Intimate pages of Mexican history

Chapter I

In Exile, Rome, 1913 — Retrospect — Triumphal Entry of the Heaven-born General into Mexico City, November 21, 1876 — First Administration— Immediate Predecessors: Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, Proud and Unpopular. Benito Juarez, the Great Ldberal, the "Man in the Black Coat."

Diaz needs no written praise. His works have long since been set in final and magnificent relief against the chaos that followed his disappearance from Mexican history.

Yet a few human things concerning one to whom nothing human was foreign will not come amiss.

The Abb6 Brasseur de Bourbourg, traveler and savant, passing through Mexico in the early sixties, says of him that he was the most perfect type he had ever seen, and what he imagined the kingly hero Cuauhtemoc to have been. More than half a century has passed since then. During these decades, doubtless sometimes mistakenly, after the human way, but always in the grand manner of Empire-builders, he transformed his country, bandit-ridden, revolutionrent, blood-stained, darkly passionate, where things are seldom what they seem, into something bright and beautiful and explicit among the nations.

I knew him only in exile, but even then old, very old, and hurt unto death, so much of the magnificence of his high and tragic destiny hung about his person, that I was dazzled and silent as I stood looking at him in the radiance of that Roman Easter morning of 1913. His head was of fine proportions, somewhat square and high above the ears, his white hair was still thick, his jaw was firm, the lines leading from nose to chin, though deeply cut, caused no sagging of the face. His eye, that strange hazel eye, with its very dark pupil, was piercing and still beautiful; his forehead in spite of the many lines above the accentuated protuberances of the eyebrows, and the furrows between the eyes, was stamped with a patient yet stern serenity. His visage, though stained and yellowed, seemed to have escaped the degradation that time is accustomed to inflict upon the human countenance. There was nothing broken nor defaced in his aspect, though aged he was not destroyed; rather over his outward being lay, as it were, a beautiful patina, such as time gives to temples and pictures, but rarely to their creators.

His figure, of medium height, was strikingly erect, and his few gestures had the noble reserve of outlong accustomed to authority.

Beside him stood the incomparable companion his greatness. In her severe, deep-blue dre-^ close, deep-blue hat, a single string of fau. pearls about her throat, she was of an indeg ribc elegance, the storied queen in exile.

She had noble, strongly-marked features and a skin of ivory-like texture and pallor. Her head was carried with a sort of lofty modesty, peculiar to her alone among the women I have known of high destin}'. Her figure was slender-hipped, small-waisted and she had a low, gently-swelling bosom. There was something passionately shielding in her attitude, and a great tenderness in her look wiien it turned towards her husband, something in her naturally gentle being that suggested the vigil of the lioness over the wounded King of the Forest who feels the hurt is mortal. It is no small thing for a woman to have lived for more than three decades with the greatest man of her country. . . .

After the greetings, and when he had given me the far-famed, appraising glance, we spoke of the Madero assassinations then so recent.^ It was in deep sadness that he deplored the event, but without any hint of self-justification, though ruin had been w^rought such as he had rescued his countiy from in the days of his youth, and preserved it from all the years of his power.

With a look on his face which it might have worn had he been alone, he continued :

"I might have reestablished order, — it would not

have been the first time" (here he paused for an in-

*^stant, doubtless reviewing in memory the blood of

•^att^es and the bending of law-breakers' wills), ''but

' ''ould only have been done by a fratricidal war

"^ would have destroyed the industries and com-

te of. the country, and exposed it to international

^§ipli^tions."

* Madero and Pino Suarez were killed on February 22.

"But the evil lias been greater," I hazarded (in French, he speaking Spanish). He made a gesture of assent, then without any trace of bitterness added simply ;

"It was told me that my presence was the reason for the revolution. What could I do except withdraw, making a last sacrifice to peace?"

I could not speak to him of the ingratitude of nations, who, with such rare exceptions, put their great men to death or send them into exile. He would have brooked no reproach where his people were concerned, even though they had cast him out. As, deeply moved, I arose to go, he held me for another moment, saying : "My only ambition is for my country's peace and prosperity," adding, "what can it matter to me whose hand will be privileged to accomplish this? It is the only happiness I can know in exile." He made a slight gesture, involuntarily calling attention to that hotel room in which his soul was so evidently a stranger.

As for myself, instead of that crude blue and gold salon of the Hotel Bristol where they were receiving me, I saw for a moment, hanging in a strange transparency, the high castle of Chapultepec. Beneath was the troubled, gun-shot city. It, like Rome, was enfolded in the natural beauty, even greater, of its Easter morning. I suddenly realized that I was witnessing one of those swift and formidable vindications that nature and history sometimes permit to greatness. Events had again exalted Porflrio Diaz, as definitely as if some Fate personified, stooping, had lifted his fallen statue and placed it again on its pedestal. * * . .

After the launchinj; of the Plan of Tuxtepec in Oaxaca on January 15, 1S76, Sebastian Leido de Tejada, then President of Mexico, fled to the United States. Out of the ensuing disorder finally emerged the "Greatest Mexican," Porfirio Diaz, and the manner of his appearance at the head of the government was in the typical Mexican manner, — after a revolution, by a military coup. Under his command the revolutionary army entered Mexico City on November 21, 1876, and their leader was proclaimed provisional President.

The entry of General Diaz into the capital was in keeping with the majestic period it inaugurated.

Clad in a gray field-uniform, relieved only by a single row of gilt buttons on which was embossed the Mexican eagle, mounted on a mettlesome steed, astride one of the English saddles he always used, his fine eyes flashing as they glanced vigilantly about him, his lips and chin firm, his head high, his whole bearing stamped with an indomitable will and an unfaltering courage, what wonder that an awed populace saw in him the heaven-sent leader? The revolutionary army which followed him doubtless resembled outwardly other revolutionary armies; we are all more or less familiar with them now, but no acts of violence were committed, no scenes of disorder took place. Their chief's commands were too explicit, infringement meant death. Lerdo's troops — he himself had fled tlie day before — made no resistance in the capital, but were swept away or melted quite smootlily into the victorious ranks. It was the beginning of tlie great Porfirian peace, of Mexico's Augustan Period.

General Diaz remained but a few days in Mexico City, the government being given into itlie hands of General Juan Alvarez, he himself leaving to continue the work of pacification in the interior. With an army of three thousand men he marched against Iglesias, who, after making a show of resistance, fled to the port of Manzanillo, whence he embarked for the United States. He had been elected President of the Supreme Court of Justice in 1873. This position made him virtually Vice-President of the Republic. Disputes had arisen between him and Lerdo. Being aggressive and very ambitious, Iglesias openly launched a revolution, after the time-honored custom, with the intention of ultimately assuming the supreme power. But one greater than them all had arisen in their midst.

The Congress of April, 1877, which decreed Porfirio Diaz President for four years, laid the corner stone of the magnificent edifice known as "Modern Mexico."

The only visible and decidedly encumbering furniture of State left in the debris of the old edifice, except, of course, the Constitution made of the greenest of wood, was the English Debt, the Spanish Debt, the United States Debt, ouq known as the "Padre Moran" debt, together with interior liabilities too numerous to inventory. All was done up in the frayed upholstery of banditry and revolution, and sagged and creaked with poverty. The only furnishings still in perfect working condition were the conflicting passions of half a hundred years. We of 1920, familiar with Mexico in revolution, can somewhat appreciate the difficulties confronting Porfirio

Diaz, and the sovereign wisdom which alone enabled him to construct a new Mexico.

In 1880 the term for which he was elected having expired, with a political vision that merited better results, he retired according to the constitutional provision that no President should succeed himself. Naturally this mark of civism was little appreciated by his compatriots, who considered that he was but biding a greater hour.

During this first term of office he was largely employed in discouraging banditry, and quelling the numerous revolutions which formed themselves spontaneouslyand continuously out of tlie abounding elements of disorder. For this, twenty years of active martial life had supremely fitted him. Knowing the physical and moral conformation of Mexico as no other man has ever known it, the potentialities of his people, the spirit and variety of their national qualities, he proceeded first to give them the essential gift of peace, leaving that of liberty for a more profitable moment.

He renewed diplomatic relations with France, with Belgium, with Portugal, though on account of the big English debt, an inheritance from the splendorloving but terrible Santa Ana, recognition was withheld by Great Britain. The difference of opinion as to the quality of the arms and ammunition supplied by England, which jamming or failing to explode, did not kill so many Mexicans as was expected, further embittered relations.

Though the United States maintained its diplomatic representative in Mexico City, Mr. John W. Foster, accredited there since the days of Lerdo,

22 INTIMATE PAOES OF MEXICAN HISTORY

Washington, too, delayed recognition of the Diaz government, and this for a diversity of reasons, the chief of which was lack of confidence in the establishment of peace, and in the security of commercial relations. Though the government of the United States was aware of the military achievements of General Diaz, it knew nothing of his civic genius. It did know that his country was bankrupt and unruly. There was nothing in its history since 60 years to cause the government of the United States to suspect that a man had appeared who in his single person would deliver Mexico from the evils of those six decades.

His genius was soon, however, to reveal itself clad in the rarest of all governmental garbs — instinct for facts. He proceeded to give the first great impulse to railways, knowing that better communications would tend more than anything else, except his own energy and judgment, to rid the country of bandits, and gain the indispensable good-will of his Northern neighbor. Lerdo had been wont to say that "between Mexico and the United States there should remain a desert," adding "those who wish to traverse it, can do so on donkeys." A more classic expression attributed to him is, "Entre el debil y el fuerte, el desierto." (Between the weak and the strong, the desert. ) The word of Diaz was : "better communications,— roads, railways, bridges, economic relations, reciprocal services, understanding, bonds."

He discovered also another short, very short way, into the green paths of prosperity. The Mexican state being bankrupt, foreign capital was the evident and only means for the development of its latent riches and the suckling of its infant industries. He proceeded to make it not only safe, but pleasant and profitable for foreigners to invest their brains and money in Mexico. They brought with them the golden keys with which again to open the "Treasure House of the World."

Diaz was succeeded by General Manuel Gonzalez, who had none of his predecessor's gifts and few qualities of his own. Riots, rebellions, revolutions were once more the chief concern of the Mexicans.

Fatalistically and surprisingly they allowed him, however, to finish his term, perhaps because in the Mexican subconsciousness lay the knowledge that a great man awaited destiny in their midst.

During President Diaz' first incumbency, at his solicitation, Manuel Romero Rubio, who had been Lerdo's Minister for Foreign Affairs, a charming and able gentleman, initiated by long and varied experience into Mexican political mysteries, returned to Mexico from New York, where he and Lerdo had been living in exile, according to the even then traditional custom of Mexicans who had served or tried to serve their country.

Lerdo's personal pride was immeasurable, and he always refused to return, saying "my dead body perhaps, but never alive." He died in New York; and when at last his body was returned to its native soil, President Diaz gave him the most splendid of burials, as befitted one who had been invested with the Supreme Power.

Lerdo's administration had been extremely unpopular, one of his so-called reforms having been the expulsion £>f the Sisters of Charity from the Republic, and the attendant closing of many hospitals, asylums, and homes for the aged. It was as President of the Supreme Court of Justice that he had succeeded to the Presidency, quite fortuitously, on the sudden death of Benito Juarez, July 17, 1872.

A word concerning Benito Juarez, the "man in the black coat," the only civilian figure of the first magnitude which had appeared in the history of Mexico since her Independence. He was a Zapotec Indian of pure race, born on the day of the vernal equinox of 1806, in an adobe hut, in the mountains of Oaxaca, on the borders of a lake known as the "Laguna Encantadora," the enchanted lagoon, from the way it had of unexpectedly drawing under to their doom even the strongest swimmers.

His education began with a bookbinder of Oaxaca into whose employ he was taken at the age of twelve. From this humble starting point he was destined to tread the exalted and extremely varied paths of the Mexican patriot. He was to know supreme honors, likewise prisons and exile ; at one period of his career he was a fruit peddler in New Orleans. On his return to Oaxaca in 1855 he soon gathered about him men of like political beliefs, among whom was young Porfirio Diaz, whose military star was just showing above the revolutionary horizon.

On February 5, 1857, a new figure appeared in Mexican history, the gory Goddess "La Constitucion," who has since rivaled the sanguinary gods of the Aztec teocalli in the sacrifices she has exacted from the Mexicans. President Comonfort was sponsor for her, assisted by Benito Juarez, who became later Comonfort's "Minister of Domestic Relations." These "relations," be it said in passing, were of the noisiest and most disputatious kind, and Comonfort subsequently had their Minister cast into prison. Comonfort's own natural end was flight. After various eclipses and further vicissitudes, Benito Juarez emerged as President of Mexico and professed upholder of the Constitution, though being a wise Indian, he doubtless looked upon it as Mr. Clemenceau once looked on the Peace Treaty, as something with which, though not perfect, one could perhaps work.

This indefatigable and gifted being of iron nerves and seemingly deathless body, who had never known a day's illness, died suddenly of heart disease in the Palacio in Mexico City on July 18, 1872.

His body lay in state for two days, while an awed, highly-colored, big-hatted populace defiled through the Palace to look upon his basalt-colored face, which is said to have worn an expression of surpassing, almost alarming tranquillity, despite the great scar that stretched across it.

These two men, Benito Juarez and Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, were the immediate predecessors of Porfirio Diaz, and he alone knew how strange was the heritage they left him.

Chapter II

The Love-marriage of Porfirio Diaz — He Finds an Incomparable Companion for His Splendid Years — He Eides into His Native City, Eloquent of His Martial Life, witli His Young Bride — His Sternness in Matters of Discipline — His Generosity Towards Enemies — His Only Visit to the United States.

It was while Governor-Elect of the State of Oaxaca that General Diaz married, on November 7, 1881, Carmen Romero Rubio, daughter of the man who had been Minister of Foreign Affairs under Lerdo, and who had accompanied him in his flight to the United States.

At the time of her marriage "Carmelita/' as she was to be known affectionately and admiringly during long years to the Mexican people, was only sixteen, her seventeenth birthday not occurring till the following January.

About General Diaz hung visibly much of the magnificence of his destiny. Romance clothed his past, and there were potentialities of splendor about his future. He was the fabled, fancy-stirring "man on horseback"; the type of man that every government of Europe openly inveighs against and secretly desires in this year of 1920; the savior, who like all coming to save, performs his task above and beyond the crowd, which later, after salvation is accomplished, resents his disdain and forgets his benefits.

He had fought continuously during the war against the French. The pictures of him at La Carbonera on his sorrel horse in his picturesque "charro" costume, a pistol in his hand, his steed pawing the air, the French in retreat, will live as long as the history of that epoch lives. He accomplished many daring escapes, such as that from Puebla in 1865, when he was a prisoner of the French from the 10th of February to the 22nd of September, and which is one of the most thrilling evasions of history.*

Courage, decision, judgment, luck, all the great military qualities showed themselves even in this feat.

^The following relation of General Diaz's escape from prison at Puebla in 1865 is in his own words:

"We were delivered over to the Austrian forcea who imprisoned those of us above the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the fortress of Loreto. We were threatened with summary execution unless we would swear allegiance to the Empire and the majority yielded, but four of us refused, and a few days later I was transferred to the convent of Santa Catarina and placed in a cell with two other officers. On the pretext of a disagreement Mith them, I obtained a cell by myself and forthwith began digging a tunnel, starting underneath my bed. I was on the ground floor, in a chapel which had formerly been the cell of a nun of miraculous powers, and there was a well in it, famous for its curative waters. I used the well for receiving the earth which I dug from my tunnel. When I had almost reached a point underneath the street, after five months' work, I was suddenly transferred to the convent of La CompaQia. While there I was treated with great courtesy by the lieutenant in command. Baron Chizmendia, who took me to a bull-fight on one occasion and even gave me permission to leave the prison alonjs on parole. This cost him dear on the return of his superior officer, the Austrian Count Thun, who put him under arrest for having given me these privileges. When I took Mexico, on June 21, 1867, I found Chizmendia among the Hungarian prisoners, set him at liberty and later sent him and other Hungarian officers, who were his friends, back to Europe on the "Novara" an Austrian frigate, which had come to Vera Cruz to take Maximilian to Europe.

"Count Thun had returned to Puebla in ill humor from an unsuccessful campaign in the Sierra. He summoned me before him and after trying to induce me to give orders for an exchange of prisoners, which I refused to do, and expressing astonishment at what he termed my insolence after nine months' imprisonment, he ordered the shutters of our cells closed, leaving us in darkness. He increased the number of guards, authorizing them to enter the cells at any time, and to remain there if they considered it necessary. He made me an especial victim and to the extent that I resolved to make my escape. I first chose my birthday, the 15th of September,

The internecine wars on the Isthmus and in Oaxaca, were also, as far as Diaz was concerned, a record of

but as that was the eve of the anniversary of our independence, I could not carry out my plan because of the illumination of the streets of Puebla. So I put it off until the 20th.

''I have succeeded in buying some horses which were in readiness, in charge of a servant in a house near by. Two of my fellow officers were in my confidence and they agreed to invite the others to a game of cards so that I might be left alone. I had provided myself with two coils of rope, wrapped about my body, and a third coil which I parried separately. My only weapon was a sharp dagger.

"After the night-bell had sotmded, I went from my cell to a room common to all the prisoners and finding no one there, I threw one of the ropes to the roof, caught another rope over a stone eaves-spout and climbed up, pulling the rope after me, and picking up the other. My progress across the roof to the corner of San Eoque, the point I had chosen for my descent, was most dangerous because of a detachment of troops that occupied the higher roof of the church, overlooking the convent. Although the night was very dark, there were frequent flashes of lightning, which exposed me to discovery at any minute.

' * Finally I reached the wall of the church. Here the roof slanted and was very slippery from the recent rains and I was in imminent danger of falling. I had just descended to the low roof of the chaplain's house when a young man entered it from the street, gayly humming a tune, as if he had just returned from the theater. Soon after he came out, carrying a lighted candle and passed by the place where I was hiding. After what seemed to me an interminable wait, he returned and reentered the house. I gave him sufficient time to go to bed — and perhaps to sleep — and then I pursued my way to the corner above the street of San Eoque. There stood a statue of San Vicente Ferrer, and it was my purpose to tie to it the rope by which I was to make my descent. The saint was not as steady as could have been desired, but I supposed that he was sustained by an iron bar, and for greater safety, I attached my rope to* the pedestal, which served also as the corner of the building. I decided that it would be unsafe to drop to the street, as I might be seen by a passer-by, so I chose as my place of descent an open lot on the side of the building, without knowing that it was a pig-pen. As I began to let myself down, my dagger fell from my belt and must have woimded one of the pigs, as a great squealing ensued that threatened to expose me to discovery.

* ' Upon reaching the ground, I hid for a while until the noise ceased and I was about to climb over the wall to the street, when I had to withdraw quickly on the approach of a gendarme going his rounds and examining the locks of the doors. When he had passed I gained the street, and was even able to suppress a terrible desire to cough, brought on by torments in my chest, resulting from the fatigues and anxieties of my flight.

"I ran to the house where my guide was waiting for me with horses and weapons. We mounted and, luckily, found the Teotihuacan brilliant victories, wounds, fantastic and hair-breadth escapes. At all times and in all circumstances he had been a magnetic and romantic pei'sonality. He was of handsome and authoritative presence. His eyes, when I looked into them, were even then, at more than four-score, of an extraordinary and brilliant beauty. What deep attraction must have lain within their glance thirty years before ! An immeasurable tenderness, too, one of the best gifts of strong men to beautiful women, lay beneath the absolutism of the maker and ruler of Mexico.

Such was the man bronzed, decorated, aureoled in victory, who would descend from his horse at the door of the house of Don Manuel Romero Rubio, in which is now the Calle Tacuba, then Calle San Andres. There was that in Porfirio Diaz' instinct which led him to seek a woman whose qualities would be supplementary to his own; there was that in his destiny that enabled him to find her; and having once found her, he exalted and cherished her to the end.

gate open and so could leave the city without question. Colonel Bernardino Garcia was to have awaited me with his troops on the boundary between the States of Puebla and Guerrero, but because of having had to postpone my escape from the 15th to the 20th, I did not find him there. I then swam the river Mixteeo on horseback, not daring to be unarmed even for a moment, the Imperialist forces, under Colonel Plon, being in close proximity. On arriving at the village of Coayuca, I found that a fiesta was in progress. I avoided the center of the town but while in the outskirts I met the alcalde, whom I knew. I pretended to be a merchant on the way to the coast to buy cattle. He recognized me, however, congratulated me on my escajw and offered his help, urging me to stop a while as there would be no danger. I declined and went on. A few moments later I heard rifle shots and climbing a hill I could see that fighting was going on in the town. I learned afterwards that a squadron of Imperialists had made a sudden attack in the hope of surprising Garcia 's guerrillas, who were attending the fiesta.

' ' We continued, without further incident, and after covering fifteen or twenty miles, found refuge in the rancho of Colonel Bernardino Garcia, in the mountains of Oaxaea. ' '

In the unevolved being of her sixteen years this woman held predestinatedly flie choicest qualities of tact and goodness in addition to her outward graces, and was to add to his autocratic rule a crowning touch of gentleness and modesty.

During the period of the wars of Reform and Intervention he had been the man of camps, of sieges, of blood and battles, and doubtless himself and his' methods were often rough and ruthless. The polished statesman of the last three decades of his administration was evolved, however, from this military chief.

They met, with the immediateness Fate sometimes shows, on the occasion of Carmelita's first appearance in society, at a luncheon at the Tivoli Eliseo given in honor of General Diaz. Afterwards at the house of the Duchess de Eegla, the General and Carmelita danced together one of the charming Mexican "danzas," the young girl experiencing a very natural thrill at the attentions of the man whose gifts and achievements were even then the pride of his nation. A few days later they met again at a reception at the German Legation, where his interest was» evident to all. Shortly afterwards it was made known to the parents of Carmelita that the General was madly in love with her. It was Romance, ageless, repetitive and beautiful.

But whether it was as son, lover, husband or father, each and every feeling of the heart was to be experienced in its fullness by Porfirio Diaz. His devotion to his mother gives him a typic and exalted place among the legendary sons of history. As lover.

his being was agitated by the extreme of passion and longing. As husband, fidelity, devotion and adoring solicitude accompanied every act to the end. He was, too, the kindest of fathers, .respectful of the needs and rights of the separate individualities of his children. Never were they to hear from his a violent, unconsidered word, nor suffer an arbitrary decision. I witnessed his final farewell from his daughter, Amada, his first-born. Such deep, paternal tenderness emanated from that ultimate embrace, that many who witnessed it were affected to tears. I was on my way back to Mexico in September, 1913, and for a few hours the "Espagne" lay off Santander. About four o'clock a small launch was seen approaching the ship over the glittering, many-colored, afternoon waters. In it were Don Porfirio and his wife bringing Madame de la Torre, Amada, who was returning to Mexico. As he took his daughter in his arms, pressing her so closely to him, he seemed entirely forgetful of all else save love for that child he was to see no more. When at last she tore herself from his embrace and passed up the gangway, he could be seen standing motionless, majestic, his head bared, his eyes fixed on the ship whose prow was turned toward Mexico. « * * •