
good-will of the side they elect to fight for by adven- 
turing to keep up communications between the plotter 
within and the warrior without the walls. The future 
President began his career by a feat which would be 
quite in place in the biography of Chicot. We have 
the story told in the future President's own words. 1 

He tells how when Don Marcos was arrested the 
" fiscal " (i.e., public prosecutor), Pascual Leon, was 
instructed to prepare the indictment. Now it hap- 
pened that Senor Leon owed money to Diaz and was 
tardy in his payments. The creditor had therefore a 
good right to drop in at the fiscaPs office, avowedly in 
pursuit of the debt, but with other aims, as he plainly 
says. Don Pascual avoided the unwelcome visit, and 
Diaz was left alone for a space. All is fair in love and 
politics. The fiscal in the hurry of his retreat had 



1 I quote from the official biography written by Dr. Fortunato Hernandez. 
" Un Pueblo, un Siglo y un Hombre " (" A Man, a Century and a People ") 
(Mexico, 1909). This is an official book published in reply to " Porfirio 
Diaz, la Evolucion de su Vida " (" the Evolution of this Life ") (New York, 
1908), by Don Rafael de Zayas Enriquez, a decidedly candid friend. Dr. 
Hernandez says that he takes this and many other passages from the 
" unpublished work " printed by Don Matias Romero " in the same simple, 
concise and veracious form in which General Diaz dictated it to the short- 
hand writer." 



34 DIAZ 

left his papers lying on his desk. Porfirio's legal 
education qualified him to select those which were best 
worth looking at. In a very few minutes he had made 
a number of notes likely to be useful to Don Marcos. 
The question was how to convey them to him. 

The prisoner was confined in the monastery of San 
Domingo. His cell was in the lock-up of the building 
wherein delinquent friars were shut up. This house 
of correction, known as the turret (torre cilia), pro- 
jected from the main building into the yard of the 
sacristy. It was lower than the body of the monastery. 
The walls were thick. The cell, three metres long by 
two wide, had a door with a wicket in it through 
which a prisoner could be watched, and a window 
high up on one side, barred heavily in the middle of 
the thickness of the wall. The cell was in the top 
storey of the torrecilla, and below was a door opening 
on the courtyard. Sentries were posted inside both 
at the door of the cell and at that which gave on to 
the yard. The monastery was occupied by a detach- 
ment of Santa Ana's partisans. There was only one 
way of communicating with Don Marcos, and that was 
by dropping on to the azote a (the flat roof of the turret) 
and then lowering oneself to the level of the window. 
The sill was broad, and whoever could reach it could 
find a footing on it and steady himself by holding the 
bars. There was a shutter on the inside of the window, 
but it had an opening at the top. In order to get 
at the azotea of the turret it was first necessary to 
reach the roof of the monastery. To come at the 
higher roof it was necessary to climb the outer wall 
of the garden and then climb over certain lower 
outbuildings. This was the adventure reserved for 
Porfirio. 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 35 

He might have been unable to achieve it single- 
handed, but he had the best and most trustworthy of 
comrades in his brother Felix, now and at all times 
till death divided them. Felix, commonly known by 
his nickname " El jChato " (i.e., " Flatnose "), had 
always been the comrade of Porfirio in every escapade 
or hunting excursion in the Sierra. They were both 
athletes and cragsmen. The feat presented no more 
difficulties than were sufficient to stimulate them. 
With a well-tested lasso, hemp sandals on foot, or 
barefoot, they could surely reach the highest roof, and 
once there the rest was plain sailing, on a conveniently 
dark night. 

The time was chosen, and under cover of darkness 
the brothers reached the four-metre-high garden wall. 
One standing and the other climbing on his shoulders, 
the thatched covering (or barda) of the wall (it was, one 
gathers, built of adobe, mere sun-dried brick) was soon 
reached. Whichever got up first held a rope for the 
other. Felix dropped down to scout for a possible 
sentry in the garden. None were stationed outside 
the building, a fact which does no credit to the officer 
in command. Then the way to the roof of the monas- 
tery bakery along the barda was flat and safe. The 
bakers were at work and were singing to lighten toil. 
" Quien canta sus males espanta," which may be 
rendered by " He who trills scares away his ills," is a 
sound old Spanish proverb. The noise they were 
making drowned all others for the bakers. The 
brothers passed unheard from the roof of the bakery 
to the roof of the kitchen (then empty), thence to the 
roof of the quarters occupied by the provincial, the 
superior of the house. From a small kitchen stand- 
ing there it was but one pull up more to the monastery 

D 2 



36 DIAZ 

roof. The climb was no obstacle to men accustomed 
to use the lasso. The noose was deftly tossed over 
some solid projection. One held the rope while the 
other swarmed up. Whoever was up first put his 
back into it to pull up the other. The President uses 
the very idiom. " Haciendo cuadril," he says. Now 
the " cuadril " is the haunch bone of an animal. 
Racer cuadril is to plant the heels firm and pull with 
weight and muscle, in the language of the muleteers. 
The mule can show them how to do it when in one 
of his frequent fits of obstinacy. 

Sentries were stationed on the roof, but they proved 
no obstacle. Porfirio and his brother learnt of their 
existence, not by seeing them, but by the sound of 
their voices as they called one another up, " Centinela, 
alerta " ("Watchman, watch"). But if 'the repeti- 
tion of the call keeps the men awake at their posts it 
tells a listener where they are and where he must go 
to avoid them. No sentry was posted on the roof of 
the turret. Those who were on the roof of the main 
building were probably squatting in corners out of 
the wind wrapped in blankets. For that or for some 
other reason they kept so little watch that the brothers 
could untie a long rope fastened to the clapper of the 
convent bell and tie it to a battlement. This was to 
provide themselves with an alternative line of escape 
if the alarm were given below and their retreat by the 
garden side were cut off. 

They dropped quietly on to the solid roof of the 
turret, and while El Chato watched above, Porfirio 
was lowered by the lariet they brought with them to 
the level of the cell window. A Latin phrase whis- 
pered through the airhole in the shutter told Don 
Marcos that a friend was at hand. Standing on the 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 37 

window cill and gripping the bars, Porfirio gave his 

news to the prisoner and heard his answers. The 

President does not report the matter of their talk, 

but it is to be presumed that it had reference to more 

than the law papers of Don Pascual. Messages were 

sent to friends outside. Then the adventurers 

returned as they came after replacing the bell rope. 

And the feat was repeated for three nights. How 

they contrived to free the lasso when they had 

lowered themselves by it on their return is a question 

which the reader may ask, but it is one for which there 

is no answer. The services of a friend inside would 

account for all, but none is mentioned. One thing is 

certain, and it is that no man who rose to be ruler 

of a State in the nineteenth century, outside of the 

adventurous world of Spanish America, could boast 

of such a feat. 

Though the matter of these conversations is not 
reported, we may be tolerably sure that it had refer- 
ence to a plot for handing over Oaxaca to the oppo- 
nents of Santa Ana, who in January, 1854, had drawn 
up the Plan of Ayutla, so called from the place where 
it was proclaimed. It was one of a long series framed 
to secure the future good government of Mexico. The 
Dictator, though he was beginning to be hard pressed 
from all sides, held his ground as yet. In December 
of that year, being perhaps inspired by the recent 
shining example of Napoleon III., Santa Ana called 
for a plebiscite in which the free and independent 
voters of Mexico might decide whether or no they 
preferred to be regenerated by him. On these 
occasions, or their like, the line taken by respectable 
people in Spanish and Portuguese America is one with 
the answer of the Oxford undergraduate who, when 



38 DIAZ 

asked to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, replied cheer- 
fully, " Oh ! yes, or forty if you like." l 

The President tells us that until the very day of the 
voting he was not sure whether he would " charac- 
terise " himself by voting openly against Santa Ana 
or be content with abstaining. The offhand remark 
of a friend that abstention was the course which would 
naturally be taken by those who were afraid stung his 
spirit. The friend whose name, Francisco de Enciso, 
deserves to be recorded must have part of the 
credit for the bold act which marked Diaz at least in 
the local world of Oaxaca as an intrepid partisan. In 

1 It happened to me some years ago to travel by sea from Santos in Brazil 
to Buenos Ayres with a very well bred and intelligent Argentine man of 
business. In answer to a question of mine concerning a political matter, 
he replied politely that he took no interest in it whatever. When a young 
man and in the illusions of credulous youth he had shared in a political 
movement, which of course entailed fighting. When it was over he reflected 
that he had been very young, very foolish to risk his life for the sake of a 
gang of intriguers who meant no good to anyone but themselves. Since 
then he had left politics alone. Another Argentine of the same stamp told . 
me, smiling the same smile, and making the same indication of the shrug of 
the shoulders, a barely perceptible movement, that a shower of rain (he 
was a cattle breeder, an " estanciero," and the country was suffering from 
drought) was of infinitely greater importance than any Presidential election. 
The profound mistrust which Spanish-Americans of good social position 
and honourable personal character feel for all politics may have had a share 
in the reserve of both these gentlemen, though they trust us more than they 
do most men, for they rely on our honour (" la palabra Inglesa "), a confi- 
dence which for us is a great asset. Yet my acquaintances were really 
stating a point of view. The respectable Spanish-American acts very much 
like the Arab quoted by Mr. Kinglake. When his burnos becomes intolerably 
verminous he puts it on an ant-hill and the ants eat the pest. So in Spanish 
America, when the politicians in office go too far, the moneyed men who 
suffer too much provide this or the other military politician out of office with 
the means to make a " pronunciamiento." They finance a revolution. The 
Arab can shake the ants off when they have done their work, but it is not so 
easy to shake off the politicians. This attitude of the industrious non- 
political world of Spanish America must be borne in mind if we wish to 
understand how so much bad government has been tolerated ; why revolu- 
tions have been so common ; and also why, in spite of bad government and 
revolutions, these countries have grown in material prosperity and increased 
in population. The political strife is largely a game played by a class, and 
the working community goes on its way, leaving the chiefs and swordsmen 
to fight among themselves. 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 39 

the heat of his resolution he came to the room where 
the book for recording the votes was lying open, and 
there with his own hand, and avowing his deed in a 
loud voice, gave his vote for General Alvarez, " the 
hero of Ayutla." 

The next step was to hurry from the room and the 
town. Indeed, he received a warning note from 
another friend, one Maldonado, telling him that the 
authorities were already talking of his arrest. A third 
friend, a member of the dominant faction, warned him 
verbally in the streets to be off. The wine, in fact, 
was now drawn and must be drunk. Nor was Porfirio 
anywise unwilling to do what was needful. An open 
display of preparations for flight would perhaps have 
hurried his arrest. He had to get on horseback 
without letting the enemy see what he was preparing 
to do. No great fortune is required to keep a saddle 
horse in Mexico, and he had one. Wearing a decep- 
tive air of indifference, he led his horse unsaddled to 
the water outside the town. A friend hid saddle and 
bridle in a buck-basket and sent them down to the 
water covered by clothes as for the wash. Then 
Porfirio saddled and rode off to join the Indian 
Herrera, who with a small and ill-armed band of 
Indians was already in arms for the cause in the neigh- 
bouring hills. It was not unlike an incident in a 
story by Mayne Reid, but then the Captain wrote 
about Mexico and knew it well. And now Diaz was 
fairly launched on the career which was to make him 
master of the Republic, and earn him the respect and 
confidence of the statesmen of Europe and America. 

The first weeks of his new life were more arduous 
than successful. Santa Ana's party was strong enough 
to break up Herrera's band. Diaz had to take to 



4 o DIAZ 

hiding, but the tide was going against the Dictator, 
and the partisans of the plan of Ayutla were able to 
get possession of the city of Oaxaca. A redistribution 
of offices naturally ensued, and Diaz was named sub- 
prefect of the district of Ixtlan. It was a small post 
given as a beginning, and was to all appearances not a 
promising one. The Indians of Ixtlan were considered 
to be of a very unmartial character, so much so that 
they were exempted from military levies as being of 
no use. 

Every Mexican armed force consists of two ele- 
ments the directing body of fighting politicians, or 
mere brigands, and the rank and file of Indians. The 
latter are simply pressed. Every political party has 
at one time or another promised to give up the leva 
(i.e., levy) of Indians and replace it by a fair con- 
scription. No party has ever kept the promise. The 
Indians are too broken, too cowed, too torpid, and too 
divided to resist. They submit, and their women 
come with them to forage, cook, carry burdens, and 
provide the only army service corps which Mexican 
armies have possessed. A Mexican army is in fact a 
temporary artificial tribe which camps or marches 
with its swarm of women and children. So long as 
they are paid and fed, these Indians obey and show a 
good deal of passive courage. When not paid or fed 
they desert. They pass over in masses from the losing 
to the winning chief. A Mexican victory usually 
meant the incorporation of the mass of the beaten side 
in the ranks of the victorious army. The directing 
element of the beaten side, the officers, were shot 
wholesale after the battle. With such soldiers actions 
tended to be fought at very long ranges, and the result 
was reached through desertion, and not by blows. 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 41 

The Mexican of all shades can fight fiercely in certain 
circumstances, or when his passions are aroused. But 
he fights best behind stone walls, or in trenches, where 
his Indian passivity enables him to endure much 
hammering without a sense of excessive strain on the 
nerves. As for passion : what passion can a pressed 
Indian feel for contending political generals and poli- 
tical terms which are to him meaningless ? He suffers 
patiently when he cannot desert, and will meet death 
in the shape of a military execution with an air of 
complete indifference. M. de Keratry, who served in 
the French " contra-guerrillas " during the Maximilian 
adventure, writes as if he had been shocked by what 
seemed to him the brutal callousness of the Mexican 
guerrilleros of Indian blood whom he saw shot in large 
numbers by order of the redoubtable Colonel du Pin. 
It will be seen that to be appointed sub-prefect of 
a district where the Indians the Indiada in Mexican 
phrase-^-are of such notoriously poor quality that 
nobody had a wish for their services -was no great 
promotion. And Diaz was soon called upon to bring 
help to the party. The Plan of Ayutla included the 
abolition of the Fuero Militar and the Fuero Eclesias- 
tico. When the Republicans, as the opponents of his 
Highness the Dictator called themselves par excellence, 
gained possession of the city, they of course proclaimed 
the Plan. The officers of the 4th Regiment of Horse, 
and those of the loth of Foot, which were stationed 
in Oaxaca, were offended at the prospect of the loss of 
their privileges, and on second thoughts reproclaimed 
for Santa Ana. The Republicans were driven out. 
Diaz was called upon to come to the help of his friends 
with the Indiada of Ixtlan. The enemy was for the 
moment too strong for them, and Diaz found himself 



42 DIAZ 

compelled to go back to his district and disband the 
Indians he had pressed. But this eclipse did not last 
long. Santa Ana's folly was ruining him, and he was 
soon in flight. The Republicans recovered Oaxaca. 
Juarez came back as governor after a period of semi- 
starvation in the United States. 

He and his colleagues of the Republican party 
now set to work, to organise their followers, who had 
hitherto been mere guerrillero bands, into a National 
Guard for the purpose of swamping the regular army. 
Hereupon the professional army officers, some of whom 
had acted against Santa Ana, joined forces in a body 
with the equally menaced Church. And now began 
a fair fight on a true political issue. On one side were 
the Liberals, intent on an abolition of military and j 
clerical privileges, and on the other were the menaced 
army officers and priests who constituted the Reaction. 
The place of Porfirio Diaz was with the former. 
Juarez, we are told, had begun by offering him a 
major's commission in the National Guard about to 
be formed. He declined the offer on the modest 
ground of unfitness, and preferred to remain as sub- 
prefect of Ixtlan. As he did actually accept a com- 
mission as captain in the National Guard in December, 
1856, we may assume that he was not held back by 
diffidence alone from taking service at a slightly , 
earlier date. His native sagacity must have shown 
him that the foundation of real power in Mexico is a 
local influence. He remained in his district to win it, 
and he gave his first proof of his capacity to manage 
his countrymen by obtaining an appreciable amount 
of useful service in the field from the Indians of Ixtlan. 
From that fact we may perhaps conclude that if they 
had been of small military value hitherto the reason 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 43 

was not so much that they were more pusillanimous 
than others of their race, but that they were more 
recalcitrant to the press. It may be remembered 
that the parents of Diaz had lived for years in the 
Sierra de Ixtlan, and he had relations there. 

Without undertaking to go into details of the con- 
fused period of the overthrow of Santa Ana, we must 
note rapidly that the victorious Republicans obtained 
possession of the capital. Their first President was 
^Uvaiez^the hero of the Plan of Ayutla. He proved 
but a transient President, and was quite out of place 
when he was no longer playing the guerrillero on a 
hillside. Comonfort succeeded him and formed a 
Ministry in which Juarez was Minister of Grace and 
Justice. The career of Comonfort is unique among 
Mexican Presidents, for he ended by making a pro- 
nunciamiento against his own administration. He 
was a moderate Conservative who had been driven to 
join the Liberals by opposition to, or fear of, Santa 
Ana. His conduct shows that he was prepared to go 
a certain way with them in reform, for he allowed his 
Minister of Grace and Justice to pass the law called 
after him " Ley Juarez/' which abolished the Military 
and_Ecclesiastical Fueros., But it would appear that 
when reform was seen to be developing into a con- 
fiscation of the Church's property Comonfort became 
frightened. He turned over to the Reaction, was 
overwhelmed in the confusion he created, and fled 
abroad. We may apply to him the scoffing lines 
written on the Archbishop of Paris, Louis de Noailles. 

" Cy git Louis cahi caha 
De oui et non s'entortilla, 
Puis dit ceci, puis dit cela, 
Perdit la tete et s'en alia." 



44 DIAZ 

The united Clerical and Military parties obtained 
possession of the city of Mexico and the central mass 
of the country. Juarez, who as Minister of Grace 
and Justice was also President of the Supreme Court, 
and by the Mexican Constitution entitled to replace 
the President of the Republic in case of death or 
disappearance, was recognised as his successor by the 
Republicans. He made his way through various 
hazards to Veracruz, from whence he directed the 
ensuing three years' strife with the Reaction, or 
Conservative alliance, headed by that Miramon_ who 
was destined to be shot by the side of the Archduke 
Maximilian. Partly because he had the support of 
the United States, which recognised him and allowed 
its naval officers to intervene in his favour, but not a 
little because his position at Veracruz, the chief port 
of Mexico, enabled him to intercept the customs 
revenue, Juarez was first able to hold his ground and 
then to advance against the capital. 

While the general struggle was running its course in 
the centre and north Porfirio Diaz was steadily 
fighting for the common cause in the south, and was 
incidentally qualifying himself to succeed Juarez as 
" cacique " in Oaxaca. The company of National 
Guards he commanded was raised in Ixtlan, where the 
hillmen would follow him, but nobody else. His 
party was predominant in the State till August of 
1857, when the Conservatives, led by a Spaniard of 
old Spain, Cobos, who had carried a natural faculty 
for guerrillero warfare to Mexico, burst in on them from 
the north, and beat them badly at Ixcapa. In this 
action Diaz was severely wounded by a musket bullet 
in the leg. The wound laid him up for four months, 
and the bullet was, for lack of a competent surgeon, 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 45 

not extracted till 1859. It was then taken out at La 
Ventosa by an American naval surgeon whose ship was 
protecting the workmen engaged in laying a road 
across the isthmus of Tehuantepec. 1 

Even before he was cured he had resumed service. 
It is characteristic of Mexican history that his chief 
in this part of his life was the Mejia who made a third 
with Maximilian and Miramon before the firing party 
at Queretaro. At Santa Catarina when Republicans 
and Conservatives were contending for the town, and 
on the battlefield of Jalapa, where Cobos was defeated, 
he distinguished himself as a subordinate. " The 
torrent of reform," says the future President's 
biographer, Senor Escudero, in his " Historic Notes,'- 5 
" was advancing in waves of blood to overwhelm the 
past." The Republicans gained ground, and, after 
Jalapa, Porfirio Diaz was named Governor and 
Military Commandant of the district of Tehuantepec. 

The isthmus of Tehuantepec lies at the south-east 
end of Mexico, where it meets dense tropical forests, 
and the Central American republic Guatemala. The 
town and administrative district of the name lie on 
the south side of the isthmus. Geographically they 
occupy a section of the great Mother Range (the Sierra 
Madre), which stretches along the Pacific shore. The 
administrative district is of considerable size (500 
square leagues), but they are square leagues of rugged 
hill and tropical forest, inhabited at that time by 
60,000 Indians and half-breeds. When the inhabi- 
tants were not torpid and utterly indifferent they were 
much under Clerical influence. Juarez, who was 
making head with difficulty against Miramon, could 

1 This road was an American venture and was a forerunner of the Panama 
Canal. The scheme was quashed by the Senate. 



\ 

/ 



46 DIAZ 

spare Diaz but few men and no money. On the 
contrary, the new Governor was expected to raise 
revenue and help the general cause by receiving and 
forwarding arms to be imported from the United 
States. The whole force given him for the perform- 
ance of these duties was 150 men. 

The enterprise was, however, not quite so hopeless 
as it looks on the bare statement of these facts. Most 
of the inhabitants of his government did not care for 
either party, and if they would do nothing to help him 
they would do nothing to hinder. The Conservatives 
had their hands full elsewhere, and could send no 
force against him ; and there was a third condition a 
universal one in Mexico which was much in his 
favour. However stagnant life might be in the valleys 
of the Sierra Madre, the scattered towns and villages 
had vivacity enough to keep alive local rivalries. 
The county town, as we may call it, Tehuantepec, was 
in a chronic state of dissension with the town of 
Juchitan. The first was Clerical and was in the hands 
of a party calling itself the Patricios, the Patriots, or 
Patricians, for the word can be used in both senses. 
Probably for no other reason than because Tehuan- 
tepec was Clerical, the town of Juchitan took the other 
side. Diaz chose the latter as his headquarters, as 
was to be expected. The place was for other reasons 
convenient to him. It is near the sea-shore, and there- 
fore well placed to receive stores from the United 
States, whereas its rival lies inland. 

Diaz held his government for two years, 1857 to 
1859, gathering in what money was to be obtained and 
dashing out in swift raids as occasion served. He 
swooped down on the Patriots or Patricians of 
Tehuantepec, who were clumsily preparing to fall on 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 47 

him, and sent them flying. For this service he was 
promoted to a majority. The promulgation of a new 
law which abolished the old military commandant- 
ships in March, 1858, and replaced them by " political 
districts " made an alteration in the name, but not in 
the character of his functions. Another success 
against the local Clericals at La Mantequilla earned 
him a lieutenant-colonelship. And then he did his 
party a material service. 

A considerable convoy of arms imported from the 
United States had been collected at Juchitan. It 
was to be sent on to the Republicans. But Juarez 
could send no troops to protect it, and Cobos, who 
still held Oaxaca, got wind of so useful a prize. He 
prepared to make a raid into Tehuantepec and lay 
hands on the weapons. They would have been 
valuable to the Conservatives, who, owing to the 
hostility of the United States and the occupation of 
Veracruz by Juarez, were cut off from supplies and 
were much distressed. The Government at Veracruz 
learnt or suspected the intention of the Conservative 
leader, and orders were sent to Diaz to destroy 
the arms rather than allow them to fall into the hands 
of the enemy. But Diaz would not submit to that 
necessity without an effort, and he contrived to pass 
the arms across the hills with the help of his friends at 
Juchitan. While the convoy was making its way to 
the persons for whom it was intended, he at the head 
of his little force beat up the quarters of the intruders 
from Oaxaca and delayed them effectually. By the 
end of 1859 he had made himself master of the town of 
Tehuantepec and had earned his colonelcy. He was 
now able to come to the help of his friends elsewhere. 
The political district of Tehuantepec was to Diaz 



48 DIAZ 

what the Eastern Counties Association was to Crom- 
well. 

The Republican forces in Oaxaca were under the 
command of General Ordaz, who was struggling with 
Cobos for the possession of the city. Diaz having 
now beaten down the Patricios, raised 500 Indians 
by the usual process of the press and marched to join 
the Republican general. The venture was not at first 
a successful one. When Diaz moved out from 
Tehuantepec, his old Juchitan friends, who formed a 
large part of his force, proved recalcitrant. They were 
ready to serve in their own country, but were not 
prepared to go out of it on an expedition which might 
keep them from home for an indefinite period. Diaz 
had to quiet a mutinous outbreak on January 10, 
1860. The danger was, however, averted only for a 
few days. Cobos, who appears to have known his 
business, was not the man to allow the two Republican 
officers to unite their forces at their leisure. He took 
the sound course and marched rapidly to fall upon 
them while still separated. On January 21 he 
attacked Diaz at Mitla. When the Conservatives 
were seen coming on, the sulky Juchitans ran away in 
a body, and Diaz suffered a smart defeat. Fortu- 
nately for him the approach of Ordaz drew Cobos off. 
He turned to deal with the new enemy, and was in his 
turn beaten. This timely intervention gave Diaz 
space in which to rally his following or such part of it 
as had not gone back to Juchitan. He joined his 
fellow-Republicans, who were now under the command 
of Salinas, for Ordaz had been killed in the encounter 
with Cobos. 

The death of Ordaz was a bad mishap for the 
Republicans. His successor proved, if not disloyal, at 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 49 

least captious and dilatory. Cobos was allowed to 
pick himself up. All armies of the guerrillero kind 
reunite almost as readily as they scatter, and the 
Conservative leader could rally on the city of Oaxaca. 
While he was restoring order in his following the 
Republicans were wrangling. The civil representa- 
tive of the Government, Diaz's old friend Marcos 
Perez, endeavoured in vain to stimulate Salinas to 
activity. They quarrelled, and Diaz strove to pacify 
the dispute. He refused to put his superior officer 
under arrest at the request of Don Marcos. Then 
Juarez sent a new general, Rosas Landa, to take the 
command. But his choice was singularly ill-judged, 
for when Cobos took the offensive again Rosas Landa 
fairly ran away, and the Republicans were beaten 
out of the field. Diaz and Salinas, who held together, 
took refuge in the mountains of Ixtlan. 

After such a disaster the Republican forces would 
appear to have been decisively disposed of in the 
State of Oaxaca. And yet in August of this very year 
Diaz and Salinas were in possession of Oaxaca city, 
and Cobos it was who was hiding in the hills. The 
victories of loose guerrillero armies are indeed com- 
monly barren, since they are not gained in the execu- 
tion of a comprehensive, well-thought-out plan. More- 
over, it not uncommonly happens that the desire to 
put booty in a safe place, or to obtain some private 
fruit of victory, or even only to enjoy a little rest, 
disorganises the victorious side as fully as if it had 
been beaten. Cobos was unable to follow up his 
successes, and was forced out of Oaxaca because his 
party was losing ground everywhere, his funds were 
running dry, and his men were deserting him. 

The victory of his cause in* his ^native State com- 



50 DIAZ 

pleted the first period. in the public life of Porfirio Diaz. 
The beginning of another was marked in a significant 
manner. In 1860 he received his commission as 
colonel in the regular army, which had now been 
reorganised by Juarez. The new model no longer 
enjoyed the invidious privilege of the Fuero Militar, 
but it was none the less the greatest force in Mexican 
politics. When Diaz passed from the National Guard, 
to which he had hitherto belonged, and became an 
officer of the standing army, he, as it were openly and 
officially, took his place as a candidate for the Presi- 
dency. Not, of course, at once, but when the oppor- 
tunity should come. It was natural, and we may 
even say inevitable, that when he became colonel he 
also became deputy in the Congress summoned by 
Juarez. We must not say he was elected, because no 
such thing as a free election has ever been known in 
any of the republics formed out of the fragments of 
the Spanish colonial empire nor yet in Portuguese 
Brazil. If Diaz came to Mexico city in 1860 as deputy 
for the district of Ocotlan and also as colonel in the 
Oaxaca brigade of the national army the reason was 
that the Ocotlans received a conge cPelire permitting 
them to choose him. 

During the last stage of the war he took an active 
share as a subordinate under Ortega in the field. He 
was present at the battle of Calpulalpam, where the 
organised forces of the Conservatives were finally 
broken. But an overthrow of this kind did not by any 
means entail the total defeat of the party. The Church 
was fighting for everything which could stimulate it 
to struggle. The Ley Juarez had deprived it of its 
"fuero," which it was bound by all its principles to 
consider a gross outrage. When Juarez became 



THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER 51 

President of the Republic his Minister of Grace and 
Justice framed the Ley Lerdo de Tejada that was 
his name by which all the property of the Church was 
confiscated. This measure was one of immense 
importance for Mexico. Its effects are felt to this day, 
and we shall have to come back to it. For the moment 
it is enough to point out that the Ley Lerdo de 
Tejada not only secularised the lands of the Church, 
but that it took all land in Mexico out of mortmain. 
The spoliation, as the Conservatives were bound to 
call this measure, affected not the Church alone, but 
the Indian towns, which found themselves deprived 
of the common lands which had been secured to them 
by the old Spanish Laws of the Indies. If, therefore, 
the Indians rallied to the cause of the Church with the 
cry of " Religion y Fueros," they were not acting 
from mere bigotry, nor were they fighting only for the 
abusive privilege of the clergy. Their own interests 
were threatened. The priest and the Indian had a 
common cause. 

They found a leader in Marquez, a pure-blooded 
Indian of the Sierra de Queretaro. The man was a 
savage who killed with joy. He fairly earned his title 
of " Tiger of Tacubaya." But he was a vigorous 
guerrillero leader. The French officers who saw him 
later on judged that he had even the qualities of a 
general. And he had the further considerable advan- 
tage that he was an Indian^chief who could rely on 
the loyalty of his tribesmen. Though Juarez was in 
possession of the capital and had summoned a Con- 
gress, a great part of the country was in the hands of 
the Conservatives. In June, 1861, Marquez made a 
dash at the capital. Diaz was compelled to leave 
his place in Congress and join Ortega in the field. 



52 DIAZ 

Marquez was driven back. His loose bands of guer- 
rilleros were at a disadvantage in the open. He was 
beaten at Jalatlaco and then again at Mineral del 
Monte. On the first occasion Diaz attacked without 
orders and won a distinct success. The Conserva- 
tives were described as defeated and their army as 
scattered. But the reader will understand that, as 
usual, being defeated and scattered by no means 
entailed being brought to submission. Marquez's 
guerrilleros did not make a point of honour of holding 
a position. They relied on wearing their enemy down, 
and they knew very well that the few thousand more 
or less disciplined troops at the disposal of Juarez were 
utterly unequal to the task of occupying their hills. 
They divided when hard pressed, only to meet again 
miles off. The Conservatives were masters of much 
of the country, and Marquez was in arms when a new 
and a strange chapter opened in the history of Mexico. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 

WHERE the carcass is there will the eagles be 
gathered together and the vultures. The weakness 
and anarchy of the late Spanish colonies marked them 
out as a tempting prey for armed adventurers. 
Squatters came to the territory north of the Rio 
Grande, Texas, and then, not without reasonable 
grounds of provocation on the part of corrupt and 
brutal Mexican officials, tore it away. The slave 
power in the United States saw an opening for the 
extension of slavery in Northern Mexico. By the end 
of 1849 the Republic had been deprived by force of, or 
had sold, all its belongings beyond its present northern 
frontier. Small adventurers nibbled, or tried to 
nibble, bits of Central American or Mexican land. 
The Englishman who knows of the Cacique of Poyais 
only from Thackeray may be excused for believing 
that he was an invention of the novelist. But Gregor 
Macgregor was a flesh and blood reality who has his 
column in the " Dictionary of National Biography." 
He tried to conquer and to found a State. The 
mining camps of California bred imitators of the 
Cacique in some numbers. There was Walker, known 
in rhetorical phrase as the Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny. 
Quite a small world of filibusters made inroads, 
launched companies, and commonly ended before a 
firing party. Their doings are recorded in Mr. H. H. 
Bancroft's " History of the Northern Mexican States," 



54 DIAZ 

Vol. II.. with copious references to authorities. It is a 
point not to be overlooked that the French among the 
miscellaneous swarms of fortune hunters in California 
cast their eyes on the province of Sonora, at the north- 
western end of the Mexican frontier. Schemes for 
founding a French colony in Sonora were evolved and 
advertised. Napoleon III. himself did more than 
play with them. The object was to work the mines, 
which had been profitable under Spanish rule, but 
had been neglected since its fall. Two attempts to 
seize on the much-exaggerated wealth of the province 
were made by French adventurers under the leader- 
ship of the Comte de Pindray and the gentleman of 
Provence who bore the imposing name Gaston Raoulx, 
Comte de Raousset Boulbon. The first died in 
mysterious circumstances by his own hand or by 
murder at the hands of his mates. The second, a 
young (Lecave who had run through a fair patrimony 
in a few months, had written a novel, said to be 
very bad, and a good deal of such verse as poetasters 
wrote with Lamartine and Alfred de Musset before 
them as models, was intent on making a great deal 
of money by a gambler's throw. He was shot by 
the Mexicans in 1854. They may stand for the 
eagles. 1 

The vultures cannot be better represented than by 
Jecker of the notorious bonds. It is to be observed 
that this financial adventurer, who was at last 
murdered by the communards, was in partnership or 
league with Raousset Boulbon. European capitalists 

1 The reader who may care to investigate this odd backwater of American 
history will find quite interesting matter in the story of his captivity, told 
by M. Vigneaux, one of the companions of Pindray and Raousset Boulbon, 
and in the rather frothy but amusing life of that person by the Marquis de 
la Madelene. There is another by a M. de Lachapelle, which I have not seen. 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 55 

had been very imprudently ready to lend money to 
the Spanish-American States. The facility with 
which the transient chiefs of these communities were 
for a time able to raise loans had a good deal to do 
with promoting their spendthrift wars. The money 
was of course scandalously wasted, and much of it 
was stolen by the predominant generals of the day. 
A large part of the diplomatic correspondence of other 
nations with Mexico was concerned with the reclama- 
tions of defrauded and disappointed creditors. To 
them were to be added the incessant complaints of 
foreign merchants, who suffered from robbery dis- 
guised as forced loans, or robbery naked and un- 
ashamed. In reality these victims suffered a good 
deal less than native Mexicans. After all, they had 
their Consuls and Ministers to speak for them, while 
the dictator of the day had his reasons for not going 
too far against the possible dispensers of loans, or the 
Governments from which he might have to ask a safe 
refuge. After a time honourable financial houses 
declined to have anything to do with such creditors. 
Then the rulers who came and went were driven to 
make bargains with mere money-lenders of the Jecker 
stamp. Miramon, the Conservative President ex- 
pelled by Juarez for one, made a bargain with Jecker. 
In return for a little money down he acknowledged a 
huge sum of debt. 

I do not propose to swell these pages by even the 
briefest summary of the diplomatic history of the 
French intervention in Mexico. It has been often told 
and can be conveniently read in the " Expedition du 
Mexique " of Captain Niox, or, better still, in the 
" History of the Second Empire," by M. Pierre de la 
Gorce. But it is not an irrelevancy in a life of the man 



56 DIAZ 

who was to put Mexico in an honourable position, 
at least for a time, to give some account of the 
" bochorno," the sweltering puddle of hot mud, from 
which he pulled his country. We will leave aside the 
dreams of Napoleon III., the fantastic delusions of the 
Spanish Court, the queer mixture of Quixotic vapours 
and Sancho Panza-like gross common sense of Prim, 
the wrongs of the British Embassy as told by the 
Minister (Sir Charles Wyke), the fictions of the French 
Minister (M. de Saligny), the produce of a disorderly 
imagination coloured by financial speculations, and 
the tripotages of the Due de Morny. In 1861 the War 
of Secession was coming on in the United States, and 
they for a time were neutralised. Then all the vague 
ambitions, the self-deluding and deluded greeds of 
the Raousset Boulbons and Jeckers, ran into the river 
of dreams of " regeneration of the Latin race " 
and creation of a barrier against the ambitions of the 
United States (very rashly avowed) which flowed 
through the loose imaginings in the head of 
Napoleon III. The practical result was the French 
intervention in Mexico and the ghastly story of the 
Empire of Maximilian. 

Yet it was not all the folly of a songe creux. There 
was just enough reality in it to provide a solid basis 
for the vapours to settle on. We shall have evidence 
from the campaigns of Porfirio Diaz himself that 
multitudes of Mexicans would gladly have reconciled 
themselves to obey a strong, intelligent foreign 
Government, which would keep order and administer 
with an eye to the good of the country. There was, 
too, the Church, maddened by spoliation. There 
were the Indians, aggrieved by the confiscation of the 
communal lands. If the work had been done honestly, 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 57 

if the Church had been fairly treated as far as fair 
treatment was possible in such a case, and the Indian 
commoners justly compensated, the throwing of the 
lands held in mortmain into " general circulation " 
might have been a gain for Mexico. But it was not. 
honestly done. We need not take too high a tone! 
to the Mexicans. Considering how Henry VIII.' 
spoiled the English monasteries, how barons and 
lairds ravened the Church lands in Scotland, what was / 
done in France during the Revolution, and in Spain 
after 1833, we can leave the Mexicans to do the preach- 
ing for themselves. The fact must none the less be \ 
recorded that a swarm of pillagers, fraudulent pur- ( 
chasers, politicians, and generals in search of booty 
settled on the confiscated lands. No part of the , 
produce was devoted to the public good. The victims \ 
were sore and angry. The victimisers were thieving, 
scuffling, intriguing, and lying. 

The mass of quiet townsmen and the peasants of 
Indian blood who had some property bowed, not 
unwillingly, to the foreign rule as they did to the 
unending patriots, all more or less sanguinary, who 
proclaimed this or that, and raised the banner of j 
revolt. If there had been no United States, or if the 
Secession had succeeded ; if Maximilian had not been 
a weak-willed and vaguely romantic person who lived 
in a perpetual performance of private theatricals ; if 
the Clerical party had had sense and statesmanship ; / 
if the mass of Mexicans who longed for peace and 
security would have acted instead of waiting to be , 
saved by some Heaven-sent good government, the 
empire might have been established and the Archduke 
might have died at a great age on what was absurdly 
enough called the throne of Montezuma. As every | 



58 DIAZ 

one of these conditions was lacking, it was just a 
frantic adventure. 

In the spring of 1862 England and Spain had with- 
drawn from what they had meant should be an attempt 
to recover debts, and France had been launched on 
what was in plain English a scheme to conquer 
Mexico thinly veiled by professions of a wish to enable 
its people to decide their own destinies undeterred by 
the " menaces of demagogues." General de Lorencez 
was at Orizaba with some 6,000 French troops. He 
had been joined by a few hundred Conservative 
guerrilleros lean and sun-dried scarecrows, half 
naked, armed with lances and mounted on their wiry 
nags. They and their usual tail of women and 
children gave the French no very high opinion of the 
military quality of the allies they were to find in 
Mexico, according to the highly-coloured promises of 
M. de Saligny. The Zouaves and Chasseurs d'Afrique 
in Lorencez's little army had seen just such a " smala " 
before. The Mexican forces sent by Juarez to watch 
and oppose the French were commanded by General 
Zaragoza, with whom Diaz was now serving as 
brigadier in the Oaxaca contingent. 

The French basis of supply was at Veracruz.^ This, 
the principal port on the Gulf of Mexico, lies on the sea 
front of the Hot Land (the Tierra Caliente), which is a 
strip of marsh some sixty miles wide, swarming with 
yellow-bellied mosquitoes and reeking with fever. 
The inner border of the Tierra Caliente is formed by 
the river Chiquihuite. Beyond the river begin the 
slopes of the great snow-capped mountain Orizaba. 
Here is the starting-point of the Tierras Templadas 
(the Temperate Zone), well cultivated and containing 
well-built towns Cordoba, Orizaba, and others. The 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 59 

Tierras Templadas rise by a gentle slope till they are 
cut by a barrier of high and precipitous hills running 
from north to south the Cumbres, or Heights. 
The Cumbres can be turned, but the country was 
roadless and little known to the French. The yellow 
fever of the Tierra Caliente had been so fatal to them 
that they had drawn every man they could to the 
front. Guerrilleros were pestering their communica- 
tions, which were but ill guarded. If Lorencez had 
endeavoured to turn the Cumbres he would have 
marched into the air. 

In the circumstances the French general would have 
done better to remain at Orizaba till the means for a ! 
further advance were provided. But he had the 
natural desire of a soldier to distinguish himself. And 
then he had been assured by M. de Saligny, whose 
advice he was told to take, that he had only to show 
himself in the interior in order to be greeted with 
effusion by the mass of the Mexicans. He knew, too, 
that there were Conservative bands in the field and 
that they were threatening General Zaragoza. So he ' 
decided to advance, relying on the vast military 
superiority of his soldiers and the promises of M. de ' 
Saligny. 

Behind the Cumbres lies the lofty tableland of 
Anahuac, the Cold Lands (Tierras Frias) of Mexico. 
Two passes lead from the town of Orizaba to the plain 
of Anahuac one by the Cumbres de Maltrata is only 
just practicable by wheeled carriages, and very diffi- 
cult. It leads to the town of San Andres Chalchico- 
mula. The second goes by the defile of Acultzingo, 
from whence the road is open and easy to the very 
Clerical town of Puebla de los Angeles, which was the 
prize he aimed at. The pass is a staircase flanked by 



60 DIAZ 

precipices, almost impossible to turn, and providing 
two most defensible positions at the Great and Little 
Cumbres, the two parallel chains forming the range. 
It may be confidently asserted that if such a position 
had been held by Prim with half the Spanish soldiers 
who had just gone back to Cuba, or by 2,000 Boer 
marksmen, Lorencez would not have forced the pass 
by a front attack, not even if he had been prepared 
" to cloy the jaws of death." But he was opposed by 
pressed Indians who had received a mere veneer of 
drill, who had never been taught to hold a position 
solidly, and who were commanded by men who were 
officers only because they had received commissions. 
The patriot troops had just given a proof of their 
quality. The first brigade of the Oaxaca contingent 
had been sent to take quarters in the tithe barn of 
Chalchicomula. They shambled into the yard, men, 
women, and children, bringing with them a convoy of 
gunpowder. The explosive was thrown down at the 
" grace of God," and the women set about cooking 
their husbands' dinners. The natural consequence 
followed. The gunpowder caught fire and blew up. 
The brigade, the women, children, horses, pack mules, 
and the tithe barn were dashed to pieces. Yet that 
brigade passed for one of the best in the Mexican 
army. It had served under Diaz and was partly 
raised by him. It would be pure waste to spend 
words over the action of April 28 when Lorencez forced 
the pass. Enough that eight companies of the 2nd 
Zouaves and six companies of the 1st Battalion of the 
Chasseurs a pied rushed a position 600 metres high 
defended by some 4,000 men and 18 guns, with a loss 
of two killed and 32 wounded. 

Lorencez may be excused for thinking after such an 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 61 

experience as this that he could safely rush at any- 
thing held by Mexican troops. When Zaragoza fell 
back on the town of Puebla the French general 
followed him nothing doubting. But he was mis- 
taken. The Mexicans, Indians, and mestizos were ! 
not cowards. When they were stationed in solid \ 
stone buildings, loopholed, they could stand well. 
Puebla is a typical Spanish-Indian town, full of solid 
houses and massive convents, and defended on the 
east by outlying forts. The proper approach is on 
the western side, and so Lorencez had been told by a 
Mexican officer who joined him. In his contempt for 
such soldiers, and his overweening confidence in his 
own men, he simply marched along the Orizaba road 
from the east, and rushed at the forts on May 5. 
He had no battering train, and what guns he had 
light field-pieces were fired at too great a distance 
to produce any effect. Of course no impression was 
made on the forts. The French, marching up to 
unbr cached walls, lost heavily, and were brought to a 
standstill. Diaz contributed materially to their final 
repulse by a well-timed and well-directed sortie 
against the flank of their line. A violent storm of 
rain came down. Lorencez fell back with a loss of 
1 6 officers and 156 men killed, 19 officers and 285 men 
wounded. Zaragoza hardly went too far when he said 
that the French general made his attack con torpeza, 
that is to say, in a very clumsy manner. But the 
victorious Mexican's report grows almost lyrical over 
the valour of the French soldiers, and it is easy to see 
that the general was much and agreeably surprised 
by his victory over " the first soldiers in the world." 

Diaz himself was honourably candid as to his 
own feelings. When in later"-years he dictated his 



62 DIAZ 

reminiscences he frankly said : " The victory was so 
unexpected that we were surprised indeed by it, and 
as it appeared to me to be a dream I bivouacked that 
night on the field in order to confirm the reality of the 
event by the dumb testimony of our enemy's dead 
and those of our own forces ; by the talk of the soldiers 
round the fires, and the distant glow of the enemy's 
camp." 

The French did indeed inspire such a profound 
respect for their fighting capacity in the open that no 
serious attempt was made to harass them during their 
retreat to Orizaba. General Zaragoza did, it is true, 
follow them in time and at a safe distance, but he 
made no attempt to force on an action. The siege 
of Orizaba which he proceeded to form when he had 
been reinforced amounted to very little more than a 
passive watching of Lorencez's little army from a long 
way off. General Zaragoza showed a well-grounded 
prudence in abstaining from more active measures. 
The result of the one offensive movement of the 
Mexicans only proved their utter unfitness to meet 
the French at close quarters. Orizaba is dominated 
by a hill, the Cerro Borrego. When an attempt was 
made to seize this position on June 14, and by a large 
Mexican force, it was shattered by 140 soldiers of the 
99th of the line commanded by Captain Detrie. The 
Mexican force was composed of 2,000 men of the 
division of Zecatecas, who were counted as the best 
drilled in the Mexican army. 

From early in May, 1862, till the beginning of 
March, 1863, the war was at a standstill. The French 
were receiving reinforcements and were preparing to 
advance. Juarez was doing all that was in his power 
to organise a national resistance. General Lorencez 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 63 

reopened, and kept open, his communications with 
Veracruz until he was recalled and replaced by 
General (afterwards Marshal) Forey. Diaz, who had 
been promoted to general of brigade for his services 
on May 5, was appointed Military Governor of the 
Veracruz district. There was, however, very little 
for him to do. The only forces available for opera- 
tions against the invaders were the guerrillero bands 
formed of men who had lived by civil strife. They 
were mere brigands, whose highest achievement was 
to butcher stragglers, and, when the luck favoured 
them, to cut off a very small detachment. They 
were perfectly ferocious, and they excelled themselves 
in cruelty to those of their countrymen who were 
known, or were only suspected, to sympathise with 
the French. Against them the foreign authorities 1 
organised the notorious contra-guerrillera led by ' 
Colonel du Pin. This body was recruited mainly 
among the broken men beachcombers, deserters 
from ships, bullies and ruffians of all nationalities, and 
no scruple who have ever hung about the Gulf ports. 
Du Pin fought the Mexican guerrilleros with their own 
weapons, and proved to demonstration that European 
vagabonds led by a French officer could equal the 
vilest excesses of native ferocity. No good was to 
be done for the one side or the other by such methods 
as these. Diaz might well prefer, and did prefer, to 
take his share in a more honourable kind of warfare. 
While the French expedition was being raised to an 
adequate strength by drafts from Europe, Juarez was 
preparing to defend his Government. The method he 
took was perhaps the only one available in the existing 
circumstances. He concentrated the arms and the 
men he could scrape together at Puebla, and decided 



64 DIAZ 

to make a stand at that fortress. A place besieged is 
a place taken unless it can be relieved from the outside, 
and, as the President's power to collect another army 
capable of forcing the French to raise the siege they 
were certain to undertake was nil, it follows that the 
forces shut up in Puebla must sooner or later be lost. 
The case would seem to have been one for acting on 
the maxim of Sir William Wallace who loved better 
to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep for 
refusing to shut men up within walls, for relying on a 
policy of wearing the French down by skirmishes and 
stopping their advance by threatening their com- 
munications. So undoubtedly he ought to have 
behaved if he could have relied on the support of the 
whole population of Mexico. But he could not. 
The mass of the people was passive, and a good half 
of those who were prepared to act that is, the 
Clericals were bitterly hostile and were co-operating 
with the French. To hold Puebla strongly, make a 
long defence and so gain time, was on the whole the 
best course to follow. So some 15,000 men were 
thrown into the town and there awaited the advance 
of the French. The President's policy was to some 
extent justified by the fact that not a few of the Con- 
servative leaders rallied to him when it became clear 
that the country was about to be invaded by a French 
army. Their patriotism was possibly stimulated by a 
shrewd suspicion that a Government supported by a 
serious force might be strong enough to put a stop to 
the profitable game of pronunciamiento-making. Yet 
they must be credited with having subordinated party 
to country without renouncing their principles, for 
no sooner had the French army retired before the 
menaces of the United States in 1867 thai; most of 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 65 

them who survived took up arms at once in the old 
quarrel. In 1863 there was a faint possibility that 
all the Conservatives would follow their example, and 
there was a good deal to be said for giving time to 
time dar tiempo al tiempo, as the Spanish maxim 
(much acted on) has it. Zaragoza having died in the 
interval, General Ortega was appointed to conduct 
the defence. 

The siege of Puebla was even more creditable to the 
Mexicans than the repulse of Lorencez's feeble attack 
on May 5. They held out from March 16 to May 17, 
and then did not surrender till their provisions were 
exhausted. We are told in the reminiscences of Diaz 
that he and several other of the generals present urged 
Ortega to take a line which would have been more 
spirited, and if successful vastly more effective, than 
a pure defence. He says that when Forey's army of 
26,000 men was closing round the town it advanced 
in two columns, one on one side and the other on the 
other. Diaz and the generals who thought with him 
implored their chief to strike at the head of one of the 
columns. It does appear a tenable proposition that an 
army of 15,000, or according to the French of 20,000, 
which possessed the advantage of acting on interior 
lines and of being covered behind by the town, might 
have spared men enough to concentrate a superior 
force at a point of attack to deliver a shrewd blow at 
the French while they were coming into position. 
Ortega would take no risks and refused. His advisers 
retired, some of them grumbling audibly that the'y 
were condemned to be caught in a trap and compelled 
to surrender sooner or later. 

The President's memory of that council of war may 
be frankly accepted as correct. Subordinate officers 

D. F 



66 DIAZ 

who cannot give the decision, and who therefore would 
not be held responsible if it were taken and failed, 
have always been ready to urge the adoption of a bold 
course on wary commanders-in-chief. On the prin- 
ciples Diaz was no doubt right, and yet it may well be 
that Ortega was not wrong. The attack from the 
centre to the circumference by the lesser on the more 
numerous army is no doubt a brilliant manoeuvre, but 
unless it is performed with rapidity and precision it 
will infallibly be disastrous. The Mexican army had 
not been trained to observe what Collingwood called 
" the nice concert of measures that are necessary to 
success." If Ortega had tried to play the great game 
of Rossbach and Leuthen and Salamanca, it is, con- 
sidering the quality of his troops, eminently probable 
that he would have been heavily beaten, and then 
Puebla would have fallen at once. The cautious line 
he took had at least the merit of making it possible to 
hold the French back for two months and so give time 
to time. 

M. Pierre de la Gorce, in his " History of the Second 
Empire," tells us that when the first reports of the 
siege of Puebla began to reach Paris (by steamer, for 
the Atlantic cable was not laid at that date) the name 
of Zaragoza the Spanish city, not the Mexican 
general was much in the mouths of critics and also 
of nervous friends of Napoleon III. There was just 
enough similarity between the two sieges to save the 
comparison from being altogether one of the Macedon 
and Monmouth order. There was, however, one 
great difference. The capital of Aragon was defended 
in 1808 by its inhabitants and the countrymen of the 
neighbourhood, who took refuge within its walls. 
Puebla was defended by its numerous garrison. The 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 67 

city was perhaps the most levitical in all Mexico the 
very centre and headquarters of the Clerical party. 
Whatever sympathies the townsmen had were rather 
with the enemy outside than with the defenders 
within. But as usual these sympathies were entirely 
passive. Forey gained nothing positive by them. 

The prominent part which Diaz took in the two 
months' resistance laid the foundation of his fame. 
Until now he was only one of a large body of political 
and semi-political generals and colonels, who were 
collectively a pest. When the siege ended he was well 
on his way to become a national hero. We must 
therefore dwell a little on his actions and look with 
some attention at the place where they were per- 
formed. 

Because Puebla " of the Angels " was, and from the 
first had been, above all a Clerical city, it abounded in 
massive buildings. Its sixteen convents and many 
of the secular houses within it had been erected in the 
most flourishing ages of Spanish colonial history. 
Building material was abundant, time was no con- 
sideration, slave and serf labour was obtainable in 
unlimited quantities. In these conditions the 
Spaniards constructed as if they were building for 
eternity. They brought with them an excellent 
tradition of masonry, inherited, not from the so-called 
Arabs, whose work in that kind was far from good, 
but from the " obras de Romanos," the works of the 
Romans at Merida, Segovia, and Tarragona. They 
made admirable mortar, and then they held the rule 
that " Lo que quita el frio quita el calor " (" What 
keeps out the cold keeps out the heat "). A thick- 
walled house is warmer in winter and cooler in summer. 
All this stonework would have crumbled into dust 



68 DIAZ 

within a few hours under the fire of the guns which 
have thundered in the ears of all the world since 
August, 1914. But Forey had no such battering train. 
The massive old Spanish walls were quite equal to the 
strain of resisting his field-pieces and his eight " canons 
de 12 de siege," with their reserve of six of the same 
calibre. Nor had Ortega been negligent in prepara- 
tion. The forts on the west and south and the city 
walls were looked to. Of these no more need be said. 
Forey was warned by the experience of Lorencez and 
made his attack from the east, where the city lies 
most open. Ortega had foreseen that this would 
probably be the side to be assailed. He had made a 
fort of the penitentiary which stood outside the walls. 
It was named the San Javier (i.e., St. Xavier). But 
the real defences were within. Barricades had been 
solidly constructed, house walls loopholed, mines laid. 
He meant to fight from barricade to barricade, and to 
force the enemy to pay heavily for every advance. It 
was a reasonable calculation that Forey, whose rein- 
forcements must reach him across the Atlantic, could 
not afford to be " a general at 10,000 men a week." 
The French officer would perhaps have done better to 
begin where he was forced to end, that is to say, invest 
the town and starve it out, standing ready to scatter 
any forces which might come to its relief. He would 
have got the place quite as soon as he did, and would 
have lost fewer men a consideration of some weight 
for a general who had only 26,000 with whom to 
dominate a country four times the size of France. 
But this thrifty course would have been painful to an 
army which, justly enough on the whole, had no great 
respect for the military qualities of its opponents. 
So he fixed his headquarters at the convent of San 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 69 

Juan on a low hill to the east of the town, and pre- 
pared to clear the way by taking the San Javier and 
then effect a quick storm, 

It is not necessary to give a detailed account of the 
siege, but only to show the theatre on which Diaz was 
to win distinction. As regards the general operations, 
it is enough to say that the besieger's force had no 
difficulty in disposing of such relieving force as Juarez 
was able to send ; that the San Javier was stormed, 
the city walls occupied ; and that then the real 
fighting began inside. This stage lasted till April 7. 
During that period the French had lost one general 
and seven officers killed, 39 officers wounded, 56 
soldiers killed, and 443 wounded. A casualty list of 
545 in an army of 26,000 may not appear very serious. 
But the progress made was little, and the historian 
of the Mexican expedition, Captain Niox, has to con- 
fess that this fighting amid loopholed walls, over mines, 
and under falling roofs tried the nerve of the soldiers. 
It made, he confesses, " une impression facheuse sur 
leur moral." Forey turned the siege into a blockade 
and waited till hunger compelled the Mexicans to 
capitulate. 

Diaz was in the thick of the fighting during the last 
days of March and the first of April. The portion of 
the line particularly entrusted to him was composed 
of the convents of San Marcos and San Agustin, which 
lie respectively north and south of one another, and 
the block of houses between. Puebla is built in 
straight streets cutting one another at right angles. 
The houses in the oblong blocks, known as " man- 
zanas " in Spanish, are closely joined and inhabited 
in flats. The President's reminiscences supply a lively 
picture of a passage of street fighting. 



70 DIAZ 

The French advanced till they were in possession of 
the hospice facing San Marcos, and were piercing the 
walls in order to bring a gun to bear on the buildings 
opposite. The ground floor of San Marcos was occu- 
pied by shops on either side of the " zaguan " that 
is to say, the porch and passage which led into the 
courtyard, the central " patio " of the building. The 
door had been solidly barricaded with flagstones taken 
from the ground of the zaguan and the courtyard. 
An opening had been made through the wall at the 
back of the yard to allow the defenders to come and 
go without exposing themselves in the open. When 
the French had pierced the wall of the hospice, they 
fired into the San Marcos and beat in the front of the 
shop to the right of the porch, and attempted to rush 
the building. They advanced to blow in the door of 
the zaguan, did not succeed, and then they forced 
their way in through the shop. 

" There was," says the President, " one anxious 
moment when the fury of the French charge into the 
courtyard struck my soldiers with panic so that they 
went so far as to attempt to run, but the narrowness 
of the opening in the wall would not allow them all to 
get off. At that moment I fired a little mortar which 
I had in the yard loaded with grape shot, and let 
them (i.e., the French) have it near enough to singe 
their beards [a quema ropa = burn their clothes, the 
equivalent of the French d brule pourpoint]. It 
scared them sufficiently to make them leave the 
courtyard they were just about to occupy, and they 
ran back into the porch." 

One of the Zouaves in the attacking party made a 
rush at Diaz, who stopped him by hurling a revolver 
into his face. He fell, either from the force of the 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 71 

blow which was no doubt severe, for Don Porfirio 
was by all testimony a very strong man or because 
he was wounded at that moment by a shot. The 
President never indulges in the Munchausen vein and 
generally gives ample credit to his friends and 
subordinates. On this occasion he records the stout 
help given him by one of his corporals. He adds a 
biographical detail which deserves to be repeated for 
its candid simplicity. The revolver was a second- 
hand one and out of order. It had been bought in a 
pawn-shop, he tells us, " for at that time our pecuniary 
circumstances were bad." 1 

His soldiers now rallied and forced the French out. 
The righting went on for three or four days. The 
French brought guns and tried to master houses here 
and there by forcing their way into front rooms and 
firing into and across the patios. The result commonly 
was that they brought the roofs down on their own 
heads. For though the walls of these old buildings 
are extremely solid, the frequent earthquakes which 
afflict Mexico have taught the wisdom of making the 
roofs light so that they collapse easily without injury 
to the shell of'the house. The inhabitants who cannot 
get clear away in time take cover in the thickness of 
the walls at doorways. Diaz contrived to hold the 
San Marcos. When the French renewed the attack 
and again tried to burst into the building through the 
shop, he prepared a trap. Holes were made in the 

1 For the benefit of possible book-hunters and curiosity-seekers in 
Spanish-speaking countries I will put a note here which my experience tells 
me will not be superfluous. The adjective " vie jo " (old) means second-hand. 
A libro viejo or pistol 'a vieja, like Don Porfirio's in this case, is a second-hand 
book or pistol. When what is sought is a book or pistol or any other article 
interesting for its age the curio-hunter should be careful to ask for a libro 
antiguo or pistola antigua. The Spaniards never err in their use of the 
words, and the blunders of foreigners, who usually do, are the cause of 
innocent merriment. 



72 DIAZ 

roof and hand grenades were dropped on the intruders. 
They were once more driven out. Diaz tells us with 
perhaps a touch of not ill-natured malice that the 
officer who commanded the final assault, when 
deserted by his men and called on to surrender, replied 
in the legendary Cambronne formula " The Zouaves 
never surrender ! " Nevertheless he did when it 
became clear that he would be shot if he proved 
contumacious. 

The President's narrative is on the whole borne out 
by the French version of the story given in Captain 
Niox's History. 

A few days of this work convinced Forey that he 
would lose more men than he could afford to spend if 
he continued in his attempt to take the town house by 
house. He suspended these attacks, sent for heavier 
guns from the French men-of-war in the Gulf, and 
confined himself to beating off the feeble efforts of 
the Mexicans to relieve the garrison and to menacing 
the outer forts. When the would-be relieving army 
had been routed by Forey's subordinate Bazaine at 
San Lorenzo and the provisions of the garrison were 
nearly exhausted (though it was afterwards shown that 
the townsmen had hidden considerable stores of food), 
Ortega tried to obtain a capitulation and the honours 
of war. Forey insisted on surrender pure and simple. 
The Mexicans laid down their arms after destroying 
their ammunition. Diaz was one of the 26 generals, 
303 field officers, and 1,179 company officers who fell 
into the power of the French. It was quite in accord- 
ance with the established rules of Mexican warfare 
that a large proportion of the common soldiers taken 
were at once incorporated by the Conservative leader 
Marquez, who had joined Forey, in his own ranks. 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 73 

Of the officers, many were sent to France, from whence 
they were subsequently allowed to return on the 
understanding, or in the hope, that they would join 
Maximilian. Some did take that course. A large 
proportion of the prisoners contrived to escape within 
a few days. Diaz was one of those who succeeded in 
getting away. At a later period he was accused of 
having broken his parole, but he always denied that 
he had given it, nor could it ever be proved that he had. 

When free he hurried to report to Juarez at Mexico 
city. Don Benito saw that after the fall of Puebla 
and the rout at San Lorenzo he was in no position to 
offer further opposition to the advance of the French 
on the capital. He removed his Government north- 
wards to the famous old mining city, San Luis de 
Potosi. Diaz, whose rank as general of division was 
confirmed in October, 1863, was commissioned to 
raise troops in the province of Queretaro. " The city 
of Mexico," said Juarez, " will be just one town more in 
the possession of the French." He was perfectly right. 
The occupation of the capital had no effect whatever 
on the other cities and provinces of the Republic, 
which had never followed its lead and enjoyed local 
independence. The French had apparently forgotten 
the teaching of the Peninsular War and the utter 
uselessness to them of the occupation of Madrid. 
Forey left Puebla on June 4, and occupied the capital 
on the 1 2th. He met with no opposition. All the 
townsmen asked was that he would not allow Marquez 
to enter the city. When they were assured that they 
would be protected against the " Tiger of Tacubaya " 
and his cut-throats they decorated their houses and 
welcomed the French with effusion. 

A parody of Napoleon^ s scandalous proceedings at 



74 DIAZ 

Bayonne in 1808 now followed. A miscellaneous 
assembly of notables was held, and it offered the 
" Crown of Montezuma " to Maximilian. The vote 
of this scratch collection of mere insignificances was 
made to do duty for a national choice. It was not 
what Napoleon and Maximilian had hoped for, but 
they had committed themselves already. The Em- 
peror of the French could not go back without covering 
himself with ridicule. After the repulse at Puebla in 
May, 1862, the honour of the French arms had to be 
vindicated. A foolish enterprise was to be persisted 
in because it had been begun. A provisional Govern- 
ment conducted affairs in the name of the Emperor 
Maximilian till he should arrive that is to say, it 
professed to be the Government of Mexico wherever a 
French garrison was in possession on the line of com- 
munications from Veracruz to the capital and in a few 
places to right or to left. Everywhere else the 
government, as far as there was any, was conducted in 
the name of the Republic and of the President Juarez. 

The unhappy Archduke and his still more unhappy 
wife, Amelie Charlotte of Belgium, reached Veracruz 
in May, 1864, en mal bora, in an evil hour for him and 
for her. He came with the remnant of a loan raised 
by the help of Napoleon and burdened by a heavy 
financial obligation which he was totally unable to 
fulfil. He was bound to support the French army of 
occupation out of a non-existent revenue. It was the 
French army which had to support him out of its 
military chest, which again had to be filled from 
France. 

The essential folly of the whole venture was made 
manifest from the day that the Archduke reached his 
capital. There were many Mexicans who would have 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 75 

accepted a good Government from Maximilian so long 
as they were not called on to make efforts or undergo 
sacrifices to help him. There was only one body of 
persons in Mexico who would or could have given him 
effective support. They were the Clericals, and their 
help was to be had on their terms only. The con- 
ditions they would have imposed may be fairly said 
to have been all that Hildebrand or Boniface VIII. 
would have claimed or Pius IX. would have insisted 
on if he could. They asked for nothing less than the 
entire subordination of the State to the Church, the 
restoration of all Church land, the suppression of all 
freedom of worship and opinion. Now it was mani- 
festly impossible for an Austrian archduke to submit 
to such demands. It was still more impossible for 
Napoleon III. He would have helped the Church if 
it had allowed him, but no ruler of Frenchmen could 
dare to make so abject a submission to Clerical pre- 
tensions. The Mexican Clericals were not amenable 
to reason. They would not listen ; they scorned all 
appeals to show moderation and accept facts. They 
would assert and demand all as a right not to be 
discussed. 

As it was impossible to work with the Church, 
Maximilian had to fall back on efforts to win the sup- 
port of the Liberals. When he tried to govern as a 
Mexican ruler, he soon came into collision with the 
French. When he supported the French, he offended 
the Mexicans. Add to this that the United States 
would never recognise his Government, though he 
debased himself to humble solicitations. When the 
cause of the Confederacy declined and fell, it became 
obvious that the Union would insist on the with- 
drawal of the French troops. So long as they remained 



76 DIAZ 

they could easily scatter the armed mobs which were 
called Republican armies ; but they never succeeded 
in driving Juarez over the border, though he was so 
hard pressed as to be forced to send his family for 
safety to American territory, and while he remained 
in any corner of the country, though it were only in 
some out-of-the-way hiding-place in the deserts of 
Chihuahua, the Republican Government was in being. 
No more need be said of the war in Northern 
Mexico. The field of activity assigned to Porfirio 
Diaz was in his native South. In October, 1863, he 
received a commission which had perhaps more to do 
with his future importance than any other incident 
in his career so far. He was appointed to take 2,800 
men raised in the North and to march across Central 
Mexico to Oaxaca. His command was to be known 
as the Army of the East and was to include the pro- 
vinces of Guerrero, Puebla, and Oaxaca. To reach 
his command he had to pass the line of communication 
of the French army, watched as it was by 30,000 men, 
including the " traitors " who had joined the invaders. 
In so far as the necessity for avoiding armed forces 
was concerned, the difficulties of the feat were not 
very formidable. Thirty thousand men are but few 
to watch vast spaces of country thinly inhabited and 
full of mountains. Allowing for his own knowledge 
and the help of local guides, allowing, too, for his 
freedom from the embarrassment of a heavy train of 
artillery and ammunition wagons, to avoid an inter- 
cepting force was a comparatively small matter. 
The real difficulty rather began when the French line 
of communication was crossed, and the march had to 
be completed through mountains covered by dense 
forest where no roads were, and when even local 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 77 

knowledge failed so utterly that it was necessary to 
march by the compass and explore as he went. 
The considerable powers of endurance of the Mexican 
Indian soldiers were sharply tested, and there was 
probably no passage in his life in which Don Porfirio 
benefited more by his early love of sport on the hillside 
and practice as a cragsman. 

A glance at a fairly good map will do more to make 
the march intelligible than any amount of words. 
The starting-point was at Amalco, to the south of 
Queretaro. From Amalco it was necessary to take a 
sweep out to the west and then round south by 
Molinos de Caballero, Aguangueo, Orocutia, Laureles, 
Los Arcos, Almaloya, Soltepec, and Zacualpam in 
order to avoid the French force stationed at Toluca, 
to the south-west of the city of Mexico. From Zacual- 
pam Diaz and his little army had to turn south-east 
to reach Oaxaca. In front of them was Tazco or 
Tasco, a small place held by a native force under 
French command. Diaz did not think it necessary to 
avoid this obstacle. On October 26, 27, and 28, he 
assailed and took it, capturing a supply of useful 
weapons. From Tazco he marched by many places 
of names exotic and sonorous Tepecuacuilco, Atlix- 
taca, Ixcatiopa, Xilaca-yoapas, Huitezco, south- 
east to Oaxaca. The reader who follows the route will 
see that it led across, and recrossed, several chains of 
mountains, hills which go to make up the great Sierra 
Madre. many rivers which are in fact mountain 
torrents, and across much sub-tropical forest. 

It was not till the end of November that Diaz, 
marching like the knight-errant of the Spanish ballad, 
" De Sierra en Sierra, por orillas de la mar " (" From 
hills to hills by the seashore "), reached Oaxaca, where 



78 DIAZ 

he found a state of things very characteristic of a 
country distracted between anarchy and foreign 
invasion. So far the provisional Government, or the 
French generals, without whose direction nothing 
could be done, had been too busy in the centre and the 
north to pay attention to the south. The Southerners, 
Sudenos in native speech, were well disposed to stay 
quiet so long as they were left alone, and Cajiga, the 
Governor of Oaxaca, with his secretary, Esperon, had 
in fact made an arrangement with the provisional 
Government whereby the State agreed to remain quiet 
if it were not attacked, and to await the taking of a 
national vote. In plain Castilian this meant that , 
Oaxaca would fall into line if the provisional Govern- > 
ment could rid itself of Juarez provided, of course, 
that the local interests of local politicians were fairly 
considered. The intrusion of Porfirio Diaz, a man 
with local connections, at the head of an armed force 
recruited so far away as Queretaro and the still more 
distant provinces of Sinaloa and Sonora, was most 
unwelcome to Governor Cajiga and his secretary, and 
indeed to all who preferred a quiet life. 

When the Governor met Diaz he began by pointing 
out that the large powers given to the General were 
unconstitutional a common malady with " powers " 
in Mexico and went on to ask whether he intended 
to make use of force. Don Porfirio states in connec- 
tion with a later passage of history at Oaxaca that it 
was his custom to use ferocious language in order to 
spare himself the painful necessity of taking harsh 
measures. So he answered in, as we can imagine, a 
significant tone that he certainly would use force 
against the French and all traitors. The hint was 
plain and effective. Cajiga and Esperon travelled 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 79 

rapidly to Mexico, leaving the State of Oaxaca 
headless. Constitutional pedantries were out of place 
at such a crisis. Diaz stepped into the Governor's 
place, and appointed as his secretary his trusty friend, 
Justo Benitez. All lovers of a quiet life accepted 
these irregular, but in Spanish America normal, 
proceedings with passivity. 

Don Porfirio now began to organise the three pro- 
vinces put under his command to take an active part 
in the war. Another glance at the map will show that 
Puebla, Guerrero, and Oaxaca were of the highest 
importance to the national Government for a reason 
apart from the revenue they could contribute to the 
general treasury of the Republic. They flank the 
whole line of communications from Veracruz to the 
capital, and from the capital to the Pacific coast at 
Acapulco. So long as they remained in the hands of 
the Republicans they constituted a perpetual menace 
to the provisional or imperial Government and tied 
down a large proportion of its troops. If they had 
been patriotically zealous they could have made it 
impossible for Bazaine, who had succeeded to the 
command of the French army when Forey was recalled 
in October, 1863, to carry out operations against 
Juarez in the north. If they had no such influence 
the reason simply was that, as Diaz shows very plainly 
in his reminiscences, the people were not zealous. 
When the Empire had fallen because the only prop 
which upheld it namely, the French army had 
been withdrawn in obedience to the menaces of the 
United States, it became the custom to speak of this 
war as a struggle between the outraged patriotism 
of a whole people and a foreign invader supported by 
a few traitors. The reality was very different. The 



80 DIAZ 

war was a struggle between a French army which was 
absurdly unequal in numbers to the task of occupying 
a country of 769,000 square miles in size, full of rugged 
mountain chains, on the one hand, and on the other 
that part of the population, which had ever been in 
arms against some Government, and which had ever 
used those same mountain fastnesses as places of arms 
and of refuge. The mass of the population was passive 
and would do nothing to help or to hinder either side 
except under pressure. 

As the Republican army could not be organised into 
an effective force for offensive operations, and as the 
French were too busy elsewhere to advance, months 
passed before anything happened. Moreover, a 
French army could not move like an encampment of 
Bedouins, using its women as army service corps, and 
going, as the sailors might say, " flying light." It 
needed a battering train and the usual impedimenta 
of a regular army. Now the south and south-east 
of Mexico ane separated from the centre by rugged 
mountain country, in which the roads were mere 
tracks, often mere beds of torrents winding between 
upright cliffs of bare rock, and crossed by " barrancas " 
or precipitous-sided beds of rivers, and canons, sheer 
fissures of great depth. There were places on the line 
from Mexico to Oaxaca where it was necessary to 
wind for three or four miles in order to get from one 
side to another of a narrow valley. The indispensable 
preliminary to an advance on Oaxaca was the con- 
struction of a road, and to that Bazaine applied him- 
self. The campaign at the end of 1864 and the begin- 
ning of 1865 was made up of the construction of the 
road and the fall of the city. 

During the first half of 1864 Bazaine 



THE$ FRENCH INTERVENTION 81 

himself to pushing his outposts down to, or a little 
beyond, the i8th degree of latitude. By this measure 
of precaution he covered the province of Puebla and 
confined Diaz to Oaxaca. The French advanced, 
road-making as they went along. They found no 
difficulty in obtaining native labour for pay. On the 
contrary, the population welcomed them, and com- 
plained bitterly of the exactions of the Republican 
leaders. If Diaz had had the measure of active 
support which Mina and other guerrillero chiefs found 
in Navarre and Catalonia during the Peninsular War, 
he would have made the French pay dear for every 
step in that advance. There was no lack of effort on 
his part. In August, when the French attack was 
beginning to develop, he dashed at them fiercely and 
on the best guerrillero principles, making false attacks 
to cover rapid marches across hill and dale, and falling 
on posts he had selected for attack. But when it 
came to actual hand-strokes his men would not stand 
up to the French. Even when he caught a small 
detachment of his enemy bathing and assailed them, 
they seized their rifles, fought naked, and the Mexicans 
were beaten off. General Brincourt, who was in 
immediate command, drove the Republicans before 
him and advanced to within sixty miles of Oaxaca. 
He was convinced that he could get the town by a 
quick attack. Bazaine, however, thought the advance 
would be premature till the communications were 
opened by the making of the road. Brincourt was 
ordered to establish an advanced post at Yanhuitlan, 
and withdrew his main force. Bazaine reserved the 
occupation of the city for the time when it could be 
done solidly, and for himself. 

Both sides now fell to work with spade and pick, 



82 DIAZ 

the French at road-making and Diaz in the fortifica- \ 
tions of Oaxaca. Mexico gained lasting advantage 
from the road, but the fortifications turned out to be 
of no use even for their immediate purpose. The 
fact was that the position of the Republican general i 
was a hopeless one. Many of his subordinates were ' 
deserting him. Officers of high rank went off either 
to submit to the Emperor or to take to guerrillero 
fighting, with its attendant advantage of contribution- 
raising. Throughout the whole campaign, which 
ended with the occupation of Oaxaca by the French 
in February, 1865, the national guards of the smaller 
towns either refused all obedience to the Republican 
Government and stood aside from the struggle entirely, 
or they openly joined the Empire. This was in fact / 
the period when the Republican Government was at 
the lowest and when Maximilian could claim to be 1 
gaining ground. The Civil War in the United States J 
was at its height. General Sherman had not yet / 
exposed the hollowness of the Confederacy by his/ 
march from Atlanta to Savannah. Many Mexicans] 
of note who had hitherto remained loyal to the 
national cause now made their submission to Maxij- 
milian. Among them was General Uraga, under 
whom Diaz had served in earlier years. Uraga made 
an attempt to draw him over to the cause of the Empire. 
If he had succeeded he would have rendered his new 
master appreciable service. The adhesion of the 
Governor of Oaxaca would have carried with it the 
submission of the whole south of the country and a 
valuable addition to the resources of the empty 
treasury of the Empire, and that without the need for 
any sacrifice of men or money on the part of the new 
Government. Maximilian and the Mexican advisers 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 83 

he drew about him would have had good reason to 
rejoice if such an important gain could have been 
made without the aid of the French. They were very 
restive under the dictation of Bazaine. 

Uraga sent his son Luis with a letter to Diaz. We 
cannot suppose that this was the actual beginning of 
their correspondence. Luis Uraga would hardly have 
been sent into the lion's den unless some security had 
been given for his safe return. There is no probability, 
and there is certainly no evidence, that Diaz ever 
meant to desert his party. But he may have been 
not unwilling to take advantage of an opportunity 
offered him by the other side to affirm his loyalty. 
Uraga's letter, which reached Oaxaca in November, 
was plausible, and it gave Diaz reasons of an honour- 
able, or at least of a decent, kind why he should follow 
the example set by the writer. The converted Liberal 
general pointed out that the Republican armies were 
all scattered and that a prolongation of guerrillero 
warfare, with its usual accompaniments of raids and 
extortion of contributions, could bring nothing but 
misery on Mexico. He protested that he was not 
asking his friend to give his aid to a French annexation 
of Mexico. He declared that if he thought the national 
independence to be menaced he would have continued 
to resist to the last. But he was convinced that the 
independence of Mexico was quite safe under Maxi- 
milian and that a constitutional monarchy offered 
the best of guarantees for good government in the 
future. The letter was indeed written with all the 
instinctive understanding of a Spaniard or superior 
stamp of Spanish-American how to say what you have 
to say with the air becoming to a gentleman and with 
dignity. 

G S 



84 DIAZ 

The weakness of Uraga's plea was one of which 
he was perhaps not himself conscious. The deadly 
readiness of men of Spanish blood to confound the 
fine word with the substantial fact may have misled 
him, as it has done, and daily does, many others. 
There was nothing in the general's letter (nor was there 
in the notorious facts of the case) to show that Maxi- 
milian's Government could live for six months if the 
French army were withdrawn. Without its aid 
the Emperor would be even less able to support him- 
self than the native Presidents who had come up and 
had gone down at the rate of about one a year. If 
he had not known this, why did he endeavour to 
recruit bands of Belgian and Austrian soldiers of 
fortune ? 

Now, even if we refuse to allow Porfirio Diaz the 
credit of having acted on principle and from patriotic 
feeling (which we have no right to do without evidence) 
he was certainly a man of sufficient native sagacity to 
see what was patent to others. If the Empire was 
wholly dependent on the continued assistance of a 
French army, it was a farce to talk of national inde- 
pendence. And, unless there was a guarantee for a 
continued French occupation, no one who joined 
Maximilian could have any security for the future. 
Don Porfirio professed his belief in the final victory of 
the national cause and declined to take Uraga's 
advice. 1 

It would not be worth while to go into the details of 
the fall of Oaxaca in February, 1865. The measures 
which Don Porfirio had taken to put the town in a 

1 I have not thought it necessary to quote the letter he sent in answer 
to Uraga's. It is verbose, and is written in the involved gerundial style of 
modern Spanish-speaking officialdom. The mere wording of the document 
was probably due to Justo Benitez. 



THE FRENCH INTERVENTION 85 

state to be defended, and most especially his destruc- 
tion of a number of houses for the purpose of depriving 
a besieging army of cover, had caused deep offence. 
Desertions grew more frequent, the townsmen were 
sulkily hostile, there was no prospect of help from 
without. Indeed, the only support Don Porfirio had 
was a small mounted guerrilla led by his brother El 
Chato. When Bazaine had once drawn his lines round 
the town there was nothing to be done save to sur- 
render. It may well be that if Don Porfirio had not 
ridden out to surrender on February 8 he would have 
been betrayed by some of his followers. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 

WHEN Diaz, accompanied by two of his officers, 
presented himself at Bazaine's headquarters, the 
marshal came to what was in the circumstances a very 
natural conclusion. He thought that the Mexican 
general was about to do as many of his countrymen 
had recently done namely, make his submission to 
the Emperor. On the face of it there was no other 
explanation of a hurried surrender. Yet we have 
not only the assurance of Don Porfirio himself, but a 
long succession of patent facts, to prove that Bazaine 
was entirely mistaken. The Mexican general sur- 
rendered because he knew that his garrison was not to 
be relied on, and he took the most unusual course of 
coming out with the white flag himself because he 
could not trust any of his subordinates not to play 
him some ugly trick. 

Bazaine, we are told by Don Porfirio, showed very 
bad temper when he was forced to see that he was in 
error. He accused his prisoner of having broken 
promises given at Puebla, and more than hinted at a 
firing party. Diaz denied that he had given his parole 
in 1863 or that he had ever promised to join Maxi- 
milian. A reference was made to the record taken 
when Puebla had surrendered, and it was found that 
Diaz was right. He had not only refused to give his 
parole, but had declared that he would not adhere to 
the Government set up under cover of the French 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 87 

intervention. Bazaine was not the man to be deterred 
from strong measures by formalities. But in February, 
1865, it was becoming clear that the French must 
look carefully to their going. He abstained from 
taking a course which would have tended to scandal. 
The garrison of Oaxaca was disposed of in the usual 
way. The local levies were sent back to their homes 
nothing loth. Those who had been drawn from the 
north were either sent back, or were incorporated in 
the Emperor's unpaid and barely disciplined Mexican 
levies, from which they in due course deserted, some- 
times in whole companies with their officers at their 
head. Diaz was sent to Puebla, well treated but 
closely watched. 

At Puebla he remained till September 15 of 1865. 
After the disastrous, the indeed all but ridiculous, end 
of his command of the Army of the East, it might well 
seem that his career was over even in such a country 
as Mexico. Yet he stood higher than ever in the 
estimate of his party. His failure was not due to any 
fault of his own. He would have fought if his men 
would have followed him, and amid the many and 
scandalous defections of 1864 he had been found 
faithful. 

Don Porfirio does not say it, nor is the thing one of 
those which men freely say, but we may safely assume 
that he was well content to remain for some months 
quietly in Puebla under charge of the Emperor's 
Austrian officers. There was for the moment little 
good to be done in the field, but a man of his know- 
ledge and experience must have felt confident that 
an opportunity to reappear with effect would present 
itself before long. The decisive events of that quiet 
interval didjnot take place in Mexico. They were the 



88 DIAZ 

occupation of Savannah by the Federal general 
Sherman in December, 1864, an< ^ tne surrender of Lee 
at Appomatox in April, 1865. The full significance 
of the march from Atlanta to Savannah may not have 
been visible for some little time, but the mere report 
that the event had happened was enough to enlighten 
the most obtuse of mankind as to the meaning of 
the capitulation of the commander of the army of 
Northern Virginia. The Confederacy was fairly down 
with both shoulders on the ground. However 
ignorant Mexicans might be of what passed outside 
their own range of vision, one fact was brought home 
to them with convincing force. It was that some 
thousands of the Confederates had fled across the Rio 
Grande del Norte into Mexico. Then there was talk 
of grand schemes for settling these refugees in the 
country, and also whatever numbers of others might 
join them later on. No course more exactly calcu- 
lated to exasperate every class of Mexican against the 
imperial Government could possibly have been 
devised. From the hacendado with his millions of 
acres down to the Indian " peon " there was one 
common revolt at the mere suggestion that swarms of 
Norte-Americanos, or, to use the popular name given 
them, " gringos," all armed, all prompt to shoot, 
pushful and overbearing, would be settled among them. 
All could remember what had come of the settlement 
of Sam Houston and his supporters in the once 
Mexican province of Texas. They had been Souther- 
ners, and it was precisely the old slave-holding States 
forming the Confederacy which had brought on the 
war of 1848 and had robbed Mexico of much of its 
territory. The suggestion was so ill received that 
nothing came of it. Nothing came of a not dissimilar 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 89 

scheme for settling a French colony in Sonora. But 
the suggestions had been made, and they were equally 
offensive to Mexicans and to the United States. 
Mexicans who had once been disposed to agree with 
Uraga that their national independence was safe with 
Maximilian began to think that it was more threatened 
by him and his French supporters than by anybody 
else. The Federal Government would tolerate neither 
French nor Confederate colonies on its borders. 
Napoleon III. never made a greater mistake than when 
he permitted himself to think aloud in his corre- 
spondence and to tell General Forey that it was his 
purpose to check the expansion of the United States 
over Latin America. 

There was no concealment of the fact that the 
Government of Washington was pressing Napoleon III. 
for an answer to the pointed question when he meant 
to withdraw his troops. When they were gone there 
could be no reasonable doubt that the utterly artificial 
Empire of Maximilian would be brought down like a 
card castle. There is a close parallel between the 
Empire of Maximilian in Mexico and the monarchy of 
Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. The Spaniards would 
certainly never have been able to drive the French 
armies from their country by themselves, but if 
Napoleon had left his brother to fight with no better 
support than he could get from his Spanish partisans 
the patriot forces would have made short work of him. 
Yet if the Spaniards had frankly accepted Joseph, 
then Wellington could never have forced the French 
to retire. If the Mexicans had submitted honestly to 
Maximilian the United States would have had no 
ground for interference. In both cases native resist- 
ance gave the intervention of an allied force the means 



90 DIAZ 

of proving decisive. Both countries would have 
spared themselves infinite misery if they could have 
taken the intruding ruler who demanded their sub- 
mission. But nations do not live by material advan- 
tages, or common sense, alone, and the ages in which 
any people could accept a lost battle as a judgment of 
God, and bow for their own ultimate great good to a 
William the Conqueror, lie far back in the past. 

For eight months Diaz remained a prisoner. His 
relations with his jailers, Austrian officers, were on the 
whole pleasant. When after a time he found himself 
placed under the care of Count Thun he was indeed 
very closely watched, and suffered, he says, some 
discourtesy. Thun tried to persuade him to write a 
letter to the patriot General Lucas, who was threaten- 
ing to shoot certain imperialist prisoners. Diaz 
refused to comply with a request which would cer- 
tainly have compromised himself, and would probably 
have done no service to the threatened captives. 
The Austrian governor retaliated by making his 
captivity more strict. He was not even allowed to 
go to the bath except with a sentinel to watch. Yet 
his confinement cannot have been very rigid. From 
his own account we hear of card parties with his 
fellow-Mexican prisoners and Austrian officers. When 
he had finally decided to effect another escape he had 
no difficulty in opening communications with friends 
outside. His trusted agent was an Indian of the name 
of Hernandez, who had been a servant of his family. 
Diaz could rely implicitly on the man's fidelity, but not 
altogether on his discretion. When the time for 
making the escape had come he instructed his follower 
to wait with a horse at a place he named, but did not 
say that the mount was needed for himself ; Hernandez 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 91 

was told that he would be met by a prisoner who 
was about to escape. In order that he might be sure 
to give the horse to the right man he was supplied with 
the half of a visiting card, and told that the other 
would be presented by the escaping prisoner. If the 
precaution, which reads like a quotation from the 
memoirs of some hero of the Fronde, strikes the reader 
as a needless refinement, he must remember that Diaz 
knew his countrymen. 

When the night fixed for his escape had come, Don 
Porfirio took a rope which he had provided with the 
help of a friend a proof that the watch kept on him 
was not very thorough and made his way from the 
flat roof of the convent of Sta. Caterina in which he 
was confined to the roof of an adjoining house. 
Beyond this house was a yard, or garden, enclosed by 
a wall which ran from the corner of the building. His 
plan was to let himself down from the edge of the roof 
to the wall and then drop into the street. The only 
support he could find for his rope was the lead figure 
of a saint. He found it very shaky, but calculated 
that it was fixed, though loosely, on a spike. The 
rope was tied round the pedestal, and Don Porfirio, 
who retained his power of swarming up a rope till an 
advanced age, had no difficulty in letting himself 
down. The street was empty, and all went well till 
he got down to the level of the wall. When he let go 
of the rope thinking to land on the coping of the wall 
he missed his footing, and fell inside right on the top 
of a stye full of pigs. He fell soft on the startled 
porkers, but rolled over and lost the only weapon 
he carried a well-sharpened knife, the weapon which 
by various names of " navajo," " punal," " curvo," 
or " falcon " comes kindly to the hand of the Spaniard 



92 DIAZ 

and the Creole. The squeaking of the alarmed pigs 
rent the air, but the noise was too familiar to attract 
unwelcome attention. Diaz picked himself up, found 
a place where he could clear the wall, dropped into 
the street, and walking without undue haste, passing 
civil salutations with the stray night-walkers he met 
;c Buena noche " ; " Vaya Usted, con Dios " (" Good- 
night " and " God go with you ") reached the place 
where his henchman was waiting for him with a 
horse. When once he was mounted he lost no time in 
making his way to the home of the guerrillero, the 
Sierra. A municipal official whom he met turned out 
to be a sympathiser, and gave him a useful hint where 
to meet other friends. The alarm was indeed raised 
and bells rung, but he was off and beyond reach. 

Now began what one biographer, Dr. Fortunate 
Hernandez, has called the " epic " of Porfirio Diaz. 
To put it less poetically, the next year of the future 
President's life may be justly said to give us an exact 
picture of the rise of a highly capable guerrillero. 
He meets a few friends who follow his fortune. With 
them he overcomes a few enemies and takes their 
weapons. Yet other friends who will use the arms 
under his direction are soon recruited, and so the ball 
rolls till, one having become a few, the few become 
many. The band grows into an army. It is the 
history of Mina, of El Empecinado, of Chapalangarra, 
of Julian Sanchez, of Jose Palarea (called El Medico), 
of a whole brood of heroes of the Peninsular War, and 
of Spanish America. It would be amusing enough to 
follow the apparently erratic movements, the astute 
stratagems, the surprises, starts, escapes, swift hand- 
to-hand skirmishes, which make up the guerrillero's 
career. But we must resist the temptation to dwell 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 93 

at excessive length on these adventures. After all, 
they were not in the case of Porfirio Diaz different 
from those of other " cabecillas," or heads of guerrillas. 
There were others his own brother Felix (El Chato) 
for one who played the game as well as he could. 
He is important to us because he was much more 
than a guerrillero, because he was an organiser, a 
general, and a man of government. It took him a 
year to create a serious force, but when he had 
achieved the feat he brought to the siege of the city of 
Mexico not a mere overgrown guerrilla, but an army 
with a well-filled and well-managed military chest. 
If we look only at the marches and passages of fight 
we shall lose sight of the wood because of the multi- 
plicity of the trees. Now the wood which really 
mattered was this that during 1866 Diaz drew the 
south and south-east of Mexico into his own hand, 
created a Government and a treasury, and convinced 
friends and enemies alike that he was a man with aims 
far above the mere acquisition of booty, and faculties 
of a higher order than are needed to keep a band 
together in the Sierra and use it to worry a Government. 
A single incident of those important months says 
much to explain his final victory over all other forces 
at work in the hurly-burly of Mexican war and 
politics. After one successful skirmish with a certain 
Visoso, then an Imperialist, but later on a repentant 
Republican, he captured the sum of $3,000. Given, 
so he tells us, the moral character of some of the 
elements he had to work with (every guerrilla is of 
necessity a Cave of Adullam), it followed that the 
$3,000 was in extreme danger of being divided in the 
true brigand or piratical way at the capstan's head. 
If that had been allowed to happen, his band would 



94 DIAZ 

soon have been no better than so many others, which 
differed little, or not at all, from downright brigands. 
But it was not allowed to happen. The $3,000 were 
collected from grasping hands, and became the nest- 
egg of a military chest from which Diaz handed 
over $300,000 to the empty treasury of Juarez when 
the capital was occupied. His treasurer, Manuel 
Guerrero, never lacked funds altogether. How he 
enforced honesty we are not told in detail, but can 
guess that the secret lay in the fact that he com- 
manded because he was he, and they obeyed because 
they were they. In the last resort Diaz could when 
necessary kill his man. And then all knew that he 
would take care of them. 

The taking care could go to great lengths. When 
nobody else was available Don Porfirio could even 
tackle a surgical operation : witness the case of 
the drum-major Rodriguez. The poor man had 
received a wound on the leg which made amputation 
unavoidable. It is hardly necessary to say that there 
was no surgeon attached to the guerrilla. The whole 
medical corps, such as it was, resided in the person of 
an American drummer (in the sense of bagman) who 
was wandering about in Mexico to sell some quack 
medicine. When he was asked whether he would 
undertake to perform the operation he began by 
answering with all the well-known self-reliance of his 
class and nation that he would. The only instru- 
ments available were a razor and a carpenter's saw. 
It would be idle indeed to suppose that there were any 
anaesthetics. The lack of these last was, however, 
made good (as it was in the Crimea) by the adminis- 
tration of a very strong dose of raw spirits. When the 
moment came to fulfil his promise the American 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 95 

became frightened and whispered to Diaz his con- 
fession that he dare not attempt the task of removing 
the leg. Then the general did what was necessary 
himself, and with the instruments named. He says 
and nobody will doubt his word that when the 
leg had been amputated he went away with the 
intimate conviction that the drum-major must 
infallibly die very shortly. Yet Rodriguez survived 
for many years, and lived, not unhappily, on a small 
pension a remarkable instance of the American 
Indian's insensibility to pain and tenacity of life. 

The most promising course Don Porfirio could take 
was to resume his command as general of the Army 
of the East. He could have served neither his cause 
nor himself by joining Juarez, who was still being 
hunted from pillar to post in the northern States. 
Nobody had been named to succeed him, and the 
field, though occupied by the enemy, was clear of 
rivals. The fact that the Army of the East had to be 
made, and by him, without help from the fugitive 
Republican Government was not altogether oppressing 
to a man in the prime of life, and well trained in the 
conditions of Spanish-American civil war. He might 
feel reasonably confident of his capacity to do what 
many of the party leaders of his country had done 
before, namely, create his army by his own exertions. 
A nucleus had gathered about him quickly. It 
consisted mainly of Republican officers who had been 
left without soldiers to lead through the recent 
disasters of their cause. We need not deny them the 
credit of having acted from conviction, but it is also 
true that they had not much choice. The native 
forces raised by Maximilian did not offer tempting 
chances of service. The Emperor had little money, 



96 DIAZ 

and his troops were but poorly provided for. What 
resources he could command were devoted first of all 
to the Austrian and Belgian bands imported to stiffen 
his Mexican levies, and then to the French officers 
who entered his service as instructors of native 
soldiers. These men, who brought with them senti- 
ments of dignity and self-respect formed in a great 
European army, were apt to treat the Mexican 
Imperialist officers with scant regard. Patriotic 
loyalty and political convictions were strengthened for 
the Mexicans who followed Diaz by resentment for 
what they not unnaturally considered mere insolence. 
So they fought as " reformados," to use a military 
term of Spanish origin once familiar to all Europe 
that is to say, they did duty as soldiers because their 
corps were disbanded or broken up, and until fortune 
should give them a chance to resume their position. 

The Commander-in-Chief of the as yet non-existent 
Army of the East would have preferred to begin in 
his native Oaxaca, but he was headed off by the 
French Colonel lion and the Imperialist guerrillero 
Visoso. There being no opening on that side, he 
made for Guerrero. This province was one of several 
parts of Mexico never occupied effectually either by 
the French army or the Imperial officers. As far as 
it was governed at all, it obeyed the former hero of 
Ayutla, who was in fact its cacique and ruled from 
his ranch at La Providencia. 1 

Alvarez supplied the refugees with arms at least 
with a few, some of which are reported to have been 

1 Our ranch is known to all men to be the Spanish rancho, but the original 
is not generally used in the sense we give it. In Old Spain rancho means a 
soldier's rations. In most parts of Spanish America the name is given to a 
small holding occupied by a head herdsman in the employment of a big cattle 
station, i.e., an " estancia." 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 97 

flint-locks. General Leyva, Colonels Cano, Segura, 
and others, joined Diaz in La Providencia and put 
themselves under his orders. His operations grew 
more bold as he gathered strength, which he did in 
pretty exftct proportion to the increasing favourable- 
ness of the circumstances during 1866. The good 
peace-loving people of Oaxaca had discovered within 
a few months, or even weeks, that when they helped 
Bazaine to rid them of the Republican authorities 
they did not also free themselves from tax collectors 
and forced contributions levied by the Emperor's 
Government, which had urgent need to improve its 
revenue, nor yet from the exactions of the patriot 
guerrilleros. They had in fact cause to regret the 
administration of Diaz, who, by the confession of his 
enemies, always made a moderate use of his power. 
And then it soon became a matter of common know- 
ledge that the days of the French occupation were 
numbered. The Government of the United States 
offered a steady resistance to clamour for strong 
measures. It would have done a popular thing if it 
had sent an army into Mexico. There was a time 
when Bazaine felt called upon to take measures to 
concentrate his army in view of the possibility that 
General Sheridan would cross the Rio Grande at the 
head of 200,000 Federal troops. But concentration 
meant evacuation of all the outlying provinces north 
and south. In the meantime arms, money, and 
volunteers began to cross the frontier to support 
Juarez. As the French drew together Republican 
armies began to spring for the soil. The Republicans 
who had never reconciled themselves to the intruding 
Empire came out of hiding or descended from the 
Sierras to be organised into regular armies. All that 



98 DIAZ 

element of prudent people who when the broom is to be 
used prefer to be on the side of the handle began to see 
that it was much safer to join Juarez than to sit quiet 
and still more so than to help the Emperor. The agony 
of Maximilian and his poor wife was beginning. 

The southern provinces were less accessible to 
American help than the northern. But very soon the 
French posts on the coast and their squadrons in the 
Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico had to be withdrawn. 
Then help from the States came to Diaz also. His 
advance was not continuously successful. Though 
he had not to deal with regular French troops, but 
only with Maximilian's Austrians 1 and Mexicans, he 
was for some time held in check and once badly 
beaten. But his scattered band soon rallied, and 
went on growing in force. He fixed his headquarters 
at Tlapa, and from thence made his excursions either 
to beat up the enemy's quarters, or para arbitrarse 
algunos recursos that is to say, to levy money and 
men among the Mixteca and other Indian tribes. 

By autumn he had made himself master of the open 
country, and had reduced the Imperialist garrison of 
Oaxaca to a state of blockade. The Government at 
Mexico, sinking into ever-increasing difficulties, could 
do but little to help General Oronoz, the Mexican sup- 
porter who held the town. At the close of September 
Diaz overpowered a small body of " Hungarian " 
cavalry at Nochistlan. He frankly allows that they 
were only a few, but points out that their undeniable 
superiority in discipline was an appreciable set-off to 

1 Diaz himself speaks of his European opponents as Hungarians, but I do 
not feel sure that he used the name only to designate the nationality of the 
foreigners. " Ungaro " is a Hungarian no doubt, but the sense in which it is 
most familiar to Spanish-speaking peoples is gipsy, or even only vagrant, 
tinker. The first gipsies who followed that trade in Spain said, probably 
with truth, that they came from Hungary. 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 99 

their numerical weakness. This stroke exasperated 
Oronoz, and he sallied from the town with some 2,000 
men, resolved to scatter the Republican guerrilleros. 
Oronoz may have been zealous for his cause, but he 
was not quick-witted enough to handle his opponent. 
He allowed Diaz to lead him into a trap of the most 
simple if also of the most effective kind. The 
Imperialist officer advanced, apparently without 
taking the least precaution to reconnoitre, along a 
road running through the Indian town or big village 
Miahuatlan, at the foot of the Sierra de Cuixtla. 
Diaz, who did keep a sharp look-out, laid an ambush 
for him. He posted a part of his mounted men in 
front of the village to meet Oronoz and draw him on. 
The bulk of his force was disposed to the rear of the 
village, concealed in " waves of the ground." The 
function of the cavalry in front of Miahuatlan was 
to run away through the village and draw the Im- 
perialists into an over-confident pursuit which would 
carry them headlong into the middle of the ambush 
in the rear. Oronoz fell into the trap, came helter- 
skelter through the village, and was fired into from 
both sides. His force was brought to a sharp stop. 
The reaction from over-confidence to panic is in- 
evitable with ill-trained troops, and the Imperialists 
began to turn back. Then Diaz charged and drove 
them in rout before him. The official, or patriotic, 
historian of this war, Senor Escudero, talks of the 
" delirium of battle " in Miahuatlan. Yet it seems that 
the total loss of the Imperialists was only eighty in a 
force of well over 2,000. As for the killed, the 
majority were, as was the custom in Mexican conflicts, 
shot after the battle. We have the authority of Don 
Porfirio for the fact that twenty-two Mexican officers 



ioo DIAZ 

whom he captured were shot. He spared the lives of 
some French officers whom he took. He was nowise 
given to the Munchausen style. He never indulges 
in talk about deliriums of battle and so forth. There 
is a tone of sobriety and an obvious desire to tell the 
truth in his reminiscences which inspires confidence. 
He records a detail which a writer more concerned to 
give an heroic turn to the story would have omitted. 
He says that the villagers of Miahuatlan, who were 
" very daring and were drunk," 1 fired into the flanks of 
the Imperialists and did good service by capturing 
hack and led horses. The loss of these latter was 
disastrous for the officers of Oronoz's ill-led column. 
The victory at Miahuatlan, which was won October 3 , 
1866, had a considerable moral effect. It was indeed 
a mere guerrillero action such as had been fought 
by the hundred on Mexican soil without producing 
any consequences worth noting. But it was of 
immense importance in relation to surrounding 
conditions. The Republican arrows were now flying 
with the wind, and all the world could see that unless 
help came the next step would be the occupation of 
the city and the total ruin of the Imperial cause in the 
south and east. Hard pressed as Maximilian's Govern- 
ment was, it could not allow such a disaster to happen 
without making some attempt to support its officers. 
A column of 1,500 of its foreign soldiers, on whom it 
could rely more than on its Mexicans, was sent to 
relieve Oronoz. A few days after his victory and the 
retreat of his opponent on Oaxaca Diaz intercepted a 
despatch from Mexico to Oronoz informing him that 
the relief was on its way. He was then blockading 

1 Estaban ebrios, he says ; and he adds nothing to indicate that they were 
ebrios with patriotic emotion or indeed with anything but aguardiente or 
pulque. 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 101 

the town closely with the force he had organised and 
had now brought to fair order, and with the cavalry 
guerrillas commanded by his brother Felix. He was 
in some danger of finding himself between two fires. 
There were three ways in which he could guard against 
the misfortune. He could try to storm the town before 
the relieving force could come up, or he could turn on 
that force itself, or he could raise the blockade. The 
third course he was resolved not to take, and he did 
not think his force equal to taking the first. So he 
adopted the second, and carried it out with military 
decision aided by a pleasing admixture of guerrillero 
graft. 

The Republicans had already secured a footing in 
the lower quarters of the town, though they had made 
no impression on the barricaded, loopholed, and mined 
upper part of it. Diaz knew that his opponent had 
ways of learning what was going on in his camp. He 
had observed in the course of his studies of human 
nature that if a man wishes his secrets to be soon 
proclaimed from the housetops he can take no more 
effectual course than to confide them in strict confi- 
dence to well-selected friends. Therefore he informed 
such chosen persons as he knew would not fail to blab 
that he meant to assault the upper town on the very 
next night. As he foresaw, Oronoz was duly warned, 
and stood to arms prepared to account for any move- 
ment he might hear in the lines of the blockaders as 
being the preliminary of an intended surprise. Then, 
while the Imperialist waited for the attack which 
never came, Diaz marched swiftly and in the dark to 
occupy the point at which he intended to intercept 
the relieving column. When at daybreak the 
Republican position was seen to be empty, Oronoz 



102 DIAZ 

was puzzled. He suspected a trap and could not 
guess what it was. The despatch which might have 
enlightened him had, as we have seen, been inter- 
cepted. After hesitating and delaying long enough to 
allow Diaz to lay his ambush for the coming column, 
Oronoz did come out. But his shrewd opponent 
played for his head. After posting his infantry and 
guns he came back with his cavalry to a farm on the 
road. The mayordomo, or bailiff, in charge was, as 
he well knew, a strong Clerical partisan. So he made 
ostentatious preparations to ambush Oronoz in sight 
of this man, who was not put under arrest nor watched. 
Of course, he ran off with his valuable information. 
The Imperialist officer, who had the fear of Diaz in his 
bones since Miahuatlan, fell into the trap and went in 
haste back to Oaxaca. 

Don Porfirio had decided to wait for the relieving 
column in a place which was to have a personal interest 
for him La Carbonera. He had instructed his 
subordinate, General Figueroa, to join at that spot 
with certain Indians of the Mixteca hills who had 
" risen at the call of patriotism." The call had of 
course been sounded by the voice and in the tones 
which usually summoned an " Indiada." 

La Carbonera is a small plateau on the road to 
Oaxaca from the north. It is divided into a larger 
and higher and a smaller and lower portion by a 
" cuenca," a shell or dip, through which the road runs. 
It was wooded, and on the lower portion the bush was 
thick. This was the part of the ground where the 
infantry were stationed by Diaz. Colonel Hotze, the 
Austrian who commanded the relieving force, showed 
no more judgment than Oronoz. He marched till he 
was brought up by the Mexicans on the lower ground. 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 103 

Then Diaz, who disposed of the greater numbers, 
turned his flank through the wood on the higher 
ground and beat him utterly. 

The well-managed affair at La Carbonera completed 
the ruin of the Imperial cause in Oaxaca. Diaz had 
marched on October 16 and had won his fight on the 
1 8th. On the 3Oth the town was surrendered by 
Oronoz. The interval had been largely spent in 
negotiations. One of the negotiators was the bishop 
Dr. Covarrubias, whose aim was to provide for 
himself. He sent to ask the Republican general what 
treatment he had to expect. Don Porfirio, speaking 
daggers that he might frighten his man away and so 
be spared the necessity to use them, replied that it was 
his intention to shoot the bishop in " full uniform." 
Dr. Covarrubias did not think proper to embarrass 
him by giving him a chance of fulfilling his threat, but 
fled hastily to Mexico along the line of escape carefully 
left open for him. Yet, as after Miahuatlan, Diaz 
showed no squeamishness in ordering military execu- 
tions of traitors. Pablo Franco, the Imperial Prefect 
of Oaxaca, who endeavoured to escape at the same 
time as the bishop, was taken (probably because he 
was more sharply looked after) and condemned to be 
shot. He appealed for mercy in vain. He had indeed 
done a thing which made it difficult to pardon him. 
A known Republican of Oaxaca, Justo Rodriguez by 
name, had been shot by his orders. Justo's brother, 
who was a portrait painter, had made a likeness of 
his body after execution. Diaz hesitated, or was 
thought to hesitate, as to whether he would allow the 
execution. The painter sent the portrait to him with 
a statement of the facts, and Franco was left to his 
fate. The story stands in the official biography of 



104 DIAZ 

the President published so late as 1909, and with his 
approval, by Dr. Fortunate Hernandez, " Un Pueblo, 
un Siglo y un Hombre." It is allowed that Diaz was, 
as compared with other Mexican leaders, humane. 
Yet we see from this episode, and from the slaying of 
the Mexican officers taken at Miahuatlan, that he was 
not wholly untouched by the element of pure savagery 
in which he was born and grew up. In his later days, 
when he had become the pet of American and Euro- 
pean capitalists and " edifying letters " were written 
about him by persons who had received favours from 
him and hoped to receive others, details of this kind 
were suppressed. Yet he had no wish to hide them 
himself. He was no more inclined than Cromwell to 
be beautified, at any rate not by himself, and it is most 
probable that he saw nothing to conceal. He was a 
governing man, but he was a Mexican. Full of blood 
and battles was his youth, and full of blood and battles 
was his age, and in his country it was not given him 
ever to leave that life of blood. 

The fall of Oaxaca was soon followed by the surrender 
of Tehuantepec, the last Imperialist post in the 
south. Diaz now received substantial help from the 
United States in the form, not of money, but of arms. 
Money he could get by raising contributions, but it 
would have done him no good if he had had to spend it 
in acquiring arms. The south being now reconquered 
for the Republican cause, he could prepare to bring 
help to his party in the centre. The French troops 
were being concentrated on the line from Mexico city 
to Veracruz, getting ready to take ship for Europe. 
Napoleon III. was naturally much concerned to pro- 
vide against the risk that the evacuation should be 
disgraced by some untoward incident. Bazaine was 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 105 

no less desirous to come off with a good grace. The 
atmosphere was favourable to intrigue, and a letter 
which Diaz wrote at the time to Don Matias Romero 
records that he was asked to take part in one of a 
truly extraordinary character. Romero was Mexican 
Minister at Washington. The Republican officers in 
the south were cut off from Juarez, who was in the 
northern provinces, and were compelled to communi- 
cate with him through the United States. So it was to 
the Minister, and not to the President, that Diaz made 
this surprising statement : " General Bazaine, through 
a third party, offered to surrender to me the cities which 
they [i.e., the French] occupied, also to deliver Maxi- 
milian, Marquez, Miramon, etc., into my hands, pro- 
vided I would accede to a proposal which he made me, 
and which I rejected, as I deemed it not very honour- 
able. Another proposition was also made me by 
authority of Bazaine, for the purchase of six thousand 
muskets and four million percussion caps, and if I had 
desired it, he would have sold me both guns and 
powder." * 

The witness for the fact that Bazaine made these 
proposals is manifestly the third party who reported 
them to Diaz. Twenty years after the letter to Romero 
was written (in 1886) it came to the knowledge of 
Bazaine, who was then living in great misery at 
Madrid. It provoked him to write an angry expostu- 
lation to Don Porfirio, who at that later date had been 
well established for some time as President of Mexico. 
The unhappy exile recriminated by a counter-charge 
that Diaz had written a compromising letter to him in 
1865, and asked very reasonably for the name of the 
alleged agent. Don Porfirio's answer is explicit : 

1 Mrs. Tweedie's "Porfirio Diaz," p. 169. 



106 DIAZ 

'' With regard to the second point, although some years 
have now passed, I do not think that you will have 
forgotten Senor Carlos Thiele. I must tell you, since 
you ask me, that he was the person whom I sent to you 
to arrange the exchange of Mexican prisoners who 
were in your power for those taken by me in the actions 
of Nochistlan, Miahuatlan, La Carbonera,Tehuantepec 
and Oaxaca, an exchange which was made with great 
advantage to the French army, because I sent as a 
favour all the chiefs, officers and soldiers that were 
left with me when you had no officers of ours of equal 
rank to exchange for them. This Senor Thiele it was 
who, in your name, made me the proposals which I 
reported in the letter which has aroused your resent- 
ment, and who, a few months after the circumstances 
to which I refer, settled in Guatemala, where he can 
still be found. I should be very pleased if you could 
some day persuade me that the whole affair was an 
imposture on the part of this gentleman, and I would 
make it known to the public who read my letter ; but 
for this I need Senor Thiele's own declaration, as the 
knowledge that I have '*f him does not justify me in 
doubting his honour." 

As for the letter of 1865, Diaz avows that he could 
not remember its terms, but was sure it could not do 
him any harm, for he could not call to mind any deed 
in his life of which he had cause to be ashamed. And 
there perhaps we may as well leave the matter. 
That Don Carlos Thiele, when he had been hunted up 
in his retreat in Guatemala, would have confessed that 
he was guilty of a mere imposture seems improbable 
in the last degree. But then it is no less incredible 
that a marshal of France who had a great career before 
him at home should have offered to kidnap Maximilian, 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 107 

Marquez, Miramon, etc., and hand them over to the 
Mexican general of the Army of the East. What 
price could Mexico pay to compensate him for social 
and professional ruin and dishonour ? Diaz does not 
tell us what the condition was that Bazaine was said 
by Don Carlos Thiele to have made. Until we have 
better evidence than the word of the gentleman now 
retired to Guatemala to go on it is useless to inquire. 
The safest course is to dismiss the whole as a story of 
a cock and a bull. It is true enough that some super- 
fluous arms which Bazaine disposed of before he left 
Mexico did come into the hands of the Republicans. 
But then the Mexicans who were armed by Maximilian 
were always going over with arms and baggage to the 
enemy. So did the Spaniards who were recruited by 
Joseph Bonaparte in the Peninsular War. Diaz says 
he got them by ordering the villagers to bring in 
whatever arms they had. He no doubt told the truth. 
We need, however, have no hesitation in believing 
that Maximilian tried to induce Don Porfirio to join 
him and sent a certain M. Burnouf to give him the 
invitation. The poor Empeifcr was desperate at the 
close of 1866, and was in a mood to try to make arrows 
of all wood. It was a matter of course that the offer 
should be refused. Even if we put all considerations 
of honour and principle aside (which, obviously, we 
have no right to do), common sense would have 
taught Diaz to keep aloof from an adventure which 
was visibly on the brink of ruin. Even when he was 
a prisoner at Puebla and the Republican cause was at 
its lowest ebb, he had steadily refused even to see 
Maximilian. 

All this conflict of insinuations and assertions serves 
merely as a reminder that the French intervention 



108 DIAZ 

ended as it began, amid intrigues and delusions. The 
Mexicans never dared to make an attack on the 
retreating French troops. Bazaine shipped the last 
detachment of his soldiers and sailed away with them 
in the early days of February, 1867. Maximilian, 
after a short crisis of hesitation, did the one thing 
which could save his honour. He had committed 
himself to folly, and all that remained for him to do 
was to stay and die. His enemies closed on him from 
north and south. On March 9 Diaz, having now 
thoroughly organised his Army of the East, began the 
siege of Puebla. His attack followed the same line as 
Forey's from the east and from house to house and 
barricade to barricade. The defence of the Imperialists 
was for a time at least resolute. Diaz was once in 
no small danger from the fall of the blazing roof of a 
house while he was directing the attack in person. 
He had the misfortune to be rather severely burnt. 
Yet the way in which the town fell on April 2 shows, 
to say no more of it, that the defence was far less 
resolute than Ortega's had been in 1863. What was 
said is that the place was betrayed for money, but one 
has to allow that this is just what would be said. 

The fall of Puebla would be a final blow to the 
Imperialist cause, for when the city was in possession 
of the Republicans all communications between 
Mexico and Veracruz were cut. Some effort must 
unquestionably be tried to save it. The attempt was 
made by Marquez, the Tiger of Tacubaya, who was now 
in command at Mexico. If there was any man from 
whom the most determined exertions in the Imperial 
cause were to be expected he was this blood-stained 
partisan. There was that between him and the 
Republicans which seemed to make it for ever impos- 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 109 

sible that there could be any question of quarter for 
him. Yet the Prince of Salm Salm, who was serving 
Maximilian and was actually present with Marquez's 
command, believed that he played false. He left 
Mexico with a force which could, if vigorously used, 
have raised the siege of Puebla. It included some 
Austrian troops of far better quality than the Mexican 
levies, though weak in numbers. But he dawdled on 
'the road, and while he delayed Diaz stormed the town. 
If the element of treason was absent (and all our 
witnesses, native or foreign, are far from the truth if 
it was often unknown in Mexican conflicts), then Don 
Porfirio acted as did the Duke of Wellington when he 
knew that Marmont was on the way to relieve Ciudad 
Rodrigo. " Ciud **>d Rodrigo must be taken to-night," 
was the famous order, and taken it was. Even if there 
was treason, Diaz was entitled to take advantage of 
the baseness of his opponents, however much he might 
despise them. " La traicion place, pero no el que lo 
hace " (" The treason is acceptable, but not the 
traitor "), is another Spanish proverb, and military 
casuistry has always allowed of the corruption of 
the enemy's officers. Be the truth as it may, Puebla 
was taken, and not without some fighting. 

And now the next step was the pursuit of Marquez. 
On April 5, on the third day after he had occupied the 
town, Diaz marched to overtake the " Tiger." He 
was unable to start sooner because two or three of the 
outlying forts continued to resist. The way of 
surrender was made smooth, and on this occasion 
there was no butchery of prisoners. Don Porfirio 
found and availed himself of an opportunity to prove 
that he did not nurse a grudge. When he escaped 
from Puebla in September a certain Imperialist 



i io DIAZ 

official, one Escamillo, had made a great display of 
zeal by offering a reward for the capture of the 
prisoner. He had talked of shooting. He was now in 
Don Porfirio's power, and was reasonably nervous till 
he was relieved by the good-humoured, if rather scorn- 
ful, words, " It was lucky for me I was not caught." 

The pursuit of Marquez was pushed with energy. 
On April 6 Diaz, who had left his infantry and guns 
to follow and had led the pursuit with his cavalry, 
came upon the enemy at San Diego Notario. Marquez 
made no serious attempt to stand, and he left the 
Austrian or Hungarian and Polish horsemen, com- 
manded by Kodolich, Wickenburg, and Khevenhuller, 
to cover his retreat. A clash followed which has, as 
is not unusual in all accounts of wars, been diversely 
reported. The Mexican version that is to say, Don 
Porfirio's is that the Europeans were beaten in and 
the whole body of the Imperialists forced into a run. 
Prince Salm Salm has it that the Mexicans were 
beaten off and the retreat of the Imperialists covered. 
Marquez marched hurriedly for Guadalupe Hidalgo, 
to the north of Mexico, taking a curve to reach his 
refuge. Diaz hoped to cut his road at Paso de 
Tortolitas. He had directed another Republican 
officer to occupy the pass. This officer, Jesus 
Lalanne, did make the attempt, and was severely 
cut up. But he delayed Marquez till Diaz could bring 
his infantry and guns into action. Finally the 
" Tiger " got away with the majority of his men by 
sacrificing his guns and baggage and going off across 
country in the regular scattered guerrilla style. 
The Europeans in his army suffered severely ; but he 
and his Mexicans did not shine as fighters. 

The ensuing blockade and occupation of the city of 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK in 

Mexico formed the honourable close to the services of 
Porfirio Diaz in this war. The capitulation of the 
city on June 20, the day after the execution of 
Maximilian at Queretaro, was indeed the penultimate 
date of the struggle. The actual last was the capitu- 
lation of the Imperialist garrison of Veracruz on the 
28th of the same month. It was the good fortune of 
the future President of Mexico that he ended this 
period of his life in circumstances which made it 
possible for him to combine perfect loyalty to his 
cause with the utmost moderation. He had no 
direct connection with the tragedy at Queretaro, for 
tragedy it was in more than the loose sense of the word. 
It has been much the custom of historians to draw a 
distinction between the humanity of General Diaz 
and the Indian ferocity of Juarez. A biographer is 
bound in honour to say the best he can for his hero, 
and there has been and will be much good to say of 
Porfirio Diaz. But the loyalty of a biographer is one 
thing and the lues Boswelliana is another. It was 
possible, and even easy, to show humanity at Mexico. 
It was not so easy, and it was even not possible, at 
Queretaro. Can anybody give a rational reason why 
the Archduke Maximilian should not have shared the 
fate of the Count of Raousset Boulbon ? To say that 
he was a gentleman of illustrious birth and that he 
ought not to have been treated like a vulgar filibuster 
is not to give a rational reason, but to make an 
exhibition of flunkeyism. And apart from that con- 
temptible sentiment, what is there to say of the un- 
happy Archduke ? Napoleon III. was in 1862 the 
ruler of a sovereign State, and he may be said to have 
had a right to pursue any line of policy he chose, 
however unwise. His officers and soldiers obeyed 



ii2 DIAZ 

their master as they were bound by military honour 
and all law to do. But Maximilian was no officer of 
Napoleon's. He was, with all his great pedigree, 
simply an adventurer who came to fight for a throne, 
for he had no sort of evidence that the Mexicans would 
accept him. When he consented to sign the notorious 
decree by which he refused quarter to the Republican 
officers who fell into his hands he put himself on a 
level with the very worst of the people he was pro- 
fessing to regenerate. If he had won he would have 
enjoyed his victory in wealth and power. It was the 
least he could do to stake his life, and when he lost 
to pay the forfeit. He did so quietly and manfully, 
and that was best for him. Juarez had a hard part to 
play, but he did his duty. If he had done less he 
would only have encouraged other younger sons of 
royal houses to seek their fortunes in the disorders 
of Spanish-American republics sword in hand. We 
need not think that no element of revenge entered into 
his decision. After all he was a Mexican-Indian. 
But we have no right to affirm that revenge was his 
main motive. What Diaz would have done in his 
place must remain a mere matter of conjecture, but 
he never explicitly condemned the President's action. 
As it was, he had only to wait and watch till the 
city capitulated. It is highly probable that he might 
have forced his way in if he had chosen. But the 
surrender was certain to come, and he was anxious to 
shed no blood unnecessarily. Hunger would do the 
work effectually, and the brutality of Marquez could 
only serve to make the townsmen long the more 
heartily for the coming of the day of his overthrow. 
The savage was indeed desperate. He made a furious 
display of a determination to hold out to the last, 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 113 

but the main measures he took were to extort money 
and scatter lies. Whoever refused to pay the forced 
loans he demanded was put into prison and allowed 
the smallest ration which w r ould support life. This 
kind of energy was quite in the Mexican tradition. 
Juarez had done the same thing ; but Mexicans who 
had money to lose, and the foreign men of business 
settled among them, may well have asked themselves 
what they had gained from the grandiose schemes of 
Napoleon III. for the regeneration of Mexico. One 
firm was robbed of $125,000 and another of $100,000. 
Some part of this plunder to say the very least of it 
was not spent on the defence of the city, but 
reserved to be carried off when the time should come 
to run away. Meanwhile Marquez and the Imperialist 
Press, which repeated what he ordered it to say, kept 
assuring the townsmen that Maximilian was victorious 
in the north and would soon come to their assistance. 
It is only fair to add that on May 6 he did get a 
message from Maximilian reporting some successes 
won on April 27, but nobody knew better than 
Marquez how hollow such victories must needs be. 
Though the forces of Diaz were as yet hardly sufficient 
to allow him to beleaguer the city closely, he was 
master of the open country, and could cut off the 
supply of food. Early in June provisions were 
running short and the inhabitants, if not the Im- 
perialist soldiers, began to suffer severely from hunger. 
The one passage of what can be called fighting took 
place on May 12. On that date General M. Diaz de la 
Vega, an Imperialist officer, made a sortie to the north, 
succeeded in forcing the blockading force back for 
some little distance, and collecting a useful quantity 
of forage. The Prince of Salm Salm gives the whole 



ii4 DIAZ 

credit for the operation to the Austrians in the garrison. 
The Mexican authorities deny that any Austrians 
took part in it. 

On May 16 Diaz found means to let the town know 
that Maximilian had been taken on the previous day. 
He had the news by telegraph. Marquez continued 
to deny and to threaten to shoot. But reinforcements 
began to reach Diaz from the north. On May 24 he 
was joined by Ramon Corona with 15,000 men, and 
by his brother Felix with cavalry from the south. 
Other reinforcements followed, and the lines were 
drawn closer round the city. Marquez continued to 
deny and to wrangle, and as the end grew nearer his 
efforts to extort money became more savage. On 
May 28 he was persuaded or forced to send out a flag 
of truce to verify the report of the Emperor's sur- 
render. Diaz showed the officer who brought it the 
letter which Maximilian had sent to Baron Magnus 
asking him to come with a counsel to assist in his 
defence. Still Marquez would not give in, but 
declared that the government now belonged of right 
to a regency. The fact was that the man could not 
surrender. For him there could be no quarter. His 
only hope was to break out after laying hands on as 
much money as he could carry and escape to the hills 
and from thence to the United States. He made his 
last effort on the night of June 17-18 with 6,000 men, 
but was met by Diaz and driven back on the city. 
And now the end came swiftly. The Austrians 
refused to fight. They had been told by the Minister 
Baron Lago that the Emperor had written from his 
prison telling them to resist no longer, and that the 
letter must have been intercepted by Marquez. They 
withdrew into their barrack and stood on their guard. 



THE RISE TO THE FIRST RANK 115 

The conduct of these heroes does not appear to have 
been calculated to persuade the Mexicans that 
Europeans stood on a higher moral level than them- 
selves. They had renounced their nationality when 
they entered the service of the Emperor. But in the 
general disaster they hurried to seek protection from 
the Austrian Minister Baron Lago, without making 
the least effort to obtain terms for their Mexican 
fellow-soldiers. Diaz, taking the whole responsibility 
on himself, entered into negotiations with Baron 
Lago on the igth, and promised favourable terms of 
capitulation to the Austrians. They were to keep 
their personal baggage though they were required to 
surrender their arms, and were secured a safe conduct 
to Veracruz. While they were providing for their 
safety Marquez was taking care of his. He resigned 
the Government and found means to hide himself, till 
he escaped to the United States. Other Imperialists 
who were very badly compromised were not so 
fortunate. General Ramon Tabera, who replaced 
Marquez, endeavoured to obtain a capitulation, and, 
on being told that he must surrender at discretion, 
talked of fighting to the last. But when Diaz began 
a bombardment, and made visible preparations for a 
storm, Mexico surrendered on June 20. The town was 
occupied next day. 

With the occupation of the capital of the Republic 
we come to the turning-point in the life of Porfirio 
Diaz, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the 
point where he was to be called upon to show whether 
he had it in him to go further and higher. His 
action at this time, both during and after the siege, 
seems to prove that he himself was conscious that he 
stood at the place where his fate was to be decided. 

I 2 



ii6 DIAZ 

He acted as if he were consciously presenting himself 
to his countrymen as one who was fit to rule, and might 
be trusted to use power without brutality. He con- 
fined himself to doing what was necessary to secure 
the victory of his cause, but he avoided bloodshed as 
much as he could. He took no personal revenge, and 
those of the Imperialist partisans who were captured 
and put to death died by order of the Government, 
and not by his. If this was his purpose, he succeeded. 
From the day of capitulation he was a recognised 
candidate for the place of governor of his country. 
He had still not a little fighting, successful and unsuc- 
cessful, to do, but his purely military life was over and 
his political career had begun. 



CHAPTER V 

THE POLITICIAN 

AT this moment when we are at the turn of the road 
we must stop to make an estimate of the man, to 
endeavour to see what he was in himself, and what his 
work could be expected to be either in so far as it was 
the expression of his own capacity, or as it was 
conditioned by the elements he had lying to his hand. 
There is a known difficulty in learning what any man 
was, or is, in himself, and it is apt to be insuperable 
when we lack, as we do in the case of Porfirio Diaz, 
the guidance of a great mass of private correspon- 
dence. No evidence of that character has been 
published, nor is it likely that any ever will be. Don 
Rafael de Zayas Enriquez, author of a bitter-sweet 
biographical study, has stated that h never learnt 
to read or write well. The very neat handwriting of 
certain notes of his published in facsimile vindicates 
his penmanship, but we may take it for granted that 
he was no great writer of letters. The autobiographi- 
cal narrative he dictated in his latter years shows no 
trace of self-revelations. It is downright and purely 
historical at least, that is the case with the pub- 
lished parts ; and while it gives the acts it does not 
dwell on the reasons nor the motives. But we may 
doubt whether there was anything to reveal. As he 
appears to the world Porfirio Diaz was a man who had 
one rule and one great quality. He played the game, 
and he loved order. The rule and the quality can be 



ii8 DIAZ 

so amply displayed in act that autobiographical reve- 
lations are quite superfluous. His mind was simple 
and his will was clear. He had no velleities, but 
always definite intentions. 

This essentially practical and manly mind was lodged 
in a most fortunately constituted body. He is called 
tall by one who was himself very short, and of middle 
height by another who judged by a different standard. 
All agree that he was remarkably well put together, 
though he looked somewhat taller in the saddle than 
he did on foot. From this we may perhaps conclude 
that, like the strong types of men belonging to the 
southern, or so-called Latin, races, he was longer in 
the body than the legs. It is very credible that, as 
some of his critics have alleged, he liked best to be 
seen and to be pictured in the saddle. Nor is it 
anywise difficult to believe that he liked a big horse 
rather than a small one. He belonged to a race of 
horsemen. He spoke a language in which horseman 
and gentleman are synonymous. It is quite likely 
that he would have seen nothing absurd in the old 
maxim that the man who is mounted on the great 
horse is as high above his fellow-men as fortune can 
place him. A strongly-built frame is a great gift of 
Nature, but it must be completed by a sound con- 
stitution and a freedom from any tendency to 
disease. That Diaz was favoured in that respect 
even beyond the fortune of well-endowed men is 
proved by one patent fact. He lived either in poverty 
or in constant hardship and exposure for more than 
half of a life of over eighty years. He was wounded, 
and badly ; he was severely burnt ; he was visited 
at least once by marsh fever contracted in unwhole- 
some bivouacs. These injuries and invasions of germs 



THE POLITICIAN 119 

of disease had no weakening effect on him whatever. 
They were thrown off and left no evil consequences 
behind. He died of senile decay when the strong 
body was worn out. 

Other men have had these advantages and have 
wasted them. We have the testimony of those who 
hated him, and would have said all the ill they could 
of him, that he treated his powerful frame and his 
fine constitution as instruments to be kept in order by 
sobriety. For the first half of his life the conditions 
in which he had to work constituted a perpetual train- 
ing. He had to ride by day and night, when his 
safety depended on his nerve and his vigilance. But 
if he had not observed the famous rules of Blaise de 
Monluc he would not have borne the strain even in 
his youth. 1 

From the time that he became the political head of 
his country he made it his aim to keep himself in 
training. He could not have adopted this rule if he 
had not been prepared. His habits do not give us the 
chief reason why he rose, for men of a very different 
way of life had reached the place, but they do explain 
better than any other knowledge we have of him why 
he remained at the head for so many years. All our 
witnesses tell the same tale, but the only one who need 
be quoted is the most hostile, Carlo de Fornaro, 

1 The four rules of Monluc will be found in the address to the lieutenants 
and captains of France which he puts at the head of his Commentaries. 
They do not contain the highest reasons for observing morality of conduct. 
Blaise would naturally leave them to his brother the Bishop, but, speaking 
as an old soldier to young soldiers, he talks excellent sense. The passage 
is too long to quote, but the substance of it is that a man will never become 
one of those good officers whose services are indispensable to the distributers 
of promotion unless he avoids certain sins of the flesh which besot and 
weaken him, so that he will not have at command the clear head, the steady 
nerve, and the ever active body which can rise to all emergencies by day or 
night. 



120 DIAZ 

author of a typical scream of Spanish-American 
invective. Observe that Senor Fornaro, in his " Diaz, 
Czar of Mexico," published in several languages in 
1909, speaks in this style of a passage in the history 
of the President's first term of office : " This was the 
finishing stroke of the most brutish, the most craven, 
and the wildest orgie of blood perpetrated in the annals 
of humanity ; it was an insensate Saturnalia of Gore, 
the luxurious rage of an impotent, cowardly, sadic 
old despot." 

The event of which Senor Fornaro spoke in these 
rabid words will be told under its proper date. In the 
meantime, this frenzy of abuse is a not exceptional 
example of Spanish-American political polemics. 
The disputants hurl terms of insult as if they were 
half-bricks and with an apparent entire disregard to 
the meaning or applicability of the words they use. 
About fifty pages further on we get this account of the 
manner of life of the " sadic old despot " : " His private 
life for the last thirty years has been spotless, and 
although surrounded by all the luxuries he has led a 
life simple as a hermit's : in food and drink abstemious 
as an Arab ; in a country where everybody smokes 
he has been an exception ; where alcoholism is ram- 
pant he only tastes water ; where everybody goes to 
bull-fights he stays at home ; does not visit theatres 
except at official functions ; seldom hunts, and never 
plays. Private life, personal hygiene, hard work, 
physical and intellectual economy, have been con- 
centrated for the prolongation of power through the 
medium of a perfect body." 

He loved no plays, he heard no music. The Presi- 
dency was to him, not a prize to be enjoyed, but a 
redoubt to be stormed, and then held by sleepless 



THE POLITICIAN 121 

vigilance and the same hard fighting that was needed 
to win it. Given a man of prompt practical faculty, 
great physical energy, of steady purpose and strong 
will, and we can easily understand why he conquered 
in the midst of the feeble personalities, the social 
incoherences and the political nullities of Mexico. 

When we have made for ourselves a picture of the 
manner of man he was, we may before entering on 
his political career endeavour to attain to some 
conception of what he was likely to be able to do. 
That he won the Presidency and held it for a period 
which makes a long reign for a king whose right was 
not liable to be contested was a feat. But was it to 
be only the feat of the resolute skipper who, pistol in 
hand, cows a mutinous crew and keeps it to its duty, 
or the achievement of a statesman who develops 
institutions and makes a lasting Government ? A 
few years ago the general disposition would have 
been to put him with the creative statesmen. There 
were some who doubted. It is said, and we can 
believe, that Cecil Rhodes declined to enter into 
certain enterprises in Mexico because he could find 
no security that the peace of the country would last 
longer than the life of President Diaz. He spoke with 
the understanding of one who knew what government 
is. The world at large was of another opinion. The 
difficulty would have been to obtain adhesion to the 
verdict that the regenerator of Mexico, the creator of 
a new and better order, would turn out to be only a 
transient keeper of the peace. Now we all know that 
the old disorder welled up before the death of the 
strong man who had kept it down. He seemed to 
have failed, and those who had been most ready before 
1909 to believe that a new heaven and a new earth 



122 DIAZ 

had been created for Mexico by him were not the least 
disposed to think that they were disappointed by his 
fault. Those who were so quick to condemn ought 
to have asked themselves whether a ruler can be fairly 
said to have failed if he has achieved a great measure 
of success in a whole generation of effort to do the 
impossible. 

Gourgaud, who was mentally incapable of inventing 
it, has recorded a saying of Napoelon's at St. Helena : 
" J'ai trouve tous les elements de 1'empire. . . . Je 
ne serais pas venu, qu'el est probable qu'un autre 
aurait fait de meme. . . . Un homme n'est qu'un 
homme." He said it beyond doubt, and his words 
were profoundly true of himself and of all the rulers of 
men. However great a man may be, and in whatever 
field he works, he is subject to a human limitation. 
He can handle what is given him to manipulate, but 
he cannot create his material. The greatest of 
statesmen can do no more than the sheep-breeders who 
sell the wool, or the weavers who make it into cloth. 
They can breed with more intelligence and so im- 
prove the wool, or they can improve the process of 
weaving and therefore produce better cloth. The 
best of them cannot create the wool-bearing animal. 
Napoleon did great and lasting things, but then he had 
great and lasting elements lying ready to be worked 
on. There is no sort of comparison between the 
French and the jarring classes of Creoles, half-breeds, 
and Indians who make up the population of Mexico. 
But a people may be far below the French of the 
revolutionary epoch in intellect, and yet offer all the 
elements out of which a stable polity may be made. 
They may have ideas, aspirations, dispositions which 
only need to be combined in order to produce a 



THE POLITICIAN 123 

Government, and an Administration which will last 
for centuries. Those were elements Napoleon found 
in France, and there were others. The very parts of 
the Administration he framed, which still governs 
France, had been rough hewn for him by the 
monarchy. His Prefect was the old Intendant. His 
centralisation had been begun by the kings. It 
never came to full development under them, partly 
because they falsified it by interference at the bidding 
of personal whims, partly because it was blocked by 
the mouldering remains of what had once been real 
instruments of government. The Revolution burnt 
the rubbish away, but the indestructible parts of the 
old Administration were there to be used. All that 
was necessary was to put them together. It was 
the work of a constructive statesman. But a ruler as 
great in capacity as Napoleon, and a wiser than he, 
could not have created these elements. " Un homme 
n'est qu'un homme." 

Let us make a great effort and assume that the boy 
who was baptised at Oaxaca on September 15, 1830, 
had been a Napoleon, what could he have done with 
Mexico ? He could have kept it quiet, he could have 
given it some material prosperity, as Diaz did, and 
that is all he could have done. When he had achieved 
his utmost the Creole would have still been a Creole, 
the half-breed a half-breed, and the Indian an Indian. 
If, indeed, it had been possible for a man living in the 
nineteenth century in a country bordering on the 
United States, and in communication with Europe, 
to get himself accepted as a " Son of the Gods," he 
might have founded a sacred race and a lasting 
institution. But that was the impossible of all 
impossibles. In the age he was born into and in his 



124 DIAZ 

country, all he could be was to be the constable who 
kept the peace, and that he could be only while his 
strength lasted. We cannot, therefore, fairly ask 
that Diaz should have given more than he gave. He 
could only be the best of the so-called Spanish- 
American tyrants. We cannot critically compare 
him with a Richelieu, a Cavour, or a Bismarck, who 
had all such widely different elements to deal with. 
By the side of those statesmen he must needs look but 
a transient, even a futile, figure. The fair comparison 
is between him and other Spanish-American rulers 
who have had the same problem to deal with : Francia 
in Paraguay, Juan Manuel Rosas in the Argentine, 
Guzman Blanco, " the great American," in Colombia, 
or Barrios in Central America. He has no need to 
fear comparison with any of them. 

There are two other conditions which must be clearly 
realised before we begin to look at his political career. 
They are the physical limitations of Mexico and the 
nature of the Indian population. 

In some parts of South America the influx of foreign 
capital, mainly British, and of foreign labour, of which 
the most valuable part is Italian, has bred a consider- 
able material prosperity. The Argentine is the most 
conspicuous example. The growth of this industry has 
made it more profitable for political intriguers to levy 
blackmail and take bribes than to fight. In these coun- 
tries the essential anarchy of the community is skinned 
over, and presents a smooth surface to the passing 
visitor. This has not been the case in Mexico, and is 
not likely to be. A great deal is said of the natural 
wealth of the country, but there is one fact which 
ought to be a warning to those who are inclined to 
accept all they are invited to believe on this subject. 



THE POLITICIAN 125 

After thirty years if not of absolute peace, at least 
of anarchy kept down by the parish constable the 
whole trade of Mexico, with its 769,000 square miles 
of territory and a population estimated at 15,000,000 
or so, is not equal to the trade of Cuba, which is little 
more than a twentieth of its size andThas a population 
of 2,000,000. The estimates of population are but 
plausible guesswork. No real census has ever been 
taken in a Spanish or Portuguese American State. 
Yet the proportion as between Mexico and Cuba may 
be as 15 is to 2. If the first were really a country of 
great natural wealth this would most assuredly not be 
the case. It would at least be on a level with the 
Argentine. But Mexico is not a country of great 
available wealth. 1 Old and New Spain have a curious 
likeness to one another in this respect. Both have a re- 
putation for immense natural resources, yet both have 
ever been poor, because, though they do possess rich 
districts and fine mines, they consist largely of barren 
rock and high tablelands of indifferent soil and ill- 
watered. The communications of both are obstructed. 
The tablelands of Mexico are held up by mountain 
ranges on east and west. The fall to the Gulf of 
Mexico is precipitous, and that to the Pacific, though 
more manageable, is steep. Northward from the 
plain of Anahuac the communications look easy 
enough. As Humboldt pointed out more than a 
century ago, it would be perfectly possible to drive a 
wheeled carriage from the city of Mexico to the valley 
of the Mississippi. Indeed, the caravan trade con- 
ducted in big prairie wagons on the Santa Fe trail 

1 The reader who wishes to see this subject more fully dealt with may be 
recommended to look into " A Study of Mexico," by David A. Wells (New 
York, 1890, published by Appleton & Co.). 



126 DIAZ 

came from St. Louis, on the Mississippi, by Durango 
to Mexico. 1 But if the plain is smooth it is broken 
by districts which are waterless. Irrigation is diffi- 
cult, because, with the exception of certain breaks in 
Central Mexico, the mountains do not go beyond the 
limit of eternal snow. The rivers of both New and 
Old Spain alternate between being raging torrents, 
when the winter snows melt on the hills and the 
spring rains pour down, and dry river courses 
(barrancas) at other times. There is in fact a great 
open central road connecting Mexico with the United 
States, and that may some day prove to be the 
physical fact which will decide the fate of the country. 
But the road is not a good one, because it is so easy 
to starve or die of thirst on it. Therefore Mexico 
has not had the rapid prosperity of the Argentine and 
is unlikely ever to attain to that level. Therefore, 
also, foreign capital has never had the same influence 
as in the southern republic. Large tracts of Mexico 
are by nature poor, and when they are mountainous 
are also very inaccessible. In them is a population 
which gains nothing by such prosperity as there has 
been, and which offers a fine recruiting ground for the 
revolutionary and the brigand. 

The position of the Indian population of Mexico 
when Diaz began his career has already been stated 
in a general way. But a few further details may be 
given, because they show what was one problem of 
government he had to deal with. In the north-west 
along the American frontier there were certain tribes 
of pure savages who had never been subdued under 
colonial rule, and who grew more independent and 

1 See J. Gregg's "Commerce of the Prairies," 1844, for an account, by 
one who followed it, of the old Santa Fe" trail. 



THE POLITICIAN 127 

actually aggressive under the Republic. There were 
tribes like the Apaches, who were just savages. 
During the French intervention they took active part 
against the Mexicans. Over all the north, where the 
land is held in great estates, the Indians, though 
nominally free, remained in fact serfs. The Peons 
(i.e., pawns), or mere day-labourers, of Indian blood 
continued to be enslaved by their inherited ideas and 
their improvidence. They have shown a natural 
disposition for the status of serf. Strange as it may 
seem, they appear to prefer the kind of fixity of 
occupation they get by contracting a debt, for which 
they then pay by their labour. A Peon who wishes to 
acquire a wife and hut takes a loan from an employer 
and promises to work it off. He never does, because 
he is soon in need of food and clothes. Then he has to 
indebt himself again. A truck system which he is 
incapable of checking keeps him for ever in debt. One 
employer may let him go to another, but only on 
condition that the new master pays his debt. If he 
can find an employer on these terms he simply passes 
from the old master to the new. It has been said that 
during the rule of Diaz the Indians sank from a 
condition in which all had some estate in the land to 
one in which nobody had any except the great land- 
owners and capitalists. A good deal of fancy has 
been expended on this social revolution to the injury 
of the poor. The " pueblo " Indians whom the 
Spaniards found were living in a tribal and com- 
munal state. The laws of the Indies secured to 
certain Indian towns a ring of communal land. 
These lands were not respected when the Church's 
endowments were secularised, and the Indians suffered. 
But the fact that some Indians had definite communal 



128 DIAZ 

rights in specified pieces of land is far from proving 
that all had rights in the soil. All the evidence goes 
to show that they were serfs under Spanish rule by 
law, and have continued to be so through their own 
inability to rise to a better state. You cannot put a 
five-fingered hand into a four-fingered glove. The 
tribal and communal life is intelligible to the Mexican 
Indian, and no other is. When left to himself he is 
incurably improvident and idle. Foreign employers 
in Mexico have thought that the sloth and carelessness 
of their workmen were due to the low rate of wages, 
which did not allow them to aspire to any comfort. 
In the hope of stimulating them to industry they have 
introduced systems of piece-work by which men 
could earn twice as much as their rate of pay. They 
have found that the Indians did do a better day's 
work for as many days as were needed to earn the 
equivalent of the miserable old weekly wage. Then they 
spent the rest of the week drunk with pulque or only 
just in absolute idleness. In the south among Juarez's 
people and Don Porfirio's the Indians showed more 
character because they had kept their old tribal organi- 
sation in the mountains and the tribe had no scruple 
in using the lash on the drone who was a mere burden. 
The whole race has been degraded by serfdom, but 
not by that only. An ancient Mexican tradition 
which has at least a mythical truth tells how one 
of the peoples who preceded the Aztecs on the plain 
of Anahuac became utterly deboshed by drinking 
pulque and fell victims to the first invader. Pulque 
is in fact a terrible cause of degradation. It is easily 
made, is very abundant, and so cheap as to be within 
the reach of the very poor. Though not very alcoholic, 
it has a peculiarly besotting effect when drunk 



THE POLITICIAN 129 

continuously and in large quantities. Those who 
know Spanish America all agree that while the in- 
habitants of the low-lying lands are on the whole 
sober, the mountain populations are much the reverse. 
Mexico is emphatically a country of mountains and 
high tablelands, and beyond all dispute it is very 
drunken. What was to be done with a population 
degraded to this extent by powerful causes of long 
standing ? A great deal has been said about the 
illiteracy of the Mexicans and the good effect which 
education would produce. But the people of Mexico 
have not been more illiterate than were the Englishmen 
of the reign of Elizabeth or the French of the reign of 
Louis XIV. Their stagnation is due to the intellectual 
sloth of those who have had a chance to be literate, 
and the lack of an intellect capable of responding to 
education in the case of the huge majority of the 
inhabitants. They can be drilled to perform some 
simple industrial function in a mechanical way, but 
they cannot be taught to show the intelligence of a 
skilled European workman. The faculty is lacking ; 
and these hopeless human beings of an inferior stock 
constitute from a half to two-thirds of the population. 
They are the labouring part of the nation, and they 
fill the ranks of the army. The political and industrial 
fabric of Mexico rests on such foundation as they 
supply. 

Within twenty-four hours of the surrender of 
Mexico Diaz took a step which must needs have, and 
we cannot but believe was intended to have, the 
appearance of putting him in a position not perhaps 
of actual hostility to the Government of Juarez, but 
of separation from his old chief. He resigned the 
command of the Army of the East. His resigna- 



D. 



130 DIAZ 

tion was declined, but he insisted, and the President 
was forced to agree to his wish on July 13. He 
continued, it is true, to hold the command within the 
city till the 2 1st, because he could not be spared a day 
sooner. It is claimed on his behalf, and cannot be 
seriously denied, that nothing but his firmness saved 
the city from plunder and massacre. His army, 
thanks to his good discipline, which was made 
possible by his careful management of the money 
raised in the south, was well in hand. But, as was 
to be expected, his original force had been largely 
recruited during the blockade by bands of patriots 
who did not so much spring from the soil as descend 
from the Sierras. They burdened him with offers of 
assistance, which, as he well knew, covered a lively 
wish to share in the spoils. His most pressing 
obligation was to keep them out of the city till 
measures had been taken to forestall their entry. 
For twenty-four hours nobody was permitted to go 
in. The interval was long enough to allow of a hasty 
arrangement between the victorious general and those 
of the townsmen who possessed ready money, and 
therefore had the best of reasons for fearing an out- 
break of robbery. The first troops to enter were 
picked among the bands he had brought to a fair state 
of discipline, and their morality was confirmed by a 
payment of arrears. When all restrictions were 
removed, the less trustworthy elements of the patriot 
army poured in, only to be met by what our Eliza- 
bethan ancestors would have called " a cooling card." 
They found the plunderable parts of the city already 
occupied by well-placed troops standing to arms, and 
they saw a plainly-printed notice in conspicuous 
places to the effect that any man caught pillaging 



THE POLITICIAN 131 

would be hanged out of hand. They knew their 
man, and the confidence that was due to his word. 
Diaz saved his cause from disgrace, and if it was 
added unto him that he gained the good opinion 
of the moneyed men that reward was creditably 
earned. 

On July 13 Juarez and his Government returned 
from their years of exile and wandering in the north. 
The national treasury was empty, and an army of 
about 100,000 men, largely armed mobs, was con- 
centrated in and around the city. The $300,000 
from the military chest of the Army of the East which 
Diaz handed over at once to the President represented 
the whole of the funds immediately available to meet 
all the expenses of government. The service was great 
and timely. Moreover, it was not long since Don 
Porfirio had given a marked proof of his loyalty. 
Don Benito's term of office as President had run out 
in the previous year. Some of those about him had 
seized the opportunity to declare that as the Con- 
stitution forbade a re-election of a President he must 
retire and make room for a successor. " Ote toi de la 
que moi je m'y mette " is in Spanish America the 
most universally acted on of all the phrases applicable 
to politics. It is but just to allow that this sadly 
characteristic example of Mexican anarchy met little 
approval. The pushful persons who took the moment 
when French troops were still on the soil of Mexico and 
the intrusive Imperial Government had still an army 
in the field, to stand on the letter of the law and insist 
on performing the farce of holding a Presidential 
election were ill looked on. The United States 
continued to treat Juarez as the legitimate President. 
Diaz, who controlled the whole south, might have 



132 DIAZ 

given serious trouble if he had had no more good 
feeling and political sense than many of his contem- 
poraries. But, though he was by this time well 
aware where he meant in the end to go, he was not the 
man to show overhaste. He declared that the Indian 
who had represented the independence of Mexico 
during years of defeat and suffering must not be 
displaced till victory was won. Juarez was formally 
recognised as President in his camp. 

Yet when the two met it was as friends between 
whom a gulf was opening. Diaz declared in after- 
times that Juarez had begun to be cold to him about 
the time of the siege of Puebla. He had barely acknow- 
ledged the report of its capture and had added no 
thanks. The explanation of his ill-will is not difficult 
to find. The mere course of events had made the two 
rivals. There is everywhere such a thing as serving 
your cause too well. When he who renders the 
service puts himself in the superior position it is hard 
for the person served to feel nothing but gratitude. 
Now this was what Diaz had done. Others had 
fought hard and forwarded the cause, but none of 
them had to their credit the recovery of the South and 
the taking of Puebla and the capital. He was marked 
out as a present rival and future successor. Juarez 
is believed to have been a disinterested man, and yet 
we must not expect too much virtue even from the 
best. He was poor, and the loss of the Presidential 
chair would inevitably destroy his means of support. 
Cincinnatus can return to his plough when he is 
Cincinnatus that is to say, when he is not only a 
virtuous man, but a patrician who owes his place in 
the world to his birth, not to his means. Juarez was 
a lawyer without fortune, for whom the loss of the 



THE POLITICIAN 133 

Presidency must entail the necessity for beginning 
life again in his old age. The governorship of his 
native State might have been a dignified refuge, but 
he had lost his hold on Oaxaca during the war when 
he was far away and Diaz was on the spot. How 
could he feel friendly to the former subordinate who 
was, not indeed maliciously, but by the force of cir- 
cumstances, supplanting him ? 

Moreover, unless we are to dismiss the word of Don 
Porfirio himself as worthless, he had just done some- 
thing which outweighed many services. He had 
given the President a lesson, and a rather humiliating 
one. When he reported the capitulation of Mexico 
he received an order to place the French Minister, 
M. Dano, under arrest and to take possession of the 
archives of the Embassy. He at once refused, telling 
Juarez that since they already had the ill-will of 
Napoleon, they had better not add that of France by 
insulting its honour. Juarez made no answer. Diaz 
pressed him to send somebody else to carry out the 
order, but nobody came. M. Dano, who had obvious 
reasons for not wishing to be in Mexico when Juarez 
returned, applied for a safe conduct to Veracruz, and 
Diaz gave it at once. His prompt resignation of his 
command of the Army of the East had much the 
appearance of having been a measure of precaution 
meant to leave him free to refuse to obey. It was 
unquestionably a sign that he felt himself strong 
enough to dispense with official rank. 

Yet he tells us that he was at this time hard pressed 
for money. During the war he had been content to 
draw from the military chest he himself had filled no 
more than was enough to provide for his daily needs. 
He now offered to acknowledge that he had received 



134 DIAZ 

a third of what was due to him, though as a matter of 
fact he had taken less. It was not safe to fob off a 
creditor of his standing, and Juarez offered $21,000 
in payment of all claims. Diaz was careful to warn 
the President that he would not consider himself 
bound to follow any particular line of conduct laid 
down for him in consideration of this payment, and 
he says he added that the issue of the money from the 
treasury might be stopped if it was to be hampered 
by any condition. The relations of the President and 
the General must have been tart indeed by this time. 
But the $21,000 were duly paid to Don Porfirio's 
agent, Jose de Teresa. Diaz had spoken to Juarez of 
his intention to go into business. The business he did 
go into took the strange form of gifts of $17,000 to 
support a newspaper, a rapid and effectual method 
of evacuation. The balance was stolen in the house 
of his agent, and he only recovered a half. Though 
he persisted in resigning his more important com- 
mands, he continued at the head of the 2nd Division of 
the army till 1860, when he retired with the remnant 
of his $21,000 to a farm called La Noria (Waterwheel), 
which had been conferred on him by his native State. 
In estimating these and other sums named in dollars 
we must bear in mind the effect produced on the 
currency of Mexico by the depreciation of silver 
during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The 
Republic adhered for long to the silver standard, and 
its money fell in exchange value till the process was 
stopped, as will be told further on, by the financial 
measures of Sefior Limantour. In 1868 $21,000 made 
a larger sum than they would have done when the 
coin had reached its present level of ^s. old. He had 
married his first wife, Delfina Ortega y Reges, during 



THE POLITICIAN 135 

the siege. We know little of Dona Delfina except 
that she bore her husband three children and died 
young. For two years they lived quietly on their 
farm, and Don Porfirio applied himself to the cultiva- 
tion of the sugar-cane. 

There was in after times no lack of persons who were 
ready to ask him why he did not rest content to go on 
planting the sugar-cane. They made it a matter of 
reproach to him that he too became an agitator in due 
course, and joined those who perpetuated the disorder 
of the country by disobedience to the law and the 
selfish pursuit of their personal ambitions. These 
critics omit to show what it was incumbent on them 
to prove namely, that there was any law in Mexico 
to obey save in the impotent form of mere words on 
paper. As for the charge of ambition, it is cheaply 
brought against every man who in any polity tries to 
rise to great place. The Earl of Chatham was 
ambitious, for he believed that he could save the 
country, and that nobody else could. Holding that 
faith, he did well to seek power. " For good thoughts," 
says Bacon, " (though God accept them) yet toward 
men are little better than good dreams, except they 
be put in act ; and that cannot be without power and 
place, as the vantage and commanding ground." The 
ambitious man stands or falls by what he does with 
the power when it is in his hands. Diaz would never 
have had an opportunity to do good to his country 
if he had waited till a united Mexican people, or even 
a well-disciplined Mexican party, came to La Noria 
to interrupt him while he was cutting his harvest of 
sugar-cane with his machete (his cane-knife) and peti- 
tion him to take the Republic in hand. He had to 
win the means of doing good, and that by such 



136 DIAZ 

methods as the society he was born in forced him to 
use. Chatham could do no other, though he was 
more happily placed than Don Porfirio. He had to 
co-operate with men whom he despised, and allow 
them to help him for their own ends by the use of 
means which his soul loathed. " The rising unto 
place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater 
pains ; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities 
men come to dignities." Diaz was born in the midst of 
a blood-stained anarchy, and had to rise by the use of 
force. He is to be judged by what he did with the 
power he conquered. 

Anarchy is the one name for the condition of 
Mexico after the withdrawal of the French army and 
the death of Maximilian, as it had been before. Juarez, 
it is true, was formally re-elected President at the end 
of 1867, though re-election was forbidden by the Con- 
stitution a tolerably clear proof of the little respect 
felt for the letter of the law in Mexico. We must 
believe that gratitude had a share in confirming him 
in power, but it is certainly the fact that there was 
nobody at that moment who could have secured 
sufficient support to oppose him. Support does not 
mean votes, which have never decided anything in a 
Spanish-American republic, but an adequate military 
force to dictate to the voters over a sufficient part of 
the country. We ought not to blame Don Benito if 
his administration failed to restore peace to Mexico. 
The treasury was empty. Foreign nations had lost 
all confidence in the promises of the Republic and 
would lend no money. Indeed, civilised peoples, 
except the United States, stood aloof from the 
Republic for a time. The United States could not 
help, for they were not then able to dispense with 



THE POLITICIAN 137 

foreign capital for their own needs. The country was 
swarming with broken men, brigandage, and " pro- 
nunciamientos." The Roman Catholic clergy, then 
and for some years to come, were unscrupulous in 
fomenting disorder. The Government lacked the 
means to pay a regular force to do the most elemen- 
tary police work. It was the President's bad fortune 
that the years of his administration were full of 
earthquakes, bad harvests, and disease. Yet, when 
every allowance has been made, it must be recognised 
that the taciturn Indian patience, which had served 
Juarez and Mexico well during the years of the French 
intervention, was but a negative quality. It was after 
all only a power to endure and more was needed to 
establish order. Yet it was all that Jurarez had to 
give. 

As his term drew to an end it became clear that the 
Indian tenacity of the President, his stolid capacity 
for staying where he was and looking in silent 
obstinacy at all menaces, was about to be shown by 
an attempt to retain his seat. In other words, he 
was preparing to violate the provision of a Convention 
he had helped to make. There goes a story which at 
any rate conveys a truth, whether the thing happened 
exactly as it is told or not. Juarez, so the tale runs, 
had it out with Diaz between themselves, and said 
to him by way of closing the interview : " You will 
be President some day, but not while I live." 
Whether these words were ever uttered or not, it is 
not the less true that they state the intention of Don 
Benito. He would be President while he lived, which, 
of course, implied that he would make his own 
re-election by setting his dependent mob of place- 
holders to work, by bribing, falsifying the lists of 



138 DIAZ 

electors, threats to use force, and at a pinch by actual 
slaughter. 1 

It would surely tax the ingenuity of the most in- 
genious apologist to show that the cause of the 
President was also the cause of law and order. He 
was confessedly preparing to violate the law ; and 
there was no means of prevailing on him to stop except 
by the use of force. In the natural course of things, 
there were not wanting those who were prepared to 
avail themselves of the means so familiar in Mexican 
politics. The name " party " must still be taken to 
stand for a body of men who hold certain principles 
and try to carry them out in the conduct of 
government. But in Mexico nothing was at stake 
except the question who was to be President. It will 
avoid confusion if we use another term once familiar 
enough among ourselves, and say that there were 
three connections in Mexican politics the Juaristas, 
the Lerdistas, and the Porfiristas. The first were the 
supporters of Juarez, largely place-holders, who have 
been called Conservatives. They held the places, 
and thought that all would be well if they could only 
" conserve " them. The Lerdistas were the followers 
of that Don Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada whose brother 
Don Miguel had been Minister of Grace and Justice 
under Juarez. They called themselves the " Evolu- 

1 It is but a few years since a very pretty example was given in Rio 
Janeiro of the " Latin " American method of consulting the free and 
independent voter. It was known that the candidate who was not to be 
allowed to be returned would probably receive a good many votes in a 
certain district. On the day of the election the approaches to the ballot- 
boxes were, in the usual way, occupied by " capangas," that is to say, negro 
bullies armed with cudgels and revolvers. At an early hour a proclamation 
was published to the effect that in view of the danger to public peace arising 
from the excited passions of the district the Government had decided to 
close the poll and to count only the votes given before the hour of closing. 
Of course they were the votes of the " capangas." 



THE POLITICIAN 139 

tionists," and they held the faith that all would be 
well if only in the process of evolution they could 
occupy the places. The Porfiristas were, as their name 
shows, the followers of Don Porfirio Diaz, and they 
called themselves Radicals. It was their fundamental 
principle that no good would be done till a radical 
sweep had been made of the others and they were 
masters of the situation. The future was to show that 
they were not mistaken. Where what was at stake 
was the personality of the future administrator, the 
cause of the most capable man was the good cause. 

The election was to be held in the autumn of 1871, 
when Juarez's four years, counting from the election 
in 1867, would be at an end. The Juaristas had, of 
course, the advantage of the support of the place- 
holders. But Lerdo de Tejada had availed himself 
of his ministerial position to plant not a few friends of 
his own in offices where they could be useful. Diaz 
had the aid of all who were not provided for by the 
others, and also, it is said, of not a few old Imperialists 
who, if they did not love him, hated Juarez and Lerdo. 
When it came to voting each of the three connections 
was found to have sufficient local influence to secure 
the return of its own man in its own territory. We 
hear, of course, that the power of the Administration 
was employed to the full ; that towns which noto- 
riously contained a population of 2,000 were recorded 
to have cast 2,500 votes for Don Benito ; and, in 
short, that the force and fraud of a sham election was 
in full swing. In spite of this vigorous employment 
of the traditional methods, Juarez failed to get an 
absolute majority. The votes were 5,837 for Juarez, 
2,874 f r Lerdo, and 3,555 for Diaz. The decision 
rested with Congress, which as a matter of course 



140 DIAZ 

decided in favour of Juarez. It had been made by 
him in the well-known way. His opponents showed 
no more respect for the freedom of voters than he did. 
They applied pressure and made bargains just as he 
did. He won because his control of the Central 
Government gave him the best means for applying 
pressure and making bargains. 

It would have been strange if the defeated parties 
had rested content with this settlement. We are 
assured that they were honestly persuaded that the 
re-election of a President was contrary to democratic 
principles. It is a nice question why the sovereign 
people, which is alone entitled to choose its ruler, is 
to be cabined and cribbed and confined when in the 
exercise of its rights it chooses the same man twice 
running. The inquiry would be the more unneces- 
sary in the present case, because when the course of 
events carried Lerdo to the Presidency he began to 
provide for his own re-election, and when later on the 
Presidency came to Diaz he was more re-elected than 
any man in Spanish-American history. It will be 
right to state what the different connections professed 
that they were going to do. The make-believe of 
politicians has always a certain value, for it throws 
some light on the moral and intellectual realities of 
the political stage on which the fictions are thought 
likely to tell on the gallery. But we would treat 
some things with a respect they do not deserve if we 
spoke of them as being more than what they were. 
It would be easy to fill pages with the promises of 
constitutional improvements made by Juarez when he 
was standing for President at the end of 1867, and for 
some time afterwards. But as they were all dropped 
when they had served their purpose, the enumeration 



THE POLITICIAN 141 

would be merely tedious. The substantial facts which 
we have to bear in mind in regard to him are that he 
proved doggedly hostile to the Imperialists, and that 
he reduced the army wholesale. 

;i His implacability to the Imperialists offended not 
them only but many Mexicans who thought he simply 
perpetuated divisions and causes of trouble. An 
amnesty was passed in 1870, but with exceptions, and 
not till many Mexicans had been driven into exile, 
and many had escaped the entire confiscation of their 
property by the payment of heavy fines. They 
remained embittered and on the outlook for a chance of 
taking their revenge. The moderation which Diaz 
had shown at all times, and more especially when he 
forced the city of Mexico to surrender, pointed him 
out as the one leader they could best join. When he 
hurried, as we have seen that he did, to disassociate 
himself from Juarez, in June, 1867, he may have, he 
probably had, a definite intention to offer himself to 
all Mexicans as the man who would divide them the 
least. 

The reduction of the army was no doubt a necessity. 
With the best will in the world, Juarez could not in 
1 867 -and 1868 pay, or pension, a force of 100,000 men 
or so. But the officers and men who were thrown out 
of employment penniless in a country poor at the best 
of times, and now disorganised in its industry as in 
everything else, were not in a position which made it 
possible for them to look on his action with a cool 
impartiality. They provided the general staff and 
the rank and file of all the forces of disorder which 
kept the country in a turmoil throughout his adminis- 
tration. It was inevitable that they should help to 
recruit the connections opposed to him, and that the 



142 DIAZ 

leader they preferred should have been Porfirio Diaz, 
a soldier like themselves, and one who had quickly 
and emphatically marked his alienation from the policy 
of the Indian President, and who, moreover, had 
always taken great care of his own men. We shall 
see that when, after a first failure and some years of 
conflict, Don Porfirio became President, he made it a 
rule to treat the army, that part which had fought 
against him as well as that which fought for him, 
with consideration. It was a proof of his faculty to 
recognise facts that he always dealt with the army as 
being the decisive force in Mexican politics. Then 
Juarez did a thing which one cannot wholly condemn, 
since he was but insisting on his rights, but was sure 
to appear invidious to the multitudes of Mexicans, 
soldiers included, who were not allowed to do them- 
selves justice. He insisted on a regulation of his 
accounts with the treasury, and on the payment of 
his arrears. They amounted to $75,000. He was 
by general confession neither corrupt nor greedy. 
When his opportunities are taken into account he 
must be said to have died poor, for he left his family 
only about $120,000. But the arrears he took from 
an exhausted treasury were more than half the total 
sum. In a country where the judgments passed on 
public men are less malignant than they are apt to be 
in Mexico there would not have been lacking people to 
say that he used his official power for his own benefit, 
and that if he strove to secure his re-election it was 
because he wanted to increase his fortune. Juarez, 
as a native commentator on his life remarked, died in 
a happy hour for him and before " ingratitude 
assassinated him," but he had himself been ungrateful 
to those who had served his cause ; and we may be 



THE POLITICIAN 143 

sure that this sententious judgment expressed a very 
common opinion. 

It is insuperably difficult to discover what was the 
connection of Don Sebastian Lerdo. It was visibly 
the weakest of the three which divided Mexico. 
When events which are now to be told carried him 
into the Presidential chair, he himself treated it with 
entire contempt. But his odd story must not be 
forestalled. He was a Creole, an accomplished man, 
and a lawyer. His brother Don Miguel had been a 
foremost leader in the fight with the Church, and Don 
Sebastian benefited by his popularity with the 
Liberals. But the foundation of his political impor- 
tance was that he was President of the Supreme Court, 
and therefore, by virtue of a tradition which, strangely- 
enough, had survived from the colonial epoch, was 
entitled to succeed the President of the Republic in 
case of his death or disappearance for any other 
reason. We have seen how Juarez himself when in 
the same position had used this right of succession. 
It may seem strange that he should have left a 
political opponent in a place of so much prestige. The 
probability is that he knew he could not displace Don 
Sebastian without driving him into active alliance 
with the Porfiristas ; and Don Benito was no bad 
master of the art of dividing in order to rule. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 

FROM 1871 to 1877 Diaz was engaged in the 
struggle which ended by making him President of 
Mexico. During the first of these six years his 
opponent was Juarez. For the rest of the time he was 
in conflict with Lerdo and then with a new enemy, 
Don Jose M. Iglesias. His course was not unchecked, 
nor was his victory easy. 

When the Congress declared Juarez duly elected on 
October 12, 1871, Diaz allowed some three weeks to 
pass before he took open action. The riotous protests 
made at various towns by his followers could hardly 
have taken place if he had been known to disapprove 
of them strongly, but he did not hasten to produce 
the " plan " which invariably states the case of a 
Mexican " pronunciamiento," and is the notification 
to all whom it may concern that a party is in arms. 
The methods used in the constitutional conflicts of the 
Republic are not ours, but they have this much in 
common with the usages of British or American 
parties, that they include a programme or platform, 
and a " good cry " with which " to go to the country." 
There, too, as in countries of less picturesque ways, 
political action is preceded by consultations of 
managers, and a leader has to yield to the solicitations 
of enthusiastic supporters. Don Porfirio states that 
it was on the urgent appeals of his friends that he 
finally decided to put himself at the head of a revo- 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 145 

lutionary movement. The council in which the reso- 
lution to act was taken was held at his hacienda, or 
ranch, La Noria, on or about November 8. The 
programme was drawn up and the cry was raised. 
As the first was subsequently revised and reissued at 
other places, no more need be said of it now than that 
it was based on the demand for the Constitution of 
1857 and freedom of election. The cry adopted has 
inevitably a somewhat ironic tone when we consider 
it as having been raised by the strongest administrator 
who has ever held Mexico in his hand. It consisted 
of the words " Menos Gobierno y mas Libertades " 
(" Less Government and more Freedom "). The 
candid critic who has been freely quoted already, and 
to whom we shall have to listen again, Don Rafael de 
Zayas Enriquez, is of opinion that at this stage in the 
" evolution " of his mind and character Don Porfirio 
did truly believe that the great need of his country 
was more freedom. Experience during the years 
immediately following the promulgation of the Plan 
of La Noria, in the opinion of the same authority, 
taught him that Mexico suffered, not from over- 
government, but from the total lack of governance, 
or the bad quality of such as it had received, and also 
that it stood in more need of discipline than of greater 
freedom. The history of the next forty years cer- 
tainly appears to confirm the judgment of Don 
Rafael. 

The response to the cry of La Noria was loud and 
widespread. In this case, indeed, action had preceded 
the word. Don Porfirio's friends had drawn the 
sword before he blew the horn, for they had seized 
the Government's artillery and stores in Oaxaca. In 
many parts of Mexico the Porfiristas, or Radicals, or 

D. L 



146 DIAZ 

Constitutionalists (they used that name also), rose 
and took possession of the local governments. But, 
though the revolt was sufficiently formidable to put 
Juarez in serious danger, its progress was disappoint- 
ing after the first days. The peaceful elements in 
the population were frightened by the prospect of a 
renewal in a still worse form of the troubles of the last 
years. As it has been the fate of peaceful Mexicans 
to be sacrificed to armed factions, their fears might 
have had no power to injure the Porfiristas. But 
Juarez had an attached following which stood by 
him and the control of the central Administration. 
And then the rather patchwork following of Don 
Sebastian Lerdo, though it was by no means loyal 
to the President, was far from being disposed to 
aid the Porfiristas. It did not wish to exchange 
King Log for King Stork. Then the premature 
outbreaks which preceded the " pronunciamiento " 
of November had given Juarez the opportunity 
to weaken his enemy in detail. He put down a 
rising in the capital ferociously, and was even able 
to take the offensive when he heard of the revolt in 
Oaxaca. 

The old President acted with commendable prompti- 
tude, and he was helped by the fact that Diaz, after 
'seeing the movement well on foot in Oaxaca, hurried 
with 100 horse to get his supporters in the centre and 
north well in hand. The Juarista general, Latorre, 
marched into Oaxaca, defeated Don Porfirio's 
lieutenant, Luis Mier, at San Mateo Xindihui in 
December, and occupied the town in January of 1872. 
Felix Diaz, who was in command, found himself 
unable to defend it, and, falling back on his old life, 
took to the Sierra. His career was, however, short. 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 147 

Before the end of the month he was surprised while 
almost alone by a party of local enemies from Tehuan- 
tepec and murdered. The insurrection in Oaxaca 
appeared to be wholly suppressed, but in Mexico, as 
we have seen and shall see, this only means that it 
had failed to win for the moment. The conditions 
which produced it were not altered, and continued to 
produce their normal consequences. 

While his cause was at any rate superficially beaten 
in the south, Don Porfirio was not able to make head 
effectually in the centre of the country. He reached 
Zacatecas, to the north of the city of Mexico, in 
February. It had been already occupied by his 
partisans, and we are told that he received a great 
ovation. But it was far from being the case that all 
was over except the shouting. The Government 
troops were better armed and better organised than 
their opponents. They scattered the insurgents 
easily enough in the open field, winning " decisive " 
victories at Cerro de la Bufa, reoccupying Zacatecas, 
and gaining such successes as every Mexican Govern- 
ment claims to win till it crumbles. Diaz, who was 
not present at any of these engagements, marched 
with a body of cavalry on Mexico city itself, in the 
hope of being received by a popular revolt. But 
townsmen and garrison refused to move, and big towns 
cannot be ,taken by columns of cavalry except with 
their own consent. He had to retire to the State of 
Jalisco and wander round the central regions still 
held by Juarez. The rising had not upset the 
Government, but whole States were out of hand, 
particularly in the north, where Sinoloa and Chihua- 
hua were hostile, and there were Porfiristas every- 
where in sierra and plain. A small defeat in the field 

L 2 



148 DIAZ 

would in all likelihood have brought the Government 
down. The decision came in another way. Juarez 
died suddenly on July 18. The disappearance of the 
old leader in a great internal conflict and a struggle for 
independence appealed to popular emotion. Sunt 
lachrymce return, even in Mexico. All parties were 
awed for a moment, and combined to give him " a 
first-class funeral." The kindly regard for the 
memory of an old foe which Swift grimly noted in 
Harley and St. John when they were talking of 
Godolphin, who was dead and could now do them no 
harm, is a universal human sentiment. The political 
world of Mexico gave Juarez his first-class funeral, 
and voted him " well deserving of his country in the 
heroic degree." Then it went on as before. 

The removal of one of the three competitors for 
power could make no change in the real condition of 
the country. Yet it simplified the situation and 
allowed of an interval of at least relative peace. 
Lerdo became interim President by right of his place 
as President of the Supreme Court. By retaining the 
Ministers of Juarez, by keeping his own counsel, by 
hinting hopes to his own party, by offering amnesty 
on easy terms, and buying off individual leaders he 
kept Juaristas and Lerdists together, and he divided 
the Porfiristas. Diaz held out for a time, but by 
October he had to recognise that he would only lose 
by continuing in arms. Lerdo refused to make any 
further concessions in answer to letters Diaz wrote 
on August I and September 23. In these documents 
Don Porfirio only proved, I fear, that after all he too 
was in the year 1872 a Mexican politician. The one 
substantial word which stands in the midst of a flow 
of verbiage was the demand that the amnesty should 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 149 

be amended in his favour. The tenth Article of that 
document declared that officers of the army who had 
taken part in the late rising were to lose rank and pay, 
though they were not to be otherwise punished. And 
this is the appropriate place to note that, in spite of 
Lerdo's firm refusal at the moment, the rank and pay 
were restored before long. We may assume that 
other communications of a private character took 
place, but were not put on record. These compro- 
mises are unavoidable in parliamentary life, even when 
it is conducted by " plans " " pronunciamientos," and 
war cries. If the great Commoner was forced to suffer 
the intrigues of the Duke of Newcastle, it is no less 
true that the Duke could not have intrigued and 
corrupted during a certain set of years without the 
tacit assistance of the great Commoner. All the 
other parts of Diaz's two letters are concerned with 
the usual fine sentiments about freedom of election and 
a warning that unless Government altered its ways 
the arrangement now in course of being made would 
turn out to be but a temporary truce. The prediction 
was a safe one, even if it had not been uttered by a 
man who was in a position to fulfil his own prophecy. 
For the moment the way to the Presidency was 
closed. Diaz returned to Oaxaca. His ranch, La 
Noria, had been burnt down by the soldiers of Juarez 
during the late troubles, and he now established 
himself at La Candelaria. For three years or so he 
again applied himself to the cultivation of the sugar- 
cane, but this time he added a manufacture of chairs 
to his agricultural industry. The cultivation of the 
sugar-cane allows of long, quiet intervals between the 
planting and the reaping. But he certainly did not 
limit himself to growing sugar-cane and making 



ISO DIAZ 

chairs. He was now the head of a powerful connection, 
defeated, even scattered, for the moment, but always 
capable of reuniting if its members found that their 
ambitions were not satisfied. Don Porfirio, who was 
a good judge of men, must have known enough of 
Lerdo to feel sure that he had only to wait patiently 
for an opportunity which would not fail to come. 

Don Sebastian Lerdo appears , from what he did 
and what we are told of him, to have belonged to a 
type of man known in all countries, and certainly not 
less common among Spanish-speaking politicians than 
elsewhere. There was in him a combination of 
dignity, not to say gravity, of outward bearing with 
inward arrogance, and of frivolity of judgment, which 
is fatal. Mr. H. H. Bancroft, in his " History of 
Mexico," gives it as his belief that Don Sebastian had 
a love of mystifying the people about him. Now few 
of those who indulge in this form of humour are found 
to be able to keep their enjoyment of the joke to 
themselves. They triumph, and indeed it is not 
always possible to hide the mystification from the 
victim, and it is especially hard when the point of the 
jest lies in depriving him of a place or keeping him out 
of one. The sufferer is forced to recognise that he has 
been made to look like a fool. There is no more 
effectual way of gaining enemies than to indulge in 
these feats of ingenuity. The Duke of Wellington, 
on one of the rare occasions on which he con- 
fessed to have made a mistake, said that it lay in 
having proved another gentleman to be a fool, for 
nobody likes to be thought a fool. On one occasion 
Lerdo mystified the whole population of the city of 
Mexico by holding a premature ceremony of inaugura- 
tion of the Veracruz railway, with a great flourish of 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 151 

trumpets. The arrogance of the man, and the 
frivolity, too, came out when he made a public 
declaration of his belief that he owed his place to 
constitutional right and was not bound to consider 
anybody. He was technically right, since he had 
succeeded Juarez by virtue of his office as President 
of the Supreme Court, but he was in that place 
because he was a party leader. It was not wise to tell 
his followers that he had outgrown the need of their 
support. And then, too, he had drawn over many 
of the Porfiristas by giving them to understand that 
he would choose some of his Ministers from among 
them. Yet he kept them at arm's length. And he 
did a still less intelligible thing. He treated his own 
party as a negligible quantity, and chose his Ministers 
entirely among the Juaristas. The Lerdistas were 
naturally angry. He was accused of corruption and 
of underhand dealings for his own advantage with the 
foreign capitalists who were now beginning to lay the 
Mexican railways, as also of sacrificing the interests 
of Mexico to British creditors. But these accusations 
were probably the result rather than the cause of his 
unpopularity. Withal he might have completed his 
term of office in peace if he had not sought his 
re-election in the usual way, which it would be unneces- 
sary as well as tiresome to repeat. The time was ripe 
and Don Porfirio came out of his retirement to 
conduct another constitutional campaign. 

And now we have come to the last " Plan," and as 
it really did produce some definite and long-lived 
consequences, it is worth while to look at the thing 
with some attention. It was in all ways typical of the 
political world of Spanish America, in its inception, 
its development, and its result. Lerdo did not forget 



152 DIAZ 

the part he had played to Juarez, and thought it wise 
to take his precautions against any possible display 
of independence by the present holder of the post of 
President of the Supreme Court, Don Jose Maria 
Iglesias. Don Jose had been a steady supporter of 
Juarez and had borne the heat of the day during the 
Imperial interlude. He was an important man in 
his party, and Don Sebastian no doubt looked upon 
him as very capable of nursing ambitious views on 
the national Presidency, to which, as we have just 
seen, the Presidency of the Supreme Court had thrice 
served as a stepping-stone. One of the most valued 
and honourable functions of the court was to decide 
on the legality of the election of a national President 
in case any dispute did arise. Now, as Don Sebastian 
was quite resolved to be elected and to use all means 
to that end, it followed that he could not lay himself 
open to the risk of seeing his return quashed for 
irregularity. The probability that this judgment 
would be given was strong, for not only was Don 
Sebastian resolved to be national President regardless 
of law, but as the President of the Supreme Court was 
interim President of the Republic sede vacante, it was 
obvious that in the act of declaring the return of 
another to be irregular Don Jose would seat himself 
in the Presidential chair. To get rid of Sefior Iglesias 
and put a person more likely to prove compliant in 
his place would at the first blush appear to have been 
the simple course. But it was not simple. The 
summary dismissal of Don Jose Maria would have 
offended his friends, and would have given the 
Porfiristas, whose opposition was certain, good ground 
for asserting that the court had been packed and 
so for disregarding its judgment. Nor was it at all 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 153 

sure that anyone else who might be put in his place 
would not be tempted to display a manly and pro- 
fitable regard for the majesty of the law. 

Mere dismissal was therefore not to be thought of. 
Lerdo believed that he had found a more excellent 
way. He made a new rule with the help of his docile 
Congress, and it was that the right of examining into 
the legality of elections ought on all sound principles 
to belong to the electoral college which directed the 
taking of the poll. Of course Don Jose protested 
against that new little law of the President's, declared 
it unconstitutional, and offered his resignation. To 
let him go in these circumstances would have been 
equivalent to dismissal. So Lerdo refused to accept 
his resignation. A stormy interview followed. Don 
Jose protested that the law was no law, but he kept 
his place. It was obvious that his presence on the 
bench must be dangerous to Lerdo, for in the certain 
event of a denial of the legality of the election the 
President of the Supreme Court would insist on main- 
taining that he had jurisdiction. Lerdo must have 
considered this the lesser danger of the two. He left 
Iglesias in possession of his place and went on his own 
way, relying on being able to enforce his will when the 
time should come. What Iglesias might do would 
depend on what the Porfiristas could do. If they 
were beaten it would not be difficult to dispose of him. 

The election was treated as the farce which it was 
by Diaz and his party. He left his farm, La Cande- 
laria, in December, 1875, to open the campaign. On 
this occasion the course first adopted differed from that 
followed three years before. Diaz left his supporter, 
Don Fidencio Hernandez, to begin the rising in 
Oaxaca. He took ship in the British steamship 



iS4 DIAZ 

Corsica with several friends, and went to Brownsville, 
in Texas, just opposite the Mexican port Matamoros, 
at the mouth of the Rio Grande, which is here the 
border line between the two republics. His purpose 
was to cross the river and take command in the field 
at the opportune moment. In the meantime he 
directed operations from safe headquarters. 

The first move was made in Oaxaca with complete 
success. Don Fidencio Hernandez found no difficulty 
in scattering the small body of Federal troops which 
tried to oppose him and the ill-armed " Indiada " he 
led. The town of Oaxaca was easily taken, Govern- 
ment arms and rifles seized, while the Government 
troops were incorporated in the revolutionary army. 
Hernandez observed the traditional forms by issuing 
the regulation plan at Taxtupec. As it was modified 
by Diaz himself later, and produced on a second 
occasion as the Plan of Palo Blanco, no more need be 
done now than just note its appearance and name. 
The happy beginning in Oaxaca was well followed 
up. In a very short time the " banner of revolt " 
was being raised in all the four quarters of Mexico. 
As some troops adhered to Lerdo, and as General 
Latorre, who had been loyal to Juarez, was also true 
to him, some smart fighting in the Mexican way took 
place. Diaz himself crossed the frontier on March 22. 
Don Porfirio found that the Plan of Taxtupec was not 
wholly acceptable to the anti-Lerdinas. It provided 
for much they were in arms to secure, the removal of 
Lerdo being the essential point of the whole. But the 
Plan also provided that Don Porfirio should be General 
of the Revolutionary Army and that the right to act 
as Government should be given to him. Now the 
Northern leaders were not disposed to accept a chief 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 155 

named for them by Oaxaca. Diaz saw the necessity 
for a little judicious face-saving and modified the 
wording slightly. The preamble, which recited the 
sins of Lerdo, needed no alteration. The Plan as 
finally settled provided that the Constitution of 1857, 
with the amending Acts of 1873 and 1874, should be 
" the supreme law of the Republic." That the ineligi- 
bility of an outgoing President should also be a supreme 
law till such time as it was made a constitutional 
reform. That Lerdo and all his men were naught. 
That governors of States who accepted the Plan were 
to be kept in office. Those who did not were to be 
removed and replaced by nominees of the General-in- 
Chief of the Revolutionary Army. Another election 
for President was to be held within two months of the 
occupation of the capital by the said Revolutionary 
Army. That the President of the Supreme Court was 
to be interim President of the Republic (this was the 
face-saving clause) provided that he accepted this 
Plan in all its parts (this was the condition which ren- 
dered the face-saving clause quite harmless). That in 
case of his refusal the General-in-Chief was to be in- 
vested with executive power. That the next Congress 
was to set about the work of constitutional reform 
and to provide guarantees for the independence of 
municipalities. That all generals and officers who 
accepted this Plan no limit of time being fixed for 
acceptance were to be maintained in the possession 
of their rank and emoluments. 

The really important parts of the Plan of Palo 
Blanco were the clauses which put the President of 
the Supreme Court " between the sword and the wall," 
and the last. If Iglesias accepted the whole Plan he 
put himself in the hands of the General of the Revo- 



156 DIAZ 

lutionary Army, who would take care that he should 
not be elected definitive President for the full term of 
four years. But this was not Don Jose Maria's 
reading of the constitutional law of Mexico. His 
view was that when the President of the Supreme 
Court became interim President of the Republic, sede 
vacante, he alone was to have power to replace 
governors or do whatever else was necessary to make 
his own election sure. He pointed to the recent 
precedents of Juarez and Lerdo, and stood on constitu- 
tional practice with all the tenacity of the strictest 
sect of the Pharisees. 

For a time he was able to give substantial trouble to 
Diaz. He left the capital and entered into negotia- 
tions with persons of influence. His claim was that 
from the end of November, 1875, when the term for 
which Lerdo had been elected closed, he was interim 
President of Mexico, and government was to be con- 
ducted in his name. He found a good deal of support 
in the North. It was the trouble given him by 
Iglesias rather than a small check at the hand of 
Lerdo's troops at Ixcamula which decided Diaz to 
return to the South in June. He had made good pro- 
gress, had taken Matamoros, had been joined by 
partisans, and had collected an army about him. His 
revised plan of campaign was to go himself to New 
Orleans and from thence by sea to Veracruz, then 
put himself at the head of the Oaxacan forces. In 
the meantime General Gonzalez, on whom also he 
could rely, was to lead the revolutionary soldiers who 
adhered to Don Porfirio across country to the hill 
country of Puebla. Here the two were to meet and 
advance on Mexico. 

And now we have to leave high matters of politics 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 157 

and strategy and return for a last dip into the world 
of Dumas and Mayne Reid. The coming President of 
Mexico, a man of forty-five, head of a party and an 
army, had to go through an adventure such as would 
become the hero of a boy's book. Diaz recrossed the 
frontier of the United States and went to New 
Orleans. There he took passage for Veracruz in the 
coasting steamer City of Habana in the character of a 
Cuban doctor. The steamer put into Matamoros to 
pick up passengers and cargo that is to say, she lay 
four miles off that indifferent port till they were 
brought to her in lighters. When the passengers 
came aboard they turned out to be Lerdist soldiers 
who had surrendered to Diaz not long before, had 
been released by him, and knew him by sight. He 
was of course recognised at once, and knew he was. 
So long as he remained in the City of Habana he was 
in no danger, but there was every probability that he 
would be arrested when he reached Veracruz. In 
this fix he had recourse to a device which might per- 
haps have suggested itself at one time of his life to 
Bismarck, but which we can by no effort of fancy 
make credible in the cases of Cavour, Thiers, or Mr. 
Gladstone. He took to the water and made a 
determined effort to swim the whole four miles to the 
shore. Now Diaz could swim, but a man must be an 
uncommonly strong swimmer and in good practice to 
be able to swim four miles. The gallant attempt to 
reach his friends in Matamoros went indeed near to 
ending in a disaster. He began to become exhausted. 
A boat had to be sent from the ship to pick him up. 
The captain of the City of Habana was no doubt a 
humane man, but he had a strong motive for not 
allowing Don Porfirio to be drowned. Spanish and 



158 DIAZ 

Spanish-American port authorities have a lively 
passion for enforcing quarantine and for levying fines. 
If the number of passengers and crew actually on 
board had not coincided exactly with the list made at 
Matamoros the steamer would pretty certainly have 
been detained and a fine levied. 1 

When Don Porfirio was back in the steamer he was 
again in danger. But luck or good management 
came to his assistance. The purser of the steamer 
proved a friend in need. He contrived to conceal the 
future President in his cabin in a sofa seat, it is said, 
a very trying place to hide in during June or July, 
and in the Gulf of Mexico. At some period in the 
course of this adventure a bribe passed into the hands 
of somebody, but the truth is now in all probability 
past recovery, and the details of the story as it is 
commonly told are somewhat hard to work out by 
anyone who knows the routine of a passenger ship and 
a seaport. 2 The substantial fact is alone important, 
and it is that Diaz was helped to escape at Veracruz 
by the officers, or an officer, of the City of Habana 

1 The ways of Spanish-speaking officialdom are not ill-illustrated by this 
little incident which came under my own observation. A British ship had 
entered the port of Barcelona. The local health officers were taking the 
number of her crew to see that it coincided with the list. While the call was 
being taken the captain, who was on the bridge, had occasion to give an 
order to the deck. He bent over the rail of the bridge, taking off the sun 
helmet he wore and holding it out at arm's length behind the back of the 
mate, who was standing beside him. The health officer counted in the sun 
helmet and accused the captain of having one more on board than he 
acknowledged in the list. This was of course an excuse for a fine. When 
the facts were explained the officials accused the skipper of playing a 
practical joke on them, and he was fined for disrespect to the authorities. 
The British skipper, it is true, does play jokes of a very irritating character 
on " the authorities." One of them who was capable of this and greater 
things, being pestered just when he was about to leave by two customs- 
house officers who were prowling in search of an excuse to fine or to extort 
a bribe, inveigled them into his cabin, gave them beer, locked them in, got 
under way, and carried them with him to his next port, which was on the 
coast of Africa. 

2 Cf. " Porfirio Diaz," by Mrs. Tweedie, pp. 253255. 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 159 

disguised as a sailor. And then the other fact that 
leaders of great parties have to go through these 
adventures in Spanish-American States tells us much 
of the level at which those communities stand. 

In Veracruz he had friends, not only in politics, but 
in business, and he was personally liked by them for 
fair dealing. He had, as we know, a varied experience 
in escapes, and was moreover well acquainted with the 
country he had to cross. Between what help he found 
and his own resources, which must have included 
some money, he succeeded in reaching Oaxaca in July. 
Meanwhile Gonzalez was working South, and had 
reached the Tlascala hill country between Mexico city 
and Veracruz, while Diaz was getting ready to 
advance from Oaxaca. Lerdo's danger was steadily 
increasing. Iglesias was threatening him from the 
North and the Porfiristas were gathering force in the 
South. Gonzalez was between him and Veracruz and 
had cut the new railway at three places. Yet events 
did not move fast. In the climate of Mexico it is the 
heat of summer rather than the cold of winter which 
sends armies into quarters. October was well ad- 
vanced before Diaz had come sufficiently forward to 
be in a position to effect his junction with Gonzalez 
and other friends who were in the mountain country 
of the State of Puebla. Matters had now come to the 
point when a defeat in the field would mean the total 
ruin of Lerdo, while a victory might, and in all 
probability would, be of no more than temporary use 
to him. The disaster came on November 16. 

General Alatorre, with the Lerdist forces, had his 
headquarters at Teotitlan. This town lies about half- 
way between Oaxaca on the South, from which Diaz 
was advancing, and the mountains east of Puebla, 



i6o DIAZ 

where Gonzalez and other Porfirista leaders gathered 
to the North. These last had just been reinforced by 
General Tolentino, who with his men deserted the cause 
of Lerdo. Alatorre had the advantage of operating 
from the centre to the circumference, and with it the 
risk that he might be simultaneously attacked on 
both sides. It was the worst, and not the best of his 
position which was to be his lot. He tried to intercept 
Diaz and get the chance to beat his enemies in detail. 
But Don Porfirio's little force of some 4,000 men was 
not hampered by much baggage or train, and he had 
campaigned all over the country for years. It was 
not very difficult for him to turn Alatorre's position 
and push for the hills to the North, and so he did. 
Alatorre followed, and on the evening of November 1 5 
caught him up. But Diaz could now venture to stand, 
for his friends were near. He took up his position at 
Tecoac, north of Huamantla. It was too late to begin 
a battle on the evening of the I5th, and during the 
night he was joined by some of his friends from the 
Sierras. Gonzalez, with the main force, was still at 
some distance, but was advancing. The battle of 
Tecoac, the crowning mercy of the war, is said to have 
been very sanguinary and indeed it must have been 
if Alatorre lost, as he said he did, 1,900 killed and 800 
wounded. Such a proportion of killed to wounded 
may be said to be unknown to European armies. But 
little faith is due to Mexican statements of numbers. 
Don Porfirio was hard pressed, and in some danger of 
being driven from his position, when Gonzalez 
suddenly intervened, falling on Alatorre's right flank. 
The rout of the Lerdists was complete. Alatorre, it 
is said, was utterly surprised by the onset of Gonzalez, 
for he had supposed that the troops he saw approach- 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 161 

ing were reinforcements which he expected to receive. 
Tecoac was therefore a little battle of Waterloo, in 
which Diaz was Wellington, Gonzalez was Bliicher, 
Alatorre was Napoleon, and the supposed reinforce- 
ments may stand for Grouchy. The usual conse- 
quences of a Mexican victory followed in a measure. 
Three thousand prisoners passed over to the victorious 
side, but Diaz did not shoot the officers he took. 

As Lerdo's whole strength lay in the troops who still 
stood by him, the game was up after Tecoac. He 
showed that he realised the facts, for on November 20, 
four days after the battle, he fled from the capital, 
taking the till with him : $200,000 taken from the 
treasury and the Montepio (the state pawnbroking 
establishment) were loaded in the wagons which he 
took to the coast under protection of an escort of 
1,000 cavalry. Accompanied by some of the more 
hopelessly compromised of his friends, he fled to the 
Pacific coast, took ship, and found a refuge in the 
United States. 

His partisans could hardly be expected to go on 
fighting when he had fled, and, indeed, they lost no 
time in coming over to the victorious side. And now 
Diaz reaped the first benefits of the final clause of the 
Plan of Palo Blanco. It provided, we may remember, 
that all generals and officers 1 who should accept the 
Plan were to retain pay and rank. The adherents of 
the eleventh hour were to be even as those of the first. 
The object of Don Porfirio was to unite all the military 
factions under himself, and to drive nobody to 
desperation. When the Lerdist officers were abso- 

1 The Spanish formula is " generales, cabos, y oficiales " that is to say, 
generals, commissioned officers, and non-commissioned officers. The 
phrase ought not to be translated by " generals, chiefs, and officers," as it 
sometimes is. 



162 DIAZ 

lutely running in their haste to make their junction 
with him in time there was nothing to stay the occupa- 
tion of the capital. He entered it on November 23. 

With Don Sebastian in flight and his military forces 
hurrying to join the conqueror, only Don Jose M. 
Iglesias remained to be disposed of. During the 
advance of Diaz from the South Don Jose had been 
in active correspondence with him, and, indeed, 
letters continued to be exchanged between them, and 
friends were busy trying to bring them together till 
November 27, three days after the occupation of the 
capital. There was, and could be, no novelty in the 
discussion. Diaz was prepared to recognise Iglesias 
as interim President till a new election could be held 
if he would accept the Plan of Tuxtupec that is to 
say, be content with holding a purely honorific place 
for a time, and perhaps retaining his position as 
President of the Supreme Court. Don Jose was 
resolute to be interim President without restrictions 
to " make " his own election as President of the 
Republic. He was known to intend to keep the 
revolutionists of Tuxtupec at a safe distance from office. 
As a lawyer he would have no liking for revolutionary 
generals. It was characteristic of the pedant lawyer 
mind at all times and everywhere, and particularly 
characteristic of the Spanish slavery to mere sonorous 
words, that Don Jose Maria does really seem to have 
believed that he could put a hook in the nose of 
Leviathan with his windy constitutional theories and 
mere phrases. He seems never to have doubted that 
nothing save a hopeless perversity could prevent the 
general who had upset Lerdo from immediately giving 
up all he had fought for, and going meekly back to 
Candelaria, when he was told to respect the august 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 163 

dignity of the President of the Supreme Court. The 
patent facts that in such a country as Mexico the 
only possible ruler was a soldier, that Diaz could be 
beaten only by some other fighting man, and that 
even if a general from the North got the better of 
him in the name of Iglesias the real master would be 
that general, and not Don Jose Maria, produced no 
impression on the legal-minded man. To him facts 
were naught, and words were the only realities. 
There was nothing to be done with him but to keep 
him in play till the coast was clear of Lerdo, then 
clap your hat on, exclaim there must be an end of 
this, and call in Harrison's Regiment of Musketeers. 
And this is precisely the course which Porfirio Diaz 
followed. 

For a short time Mexico was in the curious position 
of possessing two provisional Presidents. Don Por- 
firio took the government provisionally in hand when 
he occupied the capital. Iglesias in the North 
protested that he alone was provisional or interim 
President, and he appeared to be collecting a con- 
siderable force. Queretaro, San Luis, Potosi, Zacatecas, 
and Aquasculientes proclaimed for him. The general 
who commanded in Jalisco put himself and his 
soldiers at the orders of Don Jose. The Lerdists in 
the North seemed to be every whit as ready to support 
him as those of the South were to adhere to Diaz. 
Each chief formed a Cabinet, and if appearances had 
corresponded to realities, there would have been 
every prospect of a war between North and South in 
Mexico. But as a matter of fact there was no relation 
between the appearances and the realities. Diaz was 
master of the capital and of the communications with 
Veracruz, as well as of the South. He had possession 



M 2, 



164 DIAZ 

of the richest parts of the territory of the Republic, 
and he controlled the chief source of its revenue the 
custom duty levied at Veracruz. The northern 
provinces, which Iglesias seemed to dominate, form 
the largest part of Mexico, but they are the poorest 
and the least inhabited. Iglesias's treasury was 
empty, and there was no prospect that it would be 
filled. Diaz was in possession of whatever Lerdo 
had left behind, and he had the means of getting more. 
His character for moderation and probity stood him 
in good stead. All classes could remember how careful 
he had been to protect property and keep the peace in 
1867. The classes which could dispose of money were 
not averse to trusting him. And then, too, the hopes 
of all the peaceful elements in the country were 
drawn to him because he was the man least likely to 
divide the country and most likely to make quiet 
possible in the future. It was true that he was a 
revolutionary general who had plunged the nation 
into another spasm of strife, but Lerdo was so 
thoroughly unpopular that few were disposed to blame 
the Porfiristas for getting rid of him. On the other 
hand, it was known that Iglesias wished to suppress 
the Porfiristas entirely by excluding them from office, 
not only in the Federal Administration, but in 
their own States that is to say, he was supposed to 
intend to take the very course which was certain to 
make trouble chronic. 

These things being thus, it followed that Iglesias 
could have no support except from the generals and 
politicians in the worst sense of the word who were for 
the time being collected about him. And where were 
the causes for which they could be expected to go on 
fighting ? No racial distinction marked the North 



THE FIGHTjpm THE PRESIDENCY 165 

off from the South ; and as for questions of principle 
to be fought over, there was only one, and it was as 
ill-calculated to nerve men to effort or self-sacrifice 
as could well be imagined. The Northern men were 
asked to go on fighting in order to give effect to Don 
Jose Maria's interpretation of the constitutional 
rights of the President of the Supreme Court. It 
certainly was not enough. 

Therefore, though Iglesias was supposed to have the 
support of an army of 20,000 men and Diaz could 
collect only half that number, when, after naming a 
governor to act for him in his absence, he marched out 
of the capital early in December, all opposition to the 
General of the Revolutionary Army disappeared 
without a fight. Iglesias did make one effort to 
oppose him, but only by persuasion. When Diaz 
entered Queretaro without meeting the least resis- 
tance on December 20, he was asked to agree, and did 
agree, to a final meeting with his rival. The interview 
took place at the farm of La Capilla (the Chapel), 
about three miles from Queretaro. Iglesias again 
laid his case before Diaz and expounded constitutional 
orthodoxy. But he was no longer of any value as an 
associate or even puppet. His men, who indeed were 
starving, were deserting him in troops with their 
officers. Diaz told him that he had refused to take 
the interim Presidency on condition that he accepted 
the Plan, and that he could not expect that the offer 
should be renewed. Don Jose abased himself so far 
as to offer to accept a Ministry named for him by Diaz. 
But the offer was declined. Then he retired from Silao 
to Guadalajara, and there on January 2, 1877, issued 
a final proclamation to the people of Mexico. Having 
made his last protest, he took ship at Manzanillo, and 



166 DIAZ 

retired to exile at San Francisco. Diaz made a 
progress of a peaceful and triumphant character 
through the northern provinces, and in February was 
back in the capital, the acknowledged master of 
Mexico. He was already President, for the election 
had been ordered to be held by his representative 
during his absence. The election of electors on the 
American principle took place on January 28. As a 
mere detail it is perhaps as well to mention that out of 
10.878 votes of electors chosen in 181 districts, 
10,500 were for Porfirio Diaz. There were other 
forms to be observed. The actual election of the 
President, or opening of credentials of the selected 
electors, and the election of Congress, were fixed for 
February II and 12, just after the President's return 
from the North. The Congress was to meet on 
April I, and on May 2 Diaz was declared by the 
Legislature to be the duly elected President. His 
term was to date from the time when he took posses- 
sion of the Government after the flight of Lerdo. 
Therefore his four years would be over in November, 
1880. 

If now the question What, if anything, had been 
gained for the cause of freedom, good government, 
and progress by some two years of fighting ? is put, 
the answer is easy to give. It had been decided that 
the man who was most capable of giving Mexico at 
any rate an interval of peace and well-directed 
administration was to be at the head of affairs, with a 
fair prospect of continuance in office. The elements 
of his power can be easily realised. First of all were 
his personal reputation and his character. There were 
no doubt men in Mexico, and even several of them, 
who could have fought the battle of Tecoac, or could 



fHE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 167 

have conducted a campaign of guerrilleros every whit 
as well as he. There was nobody who had the same 
general reputation, the support of followers in all 
quarters- of the Republic, and the confidence of the 
moneyed m'en, native and foreign, who could give 
financial help at a pinch. His moderation, his 
capacity to administer, his probity, and his energy 
were trusted. Therefore all who were tired of anarchy 
turned to him. The longing for peace and for some 
chance to enjoy a little material prosperity, which had 
caused the non-militant part of the population to 
hold aloof from him during the struggle with Juarez, 
were now in his favour. He had turned out to be the 
most promising man after all. But we must make 
no mistake on one point. All the other forms of 
support which he could rely on would have been 
insufficient if he had not won the confidence of the 
army. He himself had no delusion on the subject, 
and he shaped his conduct accordingly. 

The first speech he delivered to his Congress on 
April i, 1878, ends with a passage which is full of 
instruction on this vital matter. In it Don Porfirio 
tells Congress explicitly that he had restored the half 
of all military pensions which Juarez and Lerdo had 
taken away for reasons of economy. Faith, the 
President said, must be kept with the army. The 
Congress was asked to help him to carry out that 
obligation. It was given to understand, politely 
indeed, but with precision, that it simply must 
conform to the will of the President and the army. 
And not only must pensions be restored to their full 
figure, but the army on foot must be paid. The 
problem which this necessity forced on President and 
Congress alike was hard to solve. Thanks to the 



1 68 DIAZ 

" commendable circumstance " x that all the armed 
followings of the two defeated chiefs had come in, and 
had incorporated themselves in the Revolutionary 
Army, the national army was now in point of numbers 
far beyond the limit last fixed by Congress. The 
emptiness of the treasury was notorious. Yet these 
men had been promised the confirmation of their rank 
and continuance of their pay or a secure pension if 
they would adhere to the Plan of Palo Blanco. They 
had with very few exceptions adhered, and they must 
not be disappointed. Some, it was true, who were 
really in revolt out of pure resentment against Lerdo, 
had no wish to continue in arms. Some others who 
had taken arms under pressure on both sides were glad 
to be off home to their brown wives and the naked 
children who were tumbling about their patches of 
sugar-cane or their " magueys." But even when a 
large percentage had been withdrawn from the army 
made up of the three lately in the field, there remained 
a much larger body than the force last voted by Con- 
gress. But empty as the treasury then was, and 
whatever and whomsoever was forced to wait, faith 
must be kept with the soldiers. It was not only a 
question of honour, but of elementary common 
sense. Everybody in Mexico knew very well what 
had followed the wholesale reduction of the army by 
Juarez. Even from the merely practical point of 
view, keeping faith was likely to prove the cheaper 
course. But there was an obligation of honour and of 
patriotism to treat the army well. The soldiers of all 

1 " Plausible circunstancia " in Spanish. But the Castilian " plausible," 
though identical in spelling and origin with our " plausible," does not mean 
the same thing. It inherits direct from its mother " plauso " (applause), 
and implies " really deserving of praise " " a specious pretext " in the old 
and good sense. 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 169 

parties had just shown a capacity for combined action 
in the interest of the country such as had never so far 
been displayed by any body of Mexican civilians. 
Military government is an evil beyond peradventure, 
because it demonstrates the total lack of political 
faculty in all other parts of the State. But it is the 
least of evils when it is the alternative to anarchy. 
An army, even one which as a military force is bad, is 
at least an instrument of government. A mob of 
wrangling, intriguing, self-seeking politicians and 
political lawyers Carlyle's " attorney species " is 
a mere generator of anarchy. The firmness Diaz 
showed in enforcing justice for the army was one of 
the best proofs he gave of good political faculty. 
Without a united, contented army there could be no 
stable government in Mexico. The fact that he suc- 
ceeded in doing what no Mexican ruler had done before 
is the demonstration of his better practical faculty, 
and of his humanity too. By keeping faction from 
producing its ruinous consequences among the soldiers 
he gave the land about a generation of peace ; and he 
was able to get this control over the army because he 
had not shed blood in mere cruelty. In 1878, except 
for the executions after Miahuatlan, when it could be 
fairly alleged that the victims were indeed in the full 
sense of the word traitors, his hands were clean of 
blood. His government was based on military force 
because no other foundation could be laid in Mexico. 
His administration will be told later on. But the 
beginning of the story is the most appropriate place 
in which to consider, what were his method and his 
spirit. We have already seen with what care Diaz 
made and kept himself fit to wrestle with the responsi- 
bility and the long hours of work which the Presi- 



1 70 DIAZ~ 

dential office entailed' on a man who would not treat 
it merely as plunder to be enjoyed. Yet Diaz might 
have worked, and have worked himself to early ruin, 
if he had been a mere " mandon." But then no man 
who came to power in Mexico or in any Spanish- 
American State was less " mandon " than he. The 
note of that class of person is that he is intoxicated 
with conceit of his own grandeur and strength. He 
prefers to order and to overbear. He supposes that 
because nothing can be done unless some force stands 
ready for use in case of need and in the background, 
anything can be done by force employed in a suffi- 
ciently ruthless spirit. It is not necessary to know, 
to think, to look ahead, to learn, to consider others. 
The order and the application of force are enough. 
Acting on that principle the Santa Anas, Marquezes, 
even Don Jose Maria Iglesias, had waded from puddle 
to puddle of blood, and amid manifestations of self- 
will really not far removed from the delusions of a 
lunatic asylum, till they went headlong over some 
precipice. Bold Bayard, who lept before he looked 
because he was blind, had been the prevalent model 
in the poor, anarchical country. Don Porfirio was 
never known to leap before he looked. He was the 
last man in the world to imagine that because you can 
shear the sheep it is safe to try to shear the wolf. It 
was said in praise of our own Drake that he was a 
hearer of every man's opinion, but commonly a 
follower of his own. When a leader's own opinion is 
based on the best he can get from others and can 
combine, no better description of a managing man 
could well be given. And it is allowed of Diaz that 
he felt his way and thought his work out. When as 
President he had obtained full command of the 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 171 

machinery of administration he put out feelers 
through the Press, and he " tuned his (newspaper) 
pulpits." When he had especial reason for looking 
ahead he would appoint competent men to inquire for 
him and report. He would hear them in private, and 
he allowed the utmost freedom of speech. For him- 
self he listened patiently, and his questions were 
pertinent. When he knew all there was to learn he 
could act for himself. 

It would be strange if nobody had ever discovered 
that Porfirio Diaz was after all a figurehead, and that 
the merit belonged to some subordinate. Napoleon, 
as we have all heard, owed his victories to Berthier, 
and Wellington could do nothing without his Murray. 
The real brains of Don Porfirio were known by some 
sagacious persons to be deposited in the head of Justo 
Benitez, his secretary. But the time came when the 
President dispensed with Justo we shall see in what 
circumstances and was never a penny the worse for 
losing him. That he could use the services of others 
was obvious enough. No man could rule who was 
unable to employ agents. But Porfirio Diaz is com- 
monly said to have reposed little trust except where he 
had chosen his man. Mexican politicians who had 
held a conspicuous place in public life before 1878 
found that he kept them at arm's length. Don Matias 
Romero, who had been Mexican envoy at Washington 
during the French intervention, and Don Ignacio 
Mariscal were almost the only exceptions. 

Some time passed, we must suppose, before he had 
perfected his method or had completed his staff. 
And there were differences between his first term of 
office and those which followed. Yet he was the same 
man in 1878 that he was later on practical, not 



172 DIAZ 

blinded by self-conceit, ready and eager to work hard, 
open to hear the good advice and profit by the know- 
ledge of others, but no less capable of forming his own 
opinion, fixing his line of policy and acting for himself. 
He stood there ready to do all the good that it was in 
him to do for his country. If the good he was able 
to achieve was in the main transient, the fault must 
be shown to have been wholly his before he is blamed 
for failure. A far greater man, one who was a 
teacher and an inspirer, might have raised the moral 
and intellectual level of Mexico. At least one shrinks 
from saying that he could not. But we must take 
Porfirio Diaz as he was, a practical man, a born man 
of government who could keep order and administer 
ably. He, we are told and the facts bear out the 
judgment soon came to the conclusion that nothing 
more was within his scope. " Less government and 
more freedom " had been his maxim. A short 
experience convinced him that "Less politics and 
more administration " was what the country required. 
Politics in the world he was destined to live in meant 
intrigue with or without military violence, and nothing 
more. It was a curse, and from it he tried with con- 
siderable success to preserve the land. More adminis- 
tration when the object was a good one and the 
methods were rational was a blessing for as long as it 
could last. To it he applied himself, and it called for 
the strenuous exertion of all his faculties and the firm 
use of the military force he had gathered behind him. 
Don Rafael de Zayas Hernandez sums up the general 
situation of the country in terms which are borne out 
by the universal testimony of others : " He found the 
treasury empty, credit lost, a complete lack of confi- 
dence, foreign relations either broken off or suspended, 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 173 

serious difficulties with the United States were press- 
ing, and much judgment and tact, steadiness, and 
patriotism were needed to avert so much danger and 
save the national honour." 

The most elementary needs of an orderly society 
were not supplied. The whole country was swarming 
with bandits, who kidnapped men of means and held 
them to ransom. The trains from Veracruz dared 
not leave the stations without a guard. Murder 
and robbery were of daily occurrence. And all 
these crimes were committed with impunity, for there 
was no means of suppressing them. The evil was of 
old standing. It dated from the rising of Hidalgo in 
1810. It had been intensified by the war between 
Liberals and Conservatives and the French inter- 
vention. Nothing, or nothing really effectual, had 
been done to amend this long permanent anarchy 
during the administrations of Juarez and of Lerdo. 
The preliminary to whatever other good was to be 
done must needs be the restoration or perhaps we 
ought to say the establishment for the first time in 
the history of the Mexicans as an independent people 
of security. But the Government was hemmed in 
by a vicious circle. Without good administration 
there could be no development of national prosperity. 
And yet, without the resources which industry and 
prosperity supply, how was it possible to provide 
that is to say, to pay for a capable administration ? 
In the presence of such a hopeless-looking task 
clamouring to be performed, a ruler and a whole 
people might very well think that politics, even of a 
higher order than what had gone by the name in 
Mexico, could wait till a good administration had made 
it possible for work to be resumed. A nation must 



DIAZ 

live before it can philosophise. The problem for 
Mexico was how it was to live or rather the problem 
for the man who assumed the task of finding a solution 
was how he could enable a country which had no 
corporate will of its own, but only a plaintive longing 
for good government, to exist as a community 
at all. 

It was a great misfortune, and an evil inherited from 
the past, that the President could look for no help 
from the Church. Its power was still great in many 
parts of the Republic in, for instance, the thinly- 
inhabited Pacific State Michoacan. The wealth and 
the great lands were gone, but the hold of the Church 
on the fidelity of the poor Indian, and mostly Indian, 
population was strong. Its help would have been of 
the highest value to a Government which desired to 
raise the standard of morality and industry in the 
working classes. But that aid could not be given 
by the Church, nor asked for by the State. The 
Church had been despoiled and could not forgive the 
despoiler. The reader who has no personal experience 
of the relations between the clergy and the State in 
the so-called Latin countries of to-day finds it hard to 
realise the depth of the gulf between them. " El 
Gobierno es un ladron " (" The Government is a 
thief ") is the compendious formula of the clergy in 
Spain and in most of its old colonies. They cannot 
forgive the " el grande latrocinio " (" the great rob- 
bery ") ; neither can they forgive the compulsory 
civil marriage which was introduced by Juarez and 
cannot be abolished. They must condemn it on 
religious grounds, and they do not detest it the less 
that it was expressly meant to be injurious to them. 
The high marriage fees exacted by the Church have 



THE FIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENCY 175 

been said to have been one of the reasons why the 
Mexican peon indebted himself to an employer. The 
civil marriage was meant to deprive the Church of 
this source of revenue also. The compulsory secular 
education of which much is heard, and something is 
seen, in Mexico was no less odious. We need not go 
out of our own country to learn how very offensive to 
religious people is an education divorced from religion. 
We need not go to Mexico to know how a clergy resents 
being deprived of the great opening for good work 
(that is, when they are pious men) or the immense 
power (that is, when they are only human) which is 
conferred on them by the control of education. So 
because of grievances and on doctrinal grounds the 
clergy were hostile to the Government of Porfirio 
Diaz. 

Nor was that all. Those who have not lived in 
the midst of it cannot realise the fury of distrust, 
hatred, and repulsion which animates those who 
stand over against the Church. An Englishman may 
think that his Established Church asks for too much, 
and gives itself airs. He does not, or he is a very rare 
exception if he does, grow hot against it as a fount 
of mental imbecility and moral corruption. Now the 
anti-clerical of the Latin countries very commonly 
does. So President Diaz had to endure the reproaches 
of some of those who had fought with him under the 
leadership of Juarez. Though he gave back no lands, 
though he enforced the law which imposed civil 
marriage, though he would not suffer the clergy to 
appear in clerical dress in the streets, nor so much as 
allow the ringing of church bells, they accused him of 
truckling to the clergy and encouraging the corruption 
of the people because he did not put a stop to such 



176 DIAZ 

functions as the coronation of a certain sanctified 
statue of the Virgin. 1 

Meanwhile the clergy were denouncing him as a 
persecutor. All through the administration of Lerdo, 
who was peculiarly odious to the Church because his 
brother was the author of the law which secularised 
the Church lands, and then till far into the rule of Diaz, 
there took place a series of clerical riots in towns and 
villages. The worst were in Michoacan, but there 
were others elsewhere. A President who had by the 
ears two such wolves as the militant clerical and anti- 
clerical parties had need to keep a firm hold of them. 

1 To prevent the ringing of church bells may look like a contemptible 
piece of petty persecution. But a church bell may be rung by way of 
demonstration or counter-demonstration. A few years ago it was my luck 
to attend a political meeting of a Liberal shade in a Spanish city. It was 
held in a hall. On the other side of the street was a convent. For a: ong 
time, and until the police struck in, the: onvent bells were rung madly 
with the very probable intent, and certainly with the result, of rendering 
the speakers half-inaudible. There was an overflow meeting in the street. 
The clerical demonstration was resented, and if there had not been a strong 
force of constabulary on the spot the convent would have been attacked. 
The constabulary officer in command had to tell the superior of the convent 
that he was provoking a riot, and to order him to stop the bells. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FIRST TERM 

DIAZ settled himself, not in the official residence of 
the President, the former Palace of the Viceroys, but 
in a private house, to struggle with the hopeless- 
looking problem he had undertaken to manage. 
Like other tasks, it grew less terrible when resolutely 
tackled than it had appeared to be from a distance. 
If we could gain access to the very private and con- 
fidential papers of Mexican moneyed men and foreign 
capitalists whose interests were bound up with the 
restoration of order, we would no doubt learn how the 
new Government was supplied with the funds which 
tided it over its first days. In most Spanish-American 
political conflicts there are holders of the purse-strings 
who keep in the background but who provide the 
military chest. Some body of interested moneyed 
men no doubt did for Porfirio Diaz what the bankers of 
Paris did for Napoleon in the interval before Brumaire, 
when he was as yet only General Bonaparte and not 
even First Consul. When the immediate need had 
been met, the difficulty of finding a revenue equal to 
calls which could not be neglected was not insuperable. 
The army did not need to be laboriously persuaded 
before it could understand that a revenue must be 
secured if it were to enjoy the pay, allowances, and 
pensions to which it was entitled. It was a fact 
patent to the dimmest intelligence that as the best 
part of the national revenue came from the customs 



D. 



178 DIAZ 

levied at Veracruz, die road to the main seaport must 
be opened and kept open. Therefore the President 
had the willingly-given help of officers and soldiers in 
effecting the first piece of work to be done. 

Armed men in competent numbers and in a reason- 
able state of discipline had no great exertions to make 
before they could establish a fair working state of 
order in the more vitally important regions. It is 
true that many of the so-called soldiers were by origin 
brigands and guerrilleros. But it is also true that most 
of them had taken to these lines of life because there 
was very little else for them to do. They were poachers 
who were quite disposed to adopt the honest trade of 
gamekeeper. Diaz made prompt and effectual use 
of their better aptitudes. The organisation of the 
excellent constabulary known as " guardias rurales " 
did not begin with Diaz, but it was vastly improved 
and developed by him. The rurales in their brown or 
buff uniforms, high steeple-crowned sombreros, well 
armed and well mounted, were to constitute not the 
least useful of the President's instruments of govern- 
ment. He recruited them freely among the men who, 
under himself or other " caudillos " and " cabecillas " 
of the days of disorder, had learnt all the mountain 
paths and hiding places they were now to supervise, 
in the course of years of guerrillero and bandit adven- 
ture. They were masters of all the devices they had 
practised, and now, having decided to exchange a life 
in which long intervals of sloth and hardship were 
relieved by occasional and uncertain hauls of booty, for 
regular pay and a position of social credit, they became 
a terror to such evil-doers as they themselves had been 
in their unregenerate days. The perhaps imaginary 
Irishman who confessed that he and his friends were 



THE FIRST TERM 179 

not afraid of the soldiers but of the police very exactly 
expressed the sentiments which were rapidly instilled 
into disorderly Mexicans. A company of soldiers 
might be befooled, but not a detachment of old prac- 
titioners who knew the country as they knew the palms 
of their hands, who were everywhere, and who knew 
not only the places but the persons, who would learn 
at once whether any man was absent from the house 
where he ought to be, and why. The methods 
adopted by the rurales may not have been, and indeed 
were not, what would be suffered in the kindred Irish 
Constabulary. They were nearer the ways of the 
Spanish Civil Guard. A practice which in Mexico 
was even embodied in a law the " Ley Fuga " (the 
" Law of Flight ") gave the rurales large powers of 
summary jurisdiction. If a man did not surrender at 
once when summoned, or if when being taken to prison 
he attempted to escape, they were authorised to shoot 
him on the spot. As from the nature of their work it 
commonly happened that there were no witnesses of 
the resistance to arrest, or attempt to escape, save 
the rurales themselves, we can understand that sum- 
mary executions were nowise uncommon. We may 
take it as pretty certain that when a man was a 
notorious offender who had given trouble, and par- 
ticularly if he was one who at any time had injured 
a member of the corps, he always offered resistance or 
attempted to escape. But it is not said that the 
rurales abused their power grossly, or in order to 
extort an advantage of any kind for themselves. And 
it is a fact that men who have inherited Spanish blood 
and ideas are very tolerant of the use of summary 
methods in dealing with criminals. They trust 
rurales or civil guards more than they do the civil 



N 2 



i8o DIAZ 

tribunals which they believe to be corrupt, and they 
think the summary c: quatro tiros " (four shots) of 
the constabulary vastly preferable to the lumbering 
procedure of the courts. Within no long period life 
and property were tolerably safe in the valley of 
Mexico, on the Plain of Anahuac, and over a broad 
belt of country on either side of the road to Veracruz. 
If the police in the towns was not so good, at least 
there began to be a police of which we may say that 
it did deserve the name given to the corps to which 
Diaz had belonged in his boyhood, " Peor es nada." 
It was a " better than nothing." 

There was another kind of predatory creature, who 
was all the more dangerous because his offences were 
more subtle than robbery under arms and were 
beyond the scope of the rurales. The public service 
swarmed with bribers and blackmailers and thieves. 
The long disorders which had favoured brigandage 
were no less friendly to the corrupt official. When 
even the army could not be paid, nor the interest on 
the public debt, it followed that the civil officials had 
to go without their salaries or at any rate without 
regular payment. The armed men were allowed to 
recoup by rapine an unrivalled training for highway 
robbery and the civil officials to gain a livelihood 
by corruption. The advantages of the position were 
so great that places under Government were eagerly 
sought for. Men of influence provided for their 
trusty followers by foisting them on a public office. 
It was calculated that when Diaz became President 
there were 2,000 confessedly superfluous officials in 
the public offices of the capital. They were, it is true, 
not entirely free from check. The great men at the 
head levied a part of their dishonest gains as a 



THE FIRST TERM 181 

consideration for giving them a wide margin of free- 
dom. Corruption had in fact got to the point when 
it could be flaunted. Mr. Wells, who visited Mexico 
a few years after 1878, was not unacquainted with 
graft in his native United States, but he found it 
avowed, even after the reform had begun in Mexico, 
with an audacity which was new in his experience. 
He heard of a countryman of his own who passed for 
being exceptionally familiar with lobbies and lobby- 
ing. This old practitioner had a concession to secure, 
or some other interest to be served, and he approached 
the important person whose approval was needed 
boldly. " If you will arrange that for me," he said, 
" I will pay you $5,000 and keep the transaction a 
strict secret." " If you will made it $10,000 you may 
tell all the world," was the answer. The story in 
slightly different forms is told of many lands, but it is 
not thought plausible save in certain conditions of 
public morality. 

The new President did at least charge home on the 
pest. Having the whole armed force in his hand, and 
the army being well persuaded that if it was to receive 
its pay and allowance out of the revenue of Mexico 
($17,000,000) some reasonable measure of honesty 
must be shown in handling the money, he could use 
the broom freely. It would be rash indeed to affirm 
that bribery and corruption ceased either then or 
afterwards. But the staff was cut down to just 
proportions to begin with. A stronger measure, 
which only a very firmly planted ruler would have 
dared to take, followed. A tax was levied on all non- 
military salaries. In a country where direct taxation 
was not known save in the form of a poll-tax on Indian 
labourers and was vehemently hated, the Government 



1 82 DIAZ 

officials were subject to income tax. The measure, 
hard as it was, could not be spared in view of the 
distressed condition of the Treasury. Don Porfirio 
set an example of sacrifice by consenting to the reduc- 
tion of his own salary from $25,000 to $15,000. He 
lived very quietly in his house in the Calle de la Moneda 
(Mint Street), 1 and was as unpretentious in his way of 
life as he was accessible to all sorts and conditions of 
men. His disinterestedness compared well with the 
rather grasping action of Juarez, and must have had a 
wholesome effect. But he did not rely on compulsory 
sacrifice and good example alone. He knew that life 
must be made tolerable for those whose services are 
indispensable. Therefore he began by taking care 
that the reduced salaries should at least be regularly 
paid. When by 1896 the revenue had grown, and 
the sacrifices imposed in 1878 were no longer necessary, 
the tax on salaries was taken off. At a still later date 
the scale of pay was raised to meet the increased cost 
of living. To employ no more clerks than are needed 
to do the work and to pay them a salary on which 
they can live decently are the two antecedent con- 
ditions of the formation of an honest public service. 
The truth has been patent for centuries. The mis- 
fortune of many countries has been that it was ignored. 
President Diaz did try to establish these conditions, and 
it is a credible proposition that the corruption which 
continued to exist did not go beyond what was normal 
in England till the end of the eighteenth century. 

The simplicity of his life, the accessibility of the 
President, and his readiness to hear all men who 
wished to speak to him had much to do with the uni- 

1 In Spanish moneda is money, una moneda is a coin. La Casa de la 
Moneda, or for short La Moneda, is the Mint. 



THE FIRST TERM 183 

versal popularity he earned and kept for years. They 
would have had their effect in any country, but they 
were particularly valuable in Mexico. They were made 
possible partly by the general simplicity of existence, 
but still more by the fact that the people had inherited 
their standard of manners from the Spaniard at his 
best. The Spaniard is always willing to recognise 
rank, but he expects to be " treated like a man " and 
without " vapours." The neat indications of rank 
which can be made by the use of the Don, the Senor, or 
the unadorned Christian name, are understood by all 
by Pedro as well as by Don Luis. So there is the 
less fear that Don Luis will lower himself, or Pedro 
will presume when they talk together " like men." 
And because the formulas are fixed and their ortho- 
doxy is undisputed and universally known, the man 
who has risen from the ranks drops with wonderful 
ease into the ways and bearing of a " gentleman born." 
There is no uncertainty as to what is the right thing 
to do, and therefore but little of the underbred 
uneasiness of the parvenu. Senor Fornaro will have 
it that Don Porfirio learnt the dignity he showed in 
his later years after his second marriage to a lady of 
a good Creole stock. Senor de Zayas says that in his 
earlier years he was timid in his bearing. Timidity 
may be due to an absence of mere self-conceit. 
Foreigners who saw him were of opinion that long 
before he was President he had the air of a soldier 
and a gentleman. It was not only because Mexico 
is a republic, but because the Mexicans were in part 
Spaniards, and trained in the old Spanish standard, 
that the son of the innkeeper at Oaxaca, who had also 
been farrier in a cavalry regiment, was perfectly at 
home as head of the State. 



1 84 DIAZ 

In the meantime popularity, military support, and 
the general longing for peace and freedom to work 
were none too much to bear Diaz up in the task before 
him. There were three dangers he had to face. To 
put them in their order of real importance they were : 
the relations of Mexico with the United States ; the 
distress of the national finances ; and a remnant of 
armed faction which plotted, agitated, and broke out 
sporadically for a time. Unless he had averted the 
first he would have striven in vain to overcome the 
second and the third. From the day on which he 
became President till that other thirty-three years 
later when he sailed from Veracruz amid the down- 
fall of his labours, there can have been few days, 
and there cannot have been a single month, in 
which the relations of his country to the United 
States did not give him cause for thought and 
anxiety. The great power to the north has hung, 
and hangs, over Mexico like a mass of snow or 
earth which some act of folly or accident may turn 
into avalanche or landslip. Questions of the dip- 
lomatic order pressed for solution, and behind 
them, giving them an almost awful importance, 
were physical, geographical, social, and financial 
forces. 

It is a literal statement of fact, that for a Mexican 
ruler the exterior world is divided into the United 
States and all the rest. If the first is friendly, the 
second can do him but little harm. If the first is 
hostile, the second can render no help. In 1878 there 
was a strong probability that the United States might 
become actively hostile. Before going further let us 
guard ourselves with care against the risk of seeming 
to agree with those critics, of whom some of the most 



THE FIRST TERM 185 

trenchant have been Americans, 1 who have said that 
the United States have been aggressively brutal to 
their neighbour. Individual Americans have behaved 
badly to Mexico, but the Government of Washington, 
which alone acts for the United States, has on the 
whole shown much long-suffering in its dealing with the 
unruly and provocative community on its southern 
border. 

The numerous and chronic disputes between them 
have arisen from two kindred sources the disorders 
of the border, and the losses caused to American citi- 
zens by or through the internal confusions of the 
Spanish- American Republic. Putting aside the con- 
ditions of the border for the moment, the two sides 
may be treated together, to begin with, simply because 
there was always a question of compensation to be 
paid for wrongs inflicted on individuals. There were 
cases in which the sufferer was a Mexican ; and then 
the one claim had to be set off against the other. The 
Mexican grievances mostly arose from the border, but 
the Americans had suffered everywhere. There were 
cases of violence practised on individual citizens of 
the States in various ways, but the worst of all were 
the constant extortions of forced levies of military 
service and money. On paper the Mexicans had often 
a good case, and their diplomatists, who are by no 
means lacking in quickness of wit, could frequently 
seem to put the United States in the wrong. They 
could, and they did, argue with much verbal force 
that these levies and contributions did not constitute 
a true grievance, because they were not imposed on 

1 Mr. Wells, for instance, does not mince matters. He declares roundly 
that the United States have played the part of a great bully to their weaker 
neighbour, and that opinion is far from being peculiar to him. 



1 86 DIAZ 

Americans alone but on the whole body of the 
inhabitants. Now it is a tenable proposition that 
if a man will settle in a foreign country in search of 
some advantage to be obtained for himself he has no 
ground for claiming better or other treatment than is 
shown to the people among whom he has of his own 
free will chosen to live. But this is only true when 
the country he lives in offers good guarantees for order 
and equal treatment in a uniform and legal way. 
Moralists and sentimentalists may refuse to make a 
difference between country and country. They may 
ask why did you go where the kind of treatment you 
desire to receive was notoriously not to be found ? 
The answer is perhaps illogical, but it is a good one. 
It is, we go because the world is so constituted that 
we do and we must. If the question is why do you 
make a difference between one country and another ? 
the answer is perfectly logical. It is that they are 
different. There is no parity between the obligation 
to pay taxes, to conform to police rules, to submit to 
expropriation for public services, or to the compulsory 
use of property in a time of war, to which an American 
might be called upon to yield in England or France, 
and the outrages the " avanias " of Turkish pashas 
and Chinese mandarins. Now the whole case of 
America was that the wrongs which its citizens had 
suffered in Mexico at the hands of Santa Anas and 
Miramons were of the same nature as the excesses of 
pashas and mandarins. If Mexico wished to be 
treated like England or France she must offer the 
same guarantees, and that she had notoriously never 
done. Therefore she must expect to be classed with 
Turkey or China. And in sober fact the United States 
were right. Since they were they must be allowed to 



THE FIRST TERM 187 

have shown moderation. Even if we look back to 
and beyond the war of 1 848 the Union can fairly say 
that it endured more and retaliated less than European 
Governments have done. A comparison between their 
policy to Mexico and that of the Marquess of Wellesley 
to the Mahratta rulers or of the British Government 
to China (a much more stable country than Mexico) 
ought to be in their favour in the opinion of those who 
condemn the use of force. 

After the war of 1 848 there had been long discussions 
which dragged on till 1876. When at last a settle- 
ment was made it left Mexico with the obligation to 
pay $4,125,622 in yearly instalments of $300,000 to 
begin in January, 1877. A rebate of $150,622 to be 
deducted from this sum was made for proved Mexican 
claims. It is not unworthy of notice that the 
$4,125,622 was all that remained of 2,000 American 
claims which amounted to $556,788,600. The com- 
missioners who examined the accounts presented to 
them had to reduce to fair proportions whole floods of 
greedy pretensions, supported by a positive frenzy of 
mendacity and forgery. The story had a sequel 
which can hardly be quoted against the United States. 
Among the claims presented and supported by the 
United States Government were two made by a Mr. 
Benjamin Weil and by the La Abra Mining Company 
for $487,810 and $681,041. The Mexican Govern- 
ment protested against them as fraudulent, and they 
became the subject of litigation in the States. The 
law's delays dragged the case on till 1900, when the 
Court decided against Mr. Weil and the company. 
Then the United States Government both refused to 
collect any more for them and refunded the payments 
which had already been made. It should be added 



. 

1 88 DIAZ 

also that the umpire chosen by both sides in 1873 was 
Sir Edward Thornton, British Minister at Washington. 

In 1877 the demand of the United States for the 
payment of the first instalment due in January was 
to be met. The sum of $300,000 was not a heavy 
one for a revenue of $17,000,000. But the revenue 
had not been collected when Congress met in April, 
and further delays would be dangerous. Indeed, 
there was no regular channel by which a request for 
time could be made. The Government of Washington 
treated Diaz as only one military adventurer the 
more, and did not so far recognise him as lawful 
President. It is to be presumed that this refusal of 
recognition was meant to be a form of coercion and a 
warning, since it is difficult on a survey of Mexican 
history to see that the election of Diaz was less lawful 
than those of his predecessors with extremely rare 
exceptions if, indeed, there was more than one. 
The attitude of the United States Government was of 
course an encouragement to the irreconcilable Ler- 
distas who were plotting in their places of exile in 
Texas. The first instalment of $300,000 must be 
paid off, and it was paid by having recourse to the 
familiar expedient of a forced loan. Henceforward 
the payment was regularly discharged till the whole 
award was cleared off in 1890. In April, 1878, after 
the second instalment had been supplied, the United 
States Government did at last recognise President 
Diaz, and the relations of the two Governments became 
as friendly as the unending disputes on the frontier 
allowed. 

These last did not end, and have not ended when this 
page is being written. They are secure of a renewal 
of life so long as the condition of the country on the 



THE FIRST TERM 189 

Mexican side of the line and the population on the 
northern side remain the same. When after the 
disastrous war of 1848 Mexico was deprived of all 
the territory it claimed to hold north of the Rio Grande 
more than half the total area of the Republic the 
Mexicans remained, as was but natural, angry and 
apprehensive. It is true that this vast expanse of 
territory was of little value. Much of it was waterless 
and barren, but to a far greater extent it was worthless 
because it was not inhabited by a useful population. 
A few settlements of Mexican half-breeds were lost 
in empty deserts, and among tribes of Red American 
Indians, Apaches, and others only less bestially 
ferocious than they. Mexico herself could supply 
no colonists, and the story of those whom she had 
invited to Texas from abroad was not encouraging 
either to them or to her. Still, Mexicans could hardly 
be expected to bear their loss with indifference. It 
was not possible that they should be without fear of a 
new American advance. The best and, in the long 
run, the only effectual defence would have been to 
settle the country on the right bank of the Rio 
Grande up to El Paso, and then on the south of the 
line running westward from El Paso to the Pacific, 
which together marked the new frontier. But the 
Mexicans had no overflow of their own to settle in 
these regions, and they could not draw on the popula- 
tion of Europe. The conditions which have allowed 
of considerable German and Italian settlements in 
Southern Brazil and the Argentine did not exist for 
such remote, and before the construction of railways 
such inaccessible, regions as Chihuahua, Coahuila, 
Sinaloa, and Sonora. The peninsula of Lower Cali- 
fornia and the maritime States both on the Pacific 



190 DIAZ 

Coast and on the Atlantic were, it is true, open to 
immigration from the sea. But the Mexicans were in 
fear of all immigrants. Schemes for the establishment 
of a French settlement in Sonora, whether pushed by 
mere filibusters like Pindray and Raousset-Boulbon, 
or more peaceful speculations advocated by Jecker 
or patronised by Napoleon III. during the Empire, 
were equally repugnant. The Mexicans were sus- 
picious of all " gringos," and were persuaded that 
these intruders meant mischief to them. They 
looked with hostility on the pushful newcomers, as did 
the Gauchos of the Argentine Pampas on the Euro- 
peans who displaced them and threatened to rob them 
of their very " chiripas." 1 

Except on the sea-coast and in a few ports, Mexico 
was represented in the great belt of territory which 
stretches from Lower California to the Atlantic by a 
sparse population of herdsmen, vagabond seekers for 
" bonanzas," bits of luck in the shape of pockets of 
gold, half-breeds, and broken men. In 1877 and for 
some years afterwards the United States had not 
subdued their own territory to complete order and 
especially not in Arizona and New Mexico, which 
stand over against Chihuahua and Coahuila. Then 
the half-breed herdsmen and their like on the Mexican 
side were not the only inhabitants. Where they could 
not occupy the land, hunting Indians roamed, or 
Pueblo Indians lived their old communal life. In 
these conditions it would have been strange if the 
border had not reproduced all, or more than all, that 
our own ancestors knew under that name. The 

1 The " chiripd " is the shawl which the riders of the Pampas wrap round 
the middle of the body as a protection against the cutting winds from the 
South Pole. An odd and rather indecent story has been invented to account 
for an article of dress which really explains itself. 



THE FIRST TERM 191 

Indian tribes on the northern side began to burst into 
Mexico as they felt the pressure not only of the rifles, 
but of what was more deadly by far to them, the 
economic conditions created for them by the ad- 
vancing whites who broke up or enclosed their hunting- 
grounds and were exterminating the bison. From 
Mexico as from a place of refuge they raided back on 
the enemy who had starved and forced them out. 
The unfailing products of an unsettled border the 
cattle-lifters, half-breed, and white could not be 
lacking. In fact they swarmed. Most troopers are 
agreeably picturesque figures on the pages of Sir 
Walter, but Willie of Westburnflat or the Devil's 
Dick of Hellgarth are less attractive when seen in their 
native characters of cattle-lifter, horse-thief, fire- 
raiser, blackmailer, and murderer. 

There was another personage at work who had been 
unknown to the Middle Ages to wit, the land specu- 
lator. Northern Mexico was the country of the 
" hacendados," the great landowners whose acres 
were counted by the million. But there was land to 
sell, and it will occur to everybody as but natural that 
a title more or less good could be obtained in Mexico 
at a very cheap rate. It could in fact be acquired 
in Mexico for a few cents an acre. If only the country 
could be transferred to the sovereignty of the United 
States the market price would promptly rise to the 
same number of dollars. Of course there were not a 
few holders of titles Mexicans too in many cases 
who were perfectly ready to foment any disorder in 
the hope that the United States might be tempted or 
provoked to make another advance and annex another 
belt of Mexican territory. The change of sovereignty 
would -promptly have interpreted itself for them into 



192 DIAZ 

a very profitable transaction. Nor was there wanting 
on the American side a lively desire for new land to be 
settled, or, what was more innocent, for the greater 
security which would come of the presence of the 
United States cavalry on the right bank of the Rio 
Grande. In short, pretext, provocation, speculation, 
and the just resentment of the Government at 
Washington might combine at any moment. There- 
fore it was that the United States hung over Mexico 
like an impending avalanche or landslip. Indeed 
it was thought that but for the firmness of President 
Hayes the whole mass would have been precipitated 
during Don Porfirio's first Administration, and that, 
no doubt, was one main reason why he was resolved, 
and was able, to bring his countrymen to pay the 
$300,000 a year of indemnity according to the terms 
of the award of 1876. 

There was, however, more to be done. If the 
Mexicans suffered from Indian and other raiders who 
came across the border from the American side, the 
citizens of the United States lost far more by the 
raiders who came from the south, for the sufficient 
reason that they had incomparably more to lose. 
Pursuit of the offenders was useless when they could 
take refuge across a border and could not be followed. 
There is no reason to believe that the United States 
would have wished to send their troops across the 
frontier in pursuit of Indian or half-breed raiders if 
the Mexican Government would have maintained a 
proper ward of the marches. But that it would not 
and could not do. Like other Spanish American 
communities, it was far too ready to take advan- 
tage of its own wrong, to plead that because it was 
anarchical, and therefore very poor, it ought not to be 



THE FIRST TERM 193 

summoned to perfornyts elementary functions. When 
it was shown to be incompetent to the injury of its 
neighbours, it stood on its dignity. When during the 
Administration of Juarez it was asked to consent to 
allow American troops to cross the frontier, it declined. 
The American Government was honourably patient 
and took the perfectly fair course of offering reci- 
procity. Till 1 877 nothing was done. In the confused 
condition of Mexico in these years it was often not as 
much as possible to say who was the Government, or 
where was the Government, at any given moment. 
In 1877, just when Diaz was really beginning to bring 
the country to order, the condition of the border, 
especially where it marched with the new well- 
inhabited and prosperous State of Texas, had reached 
a point where the sufferers declared that the nuisance 
was no longer to be tolerated. The reputation of the 
Texans is that not very much is required to bring them 
to the fighting pitch. Some among them by general 
admission were on the same moral level as Mexican 
cattle-lifters. Every raider was not born south of the 
Rio Grande. There were some who had first crossed 
the river from the north, and to whom Mexican 
territory served as a no man's or debatable land, 
where they could find refuge. But that is only 
another way of saying that the Mexican Government 
did not govern. The grievance was not all on one 
side, but it was real, and it was worse for the richer of 
the two countries. 

In June, 1877, the United States Government gave 
instructions to General Ord, the officer commanding 
in Texas, to cross the frontier in pursuit of Mexican 
marauders. He was, however, told to act in harmony 
with the local authorities and to ask their help. 



194 

These instructions showed a desire to make com- 
pliance as easy for the Mexican Government as the 
state of the case permitted. None the less the advance 
of the American troops would have constituted an 
invasion. The action of the United States, or rather 
the threat to take action, created a serious difficulty 
for Diaz. If he yielded, he would have discredited 
himself in the eyes of his countrymen, and then some- 
body would have been found to set the old anarchy 
boiling again. If he had taken a very high tone with 
the United States, he might, indeed he certainly 
would, have provoked a war in which Mexico would 
have suffered grievously. No such result was desired 
on either side. President Diaz took a line which, while 
satisfying the susceptibilities of his countrymen, was 
really a compliance with the just demands of the 
United States. He sent General Trevifio to the fron- 
tier with a competent body of troops and with public 
orders to resist General Ord by force if he advanced. 
It was generally believed, however, and the opinion 
seems a plausible one that General Trevifio was 
privately instructed not to be officious in putting 
himself in the way of the American general. This 
measure was accompanied by a vigorously-worded 
protest against the proposed action of the United 
States as contrary to international law. But the 
protest was followed by the adoption of measures to 
bring the border to quiet. It was allowed that they 
were effective and that the marauding was abated. 
It is not rash to assume that General Trevifio and 
other Mexican officers, acting under the wholesome 
stimulant applied by America, administered a good 
deal of Jeddart justice and Halifax law on the right 
bank of the Rio Grande. 



THE FIRST TERM 195 

The trouble did not cease, for it arose from the 
natural wealth of the soil in such growths. But 
President Diaz convinced the United States that he 
meant well, and that if he were not unduly hampered 
he would do better. After he had been recognised in 
April, 1878, the two Governments joined to provide 
a remedy. In 1880 the States asked for an arrange- 
ment, regularly recognised and recorded, by which 
their troops might cross the line in pursuit of 
marauders. President Diaz, after consulting with his 
Congress (mainly, one imagines, from politeness and 
for form's sake), consented to a treaty, not, however, 
signed till July 29, 1882, when he was not in office. 
By this treaty the regular troops of each Government 
were to be authorised to cross into the territory of the 
other on certain conditions. The entry must not be 
made on settled land, nor go within six miles of any 
settlement. It must be notified at once to the local 
authorities, and the pursuing force must retire when 
the capture was effected or the trail was lost. Con- 
ventions of this kind have since been repeatedly made 
and renewed. President Diaz had secured for his 
country equality of treatment, though it was not he 
who actually signed the treaty of 1882. 

The line adopted by the two Governments was the 
best available, but it is obvious that there was a 
considerable danger in such reciprocity as this. 
When one side was impatient and perhaps unduly 
scornful, and the other was susceptible and not without 
resentment, collisions were not unlikely to occur. 
One did in 1886. An American officer, Captain 
Crawford, crossed the frontier into Chihuahua on a 
proper occasion with a few United States soldiers and 
a large proportion of Apache scouts. By a misfortune 



O 2 



196 DIAZ 

such as was inherent in the case, a body of the Mexican 
Chihuahuan guard which was in pursuit of other 
raiders fell in with Captain Crawford's detachment. 
Misled, as it alleged, by the sight of the Apache scouts, 
it concluded that it had to do with a body of plunder- 
ing Indians. It attacked and Captain Crawford was 
killed. The incident excited, as may be supposed, 
much anger in the United States. But a war was not 
desired, and Diaz, who was now back in the Presi- 
dency, had the confidence of the American Govern- 
ment. It recognised that Captain Crawford had not 
observed the terms of the treaty with exact care. He 
was entitled to cross the frontier, but only with regular 
troops. The greater part of his command consisted of 
Apache scouts who could not be so described. The 
trouble was smoothed over, but when collisions of 
this character were likely to occur vigilance and good- 
will must have been taxed on both sides to keep 
friendly relations from being broken. 

His first Administration did not give President 
Diaz the chance of putting the finances of Mexico on 
a better footing. He was indeed tempted to do them 
some damage. But they may be allowed to stand for 
a space while we turn to his struggle with the condi- 
tions which had to be subdued if he was to go on doing 
any measure of good on any side of Government. 

The new President had bound himself by all " Plans " 
issued by him La Noria, Textupec, and Palo Blanco 
to establish the rule that no immediate re-election 
for the Presidency was to be allowed in future. And 
this rule was to apply to the governors of the States. 
He had also bound himself tacitly by the final clause 
of the Plan of Palo Blanco, and explicitly by definite 
promises he gave in a public letter published after 



THE FIRST TERM igy 

his return to the capital from the north in February, 
not to govern with or for one party, but for the nation, 
and with the help of men of all parties who would 
frankly give their aid. Now nothing was easier than 
to persuade Congress to pass a nice little law forbidding 
re-elections. Laws can be made with a light heart in 
countries where they are but little respected. Nobody 
in Mexico can have believed sincerely that the new 
constitutional law would prove to have more virtue 
than the long series which had preceded it. But to 
govern without strict regard to party was by no manner 
of means so easy, for it implied that the President 
must disappoint some at least of those who helped 
him to rise to power. And in such a country as Mexico 
this meant that the disappointed persons would 
protest with the use of force. Then, too, a patriot 
President resolved to rule free from the bonds of 
party was no less sure to offend those of his opponents 
who would be content with nothing less than all, and 
it was a matter of course that they would take up 
arms. President Diaz had to meet trouble from both 
sides. 

Those who have heard how he gave peace to Mexico 
may be surprised to be told that there was no year of 
his first Administration in which there was not fighting 
somewhere. But a year of peace in Mexico was one 
in which only local conflicts occurred. It would be a 
wearisome task to go through a long list of these 
scufflings of kites and crows. Their incidents were 
monotonous and barren. The characters of the 
persons concerned were of the poorest. It will be 
enough to take one example of each class of disturb- 
ance, the explosion of disappointed personal ambition 
and the violent outbreak of pure insurrection. 



198 DIAZ 

General Marquez de Leon no connection with the 
Marquez who was Tiger of Tacubaya had been one 
of the supporters and agents of General Diaz in the 
north-west. He was a native of Lower California. 
This man was one of those who considered that the 
President had not rewarded his services as they 
deserved. He was of course intent on gaining his 
revenge, and he had the power to do mischief. In the 
course of his political activities in previous years he 
had acquired a useful connection in the State of 
Sinaloa. Sinaloa is the State which lies directly south 
of Sonora on the Pacific coast, and the northern end 
of it is in the Gulf of California, opposite Marquez's 
native State. Having connections in both, it was 
possible for him to combine them. And he was 
presented with an opportunity by a local disturbance 
in Sinaloa. The governor, Cafiedo, had fallen out 
with his fellow-Sinaloans on constitutional points 
which the absence of evidence makes it difficult to 
master. Judging by analogy, we may conclude that 
what was at stake was the control of the spigot of 
local taxation. " Pronunciamiento " was in the air, 
and such a well-practised wire-puller as Marquez de 
Leon was had no great difficulty in turning a local riot 
into a general rising. The immediate command in 
Sinaloa was given by him to one Jesus Ramirez, who 
was locally popular. He himself passed into Lower 
California. During the whole of 1879 and much of 
1880 these two were engaged in keeping up the banner 
of revolt by " several pronunciamientos " and 
" opportune seizures of funds," to quote the demure 
prose of Mr. H. H. Bancroft. Skirmishes occurred, 
repulses, captures, the ups and downs of the guerrillero- 
cum-bandit wars proper to those constitutional con- 



THE FIRST TERM 199 

flicts. At last Jesus Ramirez was shot in a skirmish 
by Federal troops, and Marquez de Leon, finding the 
game was going against him, disbanded his men and 
fled to the United States. Meanwhile there were 
other fights for freedom in the same or very similar 
conditions going on in other parts of the Republic. 
They were taken as matters of course and treated as 
of no consequence. In the address to Congress at the 
beginning of the session of 1879 President Diaz 
referred to them in terms which show how calmly a 
state of anarchy in solution and always on the point 
of precipitating was accepted by the strongest man of 
government in Mexico : " Some events have occurred 
in different parts of the country of which, though they 
have provoked transitory confusion and local diffi- 
culties, it cannot be said that they affect the general 
peace of the Republic or menace established order." 
Each by itself these outbreaks were but little more 
dangerous than strike riots. The wide extension of 
them and their persistence was none the less a menace 
to " established order," for it showed that anarchy 
was bred in the bone of the Mexicans. In the speech 
with which he prorogued the Congress in September, 
President Diaz made a dry and laconic reference to 
another manifestation of this same evil which had 
occurred at Veracruz. It was the event to which 
Seiior Fornaro referred in the screech of fury quoted 
above (see p. 120). It was far too characteristic of 
the country, too significant of the conditions with 
which a ruler who would keep order has to deal, and 
it touches the personal character of President Diaz 
too closely to be lightly dismissed. 

Our story has already shown that Veracruz was a 
point of peculiar importance, because it was the main 



200 DIAZ 

port of entry for Mexican trade, and the place where 
the bulk of the customs was collected. For that 
reason it was always guarded by Government with 
exceptional care. But for that reason also the seizure 
of the town was always a great object with insurgents 
of all colours. They were not likely to forget that 
Juarez had won against the Conservatives and 
Miramon very largely because he had been able to 
occupy and hold the port. If the place could have 
been captured the Government would have found 
itself deprived of funds at a critical moment. There 
was no lack of intriguers in Mexico who were capable 
of making this simple calculation. Irreconcilable 
Lerdistas were ready to combine with disappointed 
agitators of the stamp of Marquez de Leon. In the 
spring of 1879 a conspiracy was undoubtedly on foot. 
It may have been ineptly contrived, for the Lerdistas 
generally were clumsy conspirators, but it was 
genuine. The plan was to bring about a mutiny in 
two Government gunboats lying near Veracruz, the 
Libertad and the Independtncia, and then act in 
combination with Lerdista conspirators on shore who 
had returned secretly from their exile in Texas. The 
fighting leader was to be Mariano Escobedo, a veteran 
of the French war, and he had with him " some colonels 
of known dash Lorenzo Fernandez, Bonifacio Topete, 
Carlos Fuero, Jose B. Cueto, and others." There 
were other intriguers of the wire-pulling rather than 
of the fighting order within the town. 

President Diaz was too well aware of the vital 
importance of keeping a tight hold on the place to 
have neglected the precaution of putting it in safe 
hands. The governor was the Luis Mier y Teran to 
whom he had entrusted the command of his following 



THE FIRST TERM 201 

in Oaxaca at the time of the rising against Juarez. 
Teran l had gone through various fortunes. He was 
a prisoner when Lerdo fled from Mexico, and it 
was he who brought the news of the flight to Diaz. 
He was devoted to Don Porfirio. Don Rafael de 
Zayas describes him as a perfectly illiterate rough 
diamond of jovial temperament and breezy popularity 
hunting manners. He was commonly known as El 
loco Teran (Rattlepate Teran) a description answer- 
ing to our " good old So-and-so," and implying more 
condescending approval than respect. Perhaps the 
reputation of the man as a kind of noisy buffoon 
misled the conspirators into underrating the danger of 
incurring his suspicions. They were to discover that 
all this genial hail-fellow-well-met outside covered a 
capacity to be ferocious in the most extreme Mexican 
style. 

It may very well be the case that some of those 
engaged in this particular plot entered into it because 
they found conspiracy almost as exciting as the 
gambling for which most Mexicans have a furious 
passion. Even among more sober peoples men have 
been known who found an irresistible attraction in 
the game of conspiracy. The French Royalist Hyde 
de Neuville tells a story of the famous Chouan, George 
Cadoudal, which he gives as being by no means an 
instance of idle talk. They were escaping together in 
an open boat, and were on their way across Channel 

1 The reader may perhaps not always know what is the meaning of such 
a name as Mier y Ter^n that is, Mier and Terin. The second surname 
is that of the mother. Diaz himself, for instance, was Diaz y Mori. Whether 
the two names are habitually used depends on whether they are easily 
pronounced together and other considerations, such, for instance, as the 
convenience of being able to distinguish Senor Ramirez y Lopez from Senor 
Ramirez y Sanchez. A man sometimes prefers to use his mother's surname, 
and this was the case with Mier y Terin, who is commonly spoken of as 
Terdn only. 



202 DIAZ 

to England. In the middle of the night Cadoudal 
suddenly asked him if he had reflected on what was 
the first thing the King ought to do when he was 
restored. Then he supplied the answer. It was to 
shoot them both, for, said the Chouan, they had 
become so wedded to this kind of life that they would 
never be able to lead any other. And Hyde acknow- 
ledges that the humorous judgment of George had a 
basis of truth. There were certainly not a few 
Mexicans with whom plotting and " pronunciamien- 
tos " had become a habit. They followed their bent 
lightly and they talked too much. Teran became 
aware that some trouble was brewing and laid hands 
on one of the " characterised " members of Lerdo's 
party. Martial law had not been proclaimed in 
Veracruz, and the governor thought it best to observe 
the forms. He applied to Don Rafael de Zayas, who 
was Federal judge of Veracruz at the time, and asked 
him to commit other prisoners. Don Rafael, from 
whose narrative these details are taken, declined to 
comply with the governor's request. Teran was 
angry, and did not hesitate to accuse the judge "vof 
tepidity in the cause of public order. 

The arrest of the " caracterizado " may perhaps 
have stimulated the fighting element in the conspiracy 
to immediate action. The gunboats which were to be 
seized were lying, not in the poor roadstead of Vera- 
cruz, but at Tlacotalpam to the south-east, where the 
Papaloapam and the Alvarado rivers run together and 
form a species of delta and a lagoon. The anchorage 
is connected with the sea by a narrow passage. The 
town of Alvarado stands on the north-west side of 
the entrance and Tlacotalpam on the inner side of 
the lagoon. The proposed coup was only partially 



THE FIRST TERM 203 

successful, but the Libertad was seized during the 
absence of her captain, who was ashore, and by a 
party from Alvarado. The captors made off with her 
to the eastward and took her to Carmen, at the end 
of the Lagoon de Terminos in Yucatan. Here while 
the leaders of the plot were ashore in search of 
" fortunate seizures of money " the boatswain and 
the loyal part of the crew retook the Libertad and 
brought her back. 

In the meantime Teran had been promptly in- 
formed of the seizure of the Libertad. He telegraphed 
at once to the capital for orders and received for answer 
the words " Fusilalos en caliente " (" Shoot them hot 
and hot," or red-handed). Teran did not wait for a 
second order, but at once shot a whole batch of the 
Lerdistas he suspected, and buried them immediately. 
He seems himself to have been aware that this sum- 
mary execution would be blamed, for he reported to 
the Government that an attack had been made on the 
barracks at Veracruz, and that assailants nine in 
number had fallen in action. In view of what fol- 
lowed it is not easy to see why Teran put himself to 
the trouble of lying. The truth was notorious. The 
execution caused more excitement than might have 
been expected in a country where shooting of prisoners 
had been so common. But hitherto the firing parties 
had been busy with the officers of defeated armies. 
In this case those who had suffered belonged to families 
of substance and to the class which had kept in the 
background to pull the wires and work revolutions 
for their money. Their families insisted that an 
inquiry should be held. The Government was slow 
to meet their request, but at last, on July 13, some 
three weeks after the execution, the bodies were 



204 DIAZ 

exhumed. It was then found that they were tied 
with ropes, which of course showed the absolute 
falsity of Teran's assertion that they had fallen in 
open fight. 

Having obtained this amount of concession, it 
would have been, on the face of it, easy, one would 
think, for the families to force the Government to 
bring the general to a real trial. Yet they failed. 
It is true that he was brought before the grand jury 
in the capital in May, 1880, and that his case was put 
before Congress more than a year afterwards in 
November, 1881, when the President's first term was 
over. Both bodies declared they were incompetent 
to try him. He was never punished by the law. 
There is no honest reason for concealing the manifest 
truth that if he escaped punishment it was because 
Don Porfirio did not choose to allow him to be 
punished. But, that being so, we naturally wish to 
understand why, in spite of public emotion and 
newspaper clamour, the President's popularity was 
not in the least diminished by an act for which he 
must be held responsible, and which was as savage as 
any recorded in Mexican history. 

Writers who have undertaken to draw Diaz as of 
blameless walk and conversation according to an 
approved European model have passed over this 
episode in silence. Others who wished to show a 
certain measure of independence have endeavoured 
to prove that the famous " Fusilalos en caliente " 
only meant that Teran was to shoot the mutineers 
on the Libertad if he could catch them red-handed. 
This is the kind of apology for which no human being 
could really be grateful. It endeavours to save Don 
Porfirio's moral character at the expense of his 



THE FIRST TERM 205 

common sense. If that was what he meant he could 
easily have said so in terms which could not be 
misunderstood. He knew Teran well. His telegram 
was worded, not in the official and polite third person 
singular, but in the familiar second, which is never 
used except between very close friends or relatives 
" fusilalos," not " fusilelos." It was a personal 
encouragement from one old friend to another to hit 
hard. Knowing the man as he did, Diaz must have 
been woefully lacking in judgment if he failed to 
foresee that Teran would take the message for a 
direction to do some such thing as he did. 

There are only two ways in which such an incident 
as this of the massacre at Veracruz can be judged. 
Either there was no excuse for it, or it needed none, 
as being one of those actions not laudable in them- 
selves, even cruel, which were none the less done for 
the good of the State. If Mexico was a country in 
which the Government could move with a strict 
regard to law, then Teran was a murderer, and Diaz, 
who undeniably aided him to escape punishment, 
abetted the murder. But if Mexico was not such a 
country, but one in which there was no respect for the 
law, and where many men, greedy, self-seeking, or 
feather-headed, were for ever trying to let loose the 
forces of anarchy and bloodshed which had just been 
chained up, then there was no murder nor abetting 
of murder. There was a merciful rigour which at the 
expense of nine lives averted far greater slaughter. 

The fact was that for two years before the summary 
shooting at Veracruz the unhappy country had been 
worried by local outbreaks and raids from across the 
frontier, all frivolously undertaken, all ill-conducted, 
all encouraged underhand by wire-pullers who laid 



206 DIAZ 

plots and advanced money. Escobedo, who was to 
have co-operated with the Veracruz mutineers, had 
been taken in 1877 and had been allowed to go free 
on parole. Yet he was scheming again. If the 
country was to attain to a lasting peace there must 
be an end of this. Since moderation and persuasion 
could not bring that end about by gentle means, then 
an example must be made. The people who intrigued 
between four walls, found money and pulled wires, 
must be taught that there was some danger in being 
too busy. They were taught once and for all. It is 
allowed that the terror produced by the blow struck 
at Veracruz was profound and lasting so lasting 
that it was felt thirty years afterwards. The in- 
triguers realised that for the future no half-measures 
would be taken with them. They cowered down, 
and from that day " pacifism " became possible. 
Diaz could afford to be moderate because the dis- 
orderly elements had learnt that they must keep 
quiet. 

Yet his hand was always heavy on recalcitrant 
minorities. In his later years possible competitors 
for the Presidency used to vanish into prison, and 
did not always come out. Governors of States whom 
he could trust were kept in office for life in spite of the 
Constitution. Only a blindly obedient servant could 
hope to be appointed or retained as " gefe politico " 
of a district. Spies and informers were used without 
scruple. 



CHAPTER VIII 

AN INTERIM 

THE first Administration of President Diaz was 
timed to end in November, 1880. He had spent the 
first year of the four which constituted his legal term 
in fighting for his position. The three which followed 
were spent in clearing the ground and in laying down 
the lines on which his future government was to be 
conducted. The first process has been sufficiently 
illustrated by the story of Marquez de Leon and the 
Veracruz conspiracy. But it is necessary for the full 
understanding of the subject to add that the President 
showed a most consistent determination to shake 
himself free of all bonds of party or connection in his 
choice of men to serve the State. He made many 
changes of Ministers and he took, one after the other, 
several who had served his predecessors. Ignacio 
Mariscal, an accomplished diplomatist and linguist ; 
Rubio, who had been one of the followers of Lerdo, 
and had fled with him to the United States ; Berrio- 
zabel, who had been Minister of War with Iglesias, 
and others, were reconciled to the new ruler. They 
were joined with his secretary, Justo Benitez, with 
Gonzalez, who had decided the day at Tecoac, and 
other Porforistas of the early times. By this policy 
of judicious selection the President gained a double 
advantage. He provided himself with a staff of 
capable agents, and he deprived other parties and 
connections of their ablest leaders. In his case, as 



208 DIAZ 

in that of all men, death of others and mistakes of 
rivals had helped him to fortune. Juarez was gone ; 
Lerdo had made himself odious ; Iglesias had taken 
no hold. No one else rose above the crowd suffi- 
ciently to counterbalance his popularity. But of 
him also the maxim Faber fortune? quisque sucz holds 
good. He had known how to take advantage of the 
chances which fortune put in his way. And as he 
rose step by step he persuaded an ever-increasing 
number of those Mexicans whose support was valuable, 
and, what was quite as much to the purpose, of those 
foreigners whose aid was needed by every Mexican 
ruler, that their interests were safer with him than 
with any other. The Mexicans were those who 
longed for peace and an opportunity to attain to 
prosperity. The foreigners were capitalists whose 
financial aid was indispensable in so poor a country, 
and one where so much was to be done in the way of 
public works. 

When we inquire what it was that the President 
aimed at above all else during his tenures of the 
Presidency we cannot hope to find an answer more 
conveniently, or in more satisfactory form, than in the 
pages of the two volumes somewhat largely named 
" The Authentic History of the Administration of 
General Diaz." The licentiate Ricardo Rodriguez, 
who published this compilation in 1904, went too far 
when he called it a history. It is a collection of the 
speeches which the President made at the opening and 
prorogation of Congress at the beginning of every 
April and in the middle of the following September 
of each year. These " discursos " are akin to the 
messages of the Presidents of the United States, 
though they are never framed on the same ample 



AN INTERIM 209 

scale. They show every sign of being the President's 
personal work, if only because of the great similarity 
of their style to that of the biographical notes from 
which quotations have been made above. Like these 
notes, the speeches are singularly free from the faults 
of garrulity and mere rhetoric which are so commonly 
to be found in Spanish and Spanish-American political 
oratory. The President tells Congress what is to be 
done, what has been done, or what it would be 
desirable to do, in plain, straightforward sentences, 
unhampered by involved parenthetical clauses and 
inter-locked gerunds in " ando " and " iendo." The 
style we know is the man, and it is part of the biography 
of Porfirio Diaz that he was silently contemptuous of 
formulas and that his mind went directly to things, 
and to the work which the eye can see and the hand 
touch. Though he was neither a man of letters, nor 
desirous to be one, he by mere virtue of clearness of 
head and directness of mental aim, did not seldom 
attain to command of the well-knit short sentence and 
the alert prose of the Spanish writers of the good 
epoch. He was not, to be sure, Mariana, nor Lope de 
Vega, whose prose was an example to Europe, but he 
can stand with the explorers and the captains of 
Charles V. and Philip II., who were both manly and 
sober. 

Now when we look at the matter of these speeches 
we find that what predominates is public works. 
Other things are there, the advantage of getting rid of 
the abuses which had grown from the old practice of 
farming the Mint and of the destructive form of tax 
named " Alcabala," and so on; but in the main the 
President presses on the attention of Congress such 
substantial things as railways, roads, drainage, 



D. 



210 DIAZ 

bridges, afforestation, the dredging and construction 
of ports in short, the equipment of tools without 
which no country can make use of its resources. And, 
as this was what the peaceful and industrially inclined 
part of the population of Mexico knew to be most 
necessary, the prominence the President gave it in 
all his measures and speeches tended to root the con- 
fidence felt in him more deeply. 

Yet his first term of office could see only the promise, 
or at the utmost the beginning, of the good work, and 
in Mexico there was then, and we now see that there 
still is, but the poorest of security for the continuance 
of any good work apart from the personality of the 
dominant administrator. 

This serious consideration was in fact forcing itself 
into the minds of a good many Mexicans by the year 
1880. In 1877 Congress had embodied the great 
principle of the " Plans " published by Diaz himself 
at various times and at La Noria, Textupec, or Palo 
Blanco in a law. It had then provided, as far as the 
law could, that no President, nor governor of a State, 
could be re-elected at the conclusion of his term of 
office. Such re-election was, it seems, contrary to 
democratic principles. The President or governor 
must retire and wait his turn. He was not dis- 
qualified for ever, but his terms of office must not be 
consecutive. It is needless to say that in the act of 
making this law the Congress assumed that elections 
for President and governor were formalities in 
Mexico, or else that it tacitly confessed that the people 
did not consider re-election undemocratic. If the 
sovereign people did hold that faith and was free to 
choose, what compelled it to re-elect any man ? But 
Congress knew very well that elections were mere 



AN INTERIM 211 

matters of form, and that such words as " elector," 
" voter," " sovereignty of the people," " democratic," 
and so forth, had no meaning for the huge majority 
of Mexicans. They stood for institutions and ideas 
borrowed from abroad, and applied to Creoles, half- 
breeds, and Indians, to whom they were completely 
alien, and with whose real sentiments they had no 
sort of organic connection. They made a mere mask 
which in moments of passion or sincere emotion was 
thrown aside as artificial and as useless. The law of 
1877 was simply one of many other attempts to 
provide a paper-barrier which should restrain the 
actual tenant of office from turning himself into a 
tyrant in the proper force of the term. A really 
beneficent ruler was the most dangerous of all 
" tyrants " in that sense. He was exactly the man 
who was least likely to be met with opposition when 
he took measures to perpetuate himself in office, and 
thereby to block the road to those who wished to 
enjoy their turn. How far Diaz did at any period 
of his life believe that a mere Congress-made rule of 
this kind would prove to possess any virtue of its own 
is a question which he might himself have found it 
difficult to answer in his later years. 

Before his first term was over he must have learnt 
that there were many in Mexico who would have been 
glad enough to see the Congress undo in 1880 what it 
had done in 1877. If Diaz had lent himself to their 
wishes there can be no doubt that the Legislature 
would have done as it was told, and that he would 
have been re-elected at once. But the law had been 
so recently passed, and Diaz had so repeatedly 
declared against " the principle of re-election," that 
he would have discredited himself, if not in Mexico, 

P 2 



212 DIAZ 

where declarations for or against principles had never 
had much meaning and had come to have none, then 
at least in the United States. Moreover, as we shall 
see, it was not absolutely necessary for him to retain 
office in order to keep control of affairs. 

It is a truth which if men were not in practice so 
blind to it would be a platitude, that in politics no 
paper Constitutions, or other constructions of words 
printed and called laws, are of the slightest avail 
against the facts of the case. Power in Spanish 
America has resided, resides, and will continue for 
long to reside, in some person or connection of private 
persons who can coerce rivals by armed force. Their 
power is personal, however it is obtained, and it either 
overrides Constitutions or finds some way of evading 
them. The Constitution of the United States is a 
reality, and the American people has an inherited 
respect for law. Yet we know what has become of 
the attempt made by the fathers of the Republic to 
arrange for the choice of a President by a process of 
double elections. The constitutional law made by 
the Mexican Congress in 1877 has had the same fate. 
It was one of many made in Spanish America to pre- 
vent any particular man from perpetuating himself 
in office, and they have always proved equally futile. 
When they have not been set aside by force a coach 
and four has been driven through them. 

The first of the two processes needs no explanation, 
but a few words will not be wasted in accounting for 
the second. They are in fact necessary in order to 
render the next stage in the life of Porfirio Diaz 
intelligible. 

We have within the last few years become acquainted 
with the political term " rotative." It came from 



AN INTERIM 213 

Portugal, where it seems to have been invented, but 
the thing is common to the whole Iberian peninsula 
and its colonies, and is also ancient. Don Rafael 
Altamira, the most learned of contemporary Spanish 
historians, has found traces of it in Biscay and in the 
Middle Ages. It is simply an arrangement by which 
two persons or connections agree to " rotate " in 
office. The reader must not be misled by memories 
of Republicans and Democrats, Whigs and Tories, 
Liberals and Conservatives, when considering this 
Iberian institution. There is no question here of an 
appeal to the country with or without a dissolution, of 
a victory of a party at the polls, and of a transfer of 
office from a defeated to a victorious side. The 
election is always made by the politician in office as 
an alternative to the more destructive, and not less 
corrupt, method of calling the troops into the streets 
and the guerrilleros to the hillsides. We may say 
that it marks a distinct progress from a state of 
anarchy to one of constitutional order. The rotative 
system was highly developed in Spain, and worked, 
on the whole, well during the reign of Alfonso XII 
and the regency of the queen-mother Maria Cristina. 
Don Antonio Canovas went out and Don Mateo 
Praxedes Sagasta came in. Then Don Mateo went out 
and Don Antonio came in. In every case the incoming 
Minister " made " his own Cortes, care being taken 
that the " outs " should be allowed a becoming 
proportion of seats. 

Wherever a Spanish-American republic has attained 
to a state of peace it has been by the adoption of a 
rotative system. Absolute smoothness of working is 
perhaps not to be looked for. The outgoing connec- 
tion may find the door effectually locked behind it by 



214 DIAZ 

the rotators in office who will not keep to the spirit of 
the bargain ; or, again, the " ins " may try to lock 
the door and fail. In either case there is trouble and 
a reversion to the old rough method of " pronuncia- 
miento." But in many cases the arrangement 
works. The President whose term is drawing to an 
end, and who is forbidden by the Constitution to 
seek for immediate re-election, selects a safe man to 
succeed him. He superintends the election and gives 
his personal support to his friend. Four years later 
the parts are reversed. Guzman Blanco brought this 
essentially Iberian adaptation of constitutional 
government to great perfection in the Republic of 
Colombia. With or without the guidance of his 
example, and perhaps by the light of his own sagacity 
and that of his advisers only, Diaz prepared to 
perpetuate his personal influence and to prepare his 
own return to the Presidency at the end of four years 
by a rotative arrangement. A safe man was to be 
chosen, and to him was to be entrusted the duty of 
continuing the work begun, on the distinct under- 
standing that he would repay the service when the 
time came to clear off the debt. 

The choice of a trustworthy locum tenens presented 
difficulties. The best associate would be one who 
would carry out the bargain in the letter and the 
spirit of his own free will and mere motion. But such 
perfect harmony of brotherhood was hard to find. 
The next best resource was someone who would not 
be able to break the bond if he should be tempted to 
play false. He must be one who had no dangerous 
amount of popularity and influence of his own. Yet a 
mere figurehead, a mere nonentity would not suffice. 
Diaz wished to serve the interests of his country too 



AN INTERIM 215 

honestly to be prepared to leave them at the mercy of 
a bungler, simply in order to smooth the way for his 
own return to office by showing that he was indis- 
pensable. The President for the next four years must 
in fact be qualified to allow good work to go on, and 
yet not quite equal to making an independent position 
for himself. Tact and insight were much needed for 
the task of selecting " a safe man." 

Those who profess to have been well-informed 
affirm that the President began by making choice of 
his secretary, Don Justo Benitez. They had fought 
together in the dark days of the French invasion. 
Benitez had worked hard for his chief during the 
struggle with Lerdo. It is true that he had not always 
avoided giving offence in quarters where Diaz looked 
for support. But he had been loyal, and the very 
fact that he had committed errors of management in 
dealing with persons tended on the whole to show 
that he would not be a dangerous substitute. So he 
was chosen, and in order that he might be put in a 
position of sufficient prominence to appear worthy of 
the Presidency he was to be sent on a mission to 
Europe. But Don Justo broke down under the test. 
A lively French contemporary who was employed to 
negotiate with Wolsey has recorded that the cardinal 
began by saying " The King." Then he said " The 
King and I," then the formula became " I and the 
King," till at last he took to using the bald first 
personal pronoun. Don Justo had no doubt heard 
persons of insight say that he was the " intelligent 
soul," the alma pensante of his chief, and had come to 
look upon himself in that light. He soon showed 
too much independence, and spoke too much in the 
ego et Rex meus tone. Such haste in claiming the 



2i6 DIAZ 

first place was a warning and Don Justo was dropped. 
Then, so it is said, President Diaz's thoughts turned to 
Teran. But the outcry raised over the general's fierce 
dealings with the Veracruz conspirators rendered him 
dangerous as a locum tenens. The President did indeed 
prove that he would not allow the general to suffer for 
displaying excess of zeal in carrying out the order 
" Fusilalos en caliente " if excess of zeal there had 
been. But he could not take too much of Teran's 
unpopularity with some of the Mexicans on his own 
shoulders while the scandal was fresh, and attempts to 
bring the general to a genuine trial were still being made. 
Whatever the true truth as to the tentative selec- 
tions may be, we know that the candidate finally 
chosen was Don Manuel Gonzalez. He was the general 
to whom the President had entrusted the command 
of the infantry of his army during the struggle with 
Lerdo in the north. His timely appearance on the 
right flank of Alatorre's line had decided the battle 
at Tecoac. He had been for a time Minister of War 
for Diaz. The President could rely on his loyalty, and 
his position was such as to justify his candidature. 
The election was held and passed off peacefully because 
Diaz kept order, and also because four other candi- 
dates, one of whom was Justo Benitez, were allowed 
to canvass freely and to receive a decent show of 
support. But the influence of the President was 
thrown openly on the side of Gonzalez, who was 
elected by an immense majority. The Congress 
declared him duly returned on September 25, and he 
entered on his term of office on December i, 1880. In 
the speech which closed the session of that year Diaz 
congratulated Congress on the good order which had 
reigned during an election, though the public had taken 



AN INTERIM 217 

unusual interest in the contest. All constitutional 
government requires the aid of fictions, and Mexico 
has its own. 

The real character of the transaction is sufficiently 
displayed by a single fact. Diaz offered his active 
support to the new Administration, and was invited by 
his successor to take a portfolio in the new Cabinet. 
It was characteristic of him that he took the depart- 
ment of Public Works. In that office he was able to 
apply himself to what was of most interest to him, 
while keeping a watch over the whole administration. 
He showed himself particularly attentive to the new 
harbour and railway works at Tampico. They were 
not without a certain political interest. The Gulf 
coast of Mexico is ill-provided with ports. Hitherto 
the interior tableland had been wholly dependent on 
Veracruz, which is but a narrow anchorage between 
the rocky little island of San Juan de Ulloa and the 
mainland, and the route inland has to climb a very 
steep ascent. Tampico lies to the north by west of 
Veracruz at the mouth of the Panuco River, which is 
navigable for a short distance, and close to the lagoon 
of Tamaulipas. It is just at the southern point of the 
State of that name. The natural harbour is not a 
good one for large ships, but it is on the whole better 
than Veracruz. By improving the port and connect- 
ing it with the capital the Central Government would 
free itself from the dangerous old dependence on what 
had been the sole outlet and entry place for trade. 
We can therefore easily understand why Don Porfirio, 
who looked forward to his own return to office, should 
have shown a special desire to forward the works. In 
fact, the whole question of " works " was becoming 
predominant in Mexico, and whoever had the general 



2i 8 DIAZ 

direction of them stood fair to be the most important 
man in the country. 

Though the statement may appear to be rather in 
contradiction with what has been said above, it was 
probably the very importance of the post which 
induced Diaz to retire from the Ministry at the end of 
a year. He gave as his reason for withdrawal and it 
must be allowed that it was a plausible one that he 
found some of his colleagues were of opinion that he 
overshadowed them. They were certainly not wrong, 
and it must be allowed that his presence in the 
Cabinet was too well calculated to emphasise the real 
nature of his relations to the new President. The 
general rule in Spanish America is that the outgoing 
rotator pays a visit to Paris. The sailors have a 
saying that an old mainstay makes a bad foresheet. 
A man who has once been skipper is an uneasy first 
mate, and that is particularly likely to be the case 
when there is an understanding that he is to resume 
command of the ship in the future. Diaz must have 
felt himself awkwardly placed before the year was 
out ; and moreover he must have foreseen coming 
trouble arising out of this same question of works. He 
was to have his hands free of it. The story may be 
left till it can be treated as a whole. In the meantime 
Diaz withdrew from the Cabinet and returned to his 
native Oaxaca, where no doubt by previous arrange- 
ment he took up the governorship. 

Oaxaca, as we know, was not only the State to which 
he belonged by birth, but it was that one wherein he 
had been " cacique." Influence there had been the 
foundation of his power. Of late he had not seen 
much of his home, but the time might be at hand when 
he would need Oaxaca again. The laws of 1877 had 



AN INTERIM 219 

limited a State governor's tenure of office to a year. 
Diaz, as was usual with him, played the game strictly. 
He spent twelve months on the Administration of 
Oaxaca, which had, as can easily be believed, fallen 
into considerable confusion since he issued the Plan 
of Textupec. The question of works followed him 
here, and his tenure of the governorship was made 
notable by strenuous efforts to promote the construc- 
tion of the railway across the isthmus of Tehuantepec 
from Santa Cruz on the Pacific to the port with the 
rather unmanageable Indian name Coatzacoalcos on 
the Bay of Campeachy. Coatzacoalcos was officially 
deposed in favour of the easier, if less characteristic 
and sonorous, Port Mexico. When his twelve months 
were over he returned to the capital, and took up 
his residence in Humbolt Street, in a house which 
became his own and was afterwards occupied by his 
son Felix. 

For a short time, and in so far as retirement was 
possible for one who was known to be about to resume 
the Presidency, he lived apart from politics. But the 
interval was filled for him by an event of the first 
consequence for his future life. He had become a 
widower during his first term of office. We know 
little of the lady whom he married during the siege of 
Mexico. But the second Senora de Diaz was to be 
almost as conspicuous a figure of the political and 
social life of the country as her husband. A certain 
reserve must be used in speaking of a lady who is still 
alive, even when there is nothing but good to be said. 
The facts which can be mentioned without risk of 
intrusion are that his second wife was much younger 
than himself and was by birth a lady who had received 
and had profited by a more serious education than has 



220 DIAZ 

usually been given to the daughters of Creole families. 
Dona Maria del Carmen Romero Rubio was the 
daughter of Don Manuel Romero Rubio, who had been 
one of the Ministers of Don Sebastian Lerdo, 1 had gone 
into exile with him and had returned. He was after- 
wards one of Don Porfirio's Ministers. 

La Senora de Diaz (for why should we say Mme. 
Diaz ?) has confided to Mrs. Tweedie that she had had 
a girlish admiration for Don Porfirio, and had, in 
fact, regarded him with the sentiments which Desde- 
mona felt for Othello. The President who had been 
and was to be was nowise insensible to a homage 
which we are given to understand was not disguised. 
His attentions so his biographer, Senor Godoy, 
records were noted in Mexican society. Nobody 
was surprised when his marriage was announced and 
took place in November, 1882. It was a happy one 
in private and public ways alike. Don Porfirio never 
showed the least tendency to fall into the folly of some 
of his predecessors who tried to surround themselves 
with a sham court. He maintained a " republican 
simplicity " of life. But there is room in the simplest 
life for dignity and good breeding. Indeed, there is none 
in which those qualities can be shown with greater 
merit. To dress richly and well is comparatively 

1 Spanish feminine names are not always clearly understood by us, and a 
few words on the subject may not be amiss. The full married name of the 
President's wife would be Maria del Carmen Romero Rubio de Diaz. In 
social life the full name is reduced to Carmen de Diaz. It is safe to say that 
every Spanish woman is baptised by the name of Mary, though she may 
have and may prefer to use another Christian name or font name, " nombre 
de pila." But it is usual not to give the mere name Maria. One of the 
personifications, or attributes, or qualifications of the Virgin is added : 
" Maria del Carmen," " Maria de los Dolores," " Maria de la Concepcion," 
" Maria de la Incarnacion," " Maria de la Asuncion," " Maria de las Nieves," 
or local virgins, as "Maria del Pilar," " Maria de Guadalupe," "Maria de la 
Pena de Francia," and many others. Some of them have familiar abbrevia- 
tions " Concha," for Concepcion, or " Blanca," for Nieves (" the Snows "). 



AN INTERIM 221 

easy. To dress very simply and very well is a test 
of good taste. It was part of the exceptional position 
which President Diaz took among Spanish-American 
rulers that his household was presided over by a lady 
who would have been at home in the society of a great 
European capital. The education of women in the 
different Spanish-speaking communities has a ten- 
dency to develop a somewhat narrow form of piety 
which shows itself in an excessive deference to the 
clergy. Whatever the opinions of the master of the 
house may be and in the educated class they are 
generally those of indifference to religion the wife is, 
except in rare cases, a " clerical." It is believed that 
the education of La Senora de Diaz had been of a 
kind to save her husband from this source of lack of 
sympathy. 

Shortly after his second marriage General Diaz 
enjoyed the only visit to a foreign country which he 
was able to make as a pure holiday in his life. It was 
certainly not for mere reasons of convenience, nor of 
economy, that he went to the United States. It 
would have been at least as easy for him to have 
crossed the Atlantic to Paris. But the city which has 
so strong an attraction for most Spanish-Americans 
did not draw him. Even on a honeymoon he 
obviously did not forget that the Union is far more 
important to Mexico than all the rest of the world. 
We may take it for granted that he was in search of 
more than rest and amusement, that he wished to see 
and become known to the influential people in a 
country with which he was to have close relations. 
General Grant visited Mexico in 1880. He did not 
come for any political purpose properly so called, 
though he may be said to have come in connection 



222 DIAZ 

with matters which entered largely into the inter- 
national relations of the two republics. In 1880 the 
public career of General Grant was over and he was 
beginning to enter into those unhappy business 
ventures which embittered his last years. What he 
represented when he came to Mexico was the growing 
conviction of American capitalists that Mexico was 
becoming a country in which investments might be 
profitable because they would be safe, and that 
President Diaz was the man to secure the safety. 

During the year of his visit to the States and the 
Exhibition at New Orleans matters had been ripening 
for a change in Mexico. The administration of 
General Gonzalez had begun in peace and amid every 
appearance of content and of nascent prosperity, only 
to end in a very different state. It has been said that 
the first two years were a golden age, but were 
followed by such an outburst of waste and corruption 
as had never been seen even in Mexico. The blame 
was freely laid on the shoulders of President Gonzalez. 
Rhetorical phrases of this stamp inspire distrust. 
We ask ourselves how and why the general should 
have violated an ancient maxim by suddenly becoming 
turpissimus between the end of the second and the 
beginning of the third year of his administration. 
It is not enough to say that he was generally and 
fluently abused. Gonzalez may not have been 
perfectly disinterested, and in fact it is allowed that 
when he retired from office he had provided for 
himself. Mr. H. H. Bancroft, who writes in the most 
friendly spirit to him, has to make a concession of a 
rather significant kind : " It was said that the source 
of his fortune, which has been grossly exaggerated, 
was due to peculation ; when the fact is, that at a 



AN INTERIM 223 

time of such material development as Mexico derived 
from the administration of Gonzalez, it was an easy 
matter for any intelligent and shrewd man to acquire 
wealth in enterprises of recognised utility to the 
country, as was done by many others, some of whom 
were not at all friendly to the President." The 
apology is rather of the nature of a paving-stone 
which, when used to squash the calumnious insect, 
falls on the head of the person to be defended. Presi- 
dent Gonzalez was the ruler of the country in which 
enterprises of recognised utility were being carried 
on by foreign capitalists who stood in need of coun- 
tenance and sometimes of subventions from the 
Government. In such cases a shrewd and intelligent 
man who has the power to give or withhold may indeed 
easily make his profit by accepting what Mr. Pepys 
called compliments, without going over the blurred 
line which divides indelicacy from bribery pure and 
simple. But he has need to be careful if he will keep 
himself untouched by the accursed thing. As Gonza- 
lez was not known to have had means of his own to 
use for purposes of speculation, it is to be feared that 
the fortune he took away with him from office, which, 
though it might well be grossly exaggerated, was 
confessedly not a pure invention of the enemy, had 
its origin in compliments made to him by the moneyed 
men. We need not make too much of this. Many 
others did the same beyond all doubt. That office 
should lead to fortune was as well understood in 
Mexico as it was in the England of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. President Diaz, who was 
born in poverty, and whose official emoluments were 
never great, acquired a fortune, and it would be 
difficult to say how he did so except by a very similar 



224 DIAZ 

use of shrewdness and intelligence. If one must find 
an explanation for these things, it can be found 
without doing violence to probability, in the supposi- 
tion that the best of Mexican rulers entered into 
transactions of the same character as those invest- 
ments of navy balances in Indian funds, and for his 
own benefit, which have such an ugly look in the trial 
of Lord Melville. Yet Melville was the friend of 
Pitt and the patron of Sir Walter Scott, who defended 
him fiercely. Moreover, he made a good head of the 
navy at a great crisis in our history. 

Gonzalez might have taken the compliments and 
might have speculated safely with balances, and yet 
have retired without reproach, if certain troubles for 
which he was nowise responsible had not come to a 
head in the latter part of his Administration. They 
all had their origin in " public works " and financial 
distresses, and they ran their courses in close connec- 
tion with one another. 

President Gonzalez might complain with entire 
justice that the difficulties which overwhelmed him in 
the last year of his tenure of office had their origin in 
the Administration of his predecessor. We have 
seen that President Diaz was intent on developing the 
resources of his country, and showed himself very well 
aware that the first step to be taken was to make them 
accessible. Therefore the indispensable preliminary 
to all else was the construction of railways. Nothing 
could well be more true. But Don Porfirio had not 
learnt from Benjamin Franklin that there is such a 
mistake as " paying too much for your whistle." 
Railway construction, except along the plain which 
rises gently from the Rio Grande to the valley of 
Mexico, is bound to be costly. The rise from Veracruz 



AN INTERIM 22$ 

to the capital is one of 7,000 feet in a distance of 
263 miles : 2,500 feet of this rise have to be overcome 
within 12 miles at the edge of the Plain of Anahuac, 
where it falls almost in a precipice to the Tierras 
Templadas. The construction was a great engineering 
feat, and one we may be proud of, for it was carried 
out by a British firm. But the working expenses were 
high. The outlay was hugely increased by a piece of 
jobbery. Don Antonio Escandon, the concessionnaire 
of the line, added $6,743,938 to the cost of construc- 
tion by causing the line to be increased by 120 kilo- 
metres (85 miles) in order to serve certain mills and 
lands of his own. The subvention he received from 
Government was $7,056,619. In order to cover 
interest on capital and working expenses the freights 
were high, though they were much below the cost of 
carrying goods on mule-back, the only method 
hitherto available. The Veracruz line had been com- 
pleted in 1873, and President Diaz was not responsible 
for the extravagance or the jobbery. His error was 
that he did not take warning by the history of this 
enterprise, but granted subventions to projectors of 
new lines on a colossal scale. In the last year of his 
Administration he promised $64,000,000 a huge sum 
for a Government to engage to find, even by instal- 
ments, out of a revenue which in 1880 had just risen 
to $24,000,000 from the figure of $17,000,000, at 
which it stood in 1877. 

It is commonly said that when Diaz's first term 
ended in 1880 he left a balance in the treasury, and 
that when he returned to office at the close of 1884 
he found nothing. Such a statement as this must 
have been made in reliance on the lack of knowledge 
among those to whom it was directed. That there was 

D. Q 



226 DIAZ 

money not yet paid out of the exchequer may be 
believed. But there was no part of the revenue, 
either in hand or likely to be paid in, which was not 
earmarked, and far more than covered by obligations 
which were about to mature. The railways were not 
the only claimants. Subventions had been promised 
for drainage works and harbours. All the schemes 
which swarmed at the end of 1880 were not as much as 
begun to be executed. A good many were put in 
execution and carried far enough to give the projectors 
a claim for part of their subventions. Then they were 
left unfinished. Not a few of these undertakings 
were, in plain English, " bubbles." They had no 
commercial nor industrial foundation. It was true 
that on the whole the railway-making of this period 
did in the end profit the country, and it is not less true 
that the revenue rose from $24,000,000 to $33,000,000 
in about four years. But in the meantime the 
expense was out of all proportion to the returns, and 
the growth of the revenue was largely fictitious. It 
represented the customs dues levied on the material 
imported for these as yet unremunerative works. 
The amounts which were going out in the form of 
subventions largely exceeded what was coming in as 
customs dues. And these dues were of course added 
by the importer to the price of the material for which 
in the end the Mexicans were to pay. For the 
moment the Government appeared to be in the 
enjoyment of a handsome surplus. The working 
expenses of the administration (which for a reason to 
be given did not include payment of interest on the 
debt) were estimated at $22,000,000. As the revenue 
had risen, on paper at least, to $33,000,000, it would 
appear that there was a surplus of $11,000,000. But 



AN INTERIM 227 

this sum was about a sixth part of the subventions 
promised to railways alone in one year of Don 
Porfirio's first term. And then it must not be 
forgotten that, as Mexico was quite incapable of pro- 
viding the capital for all these works herself, the 
creditors were foreign capitalists. The debtors, who 
were called upon to pay sums far in excess of their 
resources, were the native Mexicans. 

One does not need to be a profound financier in 
order to be capable of understanding that as his term 
of office drew to an end General Gonzalez found him- 
self in the position defined by the colloquial Spanish 
phrase as " between the sword and the wall " (" entre 
la espada y la pared "). There was not enough to 
pay everybody. Therefore somebody must go unpaid. 
It has been counted for pure righteousness to the 
General that he decided not to impose any sacrifice on 
the capitalists who were demanding these subventions. 
They were paid to the full, and in order that they 
might not suffer he stopped the payment of all the 
salaries of all the civil officials of his Government. 
The soldiers, who had at command very convincing 
arguments why they should be satisfied, continued to 
receive their pay. We can easily believe that the 
foreign capitalists applauded the President's tender 
regard for the national honour. It is the easiest thing 
in the world to say that the Mexicans ought not to have 
incurred obligations without considering whether 
they could fulfil them. An extremely modest critical 
faculty can point out that if parliamentary govern- 
ment had been a reality in Mexico the Congress would 
have put an impossible barrier in the way of the 
speculative temerity of President Diaz. If a country 
cannot force its Government to act with good sense, 

Q 2 



228 DIAZ 

it must suffer for its weakness. All this is the most 
obvious of the obvious. Whether the foreign capi- 
talists, who were not unacquainted with the financial 
and industrial condition of Mexico, and who had every 
means of learning that the contracts they made could 
not be carried out without injustice to somebody, 
were blameless for the wrong done is too big a question 
to discuss here. The Mexican officials who were de- 
prived of their salaries considered themselves as robbed 
for the benefit of the foreigner. They were not the 
less angry because they could see that General 
Gonzalez was accumulating a modest fortune by a 
shrewd and intelligent participation in works of public 
utility. They did not take a large view, but simply 
said that he had been bribed by foreign capitalists 
to satisfy their greed at the cost of the hapless civil 
officials. If there was an outbreak of corruption and 
pillage at the close of the General's term, one reason 
is perhaps that so many of the agents of his Govern- 
ment had been deprived of all other means of subsist- 
ence. If President Gonzalez had inherited trouble 
from his predecessor, he repaid the ill-service by leaving 
him a no less serious difficulty to overcome. 

When an important and vocal section of the 
Mexican community was in this excusable state of 
irritation, the President added two other grievances 
to the causes of the unpopularity which overwhelmed 
him. One he could not well help ; the other was the 
result of mere bad management. The first was the 
long-drawn-out dispute over the British debt ; the 
second was a Mexican version of our " Wood's half- 
pence " the exasperating blunder made with the 
nickel coinage. Both were to be left for Diaz to settle. 

The debt was a sore of some sixty years' standing, 



AN INTERIM 229 

for it dated from 1824. It had been founded by the 
Federalist agitators who with Santa Ana at their head 
had upset the " empire " of Augustin Iturbide. The 
Mexican Government issued bonds for 3,200,000 at 
5 per cent. The whole was taken up by a London 
financial house (B. A. Goldschmidt & Co.) at 58. 
The figures are sufficiently eloquent as to what was 
thought of the security, which was the whole revenue 
of Mexico. The Republic got in fact about 2,000,000 
and had to pay 5 per cent, on 3,200,000. That the 
bargain was not a good one mattered little to those 
who controlled the spigot of taxation in Mexico for 
the time being. They would not have to answer for 
the payment, and in the meantime they handled 
2,000,000. Neither, presumably, did the future 
weigh much on the minds of the financiers, who passed 
the stock on to the too confiding investor. The secu- 
rity was bad, and the usual sequence of events was 
unrolled. Next year the Mexican Government was 
in the market with another loan of 3,200,000 this 
time at 6 per cent. It was taken by another financial 
house (Barclay, Herring & Co.) at 86|. Then in due 
course came the inevitable irregularities of payment, 
reductions of interest, capitalisation of arrears, and 
so forth. The same old bad debts were rearranged 
and renamed. Somebody was paid for services, or, 
in English-Chinese phrase, took " squeezes," but the 
bondholders were paid by fits and starts and very ill 
or were not paid at all. If the protecting shade of the 
Monroe doctrine had not loomed in the Gulf of Mexico 
the Republic would probably have been taken in hand 
very much as Egypt was to be. But the Monroe 
doctrine did stand in the way, and the sorrows of the 
bondholders never got beyond the stage of being the 



230 DIAZ 

subject of diplomatic correspondence. If the holders 
of the bonds lost their investments Mexico obtained 
no good from the money. The fortunes accumulated 
by Santa Ana and other politicians alone remained to 
show where it had gone. As the anarchy grew worse 
the ways of Mexican politicians grew more violent. 
The culmination of the whole miserable story was the 
forcible seizure in the British Embassy by Miramon 
of a sum of money set aside for the payment of British 
creditors. This was the last provocation which 
stimulated the British Government to join with 
France and Spain to enforce some attention to their 
claims. The common action of the three was dissolved 
when the designs of Napoleon III. were revealed. If 
British creditors received any satisfaction it was 
because they were able to intercept part of the loan 
raised in France under the patronage of Napoleon III. 
and for the benefit of Maximilian. 

When Juarez by virtue of the protection of the 
United States issued victorious from the struggle in 
1867 he declared that all the Governments which had 
recognised the archduke had thereby declared war on 
the Republic. War dissolved all treaties and obliga- 
tions. He expelled foreign Ministers with the excep- 
tion of the representative of the United States. Little 
by little and step by step relations were renewed. The 
North German Confederation set the example in 
1869, and when France resumed diplomatic intercourse 
in 1880 the only Power which still sent Mexico " to 
Coventry " was Great Britain. When it is remem- 
bered that during these years a British company com- 
pleted the Veracruz to Mexico Railway, and that 
British men of business prospered in the country, it 
would seem that the lack of a Minister did no harm. 




INTERIM 231 

The fact, of course, is that the more serious among 
Mexican politicians were perfectly well aware that they 
could not afford to offend the capitalists of the great 
creditor nation, however high might be the tone they 
allowed themselves to take with its Government, 
from which they had nothing to fear thanks to the 
protection of the Monroe doctrine. 1 In spite of many 
loud complaints of ill-usage and occasional injury by 
common criminals, or officials who lose their heads 
in fits of greed or rage, foreigners in general, and 
British subjects in particular, suffer incomparably 
less from the vices of Spanish-American government 
than do the natives. 

By the time that Gonzalez became President the 
debt had rolled up in snowball fashion till it had, 
what with original capital and arrears of interest 
capitalised and further arrears of interest on what had 
been capitalised, reached the figure of 18,383,761. 
Though Mexico seemed to get on very well without 
holding diplomatic relations with the British Govern- 
ment, and though British capitalists showed no 

1 An incident which happened in another Spanish-American republic 
may help to explain the comparative unimportance of Ministers and Consuls 
to those British subjects who are in the service of great financial concerns. 
An engineer in the employment of a British-made and managed railway 
took upon himself to give first aid to a native " peon " whose leg had been 
accidentally broken in a railway station. When the native doctor was 
called in he asked indignantly who had dared to perform a surgical operation 
to the detriment of his monopoly. When he was told, he caused the 
engineer to be arrested. If the good Samaritan had had to wait for help 
from Minister or Consul he would have waited a long time while the corre- 
spondence was following the proper course. Fortunately for him another 
resource was used. The local manager telegraphed to headquarters. The 
chief of the company in the province went to the governor. In a few minutes 
the governor's secretary was on his way to the local station in a special train. 
The company's representative had simply told the governor that its servants 
must not be treated in this style. The officials were suspended and the 
engineer was released. Nor did he hear any more about the matter, though 
he had undeniably laid himself open to a fine for performing a surgical 
operation without a diploma. 



232 DIAZ 

reluctance to risk money in the Republic, yet Presi- 
dent Gonzalez and his advisers could not but be aware 
that Mexico could not go on for ever without regu- 
lating her relations with the great money market 
of the world, and Great Britain was aware that she 
could not keep Mexico " in Coventry " for ever. Of 
course, the settlement of the debt dispute was to 
be the preliminary to better relations in the future. 
Approaches were made on both sides ; unofficial con- 
sular visits were made by Great Britain. Sir Spencer 
St. John, a diplomatist who knew Spanish-America 
well, came to Mexico to arrange for the resumption 
of diplomatic intercourse. Don Ignacio Mariscal 
came to England from Mexico on a similar mission. 
Settlements were proposed, discussed, rejected, taken 
up again. The main purpose of the Mexican Govern- 
ment was to consolidate the debt and raise more 
money with which to carry on, and meet the first 
coupons when they became due. By the final 
arrangement, which was maintained by President 
Diaz, Mexico was to contract a consolidated debt of 
17,200,000, of which 14,448,000 was to be acknow- 
ledged to the bondholders and 2,752,000 was to be 
set aside for " expenses of conversion." 

The President had probably made as good a settle- 
ment as was possible, but at the end of his Administra- 
tion when the transaction was completed he was so 
unpopular that he was sure to be blamed for whatever 
he did. The Mexican public said that they were being 
burdened by a debt vastly in excess of any sum the 
country had ever received. They did not consider 
that the greater part of the sum represented interest 
which Mexico had promised to pay and had not paid. 
They accused the President of intending to steal the 



AN INTERIM 233 

2,752,000, and they resented certain new taxes which 
he had imposed with the consent of Congress to enable 
the Government to meet its obligations. The last 
days of his Administration were disturbed by riots, 
and he left the burden to be taken up by his successor. 
In all these matters Gonzalez had found confusion 
provided for him to deal with. But in the matter of 
the nickel currency, he made trouble for himself, and 
bequeathed it to his successor. There was a lack of 
small currency in Mexico. Something smaller than 
the old gold and silver coins was needed. As the 
country had its mints and abounded in metals, 
nothing would appear to have been more simple than 
to make the necessary small change at home. The 
course taken was certain to arouse distrust. Nickel 
coins were made in the United States and sent to 
Mexico to be stamped. From the first there was a 
pretty manifest suspicion that some swindle lay behind 
the introduction of these coins. And it is not to be 
denied that, whatever the intentions of the Govern- 
ment may have been, the nickels lent themselves to 
swindle. They were divided into one, two, and five 
cent pieces. The sizes were so ill-judged that it 
would have paid dishonest officials well to melt down 
the one and two cent pieces and recast them as five 
cent pieces. No limit appears to have been fixed to 
the amount for which these pieces of token money were 
legal tender. The limit put on the total amount to 
be struck, some 400,000 (about $4,000,000 Mexican 
dollars), was believed to be a mere blind. It was 
thought that vastly greater sums of nickel would be 
issued. It followed that if a creditor or an employer 
was free to pay debt or wages in these coins the 
creditor or workman would find himself in possession 



234 DIAZ 

of nothing better than a handful of tokens of no 
intrinsic value. 

The nickels were rejected from the very beginning. 
Stronger Governments than the Mexican have failed 
in the attempt to force a distrusted currency on a 
whole population. Peoples who will submit - to 
extreme degrees of religious and political oppression 
have been known to revolt against this form of attack 
on their pockets. However docile the bulk of the 
Mexicans may be, they showed a disposition to take a 
violent course against the nickels, and President 
Gonzalez's Ministers thought it would be prudent in 
them to try to insinuate these coins into circulation 
by gentle methods. If there WPS no element of fraud 
in the device they chose, their moral character can be 
vindicated only at the expense of their intelligence. 
They sold large quantities of these tokens to merchants 
at discounts which in some cases went as high as 
25 per cent. As the Government could not refuse to 
take its own money in payment at the nominal value 
without utterly destroying its credit, and as no limit 
was put to the amount for which the nickels were legal 
tender, the obvious result followed. The astute men 
of business presented them in payment of customs 
dues. The coins were soon back on the hands of the 
Government after inflicting a loss on the revenue in 
the course of their brief tour out and home. As for 
the mass of the population, after a preliminary period 
of protest and agitation it fairly broke into riotous 
assembly. Even if the Government could have relied 
on the soldiers it would have been beaten. But the 
rank and file of the army were like to be as great 
sufferers as any other class. There could be but one 
end to such a conflict between any Government and 



AN INTERIM 235 

the instincts of human nature. The nickels were 
howled down, and President Gonzalez had to go to 
Congress with a request that it would help him to 
withdraw them in some decent manner. 

If Diaz had ever entertained a doubt whether his 
locum tenens would keep to the understanding between 
them he must have been reassured by the course of 
events at the end of 1883 and throughout 1884. 
Gonzalez had become so utterly unpopular that he 
could not have broken the compact if he had tried 
to play false. Nobody in the country had the least 
interest in supporting him unless it were the capitalists, 
and they had nothing to gain, but, on the contrary, a 
great deal to lose, by helping him to launch on an 
adventure which would soon have plunged the country 
back into all the troubles of Lerdo's time. A Presi- 
dent of Mexico can do a great deal in the way of 
imposing a dummy successor on the country, but not 
when he has offended all the civil servants, when he 
has no certainty of support from the army, and when 
all the elements of the population are banded against 
him. The fact that there was no general rising and 
that no " Plans " were promulgated in any of the 
States showed that the increase of employment due 
to the introduction of foreign capital to be spent on 
railways, harbour works, etc., was turning the atten- 
tion of the Mexicans to more profitable forms of 
activity than " pronunciamientos." But the fact 
that apart from a few street riots in the capital and 
some towns the peace was kept is best explained by 
the universal conviction that Diaz would soon be back 
in the Presidency. Nobody appeared against him, 
and when the election was held in September he 
received 15,999 votes of a total of 16,462 delegates. 



236 DIAZ 

There is no reason to suppose that Gonzalez made any 
attempt to prevent the return of Don Porfirio. He 
was, it is true, accused of attempts to poison the 
President-Elect, and also to kill him by engineering 
an accident on the Irolo Railway, on which Diaz was 
travelling. But these are the little vivacities of 
Spanish - American political controversy. Nobody 
believes such accusations, and least of all those who 
make them. President Gonzalez retired to enjoy his 
fortune in peace, and President Diaz took up the 
reins in December, 1884, to hold them for twenty- 
seven years. 



CHAPTER IX 

PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 

THERE is no reason for breaking the narrative by 
any further accounts of Presidential elections in the 
life of Don Porfirio Diaz. Elections there were in a 
purely formal way. But everybody in Mexico knew 
well that they meant nothing. First Congress 
amended the law which forbade immediate re-elec- 
tions. Then it removed all restrictions. Then in 1904 
it prolonged the President's term of office from four 
to six years. No competitor appeared in any of the 
elections so called of 1888, 1892, 1896, 1900, and 1904. 
An opponent did come forward in 1910, but the end 
was then at hand, and the story must be left till we 
reach its date. It is enough to say here that for about 
twenty-seven years he was by common consent, and, 
to judge by appearances, to the satisfaction of all, 
the master of Mexico. Francia, the Despot of 
Paraguay, governed for nearly as long, and did in one 
way more than Don Porfirio, for he died in power, and 
he founded a kind of dynasty. No other Spanish- 
American tyrant has achieved as much as either of 
them, and Francia had a far easier task than the 
ruler of Mexico. 

During those twenty-seven years, or rather during 
twenty-six of them, Diaz was the Government of 
Mexico. It was not because Congress approved that 
he was re-elected and his term was not prolonged. 
Congress approved because its master directed it to give 



238 DIAZ 

its approval. In other words, the Government of 
Mexico was, in the technical sense of the word, " a 
tyranny." A single man had taken to himself all the 
powers of the State, and was not a whit the less tyrant 
because he used them to the best of his ability and 
with the help of the wisest advice he could obtain for 
the general good. No great event, or succession of 
events, divides these twenty-six years of rule into 
periods. Their history cannot be told chronologically 
or at least nothing is gained, and some quite 
unnecessary repetition is incurred, if we follow the 
mere order of time. We have one single subject to 
deal with the manipulation of Mexico by President 
Diaz. It may be divided under heads for purposes 
of convenience and for its better understanding, but 
it cannot be intelligently arranged by mere dates. 
And the subject is the sincere effort of a strong-willed 
and clear-headed man to cure a chronic anarchy, by 
police repression, by the spread of mere school educa- 
tion, and by the development of material prosperity. 
It will be interesting to see how far he succeeded. 
The spectacle of a strong man resolutely engaged in 
" getting things done " is always to be looked at 
respectfully. But the political instruction of the 
story, and even the true meaning of it, are to be 
sought rather in the reasons for his failure. For, as 
we now must confess, he did fail. He would not 
have succeeded, even if he had died in possession of 
power, as Francia did, and the anarchy had broken 
out after his death. But it burst forth while he was 
alive, and drove him into exile, from which he never 
returned. After all he had done for Mexico he came 
to the same end as some of the least sympathetic of 
Spanish-American despots Juan Manuel Rosas, for 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 239 

instance. What, then, did he really do ? And was it 
his fault that his work bore so little fruit ? The answer 
to the second question can wait, and, indeed, cannot 
be given till we have replied to the first. 

We may begin by allowing that he did all that lay 
within the power of a strong, resolute, and very 
laborious man who commanded a sufficient armed force 
to endow his country with all the material instruments 
capable of being used to produce material prosperity. 
It was a considerable feat, and well deserving to be 
studied. But in the face of what we are forced to see 
to-day one becomes a little impatient with the effusions 
of writers who but a few years ago were assuring us 
that because of the roads, railways, drainage, mining, 
and new harbours which were already made or in 
process of being made, because of a growing revenue, 
and recurrent surpluses, a new heaven and a new 
earth had been created in Mexico. The races who ran 
their courses on the great central plain, in Oaxaca, or 
Yucatan before the Spaniard came executed public 
works, which may have been " strangely magnified " 
by uncritical writers, but were none the less far from 
contemptible when they are considered as the achieve- 
ments of peoples who had not the use of domesticated 
animals, and were forced to work with stone and copper 
tools, and yet they lie overgrown by tropical forest, or 
crumbling amid the degraded descendants of the 
peoples who had once the energy and ingenuity to 
build them. The Spaniards constructed " obras de 
romanos " while they ruled in " the Indies," but we 
know how their colonial empire ended. And these 
vanished Indian communities and their destroyers 
did their great works by themselves. They were not 
left in debt to foreigners when the work was done. 



240 DIAZ 

Mexico was so indebted. The work was done for her 
by foreign skill and capital. Every mile of railway 
represented an increase of the hold which the foreigner 
had on her land and her resources. Everything, there- 
fore, is not said when we are asked to note that whereas 
there were only 567 kilometres all told of railway 
when Diaz became President, the mileage had risen 
to 16,285 kilometres by 1906. We want to know what 
she paid for this increase in her means of communica- 
tion and to what extent her people profited indivi- 
dually. We hear that the national revenue trebled 
without any great increase in taxation, and that the 
surpluses were frequent and large. In 1906 1907 the 
surplus reached the remarkable figure of $29,209,481 
out of a revenue of about $88,000,000. With these 
figures alone before us we do not expect to find that 
the national debt has increased in the same proportion. 
And yet it has. The traveller who finds the streets 
of Mexico city greatly improved, parks laid out, a 
national opera-house built at great expense, sees the 
proofs of increasing civilisation. But he sees them 
only because he does not look below the surface, or 
because he keeps entirely to a few towns. A national 
opera-house in a very fine style of French architecture 
has been built out of municipal funds in the city of 
S2o Paolo in Brazil. When one of the authorities 
was asked why so much money was spent on a theatre 
when the people of the town have little liking for this 
form of amusement, and rarely leave their houses at 
night, he replied that the building would impress 
foreigners with an idea of the opulence of Ss.o Paolo 
and would in short be a good advertisement. If the 
foreigner who is to be impressed goes for an hour's 
drive out of the town he will find the population living 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 241 

in huts of thin mud walls with but thatched roofs, 
and in conditions which preclude not only comfort 
but even common decency. There is not a little of 
such civilisation as this in Spain and Portugal them- 
selves, and there is far more in Spanish and Portuguese 
America. Whoever goes but a very short way out of 
the towns goes centuries back in civilisation ; and he 
goes from the outward appearance of opulence to a 
reality of dire poverty. The prosperity which is shown 
in public works, increases of revenue, French fashions, 
and buildings in the towns does not seem to affect the 
mass of the population in the least. Even a rise in 
wages seems to do no good, for it is accompanied by, 
or is the result of, a rise in prices. 

In order to begin doing what it was given him to 
do, President Diaz had to start his second term by 
bringing the finances back into order, and to do that 
he had to make what was in fact a confession of error. 
He had swamped the revenue by granting subventions 
to the contractors foreigners all of them, even when 
there was a Mexican figurehead to the enterprise. 
General Gonzalez had met the difficulty, as we have 
seen, by sacrificing his own employees and paying the 
foreign capitalists. He may or may not have had 
personal reasons for maintaining the national honour 
at such a cost, but it is certain that he put the Mexican 
Government on the road which must infallibly lead 
to a renewal of revolts and anarchy. President Diaz 
boldly reversed his predecessor's course and did not 
shrink from making what was in fact a practical 
confession of his own errors. He restored the salaries 
of the civil servants, but with the abatements already 
mentioned, which were for the moment put as high 
as 25 per cent. The figure was lowered after a time 



242 DIAZ 

to 10. The means to do this act of bare justice were 
found by suspending payment of the interest of a 
floating debt, and by withdrawing the subventions 
which he had promised to give when he was in office 
before. This was, of course, neither more nor less than 
a partial bankruptcy, but the drastic measure did not 
hurt President Diaz in the estimate of the capitalists. 
They must have known that the measure was neces- 
sary ; they had profited much already, and they 
foresaw large advantages in the future if only the 
peace could be kept. So long as the President did 
provide Mexico with a working Government, capital 
and labour between them could do the rest by drawing 
vast quantities of marketable materials from the soil 
of Mexico. 

Industry asked for defence from mere violence while 
it was engaged in obtaining and transporting the 
material, and that the President did give. We have 
seen how he had begun the work during his first term. 
He had not then been able to do more than make a 
good start, and there had been a fall from the standard 
he then reached during the Administration of General 
Gonzalez. Mexico was still a land of brigandage. 
We who have never quite succeeded in putting a stop 
to dacoity in India ought not to reproach the memory 
of the Mexican Government of that time if it took 
years to get the upper hand of the bandits. In a 
thinly-inhabited country full of hiding-places, with a 
very poor population who have no cause to fear the 
robber, and can even sympathise with him, brigandage 
is a very difficult pest to cure. It was particularly 
hard to suppress in Mexico because the most valuble 
part of the national produce was still bullion, the most 
desirable form of portable property to the highway- 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 243 

man. Until railways had been much developed, and 
President Diaz had had time to extend the action of the 
" rurales " to all parts of the Republic, the transport 
of the gold and silver from the mines to the ports was 
never quite safe. Indeed, it was not until the police 
had been brought up to the level of their task that 
the trains themselves were secure. They were occa- 
sionally stopped and robbed. 

The bullion was carried to railway stations or ports 
in convoys or caravans known as " conductas." This 
word applied originally not to the " recuas " or strings 
of mules which carried the booty in earlier days, or 
the wagons which came to be used afterwards, but to 
the armed guard sent with them as a protection. 
Even an escort was not always enough in a country 
where the brigands operated in bands which might 
be numbered by the hundred and the roads ran through 
mountain passes or through bush. The mine owners 
adopted a device to improve their own chance of 
escaping loss and to puzzle the bandits. They took 
to sending the bullion in iron wagons which were heavy 
to drag along, but were for that very reason trouble- 
some to carry off across country. They were elabo- 
rately barred and locked so as to be hard to open. 
The calculation was that the brigands would be unable 
either to carry them off or break into them before an 
armed force could be brought up to recover the spoils. 
When Mexicans were reproached with the little 
security their country afforded to the honest trader 
they were apt to reply that the care the Government 
took to provide escorts was the best proof of its desire 
to protect life and property. The desire was no doubt 
sincere, but the execution was defective till President 
Diaz's " rurales " were in full working order. But it 

R 2 



244 DIAZ 

is allowed that by the close of his second term the 
settled parts of Mexico had become safe. And this, 
it must be confessed, was the condition antecedent 
to every other kind of improvement. 

It was also far easier than the task imposed by 
ancient fiscal error on the Government of Mexico. A 
valuable trade can be conducted without any measure 
of Government protection where the traders can go 
armed in bodies and defend themselves. The once- 
flourishing trade of the prairies in the Santa Fe trail 
owed nothing to the police either of the United States 
or of Mexico. There was none, and the traders who 
carried their goods in the prairie wagons defended 
them against wild Indians and robbers alike with their 
rifles. But a bad system of taxation produces a 
universal and pervasive evil, which can only be over- 
come, and that but partially, by another evil all but 
as bad as itself, which is smuggling. There was 
smuggling in Mexico, but mainly on the northern 
frontier, and its operations did not extend southward 
across the belt of desert which divides the north from 
the centre of the Republic. The rest of the country 
suffered from a system of taxation inherited from the 
old Spanish colonial Government. It was of a nature 
to be destructive to all industry. A ref orma tion which 
should sweep it away and replace it by something 
more rational was quite as necessary as either public 
works or public security if Mexico was to reach the 
level of prosperity attainable by its poeple. But it 
was far more difficult to obtain. Any Mexican, official 
or unofficial, who had average commonsense and was 
an honest man, would see easily enough that without 
facilities for transport there could be little or no trade, 
and that without security for life and property there 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 245 

could be no industry, or but little. It was equally 
easy for him to see that roads and railways would 
provide the facilities, and that a good constabulary 
would establish the security. But when the matter to 
be considered was the reform of an old-established 
system of taxation, to which everybody was accus- 
tomed, and in the continuance of which many were 
interested, there was no chance of the same unanimity 
as in regard to such simple questions as roads and 
police, and the remedy was likely to be hard to find. 
There was no mere question of the suppression of a 
recognised evil. One system of levying a contribu- 
tion from the pockets of the taxpayer was to be 
replaced by another, and somebody was sure to be 
afraid that the change would do him a damage. 
There were indeed three classes of great influence in 
Mexico who would certainly oppose any effective 
reform. The problem was so continually prominent 
during the whole Administration of President Diaz 
that any account of his government in which it was 
passed over would be most incomplete. 

The substance of the whole question may be divided 
under two heads. There were taxes in Mexico which 
by their very nature were destructive of all industry, 
and therefore could be properly dealt with only by total 
abolition. There were taxes which, though reasonable 
in themselves, were so unfairly apportioned that they 
did about as much harm as the others, and failed to 
produce an adequate revenue. 

The tax-exacting devices which were so bad that 
they could be amended only by abolitions were the 
" alcabalas," the " portazgos," and the internal 
customs barriers. All three had been imported from 
Spain, where they had produced their full effect by 



246 DIAZ 

killing the nascent industry of the country, and 
they had continued their destructive course in Mexico. 
The first has always been quoted as the very perfection 
of a thoroughly bad tax. It was an excise levied on 
goods sold in the market or by public auction. In 
spite of its Arabic name it was of Roman origin. Of 
course it was not always equally heavy, nor levied 
with equal severity. Mexicans got off more lightly 
than the Spaniards of Old Spain. In the mother coun- 
try the alcabala (or alcavala) went as high as 14 per 
cent, of the price of the goods at one time, and the 
country was sensibly relieved when it was reduced to 6. 
When in 1885, tne fi rst 7 ear f Don Porfirio's second 
Administration, Congress voted the general alcabala 
for all the Republic, it fixed the rate at " one half of 
I per cent, upon the value in excess of $20 of trans- 
actions of buying and selling of every kind of mer- 
chandise, whether in wholesale or retail, in whatever 
place throughout the whole Republic." The same 
impost was put on " all sales and resales of country or 
city property ; upon all exchanges of movable or 
immovable property ; on mortgages, transfers, or 
gifts, collateral or bequeathed inheritances ; on bonds, 
rents of farms, when the rent exceeds $20.00 annually, 
and on all contracts with the Federal State, or 
municipal Governments." One-half of I per cent, does 
not sound like a heavy impost. But this was only 
the Federal alcabala. The States and municipalities 
levied others to provide their local revenue. Some- 
times they levied an ad valorem duty, sometimes they 
imposed a fixed charge on the article. Whatever the 
rule was the alcabala was a killing pest, because it 
required for its collection a swarm of officials and an 
endless fuss of inspection. Of course, it tended to 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 247 

have the effect which, as Adam Smith pointed out, 
was inseparable from such an impost. " Through the 
greater part of a country in which a tax of this kind is 
established nothing can be produced for distant sale. 
The produce of every part of the country must be 
proportioned to the consumption of the neighbour- 
hood." It is obvious that this must have been the 
effect. The alcabala was levied on the ox when it was 
sold to the cattle-dealer. Then again when the dealer 
sold it to the butcher, on the hide when sold to the 
tanner, on the tanned hide when sold to shoemaker or 
saddler, and on the saddle when sold by the maker to 
a tradesman, or by a tradesman to the customer. At 
every step there was an inspection to be undergone, 
forms to be filled, stamps to be fixed. No circulation 
of goods was possible under such a perpetual down- 
pour of officialdom and taxation. 

It is not enough to say that such a system of taxa- 
tion would ruin any industry. It could not be applied 
in a country in which active industry existed without 
producing universal rebellion. On the only occasion 
on which an attempt was made to apply the alcabala 
to an industrial community when the Duke of Alva 
tried to impose it on the Spanish Netherlands it did 
what political oppression and religious persecution had 
failed to do it united all the Netherlanders, Protestant 
and Catholic, in one universal rebellion. The Duke, 
arbitrary and brutal as he was, and his King, Philip II., 
who was as stiff-necked as the general, were forced to 
withdraw. The " alcabala " could be levied in Spain 
because there was little, and in most parts of the 
country there was no, movement of trade. Each 
district used up its own raw material, and the goods 
passed direct from the handicraftsman to the pur- 



248 DIAZ 

chaser. In such an unindustrial state of a population 
it is indeed difficult to see how the vast majority are 
to be made to contribute to the revenue except in some 
such way. A bad tax must be imposed because no 
other would have any effect. If we need a proof we 
can take the case of British India. Our salt tax is a 
bad one, but it is only by the use of an impost of this 
character that the huge majority of the inhabitants 
can be made to bear a part of the taxation. But the 
salt tax is a long way short of an alcabala. If, how- 
ever, we can see how this Spanish adaptation of the 
Roman " Vectigal Rerum Venalium " came to be 
fixed on Spain and its colonies, we are also forced to see 
that when imposed it had an invincible tendency to 
petrify the population in its stagnancy. 1 

The " portazgo " was another inheritance from 
Rome. It was a charge imposed on all ships which 
entered a Mexican port, and was paid for a licence to 
trade. It was in proportion to the value of the goods 
brought, but it did not release them from the obliga- 
tion to pay the alcabalas. The natural result was that 
it tended, not only to limit commerce, but to prevent 
the rise of a coasting trade. For instance, all goods 
brought into Lower California across the Gulf from 
Sonora or Sinaloa, or vice versa, paid the portazgo as 
well as the alcabalas. If brought in by land from the 
north, they only paid the alcabalas. So it actually 
suited a Mexican trader better to bring in his goods 

1 The alcabala was more like the Roman " vectigal," because in the 
ancient world so large a part of the population lived as slaves or serfs on the 
vast estates. Slave handicraftsmen worked up raw material supplied by 
slave agriculturists and herdsmen. The community was self-sufficing. 
The same conditions prevailed on the great landholdings in Mexico and in 
some parts of Spain. And on that fact we may base an observation for 
which many other supports could be produced. It is that no other country 
has inherited so much directly from the Roman Empire, and has so carefully 
preserved what it inherited, as Spain. 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 249 

from the United States across the border than to 
buy from his own countrymen. The portazgos were 
more limited in their incidence than the alcabalas, 
but within their scope they were quite as fatal. 

The internal customs barriers are not so strange to 
us as the alcabalas. We, in fact, had one till Lord 
Randolph Churchill swept it away the shilling a ton 
tax on coal imported into London. If few noticed it 
while it lasted, or now remember its obscure existence, 
most of us knew the French " octroi," and many of 
us have heard of the Spanish " consumes." They are 
municipal impost duties levied on whatever is to be 
eaten, drunk, worn, or burnt within the town. 1 But 
these municipal dues were not all. There were cus- 
toms barriers between province and province. There 
were in France under the monarchy, and in Spain till 
recent times. They survived in Mexico, and in spite 
of all attempts at reform they go on because the local 
authorities must have a revenue, and also because a 
part of the money is taken for account of the central 
Government. A piece of goods imported across the 

1 As an instance of how the " consumo " works I give this experience of 
my own. Some years ago an English merchant in Madrid sold a huge 
steam threshing machine to a landowner in Granada. It had been exhibited 
at an agricultural show. In order to move it across Madrid from one 
railway station to another the merchant had to hire a team of oxen twelve 
in all. Now oxen when introduced into Madrid for the meat market are 
subject to " consumes. " This team was not to be slaughtered, for it was 
brought in from the country outside to drag the weight. But the story of 
the machine and the transport across Madrid might be a fraud. So the 
town council insisted on the deposit of the consumo as a guarantee of good 
faith. The sum of 1,000 pesetas, say 40, was paid on the understanding 
that it was to be refunded so soon as the draught cattle had gone out again. 
Here was a ceremony not tending to the facilitation of business. But this 
was not all. The town council liked to show the best possible revenue ; 
so it was very punctual in insisting on the deposit of the money, which went 
duly down on the receipt side of the balance. But for the same reason it 
put off the repayment as long as it possibly could. The merchant had to 
" hacer antesala " (dance attendance in ante-rooms) for some time before 
his deposit was refunded ; and was lucky if he had not to oil the wheels of 
the official machinery with palm oil. 



250 DIAZ 

frontier or at a seaport would be taxed over and over 
again before it could reach the customer. No wonder 
if an article priced at $30 on the frontier costs $100 
when sold to the customer in an inland city. Sydney 
Smith's famous joke on the British taxation of his 
day was an under-statement of the Mexican fiscal 
system. There was hardly a transaction of daily life 
which had not its corresponding tax not even a 
marriage, a christening, a dance, or a funeral. To 
make all safe the tariff of a Mexican town might, and 
at least in some cases did, contain such a clause as 
this : " All articles which are not contained in the 
present tariff remain subject to the pleasure of the 
authorities of the city of Guerrero to levy upon them 
a contribution which they think right and just." 

We are by no means at the end yet. A licence was 
required for the practise of any trade. In a country 
in which the journeyman workman rarely earned 
more than 20 or 25 cents for his day's work he had to 
pay a monthly poll tax of 12 cents. This was the old 
Spanish " pecho," or breast tax, levied on all who were 
not " noble." It was just the " karrach," or tribute 
levied by the Arabs on all Christians. The only 
difference was that whereas they t^ook it from the 
unbeliever the Christian States took i^from the trades- 
men and the poor and exempted the gentry. 

And with that detail we come to what was not the 
least destructive, and still less the least unjust, 
feature of the Mexican fiscal system. It has been 
noted already that the landowning class in Mexico 
claimed to reproduce the " brazo militar " of the 
mother country that is to say, the nobles who 
were exempt from personal taxes, and to an extent 
variously fixed by custom or royal privileges from 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 251 

the " alcabalas." The Church was of course equally 
favoured. Now it is calculated that the whole of the 
land of Mexico was held by about 6,000 persons. This 
figure does not include the Indian communities, 
which in out-of-the-way places went on living their 
old communal life, tilling their bits of ground and 
dividing the produce according to rules older than the 
Spanish conquest. But it did cover by far the greater 
part of the country. These masters of the land were 
able to defeat the humane Laws of the Indies to a 
great extent. They would combine to protect their 
own profits if for no other purpose. The King's laws, 
as a favourite phrase of theirs had it, were to be 
" obedecidas y no cumplidas " obeyed, but not 
carried out. They went on the statute-book, and they 
went no farther. The same power which enabled 
them to render the laws meant to protect the Indians 
of little effect was used to save themselves from 
taxation. The secularisation of the Church lands 
made no difference. The plundered property passed 
into the hands of intriguers, who got it for nothing, 
or purchasers who paid derisive sums, and they con- 
tinued to escape taxation. There were land taxes, 
but they were low and were dishonestly assessed. 
Land not in actual cultivation of which there was 
much in the vast Mexican estates escaped taxation 
altogether, even though it was appreciating in value. 
There are no countries in the world in which a smart 
undeveloped land tax is more urgently called for than 
in the former colonies of Spain and Portugal in 
America. 

More might be said without exhausting the subject, 
but we have already seen enough to enable us to under- 
stand why the mere construction of railways or the 



252 DIAZ 

improvements of ports might fail altogether to better 
the condition of the mass of the population of Mexico. 
They enabled mine owners to gain easier access to the 
metal and carry it to the ships for export. They 
enabled the merchant who imported such goods as 
the richer classes could afford to buy to bring their 
imports more rapidly, and also more cheaply, to the 
small market open to them. But while alcabalas 
continued to be levied on the scale defined by Congress 
in 1 885, and customs barriers stood round every State 
and every town, the mass of the population would be 
never a jot the better save for such day's wage as they 
could earn in the capacity of mere labourers. This 
was a temporary gain. For the rest the very large 
majority of Indians and the mestizos would go on as 
before dressing in goat-skins warranted to last for 
years, the roughest of cotton shirts, blankets woven 
by their women folk, and wearing sandals made of a 
sole of leather and tied on by thongs which they 
fixed themselves. The revenue grew by and for the 
capitalist. The people could not buy nor sell without 
bringing a flight of tax-collecting vampires down on 
them. Their small balance of money went mainly in 
the pulque shop. No wonder if Mexico possessed in 
the " Leperos " one of the very worst vagabond 
populations in all the world. 1 A wailing song went 
about in Mexico at the very end of Don Porfirio's 
rule. " The negro of Cuba," so it said, " is free and 
lives by his day's pay. Only the Mexican Indian 
eats little and lives ill. He lives in a poor hutch. 

1 The similarity of the word Le"pero (to leper) must not deceive the 
reader. A leper in Spanish is " leproso," or popularly " gafo." " L^pero " 
is a word of uncertain origin, and is supposed to be an adaptation of an 
Indian word. Lepers there are in Mexico, but they are usually known as 
" pintados " (painted or blotched). 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 253 

They pay him with aguardiente, to make an end 
of his race. All the world knows it, my heart ; all 
the world knows it." It is " a doleful song " 
" steaming up a lamentation and an ancient tale of 
wrong." 1 

There was a clear understanding in Mexico of the 
evil consequences of the fiscal system. A conference 
on the subject had been held in the capital during the 
Administration of General Gonzalez. The delegates 
were competent judges, and, as the Spaniards would 
say, " they talked pearls." One and all agreed that 
while the alcabalas and the internal customs barriers 
remained in existence the country was doomed to 
beggary. But they were equally unanimous in 
declining to propose a remedy. They said, and with 
truth, that, whatever the vices of these barbarous 
old methods of taxation might be, they provided the 
only means by which the States and municipalities 
could raise a revenue, and they were the sources of a 
good part of the receipts of the Federal Government. 
This was the vicious circle in which the Government 
was confined. The taxes kept the country stagnant 
and poor, but abolition would render all administra- 
tion impossible. It would for one thing entail the 
disbanding of the army, and that, of course, meant 
anarchy. There were, no doubt, men in Mexico who 

1 I add the Spanish. Even a reader who does not know the language, 
but will give the vowels the broad sound, will be able to catch the " doleful " 
lilt of the lines : 

" El negro de Cuba es libre 

Y vive de sa jornal. 

Solo el Indio Mexicano 

Come poco y vive mal 

Vive en un pobre jacal. 

Le pagan con aguardiente, 

Pa que la raza se acabe, 

Lo sabe toda la gente mi vida, 

Toda la gente lo sabe." 



254 DIAZ 

were quite well aware that the remedy was to impose a 
just land tax and house tax and income tax ; to take 
the alcabala off everything else and quadruple it on 
pulque ; to lower the outrageous import duties 
imposed on manufactured goods for the benefit of a 
handful of mills which produced bad cotton shirts to 
be sold at a high price. But to do all this implied a 
land valuation, a huge amount of work, and the 
command of time. It implied something more 
namely, that reform would deeply offend the caciques 
who controlled the Governments of the States and 
the municipalities, as well as the swarms of officials 
who lived on tax-collecting and bribes for not collect- 
ing together with the owners of houses and land who 
had hitherto contrived to escape taxation nearly if 
not altogether. This last class might be politically 
useless and indeed had proved that it was but 
under the Republic, as under the old Spanish 
monarchy, it could act to defend its pocket. It 
could, as it often had done, pay for a pronunciamiento. 
That this was no imaginary peril is proved by one 
single fact. When, after many years, there came a 
revolt against the " autocracy of General Diaz," 
the immediate cause of the rising was that a 
certain family in Northern Mexico, whose members 
owned among them 20,000,000 acres of land, spent 
.250,000 in financing the outbreak. In the end 
they brought murder on some of themselves, but 
in the interval they had plunged Mexico back into 
anarchy. 

This was, if a threadbare image may be used again 
just for once, the Augean stable which President Diaz 
had to clean if Mexico was to attain to its possible 
level of prosperity. The attempt was made and 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 255 

persevered in, but, it is to be feared, with something 
far short of complete success. Accurate information 
of what was really done is hard to obtain. Nothing, 
indeed, is easier than to find from " The Authentic 
History " of Senor Ricardo Rodrigues, or the life of 
the President by Senor Jose F. Godoy, that the 
abolition of the alcabalas was the constant care of the 
Government, and that steady progress was made in 
the good work. But it is to be remembered that 
neither of these books makes as much as a pretence to 
being critical or complete. The first is a collection of 
the President's speeches to Congress published when 
he was standing for his prolonged period in 1904. 
The second is an electioneering pamphlet published in 
New York in 1910, when he was standing for the last 
time, and was addressed rather to the American than 
to the Mexican public. The Federal Government 
might renounce the alcabala so soon as the growth of 
the national customs allowed, but that the different 
States dispensed with the old familiar method of 
obtaining money is not proved. The fact, no doubt, 
is that they continued to be levied within the different 
States, or at any rate some of them, and to produce 
all their old bad effects. The inter-State customs 
barriers were certainly not wholly swept away, and 
if they have not reappeared during the recent troubles 
the conduct of the adventurers and caciques who 
have been tearing the poor country to shreds has 
been contrary to nature. 

Finance would in any case be likely to be the weak 
side of a Spanish or Spanish-American Government. 
Nothing in the training of Don Porfirio was calculated 
to turn his thoughts in that direction. He con- 
fessedly managed the funds he raised in the South 



256 DIAZ 

during the French intervention with probity and 
success ; but that was a simple business. The mer- 
chant shipper of the old times carried a bag with him 
to sea. He put into it what he received for freights 
and took out of it what he had to spend for the expenses 
of the voyage. What remained was the profit. A 
partisan leader could do as much, but to understand 
the principles of good taxation was another and a 
more complicated matter. The Spanish mind does 
not turn readily to the study of finance. It was 
possible for the President to find a good Home 
Secretary in Sefior Rubio, his father-in-law, and a 
good Minister for Foreign Affairs in Sefior Mariscal. 
But it does not appear that he had a good financial 
adviser at his elbow till he found one in Sefior Liman- 
tour, the son of a French man of business, born in 
Mexico, but not naturalised till he was twenty years 
old. In spite of all obstructions, the mere mainten- 
ance of peace, even with an accompaniment of local 
disorders in the States which, let it be noted once 
more lest we forget, never ceased entirely the making 
of railways and so forth, the development of mines, 
and some improvement in agriculture, produced 
greater well-being in some classes and a growing 
revenue. The world thought that Mexico was on the 
way to an industrial development which would bring 
prosperity and orderly habits with them ; and con- 
tinued to believe so till the crash came. 1 

1 I am conscious that much is lacking here for a full account of Mexico's 
financial and industrial position, but can only say that the real truth is not 
to be obtained. Travellers who have been in Mexico since 1911 have found 
signs of prosperity, and have been told that times of trouble are not so bad, 
because in peace so much was taken away to be spent out of the country 
which now remains at home. Does this mean anything except that Mexico, 
being a debtor nation, had to export in peace to pay its debts, whereas in 
time of trouble it repudiates and keeps the things for which it went into debt ? 
That gives an air of prosperity for a time. 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 257 

Yet while we recognise, as we must, that much in the 
work done by President Diaz was transient and super- 
ficial, it would be most unfair to deny that, even so, 
his achievement was honourable. In no other Spanish- 
American State has a ruler been able to increase the 
revenue by the growth of industry and to secure a 
succession of real surpluses. In 1896, and for the first 
time in its history, Mexico could show a revenue of 
$50,000,000 and an expenditure of $45,000,000. The 
surplus made it possible for the President to relieve 
his officials from the heavy deductions made from 
their salaries. The revenue continued to increase till 
it reached $101,385,000 in the financial year 1908 
1909. In the year 1906 1907 the surplus had been 
$29,209,481. During this period his treasury had 
had to contend with difficulties which affected all 
Governments but were peculiarly severe for Mexico. 
The depreciation in the value of silver hit a country 
which still retained the white metal as its standard, 
and allowed free coinage, very hard. Its currency 
was discredited, and the chief of Mexican exports fell 
in value. Silver had been freely coined in the eleven 
private mints which farmed the privilege of coining 
money from the State. The coins were an article of 
export brought by other nations for use in the Chinese 
trade. This flood of money which was depreciating 
rapidly threatened to make the exchange ruinous for 
Mexico. The Republic was steered through the crisis 
partly by stopping the mints, and partly by the adop- 
tion of the gold standard in 1902. It does not in the 
least detract from the credit due to President Diaz 
that the actual manager of these financial operations 
was the Franco-Mexican Senor Jose Limantour. An 
admiral or general who sees the wisdom of some 



258 DIAZ 

suggestion made by a subordinate and acts on it is 
entitled to all the credit of whatever measure of success 
it may achieve. It is to his credit that he sees the 
wisdom of the advice, and it is by his authority that 
the right thing is done. To him belongs the honour of 
turning what was but an idea and mere words into a 
profitable act. The chief in war or peace who will 
not take advantage of the capacity of his subordinates, 
lest he should be supposed to be influenced by them, 
makes an exhibition of gander vanity ; and moreover 
he is not doing his best to fulfil his duty. Now it has 
always been a great fault of the Spanish character that 
it has lacked the capacity to see and give free play to 
the capacity of subordinates. The " mandon " will 
do everything himself, and will do nothing that may 
appear to come from another lest his dignity should 
suffer. The type of this too prevalent Spanish 
littleness is the immortal Don Gregorio de la Cuesta, 
who hampered Wellington during the Talavera cam- 
paign. He refused to move his army at the English 
General's suggestion for fear that his soldiers should be 
led to doubt his wisdom when they saw him act by 
advice. In a very brief space he was ignominiously 
bundled out of the position he had refused to leave 
when he might have moved freely. There was nothing 
of Don Gregorio in President Diaz. He never gave a 
better proof of his fitness to rule than when he detected 
and utilised the financial capacity of Senor Limantour. 
Critics who were enlightened by the course of events 
after 1910 have blamed Don Porfirio on the ground 
that the surpluses shown by the revenue in the last 
years of his Administration were largely gained by 
making dangerous reductions in the army. But it is 
more than doubtful whether the evils which followed 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 259 

the revolt financed by Madero in 1910 could have 
been averted by the maintenance of a larger army. 
What if the army did as it had often done before in 
Mexican history what if it divided against itself ? 
The smaller army did so divide, and a larger would 
probably have behaved in just the same way. A 
tendency to disorder and a lack of national sentiment 
are bred in the bone of all Mexico, of which the army 
is but a part, and will out in the flesh. This sup- 
position that a stronger army would have kept the 
peace for ever is but a mere guess. 

It is, on the other hand, a fact that such measures 
as the purchase by the State of railways and the 
drainage of the Mexico valley represented in different 
degrees lasting gains. By every purchase of a railway 
the country did to some extent free itself from tribute 
to the foreign capitalist. It was far too poor to free 
itself entirely. These transactions appeared to give 
promise that the days when Mexico was looked upon 
as a species of booty, and when it granted concessions 
wholesale in order to attract foreign capital, and in 
many cases to speculators of very indifferent character, 
might be passing away. The purchase of the Vera- 
cruz-Pacific line in 1904 was a case in point. This line, 
which must not be confused with the Veracruz-Mexico, 
was built by an American company. The builders 
got into difficulties and suspended payments in 1903. 
As the line started from Cordoba, on the Veracruz- 
Mexico route, and ran south to the railway across the 
isthmus of Tehuantepec, it was of importance to the 
Government for the purpose of maintaining communi- 
cations with and its hold over Oaxaca. And then it 
provided a connection between the Gulf and the 
Pacific. A certain element of politics or of self- 

S 2 



260 DIAZ 

defence supplied a motive for the measures which the 
Mexican Government took to acquire control of the 
Central and the National lines. Both were built by 
American capital, and they connected Central Mexico 
with the United States. The first crosses the frontier 
at El Paso del Norte on the Rio Grande and reaches 
the capital by the great plain. The National enters 
the Republic at Laredo in Texas and runs to the capital. 
It was completed as a narrow-gauge line in 1888 and 
widened by 1903. In this case the Government of 
President Diaz acquired a commanding interest and 
the control of the lines in order to protect itself against 
possible dictation on the part of American capitalists. 
Of course the chance that such measures as these 
would prove of lasting benefit to the country depended 
on how far it could continue to possess an honest and 
businesslike Government. 

The drainage of the valley was a gain pure and simple 
if only because it resulted in an immense saving of 
life. The actual work could be adequately described 
only by an engineer, or by one not ignorant of the 
engineer's art. Yet without that skill we can all of 
us look at a mechanical achievement of this order from 
the point of those for whom it is done. The valley of 
Mexico is a great bowl of which the rim is formed by 
mountains. The water drains from the mountains 
into the valley and has no natural exit. When the 
Spaniards entered " The Valley," as they called it, par 
excellence, the soil was still largely covered by forests 
which held the water and delayed evaporation. The 
Aztec " pueblo " Tenochtitlan, on the site of which 
the city of Mexico now stands, was surrounded by 
what the Spaniards called a lake, but what appears to 
have been in reality a very watery swamp, which after 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 261 

a rainy season and the melting of snows was entirely 
covered, and became navigable by vessels of shallow 
draught. Within a few generations of the conquest 
the Spanish hatred of trees which has desolated large 
parts of their own country had begun to produce its 
effects in " The Valley." The forests began to go, 
the balance of water, and of wood to absorb and hold 
the water, was upset. Being no longer confined as it 
had been, the drainage from the hills flowed more 
rapid]y where the slopes gave it free way. The position 
of the lasting deposits of the waters which drained 
from the hills shifted. The alternations between the 
lowest and the highest levels of the lakes became more 
violent. The city came to stand not in, but on the 
side of, its lake, which was the lowest of the three in 
the valley. So it was increasingly menaced at the 
times of high floods. Apart from this chronic peril, 
the city, because of its position, was subjected to 
another and perhaps a worse evil. 

It stood almost on the level of the lake into which 
it was drained. The sewers had a very slight fall. 
Therefore the refuse was not carried well clear. 
What was borne away went to fill up the lake and 
create a further obstruction for the drains. At last 
the city stood on a vast network of cesspools. Only 
the extreme dryness of the climate, due to the height 
of the valley above the sea, preserved the population 
from being wholly destroyed by disease. It escaped 
this fate because refuse when exposed to the air dries 
hard. Even so the death-rate rose to sixty in the 
thousand, or more than twice the figure of Bombay. 
The Spaniards are not a provident people. If they 
had been more in the habit of looking ahead carefully, 
Hernan Cortes, who was one of the wisest of them, 



262 DIAZ 

would not have allowed himself to be tempted to 
found his city on the site of the Aztec " pueblo." He 
would have chosen a higher position, of which he could 
have found many and good in " The Valley." Pride 
and a wish to plant his foot on the very neck of the 
conquered pagan misled him. By his decision the 
city which was for long the greatest in the New World 
was doomed to perpetual danger and disease. In the 
first times of the seventeenth century the necessity 
for taking precautions had become so pressing that the 
task was taken in hand. But it was not taken in the 
right way. Dams were built round the city to keep 
out the floods, and of course they blocked the exit of 
the drainage. A great attempt to provide an outlet 
for the overflow of " The Valley " waters a true 
" obra de los Romanos " was promoted by the 
viceroys. It was the huge cutting of Nochistongo. 
The cutting is used by the Central Railway, but it 
never served the purpose it was meant for. The 
viceroy's Dutch engineer Maartens, who transliterated 
his name to Martinez, misjudged his problem. The 
work was done in the too common Spanish way by 
spasms of feverish activity under the stimulus of recent 
disaster, alternating with long intervals of neglect. 
Multitudes of Indians perished by forced labour and 
bad management, and " The Valley " was not drained. 
The Republic and Maximilian's Government found 
the problem still to be solved. Plans were made, 
foreign engineers were called in, but resources were 
lacking. They were not available till after President 
Diaz had been firmly seated in 1884; and then 
twenty years passed before the outlet which now 
drains " The Valley " to the north and into the bed 
of the Tula river, which reaches the sea at Tampico, 



PRESIDENT FOR GOOD 263 

was completed. The work was at first entrusted to a 
British firm, and when the enormous cost of keeping 
their works clear of water as they went on compelled 
them to withdraw, it was completed as a State under- 
taking at an expense of $9,000,000. A canal 35 kilo- 
metres long running from the north of the city carries 
the water to a tunnel of ten kilometres which opens on 
the valley of Tequixquiac. It was a great date in the 
modern history of Mexico when President Diaz in 
1903 broke through the last screen of rock with a 
pick and could say that after more than 180 years of 
labour, error, and delay the work was done. Even 
then a price had to be paid for the original mistake of 
the Conquistador. When during the Administration 
of President Lerdo or of President Juarez an American 
firm of engineers was consulted, they doubted whether 
the drainage could be carried out at all, and they added 
that if it ever were the withdrawal of so much water 
from the soil would probably bring the city of Mexico 
down in ruins through the shrinking of the ground 
and the settling of the foundations. Their fears and 
doubts were excessive ; but the soil has shrunk and 
the foundations have settled, so that much of the 
city is out of the perpendicular. 

Finance is confessedly of vital importance for all 
nations at all times, but in telling the life of statesmen 
and rulers of the nineteenth century it is not often 
necessary to dwell on their patronage of public works. 
In the great settled States of the modern world it is no 
more necessary to insist on their merits in that way 
than on their achievements in the slaughter of savage 
monsters. Yet there was a time when the leader of 
men had need to be a mighty hunter before the Lord, 
because superiority had to be established over the 



264 DIAZ 

wild beasts which contended with the human animal 
for the dominion of the earth. A ruler of Mexico was 
first bound to see that his country was provided with 
the instruments of industry, which in a settled, 
prosperous State are the products of the normal 
activity of the community. When Carlyle was writing 
his admirable essay on the Despot of Paraguay, 
Francia, he rebuked one of his authorities who had 
laughed at the South American " Perpetual Dictator " 
for publicly using a theodolite in the streets of 
Asuncion. " O Robertson," he asks, " if there was 
no other man who could observe with a theodolite ? '' 
President Diaz was better helped than Rodriguez 
Francia, but in the main his position in an anarchical 
Spanish-American community was the same. He had 
to stand over everything and see the work done. His 
enemies have asserted that his merits in the matter 
were small, for the needful roads, railways, harbours, 
and drainage would have been without him. How 
do they know ? The palpable fact is that through 
him they were done and the rest is guesswork. 



CHAPTER X 

THE INDIAN PROBLEM 

To have brought the finances into good order, and 
to have provided the Republic with the means of 
attaining to the level of prosperity at which a recur- 
rence of the old disorders would be intolerable, was 
much. But it was far from being enough to secure 
the future of Mexico. What remained to be done was 
to inspire the whole population with an understanding 
of the value of order, and a desire for prosperity. A 
strong ruler who could rely on the army could do the 
first. But no strength of personal character, and no 
military force, could do the second by themselves. 
They required the co-operation of the people who were 
to be governed. And in Mexico that co-operation 
was lacking, not altogether, but very largely. Sefior 
Limantour is reported to have said that the great 
obstacle in the way of the development of the pro- 
sperity of Mexico has been that a bare 20 per cent, of 
the Mexicans care for those material advantages which 
are desired by more developed or more ambitious 
races. And this is what is meant here by the Indian 
Problem. The name does not imply, and is not meant 
to imply, that 80 per cent, of the population of Mexico 
is of pure Indian blood. Whatever the proportion 
may be (and the facts are very ill known), it is not so 
high as that. But a large number of the mestizos are 
far more Indian than white, not only in blood, but in 
ways of thinking and of life. They are part of the 
Indian problem, and that is just this : " How are you 



266 DIAZ 

to persuade men, who do not value what civilised 
Europeans or citizens of the United States consider 
as indispensable things, to work in order to gain them 
as the European will, and to desire what he desires ? " 
If they cannot be persuaded, how are they to be 
forced ? For if Mexico is to become orderly and 
industrial they must needs be brought to give their 
aid. They are the rank and file of the whole industrial 
army, and without their co-operation nothing per- 
manent, nothing which will raise the whole body of 
the population, can be done. It is hard for us to 
realise that there are peoples who would not value the 
things we value if only they had the chance of knowing 
them, and yet it is true. We must not suppose that 
because an Indian here and there might rise as Juarez 
did, or as a few had done in the Church under colonial 
rule, the whole of them had any desire to change their 
way of living. The contrary was the case. Neither 
are we to suppose that because they were unhappy and 
believed themselves to be oppressed (as. they did) they 
wished to enjoy the kind of existence acceptable to 
prosperous white men. Their grievance was that they 
were not allowed to live in their own ways. Of these 
there were two the way of the wild Indian, who was 
a hunter and a raider ; the way of the tame Indian, 
who would, if he could, have lived a communal life 
in his traditional style. Until this great and torpid 
obstruction to a healthy national life is removed, 
Mexico will not only not be entitled to take a place 
among civilised States, but it will not even be the home 
of a real nation. 

If President Diaz made no attempt to conquer this 
hostile condition to his country's true welfare he must 
stand condemned as a statesman. A mere interval of 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 267 

internal peace maintained by a vigorous police is a 
good for so long as it lasts. But it may go and leave 
nothing behind it. A statesman is a ruler who does 
leave something done for ever, and something not 
merely material, not only roads or bricks and mortar. 
If all Diaz was able to achieve were measures of violence 
which intensified old evils and perpetuated old and 
cruel injustices, then he stands ill as a statesman and as 
a man. Now it is a fact which his biographer is bound 
to face that Diaz has been accused both of failing to 
try to improve the lot, and with it the character, of 
this vast Indian population of Mexico, and of acts 
which intensified injustice and cruelty. The floods 
of praise, often fulsome in tone, poured out by his 
admirers, official and voluntary, have had a counter- 
part of invective. The tone of these hostile judges does 
not indeed inspire full confidence. They are too much 
addicted to mere shrieks of invective, and they show 
absolute credulity in accepting every tale of cruelty 
or corruption they may have heard. Their rule of 
criticism is too often no more than this, that whatever 
is said to the credit of Don Porfirio is a proof of the 
sycophancy or the self-seeking of the witness. What- 
ever is said in the way of abuse is to be accepted with 
confidence because it is hostile. Yet there are certain 
facts which are not to be denied. The plantations of 
Yucatan cannot be hidden, nor can the fate of the 
Yaquis. If they are what we are told, and if President 
Diaz was responsible for perpetuating the first and 
for bringing about the second, a very great deduction 
must be made from the measure of praise which ardent 
admirers have considered his due. Such things could 
not stand alone. Exceptions of that kind are not 
heard of in countries where a Government hates 



268 DIAZ 

iniquity. They stand out because they are extreme 
examples of a prevailing condition. 

A few sentences must be enough to deal with the 
case of the true wild Indians. They did not constitute 
a serious difficulty except on the northern frontier, 
where they were represented by the Apache race in all 
its many subdivisions. Good kind-hearted people are 
apt to be shocked when they hear it said that there 
is nothing to be done with such human beings as these 
cruel red men were but to suppress them. And yet it 
is the unhappy truth. They were our fellow-men, 
and they were what they were because they had been 
produced by very ancient conditions. But these same 
ancient conditions had so fixed them that they had 
lost the power to change. In the great human family 
they represented those individuals who are to be 
found everywhere who are born callous and greedy 
and incapable of recognising their obligations to others. 
Every society has to suppress them, if not by the 
swift process of capital punishment, then by segregat- 
ing them and leaving them to die slowly within four 
walls. It was not the case with these untamable 
Apaches that they could not but be what they were. 
In the country over which they roamed to plunder and 
murder there were kindred red men who built 
" pueblos," tilled the soil, and used arms only to 
defend themselves against the Apaches. For genera- 
tions the province of Sonora was protected against 
them by the valour of the Opatas, who were " pueblo " 
Indians. The people of the pueblos learnt something 
from the white men, even if it were only to breed cattle. 
They listened to the priest, and if all they learnt from 
him was superstition the fault was not wholly theirs. 
The Apache took nothing but what must needs be 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 269 

used for evil. All the subdivisions of the race were 
not equally malignant, but as a rule the Apache took 
only what would increase his powers to kill. If he 
learnt to use the horse, that was because he employed 
it to raid farther and faster. If he acquired any 
manufactured article, it was one that would serve for 
war. When, therefore, at the beginning of his second 
Administration President Diaz did enter into co- 
operation with the United States troops to suppress 
the Apaches by downright killing, or by confining 
them to reservations where they withered in pauperism 
and hopeless competition with the industrial supe- 
riority of the white man, he was only discharging 
the elementary duty of a ruler. 

The case of the Apaches along the northern frontier 
was a very simple one. But there were other wild 
Indians whose case was nowise simple. The long 
anarchy which began in 1810 had completed the 
destruction of those ecclesiastical missions Jesuit 
and Franciscan which had honestly, for some 
generations, done their best for the Indians. The 
best they could think of was to keep them in a state 
of perpetual childhood because they were not gente de 
razon, not rational creatures, and because " of such is 
the Kingdom of Heaven." Even before the suppres- 
sion of the Jesuits the missions had, in the judgment 
of their critics, somewhat declined from their first 
standard. By the constant inculcation of childish- 
ness they had themselves become childish. After 
the suppression the missions declined still further 
under the rule of the Franciscans. The revolution 
ruined them, and in the frightful confusion which 
ensued their flocks reverted to savagery of a vagabond 
order. How to bring them back to a settled life was 



270 DIAZ 

the great question which pressed on the honour and 
the conscience of the rulers of Mexico. They were 
scattered about in many parts of the Republic, but 
mainly in the northern regions. The painful facts are 
that for long nothing was done, and that very little 
has been done to this day. The remedy which suggests 
itself as the best available would have been to collect 
them, or entice them to collect, in conditions which 
as nearly as might be would represent the kind of 
orderly life they understood that of the " pueblo " 
Indians. But if that was to be done those " pueblo " 
Indians who still survived in a fair state of order and 
prosperity must be justly treated. The treatment 
they received is but too fairly represented by the story 
of the Yaquis. As it is typical, and as it touches the 
reputation of President Diaz very closely, the tale 
must be told at some length. Writers who made it 
their business to praise everything the President did 
without stint have spoken of these Indians as blood- 
thirsty savages. Let us look at the facts. 

This Indian people came first in contact with the 
Spaniards in 1533. Cortes was still in the country 
and was sinking a large part of his great fortune in 
voyages of exploration to the north-west in search of 
the passage which, as he believed, must exist between 
the Atlantic and the North Pacific. Some of his 
rivals were engaged in the same work. One of them, 
Nuno de Guzman, pushed up by land through Sonora 
in search partly of the passage, partly of gold mines. 
The first Eldorado of the Spaniards was in " Quivira," 
a fantastic kingdom placed by imagination in the 
modern Arizona or in New Mexico. 1 In the course of 

1 The Quivira which did come into existence was a later Spanish settle- 
ment in New Mexico. 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 271 

his advance he crossed two rivers which run from the 
Sierra Madre to the Gulf of California the Moyo and, 
north of it, the Yaqui. Two peoples known to the 
Spaniards by the names of these rivers occupied their 
valleys. They were settled people who lived in 
pueblos and raised crops, and they were kindred. 
The Yaquis were the most numerous of the two. 
They offered a stout opposition, and, though defeated 
by the better arms of the invaders, they inspired the 
Spaniards with a certain measure of respect. The 
two came to terms. The Spaniards acknowledged 
the Yaquis as the owners of the valley. The Yaquis 
accepted a priest and a mission. Throughout the 
whole colonial period they lived on tolerable terms 
with the Spanish rule, though not without an occa- 
sional brush. The cause of conflict was always the 
same. The Yaquis resented the intrusion of white 
prospectors for mines and other intruders into their 
land. When provoked by these aggressions, they 
fought, and on the whole with success. They ended 
by falling out with the missions, but only when the 
missionaries became too grasping. When the colony 
became independent they took all they heard about the 
rights of man and equality and so forth as being really 
meant. They soon discovered that the Mexican 
Republicans did not consider that those fine principles 
applied to " pueblo " Indians, and they found that 
they were assailed by new aggressions on their valley. 
So they defended themselves, as before, under a 
leader known as " Bandera " because he carried about 
a banner with a picture of the Virgin on it, which he 
had taken from a church and which, he said, had 
belonged to Montezuma. At this time (1825 1828) 
the Yaquis were seen by our countryman, Lieutenant 



272 DIAZ 

R. W. H. Hardy, R.N., a gentleman who had taken 
part in the conquest of Java and in the expedition to 
New Orleans, and who in the times of peace and no 
employment was prospecting for pearls in the Gulf of 
California. And this is his judgment on them : " The 
Yaqui nation is spread over every part of the province. 
They are miners, gold-diggers, pearl-divers, agri- 
culturists, and artisans ; and in the arts of peace, 
by far the most industrious and useful of all the 
other tribes in Sonora." Other witnesses bear out 
Lieutenant Hardy. They note that the Yaquis 
succeeded in cattle-breeding, and that they came in 
numbers to plant and take in the harvest in parts of 
Sonora occupied by white settlers. When they had 
earned their money they went back to the valley 
which, by right of occupation dating back for cen- 
turies and by the written records of Spanish colonial 
authorities and Mexican Republicans, was theirs. 
We need not picture the Yaquis as mild children of 
poetry and nature. They could fight hard for their 
rights and, like other fighters, could strike from 
passion. If some were stout-hearted, some, in the 
fallen state of human nature, would probably be 
quarrelsome and arrogant. But men do not hold 
their rights because they are of unspotted virtue, but 
because they have a title recognised by the law. Now 
by all the laws of God and of Mexican men the Yaqui 
Valley belonged to the Yaquis. " Qui terre a guerre 
a," says the French proverb. There were disputes 
between them and their kinsmen the Moyos over 
boundaries, and in a country where the law was so 
feeble as it has long been in Mexico these disputes led 
to broken heads. They have produced the same 
consequences in more civilised lands. The 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 273 

resented the intrusion of white trespassers, and if they 
had not they would have been robbed. But though 
human and therefore liable to passion, they were an in- 
dustrious people and helpful to their white neighbours. 
We can well believe that the task of dealing at 
once firmly and fairly with such a population was 
not without its difficulties. An experience of three 
centuries had rendered the Yaquis suspicious and 
touchy. They were on the outlook for aggressions, 
and prepared to repel them by the only means of 
defence which had been effective in the past. But 
an honest and humane Government would not have 
failed to understand that the one condition on which 
the Yaquis could be kept in peace was absolute justice 
of treatment, and that was impossible unless their 
claim to the sole possession of their land was recog- 
nised. It is only too certain that this condition was 
lacking. When Mexico settled down to comparative 
peace during the first Administration of President Diaz 
and his successor, General Gonzalez, a great revival 
of agricultural, mining, and other industry began in 
Sonora. The State had been half-depopulated during 
the early days of the gold-mining development 
in Upper California. The white inhabitants had 
swarmed over the border to share in the wealth to be 
drawn from the mines. The Indians were left alone. 
After 1 880 the tide of immigration set in again. Sonora 
was known to possess great natural resources. The 
French enterprises of Pindray, Raousset Boulbon, 
and Jecker had aroused interest in the country. 
Mexico was naturally enough desirous to possess a 
California of her own, and very soon the Yaquis saw 
that they were again menaced in the enjoyment of 
their lands. 



274 DIAZ 

The full truth as to what happened during the last 
twenty years of the nineteenth century is hard to 
learn. Impartial observers were not likely to be 
present. There is much unsupported assertion and 
much heated rhetoric on both sides. But the main 
fact is not to be denied. The Mexican Government 
took a course which had for its inevitable end the 
destruction of the Yaqui people. It and its admiring 
advocates have asserted that these Indians were a 
horde of savages. Against this is to be set the testi- 
mony of American railway-makers and foreigners of 
several nationalities interested in Sonoran mines and 
land which agrees entirely with the words of Lieutenant 
Hardy quoted above. The fact appears to be that 
the Mexican Government had no idea how to develop 
the resources of Sonora otherwise than by making 
huge concessions of land to " concessionnaires " who 
were often its own political supporters. These men 
intruded, prospected, marked out claims, and so forth, 
without the least regard for the rights of the occupiers 
of the soil. The Yaquis took up arms, and then fol- 
lowed a war which lasted from 1886 to the first years 
of this century. It cost the Mexican Government a 
sum estimated at $51,000,000, and it entailed the 
destruction of the most industrious part of the Indian 
population of the whole Republic. For a time the 
Yaquis made head, but when the Mexican troops 
were re-armed with the Mauser rifle they were over- 
powered. A remnant held out in the Bacetate 
Mountains, in the background of that valley. The 
great majority were reduced to slavery. They were 
not even enslaved in Sonora. They were transported 
in gangs under escorts of soldiers and rurales to the 
sisal hemp plantations of Yucatan or the tobacco 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 275 

plantations of the Valle Nacional and there sold, under 
certain hypocritical disguises, as slaves. 

The traffic reached its highest level after 1904, and 
was as open as ever was the trade of the African Slave 
Coast at its worst. The captives were shipped at 
Guaymas, the chief port of Sonora in the Gulf of 
California. Thence they were taken by steamer to 
San Bias, on the Pacific Coast in the State of Jalisco. 
From San Bias they marched over rugged ground 
escorted by soldiers and rurales in what was known as 
a " coffle " (/.., cafila = caravan) in the days of the 
African slave trade, to San Marcos the farthest point 
then reached by the Pacific branch of the Mexican 
Central Railway. The train carried them men, 
women, and children to Veracruz, where they were 
shipped for Progreso in Yucatan. The co-operation 
of the police and the troops disposes of all pretence 
that this vicious traffic was a matter of private fraud 
carried on without the knowledge of the State. The 
Government of Mexico was as much concerned in the 
trade as ever was a negro " king " in the kidnapping 
of the miserable creatures who were brought down 
from the interior to the slave ships lying to receive 
them in the Bonny river. When delivered in Yucatan 
$60 a head was paid for them by the sisal planters. 
They were not called slaves. Slavery is abolished by 
the Constitution of the Mexican Republic. The theory 
was that they were " peones," field hands, who, like 
others of their class in Mexico, were working off debts 
due to the planters. The debt was the $60 paid to 
the Government for the command of their enforced 
services. 1 

1 The world was shocked when the story of the Yaquis was told by Mr. 
John Kenneth Turner, of California, in his " Barbarous Mexico." He was 



276 DIAZ 

This is surely a most deplorable story of a failure to 
govern humanely and in the interest of the whole 
country. There is worse to be said of it, but for the 
moment, and until we are done with other stones 
akin to that of the Yaquis, it is enough to note the 
administrative ineptitude of the thing. In Mexico, 
which is burdened by a great population Indian, or 
nearly pure Indian, in blood, thriftless, degraded, 
half savage, or, what is worse, formed of once tamed 
Indians who have reverted to savagery, no wise 
Government would have tolerated the destruction of a 
community of men and women who worked freely and 
well, and who lived an orderly life, raising crops of 
maize and sugar-cane within its own borders, and 
eking out its poverty by labour on railways and by 
taking in harvests. It would have borne with the 
natural suspiciousness of the Yaquis, and while it 
suppressed the excesses of individuals among them it 
would have abstained from ruining the whole com- 
munity. To enrich a handful of political hangers-on 
and speculators it took the very opposite course. 
And that is not all. The sins of the Yaquis, real and 
alleged, were made the excuse for a similar persecu- 
tion of other " pueblo " Indians Opatas, Punas, and 
so forth. The number of " bond servants " dragged 

accused of hysteria and of being animated by a personal grievance. Mr. 
Turner does indeed write as if the zeal of the Lord's house had eaten him 
up. It is not credible that Yucatan planters should have shown not only 
utter indifference to, but absolute glee over, the high percentage a third or 
80 anc j the very early date of the deaths among their purchases. Men of 
business who had paid $60 for the labour of a Yaqui " bond servant " 
cannot surely have rejoiced over his or her death before the price paid had 
been worked off. Yet I accept Mr. Turner's account of the trade as sub- 
stantially true in the first place because it is borne out by other testimony, 
and in the second place because it is perfectly consistent with the recent 
Brazilian rubber forest scandal, and with what I know, from the testimony 
of credible witnesses given to me in the countries themselves, to be the case 
in other Spanish-American countries. 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 277 

from Sonora to Yucatan and some other places far 
exceeded the Yaqui population even if it had lost 
none of its members in battle and a remnant had not 
saved itself in the hills. If the fate of this hopeful 
race stood alone it would be a shameful blot on the 
government of Mexico. But it was not. It was only 
the most odious example of similar offences against 
humanity and true statesmanship which were com- 
mitted all over Mexico. 

The henequen or sisal hemp plantations of Yucatan 
were not supplied with forced labour from Sonora 
only. They were helped to provide themselves with 
bond servants from among the native Indian popula- 
tion, the Mayas. In this case there was some shadow 
of an excuse for the brutality shown to the victims. 
The Mayas, to judge by the buildings they have raised 
during centuries, and long before the Spaniards 
appeared on the coast, were endowed with a better 
natural intelligence than other native races. But 
they had been utterly barbarised during their long 
conflict with white intruders. There is only one 
name for the whole history of Yucatan since it was 
first visited by Panfilo de Narvaez. It is disgusting. 
It is one long record of brutal aggression and bestial 
retaliation. What the Spaniards did not teach the 
natives was taught them by English logwood cutters 
in Campeachy, a gang of buccaneers, pirates, armed 
smugglers, and kidnappers. The Mayas proved very 
apt pupils. As much of the country was covered by 
dense tropical forest, they continued to possess fast- 
nesses into which their enemies could never penetrate. 
They defended themselves and the miasmas of 
their swamps helped to defend them against inva- 
sion. They sallied out to raid and massacre. The 



278 DIAZ 

long tale of mutual slaughter grows nauseous. At 
times the Spanish settlements appeared to be on the 
verge of extinction. Then the white race regained 
ground. As mere slaughter was accompanied by the 
capture and subjugation of women, a half-breed race 
was formed. The planters as a rule belong to this 
class of mestizos. They would prefer independence 
to union with Mexico, and they do demand with 
success a very considerable measure of local self- 
government. But they need the support of the 
Republic, and so profess a certain loyalty. According 
to what has been the rule in all Spanish America, 
these mestizos are more merciless to the pure Indian 
race than the Spaniards themselves. The outcome 
of centuries of cruelty has been for Yucatan the domi- 
nation of a small class of half-bred planters who grow 
rich by the forced labour of Indian serfs. If the 
possession of better weapons and a great show of 
municipal improvements in their pet town, Merida, 
constitute civilisation, then Yucatan is civilised. If 
the sacrifice of a whole population to the interest of a 
few, if cruelty and slave-driving, are barbarous, then 
Yucatan is in a state of barbarism. If a planter is a 
humane man, he treats his slaves better than does a 
mere brute. But a condition in which decency of 
behaviour depends wholly on the virtues of indi- 
viduals, and is not enforced on all by the law, is one of 
barbarism. And the most humane of planters does 
not live on his land, but in a fine house in Merida. He 
has an agent, an " administrador," who manages for 
him, and has an office in the town. The plantations 
are ruled by overseers (" mayordomos ") who are 
expected to get the work done. The treatment given 
to the bond servants depends on these men, who are 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 279 

bound to show a profit. All experience teaches us how 
they have ever been wont to secure the desired gain. 1 
Between these two extremes of Mexico, Sonora to 
the north-west and Yucatan at the south-east, there 
were varieties and degrees in the treatment given to 
the " peones " and the weaker portions of the inhabi- 
tants of Mexico. In the Valle Nacional, to the south 
of Cordoba on the Veracruz to Mexico line, there was 
a reproduction of the conditions which prevailed in 
Yucatan. In this case the plantations were devoted 
to growing tobacco. The bond servants were largely 
provided by the industry of a class of agents known as 
" enganchadores " (crimps : gancho in Spanish is a 
hook), who corresponded exactly to the rascals once 
well known in the West of England as " the Spirits." 
Their business was to hire labourers for the West 
Indian and Virginian plantations. They made lying 
promises, and when their dupes reached their destina- 
tion they found themselves in a condition of slavery. 
The " enganchadores " worked in this way for the 
tobacco plantations. The Valle Nacional is long, is 
shut in by steep hills covered with tropical forest, and 
well watched at its entry and exit by the police. The 
bond servants who tried to escape were commonly 
captured and brought back. A fine was imposed for 
the attempt to break their contract, and it was added 
to the debt they were working off. Some, however, 
did escape and told their tale. The character of the 
Valle Nacional was well known. In addition to the 
bond servants who had been obtained in this way there 

1 I do not dwell on certain details of flagellations, the treatment of the 
women, etc., etc., on which eye-witnesses have been copious. Such 
abominations are incidental to slavery wherever it exists. There are Blue- 
books and other sources of knowledge to tell us what was done in Jamaica 
by British men and women who were alive not very long ago. 



280 DIAZ 

were others obtained in another fashion. They were 
simply crimped by the police under pretence that they 
had committed minor offences. Sometimes they had 
committed them, and were punished by the magis- 
trates by being sent into slavery. It may be added 
that many of the tobacco planters in the Valle 
Nacional were Spaniards. That fact helps to account 
for the massacre of immigrants from Old Spain which 
occurred after the fall of Don Porfirio in 1911. 

The judicious reader of such stories as these finds, 
and rarely fails to use, an opportunity to express 
doubts as to their exact accuracy. He suspects 
exaggeration at least. And often he is right. The 
witnesses who have been revolted by the spectacle of 
wrong and misery do not stop to look at the other side, 
to note the cases where those who have power exercise 
it with moderation, nor do they always remember 
that those whose misfortunes are the result of their 
own misconduct can invent plausible tales of oppres- 
sion. Yet the substantial truth of the pictures drawn 
of Yucatan and the Valle Nacional is certain, and in 
a wholesome state of society the errors or even the 
sins of men and women are not punished by turning 
them into mere instruments for money-getting, to the 
advantage of small bodies of employers who happen to 
be useful to the persons who command the public 
services for the time being, and who dignify themselves 
by the name of " the State." If judicious persons 
cannot believe that the police and the judicial autho- 
rities can lend themselves to such bad practices as 
have been mentioned above, their knowledge of 
Spanish and Portuguese America must be greatly to 
seek. It may be laid down as a rule to which there 
are few exceptions that no man who approaches the 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 281 

courts in those countries can hope, we need not say so 
much as for justice, but for a bare leave to state his 
case, unless he comes with money in his hand. The 
money, it must be understood, is not for the payment 
of lawyers' fees, but as a gift to the judge, in order to 
obtain his attention. The fees will have to be paid in 
due course. Again it must be borne in mind that in 
these countries what ought to be judicial acts are often 
performed by administrative officers. Fines can be 
arbitrarily imposed ; no protest will be listened to till 
the money is paid ; there is no way in which a single 
man can enforce a hearing of his grievance, and while 
he continues to complain, the authority goes on 
imposing fines. If he fails to pay, he is arrested, and 
then it is a short step to send him to the tobacco 
plantations of the Valle Nacional or other penal 
settlement. A distinguished Argentine statesman 
who was paying a visit to Europe was asked by an 
illustrious personage whether there was any adminis- 
tration of justice in his country. He answered 
laconically " Algo " (some, or just a little), and he put 
the case as high as he could. 1 

1 Such charges as these ought not to be made without evidence to support 
them. I would not repeat them unless they seemed to me to be proved. 
My experience goes to show that they are true. I heard on the best authority 
in Buenos Ayres of a case which shows what ill-use can be made of an 
administrative officer's power to fine. A commissioner of police for one of the 
districts of the city wished to make a mistress of the daughter of an Italian 
tradesman. As she would not consent, and the father supported her, the 
commissioner ruined him by a succession of fines, and he was driven to go 
to another town. But for the fear of giving too much offence to the Italian 
Government, the man and his daughter would probably have been arrested 
as anarchists and would have disappeared from sight. It may be remem- 
bered that a few years ago the Italian Government did forbid the engage- 
ment of its subjects for labour in the Argentine. It was the only way short 
of a declaration of war by which to put a stop to outrages of the kind just 
mentioned and worse. There is no obscurity at all as to the use which is 
habitually made of the " anarchist " law in the Argentine. The son of a 
large employer of labour told me frankly that it was " terrible," but very 
useful. " For," said he, " when my father has trouble with one of his men, 



282 DIAZ 

Where such administrative and judicial conditions 
prevailed it is easy to understand how the great Indian, 
or nearly Indian, population of Mexico might have 
bitter grievances at all times, and also how their 
sufferings might be intensified under the rule of 
President Diaz, and because of its very virtues. This 
may sound like a paradox, but a few moments' atten- 
tion will show that it is a mere statement of intelligible 
fact. Under the old colonial rule, and during the 
long anarchy which began to be suspended for a time 
about 1877, Mexico was a very torpid country. The 
Indians might have no rights, but apart from the 
forced labour of the mines, which was of long standing, 
nobody profited by demanding much from them. 
The land everywhere to some extent, but to a very 
great extent in the north, was too big for the people. 
The peon could squat on and work a little piece of 
ground for his small needs. He might be unable to 
produce a title, but he interfered with nobody. It did 
not pay to drive him, for a greater production would 
have been of no advantage when there were few means 
of making a profit by sale. Except those hacendados 
whose possessions were immense, everybody was poor, 
and, save a few tradesmen, everybody was idle. 

A great change began when the country settled 
down. There was a Government in power eager to 
develop its resources and compelled to invite the 
co-operation of the foreign capitalist. This being so, 
the land grew to have more value as pasture, for culti- 

he says to the police * That man is an anarchist,' and they take him away." 
What this means is that the employer pays the police a yearly sum for their 
good-will. It also means that a man so arrested is sent to one of the islands 
on the Argentine coast and left to support himself by fishing. He generally 
dies of starvation in about three months. Yet the Argentine Republic is 
more orderly and less brutal than Mexico. 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 283 

vation, and for mining. And now it became the 
interest of people who could enforce attention to their 
wishes because they held the purse-strings to insist 
on a sharp examination of the titles by virtue of which 
the land was used. The case was complicated by the 
fact that, land having been superabundant, and water 
in the greater part of the country rare, what had been 
thought sufficiently valuable and disputable to be 
made matter of record were not titles to land, but 
water rights. Land could be found anywhere. 
Water to irrigate it had to be obtained by industry. 
It follows that if there was to be a general inquisition 
into titles, a quo warranto, nothing could be easier 
than to show that very much, perhaps the greater 
part, of the land in the Republic was " tierra baldia," 
that is to say, unowned land, and therefore domain of 
the State, and at its disposal to give or to sell. A no 
less obvious consequence would be that the purchaser 
or grantee of the land could within his own bounds 
cut off access to the water. A water right was of 
no value to a man who could not use the adjacent 
land. In these conditions it might well happen that 
grave injustice might be done, and done with punc- 
tilious attention to a law. All that was needed was 
that the law should allow a prospector to peg out and 
claim unoccupied land and require it from the State, 
all land which was not held by a producible title being 
counted unoccupied. And this was the course taken. 
By the land law of 1886 anyone was authorised to 
" denounce " that is to say, to point out a space of 
land as " tierra baldia " and to claim to acquire it on 
payment of a small due to the State. The burden of 
proof that it was not " tierra baldia " was thrown on 
those who were making use of it, and occupancy was 



284 DIAZ 

not accepted as a title. There was no Statute of 
Limitations in Mexico, and there was on the part of the 
State i.e., the politicians in office a very firm grip 
of the principle nullum tempus occurrit regi. When, 
therefore, we hear in the President's addresses to 
Congress of the marking out of " tierras baldias," 
what is to be understood as implied is that somebody 
poor, obscure, and mostly Indian was squeezed out of 
the corner he had looked upon as his, to be worked for 
himself. We hear, it is true, that care was taken to 
provide " ejidos " for Indian villages, and if this had 
been done fairly, and under the protection of an 
independent judiciary, it would have been the better 
for Mexico. But that which depended for its just 
execution on the honour of Government officials and 
the independence of the courts was not done at all, or 
was very ill done. As a matter of course only the 
small men suffered. The great landholders, whose 
titles were often very doubtful, could take care of 
themselves. They could make use of interest to avoid 
inquisition into what they wished to conceal, or they 
could acquire a title at a cheap rate, or stand in with 
the speculative capitalist. 

As Mexico had to look abroad for capital, schemes 
for development of the resources of the land had a 
consequence which in the end proved very injurious 
to the popularity of President Diaz. It was inevitable 
that a large part of the " tierra baldia " which was sold 
to " denouncers " passed into the hands of foreigners, 
of whom the majority came from the United States. 
A jest much repeated in Mexico tells how a country- 
man expostulated with the President on the readiness 
he showed to allow Americans to acquire land, and 
how he answered that they would have it all some day, 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 285 

and might as well be made to pay while payment could 
still be demanded. The serious part of the jape lies 
in its inclusion of the fact that these foreign purchases 
were lawful only with his consent. His readiness to 
agree to them must be taken as proof of his approval 
and of a policy he pursued for years. It goes with 
other actions of his which had a disastrous effect. 
He encouraged European colonists to form land settle- 
ments, and, though the results were but meagre, the 
little done in this way was enough to rouse much angry 
feeling. The poor little colonies, mainly of Italians, 
were considered as a menace by the natives. And 
then the President at least allowed of an attempt to 
introduce Chinese and Japanese labour. The attempt 
was equally offensive to Mexicans and Americans. 
Though not much was done, yet that little also was 
enough to provoke ill-feeling. The very industrial 
virtues of the Chinese made them odious in Mexico, 
as in the United States and our own colonies, though 
not for exactly the same reasons. It would have 
been hard indeed even for Chinese thrift to lower the 
standard of living of the labouring classes of Mexico. 
But the fear was that they would displace the native. 
After the fall of the President a dreadful massacre of 
Chinese was made at Torreon, on the Texan border. 
The immediate cause was the unfounded belief that 
certain Mexicans had been poisoned in a tavern kept 
by a Chinaman, but the real cause was the hatred felt 
for the whole race. Their industry was their chief 
sin, but it is also a fact that the floggers and bullies 
employed to terrorise the bond servants in Yucatan 
and the Valle Nacional were often Chinamen, and that 
the women on the plantations were compelled to live 
with them for the purpose of breeding little slaves. 



286 DIAZ 

Against all this evil we have to put the fact that the 
outlay of foreign capital in Mexico did give increased 
employment and raise wages. Indirectly it helped 
the " peones," who were not subject to the plantation 
system ; and that, too, was a gain as far as it went. 
But a very general experience shows that the dis- 
content born of oppression is more loudly expressed 
when the sufferers begin to experience some relief. 
As they gain in strength their fear diminishes, their 
desires grow, and their claims increase. Of course, 
they are accused of ingratitude, as the Mexicans have 
been. The critics should remember that the improved 
lot may still be bad, and that old memories rankle. 
Nor do the better wages of a time of industrial 
expansion always last, while the vices of a social 
system are apt to endure. Mexicans of the labouring 
class had always before them the spectacle of the 
caravans of Yaquis who were carried right across the 
country into slavery in Yucatan or the Valle Nacional, 
and the expelled squatters. If they did suspect their 
white masters of a wish to exploit them, or even get 
rid of them to make room for Chinese labour, their 
distrust cannot be said to have been absurd. 

In so far then as this Indian population, which was 
often not the less Indian because of a slight admixture 
of European blood, was concerned there is nothing to 
show that the long Administration "of President Diaz 
did any lasting good or supplied any promise of 
improvement. There is not even evidence that the 
President as much as wished to raise its moral and 
intellectual level. This neglect of what ought to 
have been treated as an elementary duty cannot surely 
be counted to him for righteousness. But before we 
join those who condemn him wholly let us remember 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 287 

that " a man is only a man." He cannot shake 
himself quite free from the inherited dispositions of 
the society he lives in. If he could he would only 
become alien to it and incapable of governing. It 
may look discreditable to Diaz that though he was 
largely of Indian descent himself, and could profess 
pride in his Mixteca ancestry, he did nothing for 
his red kinsmen. But Juarez was a pure-blooded 
Zapoteca, and he did no more. He, too, married a 
Creole wife, and forgot his people and his father's 
house. The truth is that the Mexican Indian who has 
risen in the world, and the mestizo, who is half, or 
more than half, European, alike wish to be even as the 
Creoles of Spanish descent to rank as whites. And 
what else could they be expected to wish ? Juarez 
has been absurdly blamed for not turning Mexico into 
an Indian republic. If he had made the attempt he 
would have banded against him all the Creoles and 
all the mestizos who wished to rank as Creoles. In face 
of their hostility he would not have lasted for a week. 
Even if we make the wild supposition that he had tried 
and had succeeded, what could he have done ? He 
could have won only by a general massacre of the 
dominant classes and by turning Mexico into an 
Indian Hayti. The conquerors would have returned 
to the tribal state with its unvarying conditions 
perpetual war between " pueblo " Indians and wild 
Indians, and the domination of the softer tribes by the 
more ferocious. Long before it had come to that the 
troops of the United States would have been in posses- 
sion of all Mexico. 

Juarez could not wish for an Indian republic ; and 
still less could Porfirio Diaz. What he was bound to 
wish for was the closer assimilation of Mexico to the 



288 DIAZ 

standard of a civilised European State by the develop- 
ment of its industry and the maintenance of peace. 
In order that he might succeed he had need of money ; 
and money was to be obtained only by the help of the 
foreign capitalist. Nothing was more natural than 
that he should be chiefly concerned to satisfy those 
whose aid was indispensable to him, and that in this 
struggle for industrial prosperity the Mexican Indian 
should have been treated as a mere tool. That is not 
what would have happened if the man had been greater 
and the society about him more healthy and higher- 
minded. In that case the governors of Mexico would 
have understood that nothing of real lasting good was 
to be obtained by perpetuating a great cause of 
anarchy. This Indian population had always been 
the instrument of adventurers and insurgents because 
it was torpid subjected and so miserably poor that 
it did not lose by being drafted into guerrillero bands 
and rebel armies. So long as it remained as it was it 
would always serve that purpose. But Diaz was not 
a great moral and political reformer. He was a 
vigorous Spanish-American " tyrant " who strove to 
keep good order and promote material well-being in 
such ways as his own upbringing and the elements he 
disposed of allowed. Before he could take in hand a 
great work of social reform in Mexico he must have 
had command of a clean-handed, competent adminis- 
trative staff some equivalent, in fact, for our own 
Indian Civil Service, and an independent judiciary, 
prepared to try to do justice. He had no such aid, 
and therefore could not have done the work even if he 
had wished. That he never showed the wish deprives 
him of all claim to rank with the greater statesmen. 
It leaves him a strong administrator and nothing else. 



THE INDIAN PROBLEM 289 

Whether he could have done more if he had tried to do 
justice to the Indian population is a speculative 
question. We know that he had to learn before he 
died how little it avails a country to put money in its 
purse for a time at the cost of nursing and increasing 
the rage, hate, envy, and the sense of wrong which 
provide the rank and file of anarchical armies. 



D. 



CHAPTER XI 

ANARCHY WELLS UP 

THOSE of us who have never felt the temptation to 
cling to power may wonder why few rulers of men have 
known how to leave the world before the world left 
them. What satisfaction can it be to struggle on 
" Bankrupt of life yet prodigal ease " ? In 1904, 
when his sixth term of office came to its end, President 
Diaz was seventy-four. He was still enjoying the 
vigour of body which he owed primarily to an excellent 
constitution, but in no small measure to the stern 
discipline he imposed on himself. None the less, he 
was old, and extreme age lay just before him. His 
place was no ornamental sinecure, but a heavy toil. 
He is known to have expressed a wish to retire and to 
visit Europe, which he had never seen, while it was 
still in his power to enjoy travel. Yet he stayed, and 
when his seventh term of office, which had been 
prolonged from four to six years, ended, also in 1910, 
he again stayed. Why ? 

Astute persons who believe in nothing but their own 
capacity to see quite through the deeds of men are 
ready to provide an explanation. It was greed ; it 
was the love of power ; and all professions to the 
contrary are but the purest hypocrisy. And no doubt 
it is the fact that those who have held command are 
unwilling to pass into the ranks again. We may 
suspect, without pretending to sagacity, that Diaz did 
listen, with a predisposition to believe, to foreign 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 291 

envoys, his own ministers, and those about him who are 
known to have told him that he was indispensable and 
to have implored him to stay. Yet we can now see 
that they were right. He alone stood between 
Mexico and anarchy. He was tied to the stake and 
must bearlike fight the course. By staying he put 
off the day of danger, and a space was given in which 
to prepare for the time when his place must needs be 
vacant. 

The election, so called, was not quite as others had 
been. There was no opposition, and the part of the 
electors did not vary. But up to this time there had 
been no Vice-President in Mexico. The President of 
the Supreme Court stood ready, as we have seen in the 
cases of Juarez and Lerdo, to take the accidentally 
vacant chair. But in 1904 it was felt to be no longer 
safe to rely on the lawyer who happened to preside 
over the Supreme Court. A politician trained to the 
work must be provided to stand by the President 
ready to replace him if he died, and to succeed him if 
in 1910 age should have deprived him of the capacity 
to hold the reins. The precaution was wise, but the 
choice made was unfortunate. His understudy and suc- 
cessor was expected to continue the same " system " 
to keep the peace, to promote industry, and to protect 
foreign capital. In order that he might be able to 
fulfil this programme he must have a certain measure 
of popularity, the confidence of the capitalists, and 
the capacity for hard work. There was a time when it 
was assumed that in the new industrial age the most 
appropriate successor for Don Porfirio would be his 
Minister of Finance, Don Jose Limantour. But there 
was a difficulty in the way. The Constitution provided 
that the President of Mexico must be native born, and 

U 2 



292 DIAZ 

Senor Limantour was by birth a Frenchman, and had 
not been naturalised till he was twenty. It is true 
that Constitutions are subject to revision in Spanish 
America, and that Congresses will commonly revise 
or do whatever other thing they are bid to do. 1 But 
in 1904 the anti-foreign feeling was rising, and the 
selection of a financier of alien origin might have been 
dangerous. 

The understudy chosen was Don Ramon Corral. 
Don Ramon has been made the theme of an immense 
amount of abuse in the best style of Spanish-American 
polemic or of renaissance literary blackguardism. All 
that may be left standing on its own basis. It is 
enough to say that he was connected with land 
company speculations in Sonora, was associated with 
American capitalists, and was not in good health. As 
an " Americanised Mexican " he was peculiarly repug- 
nant to the patriotic sentiment of the north of Mexico 
and not a persona grata in the south. If the choice 
was due to the influence of " foreign plutocrats " and of 
" Wall Street " it afforded a wondrous example of the 
extent to which business men can be besotted by their 
reliance on the " power of money." 

There was a peculiar reason why the creation and 
nomination of a Vice-President should be carried out 
with great tact in the choice of the person. The 
measure was a most intelligible warning that steps 
were being taken to perpetuate the " system of Diaz." 
The view taken of it is quite lucidly explained by Don 

1 It was only the other day that a President of the Argentine Republic, 
finding his Congress inclined to be sulky and to go on strike, arrested a 
quorum, marched them to the House in charge of the police, and stood over 
them till they did as they were told. The same sort of thing might happen in 
any part of Spanish or Portuguese America, except in Chile, where the power 
is in the hands of a species of oligarchy of landowners. 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 293 

Francisco Madero in his little treatise " La Sucesion 
Presidencial en 1910." Sefior Madero is a person who 
will play a considerable part in the last stage of the 
life of President Diaz, and it is well to know who he 
was before we listen to what he said. 

The Madero family was of Spanish origin and, as it 
seems, of rather recent settlement in Mexico. It 
possessed much land in Coahuila, the border State 
which lies next to Chihuahua to the east ; and it was 
very wealthy. Francisco, who was still very young 
when he came forward in Mexican politics during the 
seventh term of President Diaz, had been educated 
partly in the United States and partly in Europe. In 
the course of his travels he is said by those who profess 
to know and to admire him to have adopted some of 
those opinions which more sober-minded people call 
fads. He was a vegetarian and a spiritualist. 1 It is 
obviously not quite safe to accept the testimony of a 
man of credulous turn. Yet Seiior Madero may be 
trusted when he says that the creation of a Vice- 
President and the choice of Sefior Corral mark the 
starting-point of a definite movement of opposition. 
There were, he says, Mexicans who thought that a 
time had come for a change in the " spheres of power." 
But up to 1904 they were prepared to wait till age and 
fatigue or death should remove Don Porfirio. When 
they saw that steps were being taken to perpetuate 

1 If we can trust some of those who praised him, he would seem to have 
been in the habit of consulting the crystal, or the cards, or some other form 
of divination. It is said that when he had the now notorious Zapata in his 
power, and might have shot him according to all Mexican precedent, he let 
him go. The reason given is not that he thought such an act brutal, or was 
reluctant to execute without form of law. It is that he had been magically 
" told " that his own death would follow Zapata's within twenty-four hours. 
This is the sort of story which would be told of such a man, and I would be 
sorry indeed to vouch for the truth of the tale. But the stories told of a 
man are in their way evidence. Nobody would have invented or believed 
such gossip (if mere gossip it was) of Santa Ana, or Juarez, or Diaz. 



294 DIAZ 

the possession of office by those about him, they felt 
that they must act, which means that they must 
conspire. They might have had patience if they had 
known that the disappearance from the scene of 
President Diaz would leave the field clear, but if it 
were only to mean that another and perhaps heavier 
hand were to control the same machine they must 
resist. Nothing could well be more likely, and the 
course of events during the next six years would be 
enough to prove that many felt in this way even if we 
had not the direct testimony of a witness. Even if 
Senor Madero tells us only what he thought, then, in 
view of the part he took, his statement has a sub- 
stantial value. 

On the surface all looked well to those who saw the 
Republic from abroad, or if they came to it came only 
as visitors to look at the improvements and report 
astonishing progress. Between 1904 and 1906 there 
appeared quite a crop of books full of the most 
hopeful descriptions and predictions. It came to be 
a commonplace that the evil times were over for 
Mexico. In 1907 Mr. Elihu Root visited the capital, 
and many festivities were held and fine speeches were 
made. The eloquent American praised President 
Diaz as the greatest of living statesmen. Mr. Root 
struck a note which was echoed far and wide. At the 
end of a book published in New York in 1910 by Don 
Jose Godoy, the author publishes a long collection 
of what really sound like testimonials to the efficacy 
of some invention or patent medicine. They are 
examples of all the laudatory things said of President 
Diaz. Senor Godoy's book was in fact an electioneer- 
ing puff, and one feels in regard to many of the other 
books that they represent what business interests 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 295 

would wish investors to think of Mexico and its 
Government, and very little else. When in 1909 
President Diaz met Mr. Taft at Paso del Norte the 
toasts and the ceremonies were those which we are 
accustomed to hear of when Sovereigns hold an 
interview. In short, there was no failure in the flow 
of official assurances that all was well with Mexico 
within and without. 

While persons whose first purpose was neither to 
see nor to tell the whole truth were saying smooth 
things the unrest of Mexico was growing more acute. 
It is a significant fact that just when the " coffles " of 
enslaved Yaquis were beginning to defile across 
Mexico in shameless publicity that is to say, from 
1904 onwards the Socialists grew very restive. It 
is not a whit less significant that just before Mr. Elihu 
Root came in 1907 there had been a very long and 
very savage anti-American agitation in Mexico. It 
was said in a picturesque way that an American 
" Sicilian Vespers " was averted with great difficulty. 
When Mr. Taft met his brother President at Paso in 
1909, one of the subjects of their unreported conversa- 
tion must have been the recent flight of exiles from 
Mexico and the trouble they gave Governments. 
Everybody who cared to learn the facts knew that 
only the vigilance of Washington prevented the 
territory of the United States from being used as a 
basis of operations for a rebellion in Mexico ; and even 
this guarantee for peace was not at all times sufficient 
It is all but impossible to guard every part of a frontier 
seventeen hundred miles long of which much is not, 
or is barely, inhabited. In 1908 there was an out- 
break in Coahuila which had notoriously been 
prepared in the States. 



296 DIAZ 

There is always an extreme difficulty in getting at 
trie whole truth of events which have happened very 
recently ; and yet we may venture to assume that 
not much is to be learnt about the insurrection which 
finally drove President Diaz to Europe beyond what 
appears on the surface. The reasons given in the 
last chapter why the peace he had kept for a time 
unprecedented in Mexican history should at last be 
broken are also sufficient to account for what in that 
country and in the circumstances was a natural event. 
If anything needs to be added, it is that as Diaz 
came near his eightieth year he could no longer work 
as he once did. Don Francisco Madero asserts that 
this was the case. It follows that he fell into the 
hands of those about him. They intercepted the 
truth, so Don Francisco asserts, and it is consistent 
with probability. It is the fatal defect of all purely 
personal government that it grows old with the ruler 
before it dies with him. In a monarchical country 
what descends to the grave with an Elizabeth or a 
Frederick the Great is a personal method of using an 
institution. But what of necessity went into exile 
with the President of Mexico was all government. 

Don Porfirio could quote this fact in answer to the 
question why he decided to re-elect himself once 
more in 1910. He had had many warnings from 1904 
onwards that by persisting in office he would provoke 
trouble. Open disorder, Socialist or Liberal, had been 
repressed with apparent success. The " acordada " 
(secret police) kept watch. Those who threatened to 
become dangerous were arrested and sent to the 
castle of San Juan de Ulloa, or driven to escape over 
the American border. There the United States kept 
an eye on them, and, instigated, so we are assured, by 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 297 

Wall Street, repressed their plots. But though a 
smooth surface was preserved by these vigorous 
measures, there were signs which could not be ignored 
that mere police vigour would not be enough. The 
Press of Mexico is free only by the letter of the 
Constitution, and as the electors are free. Yet even 
the Press began to say strong things about the 
" caciquismo " of the President's rule. The great 
re-election theme began to be discussed. It was a 
sign of the times that a very curious compromise 
found favour with some. They were ready to consent 
that the President should be chosen again in the old 
way in other words, that the voters should do as 
they were 'bid in so far as he was personally concerned. 
But they had a device for introducing true liberty of 
election. It was that the electors should be absolutely 
free to vote for or against the Vice-President, Don 
Ramon Corral. The compromise was infantile. Don 
Ramon had been selected as President's understudy 
precisely because he was expected to continue the 
so-called Diaz system with the same men as colleagues 
or agents. If he were to be defeated at the polls 
and on the supposition that the election was to be free 
he most assuredly would be the system would be 
defeated too. Don Porfirio would be reduced to a 
figurehead. It was not a position he could be expected 
to accept ; nor ought he to have accepted it. Mexico 
is not a country which can be governed by a figure- 
head. The so-called compromise broke down at once 
when tested. 

The fact that everything was at stake became more 
apparent in 1909 when the Central Democratic Club 
produced a scheme of reform. It contained a great 
many generalities, and not a few sentiments, but there 



298 DIAZ 

was one proposal in it which was undeniably sub- 
stantial. This was that the office of Jefe Politico 
should be abolished, and that the Jefes should be 
replaced by an elected board or committee. Of 
course this change would have taken away the whole 
foundation not only of the " Diaz system " but of the 
edifice of government in Mexico. The novelty was to 
be accompanied by electoral reform at large free 
election for governors and President. Anyone who 
knew what government meant in Mexico could see at 
once that the practical result of such a constitutional 
device must infallibly be a fight in the literal sense of 
the word in every district of every State in the 
Republic. 

What Porfirio Diaz may have thought or decided 
in foro interno is mere idle speculation. We know 
with sufficient accuracy what he did. When the time 
for the new election of 1910 drew near he said he 
would not stand again, and he broke his promise. 
That is the substantial fact. Did he break his word 
from mere longing to retain office, and was his 
promise a sheer hypocrisy ? Or did he decide to 
continue in office simply because he must ? There 
are good reasons for thinking that the last is the true 
explanation. The reader is asked to excuse a repeti- 
tion of the statement that there was but one choice for 
Mexico namely, between a vigorous personal govern- 
ment by some one man, working with a trusty staff of 
agents, and anarchy. Since this was the fact, as the 
events of the last five years have amply demon- 
strated, was Diaz to blame if he refused to retire before 
he could leave the country in strong hands ? It is at 
least a tenable proposition that he would not have 
been justified. Even if he saw no chance of finding a 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 299 

competent successor, he was to be excused for endea- 
vouring to put off the evil day so long as he could. 

In 1909, before the election was formally open, a 
proof was given of the resolution of some Mexicans to 
break down the " system." The opponents of Don 
Ramon Corral decided to oppose his re-election they 
did not so far openly oppose the President and they 
chose General Reyes as their candidate. General 
Reyes had been for some years Governor of the State 
of Nuevo Leon. He was therefore a part of the 
" system." But he had been a popular governor and 
had local influence. From all that can be seen of him 
from this side of the Atlantic, the General appears to 
have been a moderate man of a kindly disposition, but 
of not much force of character. He did not, so it 
seems, exactly put himself forward as an opponent of 
Don Ramon, but his friends, or the party which 
thought he would be useful to them, did it for him. 
Of course this was opposition, and, if it was allowed, 
would set a bad example. Measures were taken to 
suppress the agitation, and the Reyista party (a 
Mexican party nearly always names itself after a 
person, rarely after a principle) retaliated by riotous 
demonstrations. The demonstrations were put down 
and General Reyes was sent on a mission to inquire 
into the military systems of Europe. It was not harsh 
treatment, but Reyes had many friends in the army. 
He went, and before leaving America he gave an 
interview to newspaper reporters in New York which 
leaves nothing to be desired as a profession of faith in 
the virtues of Don Porfirio and the necessity of 
retaining him as President. 

The disappearance for the time being of General 
Reyes left the field free for Don Francisco Madero. 



300 DIAZ 

One cannot but have a certain compunction to speak 
unkindly of a man who came to such a shocking fate. 
And yet if he had not been butchered with a barbarity 
exceptional even for Mexico, it would be hard to keep 
one's hands off Francisco Madero. Enthusiasts have 
been found to call him " a star " and what not equally 
laudatory. Yet, to anyone who will take the trouble 
to read his book " The Presidential Election " and to 
learn his actions, he appears to have been neither 
more nor less than an example of the " ligereza " 
the feather-headedness of a certain stamp of Spaniard. 
He was the pitiable victim of his own errors, and so 
we may prefer to say all the good we can of him. It 
is honourable to him that his little book is free from 
the foul scolding so common in the political journalism 
of his and kindred countries. But a man needs more 
than some sense of decency before he is justified in 
letting loose a civil war. He must have ideas and a 
cause to fight for. Now it is impossible to make out 
from Sefior Madero's statement of his case that he took 
up arms for anything except the sacred principle that 
the places of dignity and emolument ought to go round 
in a truly democratic country. There is not a trace of 
any attempt on his part to face the dominant fact 
that Mexico is not a democratic country nor one in 
which the choice of rulers, upper and under, can be 
left to the free and independent electors. The theory 
of the orthodox democratic doctors, says Madero, is 
so and so, and we must apply it regardless of facts, 
conditions, and experience. The man was, in short, 
a pedant. It is characteristic of him and his unhappy 
class that, while he speaks with a humanity which 
must be credited to his honour of the cruel treatment 
of the Yaquis and other Indians, he gives no sign of 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 301 

having thought out any definite plan for righting 
their wrongs, nor to have reflected on the principles 
which ought to guide a Government in dealing with 
such a population. He has nothing to offer but 
sentiments and the promise that, if only there is a 
change of persons in the Presidency and the governor- 
ships of the States, all will be well in Mexico. It is 
said that he was kind to his own Indians, but it is not 
said that the truck system, which by its very nature 
worked for evil, was rejected on the Madero estates. 
There is something suspicious in his candid-looking 
confession that his family had no private reason for 
disliking the " system " of President Diaz. Whenever 
the Maderos had occasion to appeal to the courts or 
the Administration at the capital their interests had 
always been treated with equity. What this may 
very well mean when translated into the language of 
mere truth is most probably nothing but just this 
that the courts and the Administration were always 
ready to meet the views of an influential family. The 
Maderos were quite as well disposed as any other 
wealthy connection to make use of the much-abused 
system for their own ends. We need not be surprised 
to hear that when Don Francisco did become President 
his " good nature " made it impossible for him to 
check the rapacity of his relatives. There is a kind of 
good nature, as well as of good intention, which paves 
the road to hell. 1 



1 I am not quoting Dr. Johnson, but a Portuguese proverb which says 
that the road to etc., etc. a far wiser saying than the Doctor's famous 
explosion. It is not perhaps of much use to refer the reader to books which 
he can only obtain by writing for them to Mexico or to Havannah, but if he 
by accident comes across a book by the name of " La Parra, la Perra, y 
la Porra " (" The Wild Vine, the Bitch, and the Cudgel "), he will see a fine 
example of the mere froth of words which surrounded the whole Madero 
adventure. La Parra was the name of Madero's hacienda. 



302 DIAZ 

If there had not been general discontent in Mexico 
with more than the clinging to office of Don Porfirio 
and his connection, such a man would have had no 
opportunity to play a part. And if he had not had 
command of a long purse he would probably not have 
cut much of a figure even as it was. But, the two 
going together, he was the man who hastened the day 
when Mexico was to return to anarchy. 

Before the movement in favour of electing General 
Reyes had been quashed, and the General had sailed 
on his mission to inquire into the military systems of 
Europe, Madero was simply a " joven distinguido " 
(a youth belonging to an opulent family). But he 
now came forward as a candidate for the Presidency 
itself. It is quite unnecessary to spend . words in 
saying what this implied in Mexico. What it meant 
for Don Francisco was that he was arrested shortly 
before the election was due, in July 1910. The charge 
was first that he had helped to protect one Estrada, 
a partisan of General Reyes, from arrest ; then it 
was altered into a charge of insulting the nation. 
Finally he was accused of insulting the President. 
This at least was the account given by his friends. 
The formula preferred was of no consequence, and 
any other pretext would have served for a measure 
which had no end but to silence a politician who 
threatened to give trouble. The enemies of President 
Diaz have been put to it to explain why Madero 
was not shot. They have cleared up the mystery by 
describing a pathetic scene in which La Senora Diaz 
implored and persuaded her ferocious husband not to 
add another to the already long-drawn-out list of his 
murders. This is precisely what would be said by 
anyone with a moderate inventive faculty. Madero 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 303 

was not shot, but preserved to be butchered by one 
or several of the wild beasts he had helped to let loose 
on his country. He was only kept in jail and out of the 
way of doing or suffering harm till the election was over. 

It being clear that no real election would be 
tolerated, and as the Government disposed of an 
adequate armed force, President and Vice-President 
were declared duly returned by the unanimous voice 
of the people. In September President Diaz presided 
over the last peaceful ceremony he was to witness in 
Mexico, the celebration of the independence of the 
country, which has been made to date from the rising 
headed by Hidalgo. We have seen what that 
emotional priest had really done. A spectator who 
knew the facts of the state of the country might well 
have asked himself whether the revival of that 
memory was not ominous. His doubts would have 
been justified, for the rule of President Diaz had not 
then a year to live. 

The mere events of his fall need not be recorded 
here. That Madero took up arms in Chihuahua in 
January and that by May the " Diaz system " had 
collapsed are, with one other about to be named, the 
essential facts. There were no encounters deserving 
the name of battle. No faculty and no energy were 
displayed, either in attack or defence. The regime 
which had given Mexico some thirty years of growing 
material prosperity and the appearance of order fell 
to pieces, and this happened (here we come to the 
third fact which is to be kept in mind) because the man 
on whom all depended had himself broken down under 
the pressure of age. Don Porfirio bore up gallantly, 
keeping himself upright by sheer strength of will, 
speaking of his intention to take command of the 



304 DIAZ 

forces in the field, if the rising became really dangerous, 
till his body failed him. On May I he was still 
insisting on a compromise by which he and Madero 
were both to retire, and a desperate bid for popularity 
was made by a change of Ministry. But the long 
fight had ended in defeat. Anarchy was bubbling 
up on all hands. The United States were threatening 
intervention. The insurgents could safely refuse to 
listen to any terms and could insist that the uncon- 
ditional retirement of the President must be the 
preliminary to every other measure. Porfirio Diaz 
himself was prostrate, and the acts of his Government 
were as the blows of the exhausted athlete which have 
lost their force. He was confined to bed and his 
strong body was showing the first signs of senile decay. 
He could see no one outside of his own family save 
jSefior Limantour, who alone of his old ministers 
remained with him. On May 18 his resignation was 
announced to the Congress in words which cannot 
have been his, and he prepared for exile. There were 
still among the soldiers, whose interests he had always 
considered, loyal men enough to see to it that the old 
President should not be subject to insult or outrage 
while he was leaving the country. He, his family, and 
those of his associates who had no choice but to go into 
exile with him were protected on the way to Veracruz, 
where they took ship for New York. General Huerta, 
who was to succeed him, to avenge him vilely on 
Madero, and in the end to join him in exile, saw to the 
safety of the party. It was assailed on the way to 
the seaport, and the escort had to fight it through. 
On the pier Diaz listened, hat in hand, a pathetic 
figure, to the last words of farewell spoken to him on 
his native soil. 



ANARCHY WELLS UP 305 

From New York he sailed to Europe, and from that 
time forward his life passed into the privacy of his 
family, where we have no right to follow him. After 
spending some time in the south of Europe, he went to 
Paris in May, 1914. He died there on July 2, 1915, 
amid the roar of a storm which left the world with but 
little attention to give to a fallen President of Mexico. 

This book has been written to no purpose if it is 
necessary to spend words in summing up the career 
and the character of Porfirio Diaz. If a final verdict 
is to be given it must be something like this. He 
showed the world what was the utmost that his country 
was capable of doing in order to qualify itself to 
take its place among civilised and progressive States. 
All it has been able to do has been to produce a 
resolute, heavy-handed man who could keep an 
incurable anarchy within bounds for an unprecedented 
period of years. That man had no other nor higher 
aim than to develop resources, build public works, 
enable foreign capital to promote industry and make 
profits for itself. All this he did, and an admiring 
world took him for a great reformer whose work would 
last. But, much as it seemed to be, it was naught 
if we look beyond the outward and visible things 
which money and labour can produce between them, 
and try to pierce into those inward and spiritual 
things which alone make the health of a nation, and 
without which all the triumphs of industry are but 
pearls on the swine's snout. He rose to rule a 
country which could not possess real unity save if it 
had been endowed with a strong monarchy and a 
capable aristocracy. Monarchy was impossible, and 
there were not the most beggarly elements of an 
aristocracy. Police order for a time he could give, and 



3o6 DIAZ 

nothing more. Under cover of that police order the 
outer world put its hand on Mexico and brought the 
country appreciably nearer the day when the huge and 
growing mass of power on its northern border will 
spread over it by what movements we do not 
know, but as surely as water flows from a higher 
to a lower level. At no period in man's history 
has a chronic, sanguinary, brainless anarchy been 
allowed to live for very long beside order and political 
capacity and thought. He could not even add 
strength to the mere mechanical unity of his country, 
for he lived to see the northern provinces in process of 
being torn away by a mere brigand, while his own 
nephew was erecting an independent power in his 
native Oaxaca. He failed, perhaps because he was 
not great man enough, but more surely because he had 
not to his hand the elements with which more could be 
done. Un bomme n'est qu'un homme. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bancroft, H. H. " History of the Pacific States of North 
America." 34 vols. San Francisco. 1882 1890. 

The " History of Mexico," 1517 1857, forms vols. iv. 
to ix. of the whole work. The Histories of the North 
Mexican States Texas, Arizona and New Mexico are 
in vols. x., xi., and xii. Full, impartial, well informed, 
with many quotations from documents, and copious 
references to authorities. 

" Datos Biograficos del [Biographic Data of] General 
Porfirio Diaz." Published in the office of the Patria news- 
paper. Mexico. 1884. Official and partisan, but contains 
useful documents. 

Escudero, Ignacio M. " Apuntes Histdricos de la Carrera 
Militar del [Historical Notes of the Military Career of] Senor 
General Porfirio Diaz." Mexico. 1889. Partisan, but full 
of details. 

Zayas Enriquez, Rafael de. " Porfirio Diaz, La Evolucion 
de su Vida " [The Evolution of his Life]. New York. 1908. 
A critical and not always friendly study by a well-informed 
writer. 

Rodriguez, Ricardo. " Historia Autentica de la Adminis- 
tracion del [Authentic History of the Administration of] 
Senor General Porfirio Diaz." Mexico. 1904. A collection 
of the President's addresses to Congress. 

Hernandez, Fortunato. " Un Pueblo, un Siglo, y un 
Hombre " [A People, an Epoch, and a Man]. Mexico. 1909. 
An answer to Zayas Enriquez inspired by the President. 

Garcia, Genero. " Porfirio Diaz, sus Padres, Ninez, 
Juventud " [his Family, Childhood, and Youth]. Mexico. 
1906. Useful details of early years (largely supplied by 
Porfirio Diaz). 

X 2 



308 DIAZ 

Fornaro, Carlo de. " Diaz, Czar of Mexico." No place of 
publication is given, but probably New York. 1909. An 
invective. 

Godoy, Jose F. " Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico." 
New York. 1910. The work of an official and a partisan. 

Madero, Francisco J. " La Sucesion Presidencial " [The 
Succession to the Presidency]. Mexico. 1911. A party 
pamphlet, but a useful statement of the views of opponents of 
the re-election of Porfirio Diaz in 1910. 

Tweedie, Mrs. "Mexico as I saw It." London. 1901. 
" Diaz." London. 1906. 

Turner, J. K. " Barbarous Mexico." London. 1911. A 
book inspired by passionate indignation, but well informed 
and the work of an eye-witness whose spirit was honourable. 

Niox, G. " Expedition au Mexique." Paris. 1874. A 
good narrative of the French intervention by an eye-witness, 
and based on official papers. 



INDEX 



ACULTZINGO, Pass of, forced by 
French, 60 

Alatorre, General, supports Lerdists 
defeated by Diaz at Tecoac, 159 
1 60 

Alcabalas, Mexican excise, 245 etseq. 

Alvarez, General, President, 43 ; 
aids Diaz in Guerrero, 96 

Amelie Charlotte, wife of Maxi- 
milian, comes to Mexico, 74 

Apaches, suppressed, 268 269 

Appomatox, capitulation of Con- 
federates at, 88 

Argentine Republic, cause of pro- 
sperity of, 124 

BANCROFT, H. H., quoted, 53 
" Bandera," Yaqui chief, 271 
Bazaine, General, afterwards Mar- 
shal, defeats Mexicans in San 
Lorenzo, 72 ; Commander-in- 
Chief, 73 ; prepares to occupy 
Oaxaca, 80, 81 ; takes, 85 ; 
anger with Diaz, 86 87 ; corre- 
spondence with Diaz, 105, 107 ; 
evacuates Mexico, 108 
Benitez, Justo, secretary to Diaz, 
79 ; supposed to inspire Diaz, 
171 ; why rejected as successor 
to Diaz, 215 

Blanco, Guzman, President of 
Colombia, and the " rotative 
compromise," 214 
Brazo Militar, what meant, 27 
Brincourt, French General, opposed 
to Diaz, 8 1 

CACIQUE, what meant, 29 ; of 
Poyais, see Macgregor, Gregor. 

Candelaria, La, Diaz's second ranch, 
149 

Carbonera, La, action at, 102 

Cerro Borrego, defeat of Mexicans 
at, 62 



Cerro de la Bufa, action at, 147 

Chalchicomula, San Andres de, 59 ; 
explosion at, 60 

Church in Mexico, reasons for 
opposition to Diaz, 174 et seq. 

Cobos, General, Conservative leader, 
wins battle of Ixcapa, 44 ; 
defeated at Jalapa, 45 ; defeats 
Diaz, 48 49 ; is defeated, ibid. 

Colonies, British and Spanish com- 
pared, 7, 9 

Comonfort, President, his erratic 
policy and exile, 43 

Consumes, Mexican octroi, 249 

Corona, Ramon, General, joins 
Diaz, 114 

Corral, Ramon, elected Vice-Presi- 
dent, 292 ; re-elected, 296 ; oppo- 
sition to, 297, 299 

Crawford, Captain, U.S. Army, 
killed in Chihuahua, 195 

DANO, M., French Minister, pro- 
tected by Diaz, 133 

Debt, Mexican public, 228 et seq. 

Detrie, Captain, defeats Mexicans 
at Cerro Borrego, 62 

Diaz, Felix (El Chato), younger 
brother of Porfirio Diaz, his 
birth, 3 ; aids his brother, 34 
37 ; reinforces his brother, 1 14 ; 
in arms with his brother, 146 ; 
murder of, 147 

Diaz, Jose de la Cruz, father of 
President Diaz, I, 2, 3 

Diaz, Jose de la Cruz Porfirio, see 
Diaz, Porfirio. 

Diaz, Maria del Carmen Rubio 
Romero, Senora de, second wife 
of President Diaz, 219 et seq. 

Diaz, Porfirio, birth, i ; education, 
2, 3 ; volunteers in war with 
United States, 4; enters seminary, 
ibid. ; refuses to enter Church, 5 ; 



316 



INDEX 



studies for the law, ibid. ; com- 
municates with Marcos Perez in 
prison, 34 37 ; votes against 
Dictator and becomes guerrillero, 
39 ; Sub-Prefect of Ixtlan, 40, 
42 ; raises company of National 
Guard, 44 ; wounded at Ixcapa, 
ibid. ; Governor of Tehuantepec, 
45, 48 ; defeated at Mitla, 48 5 
hides in Ixtlan, 49 ; helps to retake 
Oaxaca, ibid. ; colonel in regular 
army and deputy for Ocotlan, 50 ; 
services in field, ibid., 51, 52 ; 
takes part in defence of Puebla, 
61 ; quoted, 62 ; promoted 
General of brigade, 63 ; Governor 
of Veracruz, ibid. ; his policy for 
the defence of Puebla, 65 ; de- 
fends San Marcos and San 
Agustin in, 69 ; quoted, 70, 71 ; 
becomes prisoner of war, 72 ; 
escapes, 73 ; appointed to com- 
mand Army of East, 76 ; his 
march to Oaxaca, 77 ; assumes 
government of, 78, 79 ; operations 
against Bazaine, 81 ; ill sup- 
ported, 82 ; refuses to join Maxi- 
milian, 84 ; forced to surrender, 
85 ; threatened by Bazaine, 86 
87 ; sent prisoner to Puebla, 
ibid. ; refuses to intervene on 
behalf of Imperialist prisoners, 90 ; 
escapes from Puebla, 91, 92 ; 
forms new Army of East, 93, 96 ; 
performs surgical operation, 95 ; 
defeated by Imperialists but 
gains ground, 98 ; his victory at 
Nochistlan, ibid. ; and at Miahu- 
atlan, 99 ; his skilful operations, 

101 ; victory at La Carbonera, 

102 ; takes Oaxaca, 103 ; rigo- 
rous measures at, ibid. ; com- 
pletes recovery of South and 
East, 104 ; correspondence with 
Bazaine, 105 107 ; refuses in- 
vitation of Maximilian, ibid. ; 
besieges and takes Puebla, 108 ; 
operations against Marquez, 109, 
no; begins siege of city of 
Mexico, 112, 113 ; surrounds city, 
114; his conduct during siege, 
115 ; estimate of his character 
and capacity, 116, 121 ; hit 



separation from Juarez, 129 et seq.; 
protects French Minister, M. 
Dano, 133 ; his financial position, 
134; retires to La Noria, ibid.; 
his first marriage, ibid. ; reported 
conversation with Juarez, 137 ; 
opposes Juarez in election of 
1867, 139 et seq. ; heads revolt 
against Juarez, 144 et seq. ; has 
to yield to Lerdo de Tejada, 148 
et seq. ; retired to La Candelaria, 
149 ; heads rising against Lerdo 
de Tejada, 151 et seq.; goes to 
Texas, 153 et seq.; invades 
Mexico, 154; his difficulties with 
local leaders, 155 ; takes Mata- 
moros, 156; returns to United 
States, ibid. ; sails for Oaxaca, 
and his adventure on the way, 
ibid, et seq. ; takes command in 
Oaxaca, 159; his victory at 
Tecoac, 160 ; occupies city of 
Mexico, 162 ; marches against 
Iglesias, 165 ; elected President, 
1 66 ; insists on keeping faith 
with army, 1 67 et seq. ; his method 
of government, 170, 172 ; diffi- 
culties of his position, 173 et 
seq. ; hostility of Church, 174 - 
et seq. ; reform of public services, 
181 ; simplicity of his life, 182, 

183 ; relations with United States, 

184 et seq. ; settlement with, 187 
et seq. ; recognised by, 188 ; 
difficulties on frontier, 188 et 
seq. ; approves action of Teran 
in massacre at Veracruz, 200 
206 ; First Administration ends, 
207 ; matter and style of his 
addresses to Congress, 209 ; on 
end of his first term takes Ministry 
of Public Works, 217 ; resigns 
and takes Governorship of 
Oaxaca, 218 ; second marriage, 
219 et seq. ; visit to United States, 
221 ; probable origin of his for- 
tune, 223 5 his error in regard to 
financing of public works, 225 ; 
re-elected President, 235 ; subse- 
quent re-elections, 236 et seq. ; 
beginning of his second term, 241 ; 
choice of Minister of Finance, 257 ; 
makes reductions in army, 259 ; 



INDEX 



317 



purchases of railways, 259 260 ; 
charges of inhumanity brought 
against, 267 ; co-operates with 
United States to suppress 
Apaches, 269 ; favours capitalists 
and land companies, 284 et seq.; re- 
elected in 1904, 290 291 ; meets 
Mr. Taft on frontier, 295 5 his 
strength begins to fail, 296 ; 
decides to be re-elected in 1910, 
ibid, and 298 ; struggles to 
maintain his position, 303 ; his 
strength breaks down, 304 ; 
resigns and leaves country, ibid. ; 
death in Paris, 305 
Dominguez, Canon, afterwards 
Bishop of Oaxaca, godfather of 
Porfirio Diaz, aids in his educa- 
tion, 4 



ESCANDON, ANTONIO, conccssion- 
naire of Veracruz line, 225 



FOREY, General, besieges Puebla, 
65 72 5 occupies city of Mexico, 
73 ; superseded by Bazaine, ibid. 

Fornaro, Carlo de, abuse of Diaz, 120 

Franco, Pablo, Imperial Prefect of 
Oaxaca, executed by Diaz, 103 

Fuero militar and eclesiastico, 
what meant, 27 



GONZALEZ, General, left in com- 
mand by Diaz in North, 156 ; 
elected President in 1880, 216 
et seq. ; his Presidency, 222 
et seq. ; retires, 235 

Gourgaud, Baron, his quotation of 
Napoleon, 122 

Grant, General Ulysses S., visits 
Mexico, 222 

Guardias Rurales, reorganised by 
Diaz, their origin and functions, 
178 et seq. 

HARDY, Lieutenant R. W. H., R.N., 

his account of Yaquis, 272 
Hernandez, Fidencio, commands 
for Diaz in Oaxaca, 153 et seq. 



Hidalgo, priest, his revolt, 22 j 

death, 23 
Huerta, General, protects Diaz, 304 



IGLESIAS, Jose* Maria, 144; Presi- 
dent of Supreme Court, 152 ; 
conflict with Lerdo de Tejada, 
ibid, et seq. ; his pretensions, 155 
et seq. ; supported in North, 156 ; 
his opposition to Diaz and 
defeat, 162 et seq.; escapes to 
United States, 166 

Indiada, meaning of term, 40, 41 

Indians, Mexican, causes of their 
poverty, 126 128 ; why pro- 
sperity of Mexico did not benefit 
them, 282 et seq. 

Ixcamula, action at, 156 



JECKER, and Jecker bonds, 54, 55 
Juarez, Benito, President of Mexico, 
is Professor at Oaxaca, 5 ; his 
influence in Oaxaca, 29 ; exiled, 
31; Governor of Oaxaca, 42; 
resists French intervention, 63 
et seq. ; passes Ley Juarez, 43 j 
becomes President, 44 ; leaves 
city of Mexico, 73 ; behaviour to 
Maximilian, 112; re-elected, 131, 
136 ; tries to perpetuate himself 
in office, 137 et seq.; his death, 
148 



LAGO, Baron, Austrian Minister, 
arranges capitulation of city of 
Mexico, 114, 115 
Le"pero, vagabond class, 253 
Lerdo de Tejada, Sebastian, Presi- 
dent of Supreme Court, his party, 
138; stands as President, 139; 
becomes President on death of 
Juarez, 148 ; his character, 150 j 
political errors, 151 ; over- 
thrown, and escapes to United 
States, 161 

Lerdo de Tejada, Law so called, 51 
Ley Fuga, its purpose, 179 
Limantour, Jose, financier, 135 ; 
becomes Minister of Finance, 
256 5 Minister of Finance, 257 j 



INDEX 



quoted, 265 ; indicated as succes- 
sor to Diaz, 291 292 ; adheres 
to Diaz, 304 

Lorencez, General, commands 
French troops in Mexico, 58 ; 
defeated at Puebla, 61 62 



MACGREGOR, GREGOR, Cacique of 
Poyais, 53 

Madero, Francisco, his origin, 293 ; 
opposes Diaz, 299 et seq. ; his 
opinions, 300 ; imprisoned, 302 ; 
revolts, 303 

Magnus, Baron, assists in defence 
of Maximilian, 114 

Marquez, General, called Tiger of 
Tacubaya, Conservative leader, 
51, 52; his defence of city of 
Mexico, 112 et seq.; endeavours 
to relieve Puebla, 108, no; 
defends city of Mexico, 113 
et seq. ; his escape, 115 

Marquez de Leon, General, revolts 
in Sinaloa and Lower California, 
198 

Matamoros, taken by Diaz, 156, 157 

Mateo Xindihui, San, action at, 146 

Maximilian, Archduke, Emperor of 
Mexico, his character, 57 ; reaches 
Mexico, 74 ; resists claims of 
Church, 75 ; recognition of re- 
fused by United States, 75 ; 
painful position of, 89 ; his 
fall and death, in, 112 

Mayas, Indian tribe of Yucatan, 277 
et seq. 

Mexico, Republic of colonial 
period, 10 22 ; first civil war in, 
23 ; declares its independence, 24 ; 
anarchy in, 25 ; condition in 1859, 
53 et seq. ; its physical defi- 
ciencies, 124, 125 ; city of, 
besieged and taken by Repub- 
licans, 113, 115 ; drainage of, 260 
et seq. 

Miahuatlan, action at, 99 

Michoacan, disturbances in, see 
Church 

Mier y Teran, Luis, see Teran. 

Miramon, General, leader of Con- 
servatives, 44 ; borrows money 
from Jecker, 55 



Mitla battle, 48 

Mori, Patrona, mother of Porfirio 

Diaz, 2 5 widowed, 3 
Moyos, Indian tribe in Sonora, 271 



NAPOLEON I., Emperor, quoted, 122 
Napoleon III., Emperor of French, 

reasons for his intervention in 

Mexico, 56 

Nickel currency, story of, 233 et seq. 
Noria, La, Diaz's ranch, 134 ; 

proclamation of, 145 ; burnt, 149 
Nufio de Guzman, Spanish explorer, 

discovers Yaquis, 270 



OAXACA, State and City, Porfirio 
Diaz born in, i ; taken by ene- 
mies of Dictator Santa Ana, 40 ; 
retaken, 41 ; taken again, 42 ; 
taken by Republicans, 49 ; sur- 
rendered to French, 85 ; risings 
in, 144, 153 ; Diaz becomes 
Governor of, 218 

Ord, General, instructed to pursue 
marauders in Mexico, 193 

Ordaz, Republican General, killed, 
48 

Orizaba, defence of by French, 62 

Oronoz, General, Imperialist Gover- 
nor of Oaxaca, 98 et seq. 

Ortega, Dona Delfina, first wife of 
Diaz, 134 

Ortega, General, Governor of 
Puebla, 65 et seq. 



PALO BLANCO, plan of, 154 et seq. 
Perez, Marcos, Professor, patronizes 

Porfirio Diaz, 29 ; imprisoned, 

33 ; in civil war, 49 
Pin, Colonel du, commands French 

counter guerrilla, 63 
Pindray, Comte de, filibuster, his 

death, 54 

Portazgos, ship taxes, 245, 248 
Prim, General, commands Spanish 

troops in Mexico, 56 et seq. 
Puebla de Los Angeles, repulse of 

French at, 61 ; siege of by 

French, 65, 72 ; Diaz takes, 108 



INDEX 



319 



QUERE"TARO, siege of, 1 1 1 
Quivira, supposed Eldorado, 270 

RAMIREZ, JESUS, revolts in Sinaloa, 

198 ; shot, 199 
Raousset-Boulbon, Gaston Raoulx, 

Comte de, filibuster, his career, 

Reyes, General, chosen as candidate 

for Vice-Presidency, 299 ; exiled, 

ibid, and 302 
Rhodes, Cecil, his view of Mexico, 

121 
Root, Mr. Elihu, visit to Mexico, 

and his praise of Diaz, 294 
Rosas Landa, General, Republican 

leader, his misconduct, 49 
Rotative compromise, meaning of, 

212, 214 

SALIGNY, M. de, French Minister in 
Mexico, 56 ; misleads General 
Lorencez, 59 

Salinas, General, Republican leader, 
his failure, 48, 49 

Salm Salm, Prince, quoted, 109, 113 

Santa Ana, Dictator of Mexico, his 
character, 31 

Sherman, General, occupies Savan- 
nah, 88 

Sonora, Province, mines of, and 
raids of filibusters on, 54 

TABERA, RAMON, General, surrenders 
city of Mexico, 1 1 5 

Taf t, Mr., President of United States, 
meets Diaz on frontier, 295 

Tecoac, battle of, 160 

Tehuantepec Isthmus, 45 et seq. 

Teran, Luis Mier y, General, sup- 
ports Diaz, 146 ; Governor of 
Veracruz, his character and bru- 
tality, 200 206 ; rejected as 
successor to Diaz, 216 

Textupec, plan of, 1 54 et seq. 



Thornton, Sir Edward, British 
Minister at Washington, arbi- 
trates between the United States 
and Mexico, 188 
Tierra Baldia, meaning of, 283 
Tolentino, General, joins Diaz, 160 
Torreon, massacre of Chinese at, 285 
Trevino, General, instructed by 
Diaz to restore order on frontier, 
194 

Turner, J. R., author of " Bar- 
barous Mexico," quoted, 275 



UNITED STATES, their patience with 

Mexico, 184, 187 
Uraga, General, goes over to 

Maximilian and attempts to 

seduce Diaz, 82 83 

VALLE NACIONAL, tobacco planta- 
tions of and slavery on, 279 et seq. 

Vega, Diaz de la, General, makes 
sortie from Mexico, 113 

Veracruz, headquarters of Repub- 
lican party, 44 ; massacre at, 
200 et seq. ; railway from to 
Mexico, 225 5 Pacific railway line 
purchased by Government, 259 

WALKER, filibuster, 53 
Wyke, Sir Charles, British Minister 
in Mexico, 56 



YAQUIS, Indian tribe, story of, 270 

et seq. 
Yucatan, Province, 275 ; sisal 

hemp plantations of, 277 ; 

slavery on, 278 et seq. 

ZAPOTECA, Indian tribe, their 

character, 30 
Zaragoza, General, defends Puebla, 

58 et seq. ; his death, 65 



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