The whole truth about Mexico; President Wilson's responsibility

Front matter

WHOLE TRUTH

ABOUT MEXICO

PRESIDENT WILSON'S RESPONSIBILITY

Preface

The Mexican revolution has a threefold aspect at present: that of a great social drama; of a weighty international problem, and of a terrible socialistic experience for a people, whose starved, infuriated and overwrought element obtained a complete victory over the representative element in August, 1 914.

Passion is the mainspring of every drama; and every great, international political problem sets the passion of patriotism in motion, as well as the passion to secure well-being in the future at the expense of the present. Socialism in its practical application is a compelling force, destructive of traditional civilization, especially when it champions the cause of the poor in their struggle against the rich.

The "Mexican case" has become the slogan of the two American political parties now warring for supremacy in the coming elections; and it may be said to represent the clash of two great interests, drowned in a torrent of deafening and sinister language. The object of this book is to arrive at the truth, guided by one master passion, the passion for justice. It is capable of inspiring terror, of animating by hope, of ennobling by patriotism, of enlightening by faith, of illuminating moral abysses by the power of its own sovereign force. My task is by no means an easy one, as it is very difficult to treat a question quite dispassionately, when the heart appeals against the judgment of the head.

My attitude is not one of enmity toward the Mexican revolution. Study has taught me what all men who have viii PREFACE

studied the question scientifically known; that is, that every genuine revolution is a benefit to humanity in general, as well as to the people themselves, if they can carry it to a successful issue. But when the people who revolt lack the necessary reactionary power to reconstruct their country, they perish as a nation, or cease to exist as a social body. I am not an enemy of the revolution, but I do look with horror upon its progress, because Mexico is my native land and from the final, supreme test of the revolution may result the loss of its independence, or the extermination of the race, ground to dust under the merciless hoofs of anarchy.

To every reader of this book I profEer the assurance of absolute candor, and the exposition of the truth, in so far as it is humanly possible to state it.

The Author.

Part First Some Presidential Facts Concerning Sociological Conditions In Mexico

I. President Wilson's Attempt to Establish

Liberty in Mexico a Costly Fiasco . i

II. The Great Fiasco of the Mexican Revolutionists and President Wilson in the Agrarian Question .... 36

Part Second

THE TRUTH CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS UP TO THE TIME OF PRESIDENT WILSON'S INTERVENTION

L A Boxer Revolution Protected by the

United States Government . . .103

II. The Moral Upheavals of the Revolution 132

III. Maderism 152

X CONTENTS

Part Third

THE POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL INDICT- MENT OF PRESIDENT WILSON IN THE MEXICAN CASE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The First Installment of Lies Accepted

BY President Wilson . . . .189

II. President Wilson and First Chief Car-

III. The Collapse of President Wilson's Mexican Policy 281

Part Four Mexico's Probable Condition In The Immediate Future

I. The Magnitude of the Disaster . . 307 II. The Collapse of Carrancism . . . 334

III. Final Conclusions: President Wilson's

Latest Serious Errors .... 360

IV. Armed Intervention Begins . . . -370

Chapter I

PRESIDENT WILSON'S ATTEMPT TO ESTAB- LISH LIBERTY IN MEXICO A COSTLY FIASCO

THE PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE OF DECEMBER 7, I915

THE attentive perusal of President Wilson's message, read before the assembled Houses of Congress on December 7, 1915, produces a chilling sense of disappointment, inasmuch as that notable document contains nothing bearing upon Mexico which in the slightest degree meets the anxious expectations of the millions of individuals who, from motives noble or otherwise, watch from a distance the development of the terrible and sanguinary drama now being enacted there. In this drama, the plot of which he has never understood. President Wilson has essayed to figure as one of the principal actors.

It does, however, reveal with unmistakable clearness that President Wilson's dreams of an humanitarian apostolate have been shaken, not to say dissipated, by the rude shocks of savage and criminal realities. When an intelligent man, a man of character, of great civic weight — a man who lays claim to political discernment verging on mathematical precision, as does Mr, Wilson, is guilty of glaring contradictions when addressing himself to the world — for the world listens when the President of the United States speaks to tlie American people — it is because the spirit of the exalted apostle has been crushed by the annihilating force of tragic events which cannot be denied, disguised, dissimulated or justified.

President Wilson tells us that the troubled Republic of

Mexico has, "in the radical but necessary process," been able to count upon but few sympathizing elements outside its own boundaries. As a scholarly man, Mr. Wilson cannot ignore the fact that without exception every revolution rendered necessary by circumstances is, has been and ever will be, beneficial for the people who engendered it, and for humanity in general. If the Mexican revolution was a necessity, there should be no hesitation or vacillation in stating that its authors have conferred great benefits upon Mexico; whereas Mr. Wilson has stated, in the aforesaid message, with strange disregard for exactness, policy and ethics: "Whether we have benefited Mexico by the course wc have pursued remains to be seen." This course has been a policy of blind and decided championship of the cause of the Mexican revolutionists. Is there, then, no contradiction in declaring that the Mexican revolution has been a necessity, and in expressing doubt as to whether or not in protecting this revolution a benefit has or has not been conferred upon Mexico ?

President Wilson's words do not ring true. The consciousness of the Latin-American nations ought to be stirred by the self-evident fact that the President of the United States seems completely to have changed his personality, to possess to-day an identity which seems to have forgotten that of yesterday, or shall wc say that so great a personage has lost sight of the fact that his exalted position binds him in loyalty to words once spoken. "All the governments of America stand," says President Wilson, "so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of genuine equality and unquestioned independence." It must have been the other Wilson then who addressed to the independent Mexican Government under General Huerta, through his personal representative, Mr. Lind, the note in which the President of the United States, in a form that might fittingly be assumed toward the Governors of Porto Rico or the Philippines, demands that the Mexican Government comply immediately with the following orders:

'Tirst — Complete cessation of hostilities; that is, an immediate peace, or at least a truce, in Mexico.

"Second — That President Huerta resign in favor of a President ad interim.

"Third — The fixing of an early date for the presidential elections.

"Fourth — That General Huerta should not be a candidate for the presidency."

In an interview granted to a representative of The Saturday Evening Post, Mr. Wilson made the following statement: "My ideal is an orderly and righteous government in Mexico ; but my passion is for the submerged eighty-five per cent of the people of the Republic, who are now struggling toward liberty." It is difficult to understand how it is possible to conceive that justice is being shown to a people struggling toward liberty — a people which believes that this liberty can exist only under an orderly and righteous government emanating from its sovereign will — by the assumption on the part of the President of the United States that he possesses the right to interfere and establish an orderly and righteous government in Mexico; and if this policy of the White House is not set forth as based upon this right or power, it must be looked upon as a barefaced act of aggression against the independence and sovereign rights of the Mexican people.

In the same interview Mr. Wilson also stated : "Second — No personal aggrandizement by American investors or adventurers or capitalists, or exploitation of that country, will be permitted. Legitimate business interests that seek to develop rather than exploit will be encouraged." Mr. Wilson must be confusing Mexico with Porto Rico or the Philippines. Does he not know that the Mexican people possess the sovereign right even to allow themselves to be robbed by the North American capitalists, or those of any other nation, and that they cannot permit the President of the United States to acquire the power to revise all the legislative acts of the Mexican Government, and to dissolve w^ith inexorable imperial veto the laws, decrees and resolutions of this Government, even though the White House affirm that it has the power to exercise the rights of tutelage over eighty-five per cent of the Mexican people?

Having noted some of the contradictions that the President of the United States has permitted himself to be guilty of in regard to the "Mexican Case," it may be well to continue the analysis until one essential fact is satisfactorily explained and settled. If the Mexican revolution was a necessity, then it is an imperative duty to fix beyond the shadow of a doubt for whom the necessity existed. For Mexico? For the United States? For Europe? For humanity in general? And if this revolution was not a necessity, upon whom must the verdict of history and contemporaneous public opinion fix the guilt of high treason against humanity, and against the inalienable obligations that rest upon the chief executive of a nation?

PRESIDENT WILSON SETS HISTORY ASIDE

In the interview already spoken of, published in The Saturday Evening Post, the writer tells us that the President "hit the desk with that clenched fist," and said, " 'I challenge you to cite to me an instance in all the history of the world where liberty was handed down from above! Liberty always is attained by the forces working below, underneath, by the great movement of the people. That, leavened by the sense of wrong and oppression and injustice, by the ferment of human rights to be attained, brings freedom.' "

I take up the gauntlet. I accept President Wilson's challenge to give him a single instance in history where liberty has been "handed down from above."

The Roman liberties were the work of an assemblage of patricians emanating from an aristocracy which counted soldiers, landed proprietors and jurists in its ranks. Almost everything in the patriotic history of Rome to which we look up to and admire — the creation of its civil laws, its legislative work, its recognition of the rights of the people and even of the slaves — was "handed down from above." Who would attribute to the "forces working below" the glories of Senatorial Rome's golden era? The triumph of the masses produced three hundred years of Caesarism.

The famous Spanish liberties declared, sustained and elucidated by such far-famed political monuments as the Cortes, the Fueros, the Justicia de Aragon and the Church — recognized as a sovereign power within the State — were not the creations of the half-clothed denizens of the sub-stratum of humanity, but of the Infantes of Spain, steeped as they were in the spirit of feudalism ; of the Ricos-homes, crowned with the dignity of free men; of the prelates who, claiming the prerogatives granted them by the Church, imposed their authority upon the kings to curb their despotism. On the other hand, from the heart of the Spanish people — the forces working below — sprang their admiration for militarism, their veneration for the arquebus and cutlass, and that ideal of the subjugation and transformation of a people by conquest, a conquest that left the weaker vassal, beaten and crushed, but nevertheless glorying to live subject to her overbearing lord, the military power. The Spanish populace applauded the destruction of the ancient liberties implanted by the grandees, although Inevitably and In great measure they were their own, and reverted with their former blind and fervid devotion to their king and their God.

It Is readily granted by all moderately well-educated people, and by every Anglo-Saxon acquainted with this history of his national life, that the origin of the English liberties — adopted In more or less modified form by all civilized nations — is to be found in the Magna Charta of King John, a work that cannot be traced to the "forces working below," as it was forced upon this monarch by none other than the English barons. The other two great legislative monuments which incorporate the liberties of the English people are the Bill of Rights and the Petition of Rights, both emanating from the opulent industrial element and the aristocracy, still wedded to feudal ideas of liberty. It was not until 1832, when the first important reforms in the electoral laws were effected, that the English people were accorded a voice in the affairs of the nation, and by 1832 the ancient and celebrated English liberties had been perfected and completed, nothing in their composition having emanated from "the forces working below," alone endowed, according to President Wilson, with a veritable libertycreating potency.

The great French Revolution, initiated in 1789, is perhaps the most convincing example of the failure of the masses, not only to create the ideal liberal state, but adequately to understand and practice true liberty. Whatever of good survived the ravages of this great national struggle did not come from the political forces that brought it into being. The salient features of t'his movement were the revoking of the privileges of the Crown, of the nobility, of the clergy, of the judiciary, and this revocation was decreed after being learnedly and brilliantly discussed by the Constituent Assembly. The sweeping financial, legislative and administrative reform.s that modified the ancient regime were the work of the Assembly of 1791. But no sooner had the sovereign power passed into the hands of the people, than there appeared on the horizon the most frightful tyrannical machine the world has ever known, the National Convention, that servile instrument of the great crimes and incredible follies of the Reign of Terror, What was the outcome of all this? The terror produced by the will of the people permeated all ranks and classes — the great, the middle class, the lowly, the revolutionists, and even the terrorists. The people themselves ended by flinging aside their sovereign rights, seeking in Napoleon I and Louis XVIII agents who would restore to them, at least in part, their ancient institutions. These they now realized to be a necessity to their well-being, moulded as they had been by the traditions of the past which the revolution had sought to obliterate, forgetful that in the life of a people the past, the present and the embryonic future are inseparably united.

The great French Revolution, launched in the name of liberty, and for the attainment of liberty, succeeded in the end in arousing in the minds of the people a veritable panic at the mere mention of their sovereign rights, and a sense of loathing for the very name of liberty itself. The nineteenth century apostles of liberty did not dare to raise their standard in France until 1830, and that revolution was not at once extinguished because the wealthy bourgeoisie stepped in and snatched the reins from the hands of the socialist propagandists. This liberal regime was sustained by the industrial world, supported by that section of the aristocracy which preferred this kind of liberalism to being the victim of the sovereign will of the masses. The Revolution of 1848 restored the people to power, but when the attempt was made to put into practice the most absurd socialist doctrines, a reaction set in, upheld by those who, although loving liberty, preferred the despotism of a Caesar to being trampled upon by the rabble. From the offscourings of the Second Empire rose that volcanic eruption known as the Paris Commune, which threatened to engulf the French nation. As though to nullify this sinister manifestation of the rule of the people there came forth the order and liberty of the conservative republic, in which all Frenchmen united, wishing to save their nation from the catastrophies to which it had been exposed by the rule of the people. The French

Republic has developed gradually into a radical-socialist republic, bearing in its womb the pulsing monster of doctrinal socialism and empirical anarchism.

Why is the United States an exception to the rule which dominates in Latin countries of incompatibility between liberty and democracy?

From the first, while America was still an English colony, it understood, practised and was gradually trained in the English ideal, and when it achieved its independence it came forth a really democratic people, because it possessed the real and fundamental condition of democracy, an equal — or almost equal — social condition among its citizens. Like conditions prevail in Switzerland, where the proprietary class is in the majority, and so long as this unusual condition obtains, liberty and democracy can exist together, because the soul of democracy is equality. But from the moment that the proletarian element predominates, liberty has but a small chance. Moreover, in the Anglo-Saxon race there is faith in individualism, born of the results achieved by the common people in England, where the working-man commands the highest day wage in Europe, and in the United States, where he commands the highest in the world. That great Anglo-Saxon faith in liberty, due to the triumph of its efforts, also owes its origin to the economic elements which the Anglo-Saxon race has manipulated so as to create for its common people a situation superior to that of any other people of the world.

If President Wilson will examine the nature of liberty as exemplified by its evolution in different countries, he will find that the truly protective regime has always been built up by the ari?,tocracy, supported by the doctrine of divine right, the right of arms and the right of the landowner; that the liberty which has been the outgrowth of what is commonly termed the "rights of man," has sprung from the industrial world, directed by the brains of capital, combined with the old aristocratic forces which prefer to yield rather than to be annihilated; that Socialism is the ideal of the working-man of to-day, who attributes all his misfortunes precisely to this kind of liberty, as the creator of stupendous social inequalities, and who sees in the capitalist only a hugh crushing machine bent upon pulverizing him into atoms. Outside of the United States and England the working-man is not emancipated from the traditions of the past; he is a socialist or, what amounts to the same, an avowed enemy of liberty. And even in the United States there now exists a socialist party whose existence is no longer ignored, and whose unwonted demonstrations from time to time have caused the individual American to ask himself what all this may portend. In anarchy may be found the real offspring of the "forces working below," the real domain of the desperate, the cunning, of those who can live only when steeped in hate and who, believing that all social reforms proposed with a view to making the life of the working-man happy — with all his reasonable wants gratified — must necessarily fail, have resolved to do everything in their power to destroy human society.

LIBERTY AND ORGANIC SERVILITY

President Wilson resolved to implant liberty in Mexico: first, without right, later, without reason, and still later, without acquainting himself with the nature and characteristics of the people upon whom he wished to bestow that liberty which he himself says "is often a fierce and intractable thing."

Mexico's economic resources may be summed up as follows:

Total annual agricultural production, 350,000,000 pesos.^

This agricultural life of the nation is extensive, carried

1 The value of the Mexican silver peso was approximately fifty cents gold.

lo WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT MEXICO

on by a population scattered over a vast area, without national unification or equal civilization, of diverse races and languages; one only in illiteracy, silence, barbaric trend of thought, hatred of the white race and perhaps suffering, although their misfortunes are by no means equal.

The annual industrial production of Mexico in 1909 was:

Sugar and the manufacture of liquors from

sugar-cane, maguey and grains 30,000,000 pesos

National railways 80,000,000

Street railways 1 1,000,000

Electric lighting, public and private, and motor

Soap and paper 3,000,000

Annual production of silver 75,000,000

Annual production of gold 50,000,000

Annual production of copper 32,000,000

Annual production of iron 12,000,000

Annual production of lead 4,000,000

Annual production of zinc, antimony and tin... 3,000,000

Annual production of coal 12,000,000

Annual production of petroleum 30,000,000

The statistical table given above represents an average during five years of General Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship, hence the monetary unit used to compute this annual production is not paper currency but the silver peso, valued at the rating of the monetary standard of 1905, averaging, therefore, two pesos to the American dollar. Consequently, computed on this basis and classified under the two headings of agriculture and industries, our production, previous to the saving revolution of the much-lauded Francisco I. Madero, was:

Total annual agricultural production $175,000,000.00

Total annual industrial production 227,000,000.00

Apparently the Mexican nation possessed the necessary elements to establish a regime of libert}^ emanating not from the civilizing forces that work from below, which have so

WILSON'S ATTEMPT A COSTLY FIASCO ii

captivated Mr. Wilson's imagination, but to the antagonism existing between two forces, the aristocratic agrarian and the industrial, controlled by capitalist sovereignty. Liberty is born of and nourished by the antagonism created by tyrannical social forces which in the political world war upon each other, or unite to produce advantageous results for the people, whose sympathies are always with these social forces. Liberty, then, results from the peaceful impact of tyrannical forces within the limits of the community they pretend to govern.

Ostensibly Mexico should enjoy a sound industrial regime, but the conclusion to be arrived at after carefully considering the true aspect of the question will unavoidably lead to the most intense disappointment.

SOCIAL ELEMENTS THAT DO NOT MAKE FOR LIBERTY

Mexico's import trade — amounting to $150,000,000 at the time to which I refer — as also her internal trade, were almost exclusively in the hands of foreigners or foreign enterprises, whose stockholders and boards of directors were in foreign countries. The Mexican Constitution denies political rights to foreigners and does not permit foreign societies or companies to ban together for political purposes. The result of this measure was to nullify almost totally any benefit that might accrue to politics from foreign capital circulating in Mexico. Nevertheless, foreigners could indirectly, through lawyers protecting their interests and representing them before the Government and the people, mix in political affairs for their own benefit and that of the country. There was, however, no foreigner in Mexico so unsophisticated as to believe that the Mexican people were fit for liberty, whatever might be the stable form of government to which they might incline. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Japanese, Americans, all those, in fact, possessed of common sense, have always ridiculed our burlesque democracies and condemned the crimes for which they are responsible. The foreigner in Mexico who believes in our liberalism must be either lacking in sense or devoid of veracity.

The foreign element, even before the revolution of 1910, and before and during the dictatorship of General Diaz, was convinced that Mexico's best interests would be served by an iron hand, backed by an intelligent, upright, tolerant and, in so far as was possible, honest spirit. Influenced by this conviction all foreigners living in Mexico, or having money invested in the country, have always supported every dictatorship that in their estimation appeared competent or, under the circumstances, the least objectionable. One of their indirect methods of upholding the dictatorship was not to employ Mexicans who mixed in politics unless they measured up to the required standard ; that is, unless they were unconditional partisans of the dictatorship. This restriction of the industrial force of the nation, which was gathered together almost exclusively under foreign management, and which was the only other serious, positive, beneficent force — one which favored a dictatorship only because of its own inability to establish liberty — removed from politics an independent element which, not relying on the dictatorship for its daily bread, should have been free to fight it and establish a responsible government.

FURTHER ELEMENTS OPPOSED TO LIBERTY

Elements have existed in Mexico for the formation of an active, useful, respectable, conservative party. The prime requisite for this is an aristocratic land-owning class. Mexico has a landed aristocracy, Catholic in faith, a worshipper of traditions and a lover of liberty, confined within the limits of a centralized or federalized conservative republic. This aristocracy enthusiastically entered the political field under the protection of the Constitution of 1824, but failed of its aim because it lacked the real elements of strength; namely, great prestige in the eyes of the nation, great wealth, a feudal soul, or at least the military spirit, with a strong following in the army, and the effective support of religion.

The most imposing national sanctuary is the Pantheon, in which repose the ashes of the dead whose immortal deeds have glorified the centuries. In countries that can lay claim to a venerable tradition the national glories are the heroic deeds of its nobility. As long as true patriots are left to these lands, even when anarchy has invaded them, the tribute of homage and gratitude will always be laid at their feet, when calm has restored to patriotism its reflective quality. Mexico cannot hold up to its white and mestizo ^ races glorious traditions, lengendary heroes, or inspiring visions of noble Crusaders and fearless conquerors of new worlds. The traditions of the Mexican Creole aristocracy are puerile. It represents the weak type which needed the firm hand of the conquerors to perpetuate its dominion. The people know well the significance of the coats of arms of their aristocracy. With the exception of the descendents of Cortes and his handful of formidable companions, the rest of the nobility merits the contempt or indifference of sane-minded people, and the hatred based on envy of the illiterate. However, although the pretensions to nobility among Mexicans may be irritating, in no instance have the culprits, the victims of foolish vanity or incorrigible petulance, deserved implacable persecution.

The great wealth of the Mexican landowners is another well-worn lie which has held undisputed sway among those who have not an accurate knowledge of the Mexican social economic problem. In due time it will be shown thatrthe landowner's wealth was more imaginary than real, that they were burdened with innumerable difficulties and were more worthy of pity than of hate.

1 Mestizo — a person of mixed Spanish and Indian blood.

The aristocracy was not a part of nor did its influence hold sway in the army. They committed the irreparable blunder of withdrawing their sons from the service after the fall of the Emperor Iturbide, except when it was a choice between begging or seeking a military appointment.

The Catholic clergy has always been faithful to its duty of upholding the aristocratic class as the most faithful conserver of ultra-Catholic traditions. In the northern states it has almost entirely lost its hold upon the masses, but has held it among the people living south of the 22d parallel to the frontier of Guatemala, not, however, to a degree to inspire heroic uprisings in defense of their faith. Without effective strength the Mexican conservative element could not take an active part in the government, because only the strong are privileged to govern. The middle-class politicians found a way soon after the Declaration of Independence to exclude the aristocracy from party struggles. An original system was invented, simultaneously enacted throughout Spanish-America. Every revolutionist, in the same breath that he proclaimed the revolution, declared every employee of the established government a traitor, even when he himself had been one — in many cases the most favored. Every traitor was condemned to die, his property having been previously confiscated for the good of the country, and not even his children escaped the branding-iron of the "patriot." With such a system in vogue, and bearing in mind that ultimately every revolutionist triumphed, there came a time when property owners recoiled from taking part in politics since it was equivalent to aiding in their own execution. Only those who had nothing to lose and everything to gain entered the political field. From that time politics became the chosen trade of the demagogue, the storehouse of the illfed, the asylum of the deluded, who, notwithstanding some merit, were dragged into this sewer, the gentlemanly highwayman's office being turned into a font of civic virtues.

After its last political venture — the attempt to raise a throne in Mexico for the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria — the conservative party abandoned politics, advising their sons to do the same, telling them to bear in mind the words of England's wicked king, spoken on the eve of the battle that was to dethrone him:

"And if I die, no soul shall pity me: — Nay, wherefore should they? since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself."

The formation of a conservative party in Mexico was an impossibility. From 1824 to 1880 the only thing the aristocrats dreamed of was the advent of the iron-handed dictator who would restore peace without liberty, so that liberty might not cause the dishonor and death of the country.

INTELLECTUAL ELEMENTS CONTRIBUTING TO LIBERTY