The plot against Mexico

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the author's colleagues in the Committee on Mexico of the League of Free Nations Association, in warm appreciation of their efforts to prevent an armed intervention in Mexico:

H. A. Atkinson Paul Kennaday

Carlton J. H. Hayes John F. Moors

Contents

Shall We Intervene in Mexico? Introduction

by John Farwell Moors 1

One: The Plot Against Mexico 21 Two: Three Solutions for Our Mexican

Chapter One: The Plot Against Mexico

Is there a plot against Mexico? I believe that there is, and that it involves several high officials of the United States Government; that its object is armed intervention in Mexico, on some pacific pretext, the real purpose being permanent military occupation of the country, so that its internal affairs may be administered in accordance with the interests of the conspirators.

I believe that the originators of the plot are American oil men now operating in Mexican territory, or else greedy for an opportunity to begin operations there upon terms of their own dictation. I am aware that there exists a formidable publicity bureau created to poison the minds of the American people against Mexico, and that the publication of the truth regarding that imfortunate country will result in the publisher's being deluged with letters of denial, of protest, of personal vilification and abuse.

Proof is difficult — unless undertaken by an

official commission empowered to compel evidence

— and the evidence is largely circumstantial. But

there is enough to justify such an inquiry, if only as a means of preventing a war of invasion. (Senator Lodge's appointment of the most notorious enemy Mexico has to head an "investigation" of Mexican affairs was the response to this suggestion.)

American and British oil interests in Mexico are centred in Tampico, in the State of Tamaulipas, but extend south along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to Tuxpan, in the State of Vera Cruz. Seeing only Tampico, the visitor to Mexico would be impressed by the extent to which American influence has grown. This ancient Mexican port has developed into a second-rate Key West. It contains some tall buildings, and the only hotel in Mexico of the many in which I sojourned where the "scarlet creeper" is cultivated. Seeing only Tamaulipas, he would be convinced that the chief products of Mexico were oil and bandits, and would have registered the superficial impressions by no means uncommon among certain classes of commercial tourists. But having overlooked the cities of the Central Plateau, he would be ignorant of the real Mexico, and unable to contrast the peace and prosperity of the country, where the rule of the Constitutionalist authorities is supreme, with the devastation and anarchy wrought by bandits in the districts policed by "General" Pelaez on behalf of the oil men. In this land of contrasts Tampico is and always has been loyal to the Government established in Mexico City, and so are and have been the greater part of the political districts of Tamaulipas. The State Government has its seat at Ciudad Victoria, a town some distance from the port, and the governor, Dr. Osuna, who was at one time a Presbyterian missionary, possesses as complete an administrative organization as can be found elsewhere; but nowhere else in Mexico outside Villa territory is there such chaos as in parts of Tamaulipas.

A topographical map would go far toward explaining these contradictory conditions. In Tamaulipas as in Vera Cruz the descent from the cool country of the Central Plateau to the tierra caliente, or hot land of the sea-coast, can be accomplished in a single day. A chain of mountains blocks access from the interior to the coast, and to the average traveller there are but two routes open to Tampico, one from San Luis Potosi, the other from Monterey, which lies to the north of the former city — both cities on the direct line of traffic between Laredo and Mexico City. Other routes available for horsemen and pedestrians are known to the natives, whether bandits or pacificos, but have no commercial importance. Choosing the southern route because it was closer to Mexico City, I left San Luis Potosi at 6:30 A. m., bound for the oil fields. On the Vera Cruz line to the capital, and throughout the network of roads I had traversed in Central Mexico, Pullman cars were in use, and travel was in all respects as comfortable as in the United [23]

States; perhaps more so, in our days of congestion and Government control; certainly more agreeable than my rail journey from New York to Key West a few weeks earlier.

There were no Pullmans on the roads leading to Tampico. Pullman cars are expensive things, difficult to replace, even in these days of reconstruction, and "King" Pelaez of the oil fields considers it a patriotic duty to blow up any rolling stock belonging to the Constitutionalist Government, regardless of injury to the passengers, who are robbed, if still alive after the destruction of their train, and may enjoy the felicity of seeing whatever of their belongings the bandits have discarded burned while they await the means of returning to civilization.

In the most dangerous places on this dangerous journey, one of Mr. Carranza's soldiers found the cowcatcher a seat of honour from which to scan the tracks ahead for evidence of dynamite. His life and ours depended upon the accuracy of his vision. Two soldiers, swinging out from either side of the engine-tender, watched for broken rails, open switches, wrecked culverts, or other proof of a recent visit from the Pelaez following. And whether danger was apparent or not, one soldier stood, carbine in hand, on top of a baggage car which contained half a dozen of his fellows, ready to reply to fire from ambush, or take a pot shot at any bandit rolling rocks down upon us from the steep mountain side.

The beginning of the danger zone was marked in a most extraordinary way. Certain bandits who ventured from the hot lands or mountain fastnesses, where they can hide more easily than upon the open plain, had been captured and hanged to the telegraph poles. The bodies, when we saw them, appeared to have been mummified in the dry pure air, and swung to and fro in the breeze in a state of perfect preservation — except as to clothes. Neither I nor the good lady who looks after me is bloodthirsty, but we had heard so much of the frightful crimes committed by these Mexican bandits who style themselves patriots, revolutionists, and sometimes Villistas, that I confess we tried, not without success and a certain grim satisfaction, to photograph five of these cadavers.

As we ran into the hill country, valleys of wonderful beauty and fertility opened before us, and despite unsettled conditions shown by ruined villages and churches and the grouping of thatched huts as close as possible to the tracks, we saw that planting had been resumed in many places. The mountains did not lift their heads into the region of perpetual snow, and there was no such glorious giant as Orizaba towering above us almost the entire day, as when we journeyed from Vera Cruz to Mexico City; but we saw sheer walls of rock, like a greatly [25]

magnified palisade; vast heights, so nearly perpendicular that we wondered how the verdure clung to them; and rifts and chasms so deep that, after a glance, we instinctively drew back into the car. Creeping at a snail's pace along a narrow shelf of rock, we saw suspended from a spur nearly fifteen hundred feet below us a train of oil cars. These tanks, of course, and the oil they carried were the property of the Tampico oil men, but apparently they were en route to the wicked Constitutionalist authorities in Mexico City; so "King" Pelaez of the oil fields, who guards the jungle for the oil men, dynamited them — perhaps mistaking them for passenger trains.

We reached Tampico at midnight, several hours late, and with a prejudice against "General" Pelaez.

I had been told by the American Embassy in Mexico City that the oil men paid Pelaez, for guarding their interests, $200,000 a month. Still, I was surprised to learn from the spokesman for the oil interests next day that they would like to see Pelaez president of Mexico, because he was their friend, and the only friend they had, as they were "in bad" with the Washington as well as the Mexican Government. Only a few months before Pelaez was content with $40,000 a month blackmail, but the Saturday Evening Post's articles on Mexico got into his hands, and he "raised the ante." |

Two years ago Pelaez and his staff lived at Terra [26]

Armenia, the big oil camp belonging to "El Aguila," otherwise Lord Cowdray's Mexican Eagle Company, and were represented by "General" Enriquez at Juan Casiano, the biggest of the camps owned by the Huasteca Petroleum Company, of which the founders were E. L. Doheny, and C. A. Canfield of Los Angeles. The "Generals" were not at home during my visit to Tampico, having been dispossessed by President Carranza's soldiers some weeks before; so I did not have the pleasure of meeting them. But the oil men spoke highly of them, and it may be that Pelaez is now dearer to them because he costs them more.

Carl Ackerman was more fortunate than I, two years ago. "Who is Pelaez?" he asked in Tampico. "An ignorant Mexican rancher," was the universal reply. "He is a revolutionist, like all of us, against the Carranza Government. He has a loyal army that protects our property and workers. Pelaez is king of the police in the oil districts."

"And Enriquez?" Ackerman questioned. "A Mexican doctor," answered the foreigners, "cultured, educated and refined. He had a drug store in Tuxpan." ("Mexico's Dilemma," p. 80.)

Unable to meet the "King of the Oil Fields," I said to the oil men: "Why don't you shut off this blackmail and make your peace with Mr. Carranza? No doubt your stockholders could use to advantage the $200,000 a month you are giving [27]

Pelaez, and he doesn't seem to be delivering the goods." "We can't," was the invariable reply. "He would blow up our wells if we did. Besides, the State Department at Washington knows each and every payment we make to Pelaez, and approves it."

Of course a guard of United States marines would cost these gentlemen nothing. That is the first incentive to the plot against Mexico — extrication by armed force from a difficult situation — and at the expense of the American nation rather than of themselves.

And there would be money in it!

American oil men profess not to have made a cent in Mexico in years, although six months after my return from Mexico Doheny's company paid a 1918 dividend of more than $14 a share, and Lord Cowdray's company paid a twenty-five per cent, dividend last January, and the Dutch Shell h\as paid thirty-seven per cent, and forty-eight per cent, in the last two years. And Mr. Doheny expects 1919 to be the banner year for opportunities developed and negotiations completed.

How much money? I cannot state the amount exactly, but one item of economy would be the export tax now levied on petroleum by President Carranza's Government.

According to official Mexican figures, this tax amounted for the year 1918 to $5,560,198.95 in American money. The total value of petroleum [28]

exports for that year was 141,557,553.20 pesos, the peso being legally fifty cents American, although usually a trifle more valuable in the exchange. Exports might be increased and taxes eased off by American intervention.

Official Mexican figures show that twenty-four oil companies own their land in fee simple and pay no rent. Fifty-four companies pay an annual rental of less than five pesos ($2.50) for one hectare (two and one-half acres). These companies occupy nearly seven-eighths of the oil land under exploitation. The total area rented by them is 3,325,490 acres, out of a grand total of 4,064,870 acres. On this they pay an annual rental amounting to $589,320.54, or a little more than ten and a quarter cents per acre. Twenty-two companies pay annual rentals of less than $5 per hectare upon 138,340 acres, amounting to $166,- 254.84. One hundred and twenty -two companies pay more than $5 per hectare. They occupy 175,087 acres and pay a total annual rent of $2,443,457.72. Several companies pay from $500 to $2,016 per hectare, which raises the average, so that on the total acreage, as stated above, the total annual rent is $3,449,033.22. Both rentals and tax rates are lower than in Texas or Oklahoma, but under American intervention they might be still further reduced.

The Mexican Secretary of Commerce and In- [29]

dustry estimates the value of all oil properties in Mexico at $300,000,000, one-third of that sum being allotted to the wells. But in 1915 the Huasteca operators reported to their stockholders a physical valuation of lands at $75,000,000, and have since increased their acreage. Other estimates, some by Americans, place the value of foreign oil holdings at one billion dollars. A stake worth playing for? But that is not all. Only the surface of Mexico's wealth in petroleum has been exploited as yet.

Recent efforts of the New York Sun and other dailies to whitewash Francisco Villa and his lieutenant, "General" Angeles, who, it is now pretended, is "Provisional President of Mexico," while Villa is merely his Secretary of War, shifts the limelight for the moment to the State of Chihuahua and the International Boundary. The Sun absolves Villa from the Columbus massacre on the ground that he was not in immediate command of his men at the time. No doubt the American people and the British Government have been equally misinformed regarding the murder of Thomas Benton in Villa's office, Juarez, April 9, 1914, and of the score and more of Americans whom Villa is officially charged with having slain. Conclusive evidence of the moral purity of Villa will be found in the fact that the American oil interests maintained a financial agent and a press agent with him for three years, which of course they would not have done had he not been as angelic as Angeles himself. And he is Mexico's foremost military leader. That was conclusively established at the Battle of Celaya, where General Obregon defeated the Villa army of 40,000 with a force half as large, and drove him back with a handful of the men who survived to the northern mountain fastnesses where he has since skulked, only re-appearing for a cattle raid from time to time until his last feint against Juarez. Villa's break with Carranza took place in September, 1914. Chihuahua has an area of 90,000 square miles — nearly three times the territory of the Kingdom of Ireland, but its population numbers only 227,000 — which exceeds that of Springfield, Mass., by 2,000. Chasing bandits through cactus lands isn't easy work. If you don't believe it, ask General Pershing.

And a handful of men can do much damage and make a lot of noise. If you don't believe it, reread the recent accounts of bombing outrages in American cities, and of riots in Washington, Chicago, Boston, Omaha, and elsewhere.

But how has Villa maintained himself in all these years?

Partly by stealing cattle, which find a ready market on the American side of the border, despite the efforts of the Border patrol to prevent smuggling, partly by robbing ranches and mines, [31]

but chiefly through the charity of his American friends.

"Innocent, well-meaning, but utterly deceived Villa," writes the charitably minded Carlo de Fornaro (Carranza and Mexico). "If he only knew that the Cientificos, whom he accuses of having affiliated with Carranza, are really pulling their wires from New York, and using him as a tool to eliminate Carranza, and this because the First Chief intends to carry out all the radical reforms of the revolution."

Mr. de Fornaro believes, and rightly, that the American press, though it cannot be bought, can be fooled. He tells how British oil interests spent 7,000,000 francs to corrupt the Paris press when Huerta was seeking a foreign loan, on the authority of Dr. Atl, now director of the Mexican National Art School, who exposed the facts in "L'Humanite." Then he throws some interesting light on the press campaign for Villa in 1913, when "the Villa publicity reached its zenith," and "as much as two hundred dollars was paid to a writer to get a story on Villa into a New York Sunday paper."

"Even the Aguascalientes convention became a Punch and Judy show," he writes, "managed from New York, and it was used as a convenient lever to oust Carranza and place a puppet in his stead. . . In fact, all the interviews passed through the hands of an American press agent of Villa, and his manifestos, proclamations, and letters were written by the agents, and signed by Villa, who was absolutely ignorant of the contents of the documents."

In the midst of a new campaign against Mexico through the press, one wonders how intelligent editors can be deceived so easily. In the case of a great publication like the Chicago Tribune, owned by people who, as revealed in the Ford libel suit, are also interested in the Harvester Company and in the oil corporations, all of which are now in opposition to the present Mexican Government, some overzealous newspaper employe might occasionally stretch a point of fact in trying to "roast" Mexico.

The attitude of Mr. Hearst's papers is partly understandable on the grounds of that publisher's large property interests in Northern Mexico. But what about the others?

Melville E. Stone said a few years ago in the course of an address at the Pulitzer School of Journalism, "I once had luncheon with the editor of the Paris Figaro, Gaston Calmette. That day his paper had contained what purported to be a cable message from New York, recounting in thrilling phrase the story of a massacre of a large company of people by Indians on Broadway. I asked him why he published so absurd a tale. 'Ah,' said he, [33]

'there are sixty thousand brainless women in Paris. They are the demimonde. They read Figaro and these silly things amuse them,'

"This sort of journalism," Mr. Stone added, "is not the most profitable sort of journalism," a statement with which one may agree, and still wonder why it should be blazoned to the world by certain American newspapers in their efforts to please the anti-Mexican propagandists.

Perhaps even the great and powerful news gathering association of which Mr. Stone has been so long and with such distinction the directing genius is at fault. The Associated Press serves several newspapers in Mexico, and has its main office in the editorial rooms of El Universal, a daily with correspondents in all parts of the republic. Yet its dispatches from Mexico are meagre and far between.

On March 3, 1919, a Mexican official at a dinner given to visiting newspaper men in Mexico City, announced on the authority of the present Mexican Secretary of the Treasury that the petroleum controversy would be solved by eliminating the retroactive features of Article 27 of the new constitution. The representative of the Associated Press took the floor, and asserted that he would not wire this statement until it was made in official form, and criticized the Mexican officials for their lack of system in communicating information to the press.

Not wishing to duplicate, but believing that the information should be cabled to New York, I asked the A. P. man if he really meant to "spike" the story, late that night, intending to cable it myself.

"Certainly I'll 'spike' it," he said. "It's plain propaganda, and I've been warned from headquarters to let propaganda alone. There's too much of it on both sides."

I shall not suggest to Mr. Stone that any member of his organization would be guilty of suggestio falsi, but here is a distinct example of suppressio veri, and precisely at the time when his old friends the Shanghai liar and the correspondent who frequently heard firing off the Mole St. Nicholas appear to have taken their abode in Washington and El Paso.

It is merely a coincidence, of course, that the oil, mining, and other interests now attacking the Mexican Government should have chosen as their chief press agent in New York a former general superintendent of the Associated Press office in Washington, Mr. Charles Hudson Boynton, whose father held that position before him. Mr. Boynton came to New York nearly ten years ago to engage in the brokerage business, and has been president of the American Russian Chamber of Commerce.

In a characteristic letter covering anti-Mexican oil propaganda, Mr. Boynton tells the editor that he has now assumed the direction of affairs for [35]

the National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico, seeks "information as to the individual with whom we should deal whenever we have information which we think would be of news value," and concludes by a reminder of old A. P. friendship: "As my new capacity will bring me in touch with many old acquaintances, I hope that you will permit me in the near future to renew ours."

Frank J. Silsbee is associated as secretary with Mr. Boynton, who is styled "executive director," and the offices are located at 347 Fifth Avenue.

But the Boynton bureau is not the only concern handling anti-Mexican oil propaganda. There seems to have been an Association of Producers of Petroleum in Mexico at the same address, letters to which appear to sometimes get in Mr. Boynton's hands, and there is or was until recently, an "Association of Oil Producers in Mexico," which in last March issued a legal brief for circulation in our State Department, the foreign offices of other countries, and the diplomatic corps. It is rather well done, by a lawyer for the Standard Oil Co., I am informed, and in its summing up thus delicately hints at what will happen to church property, if the petroleum laws are not amended.

"Confiscation, like conflagration, spreads. If Mexico consummates the confiscation of oil fields contemplated in her newest constitution and de- [36]

crees, other confiscatory provisions of Article 22 of this constitution will be boldly applied as against foreign and native holders of lands. It is undeniable that such consummation will encourage similar spoliation of foreign owned interests in other new countries. The result will be commercial chaos and fatal retardation of industrial development in these new countries where development is so needed."

This association lost its punch by admitting that if the petroleum laws were amended, the oil people would have no further grievances against the Mexican Government, and probably will disappear. Of course they have grievances. Are not the Mexicans committing the lamb-like folly of muddying the wells from which the oil men drink? They have already manufactured the bases for a new set of grievances, as related in the financial columns of the New York Sun (morning edition), of June 7, 1919, where nothing appears offensive to the propagandists.

"News that the confiscatory feature of the Carranza subsoil nationalization decree is now a dead letter has reached operators of oil companies in the Mexican Tampico fields. They are going ahead with exploration and drilling without any interference from the Mexican authorities. All foreign oil interests in Mexico got together several weeks ago and agreed to keep on boring and bring- [37]

ing in wells without obtaining the new form of permit. This was drawn to compel obedience to the Carranza decree arbitrarily nationalizing Mexican subsoil without regard to property ownership or leased rights legally established before that decree was promulgated last winter. To obtain such a permit an operator had to sign an acceptance of the subsoil decree terms, and thereby relinquish by his own act his ownership or leasehold rights. Several new wells have been brought in by American companies since the decision of the operators to go ahead without government permission."

This unlawful conduct recalls the dicta of an oil man, widely published throughout Mexico: "If Mr. Carranza won't give us what we want, I'll go down into Mexico City and set up a government that will."

Even more dangerous to international peace than the more or less easily recognizable propaganda of the press, or the alarming and untruthful official appeals from the governor of a border State, or the intentional indiscretion of a public official like Mr. Speaker Gillett in blurting out an attack on Mexico at a gathering of pan-American public men chiefly concerned with improving relations between their countries and ours, is the veiled and scientific attack by lawyers and other employes of the oil interests in their private capacities.

Thus Mr. Ira Jewell Williams, of the Phila- [38]

delphia Bar, is always ready to reply to any article in which a favourable opinion of Mexico may be expressed, and to set the editor right. In so doing he encloses with his compliments a reprint of an article he wrote for the Journal of the American Bar Association on "Confiscation of Private Property of Foreigners Under Colour of a Changed Constitution." He writes on elaborate law firm stationery, but omits to add that he is president of the Panuco-Boston Oil Co., although he broke this rule in a recent letter to the New York Times.

Much more frank is Thomas Edward Gibbon, attorney of Los Angeles, home town of Messrs. Doheny and Canfield, who calls his book "a lawyer's indictment of the crowning infamy of four hundred years of misrule," dedicates it to the poor peon and his distinguished fellow townsmen, and echoes the demand for intervention. He has written the text-book for the interventionists, regardless of fact or of consequences, and his publishers are the Doubleday-Page Company, once supposed to be close to the administration of Mr. Wilson.

Careful reading of recent anti-Mexican oil propaganda shows that the press agency desires to impress four points on the public:

( 1 ) There is no plot against Mexico.

(2) The plot against Mexico was discovered or invented by an author of artistic temperament.

(3) The oil men are spending only |30,000 a month in maintaining armed rebellion against the legitimate and recognized Government of Mexico through subsidies to the bandit Pelaez, and not $200,000 a month, as they told the American Embassy in Mexico City.

(4) The oil interests are really engaged in missionary work in Mexico, seeking rather to benefit the down-trodden peon than to exploit the natural wealth of the country for selfish purposes.

These statements may seem contradictory, but they can be reconciled easily by any mind which has been thoroughly lubricated with petroleum. For my part, I rarely express doubt at any statement a press agent may make. It seems so useless. But points one and two are flatly denied in a document which is entitled to consideration:

WILSON TO END PLOT AGAINST MEXICO

(By the Associated Press)

Washington, March 25, 1916. — Convinced that powerful influences are at work to force intervention in Mexico, Administration officials were today considering just what steps shall be taken to bring tlie agitation to an end. . . . President Wilson is said to be determined to stop the circulation of inflammatory rumours, and to take legal steps if necessary.

I yield the honour of discovery, if it is an honour, to the President of the United States, who is thus denounced, I believe for the first time, as an author of artistic temperament.

His proclamation of an order to stop gun-running into Mexico would indicate that he really means business, and there is no doubt that the complete pacification of Mexico would quickly be an accomplished fact if unlawful traffic in arms and ammunition were stopped, and legitimate sales to the constituted authorities encouraged.

If the Police Department of New York City were denied the right to purchase weapons, and the gunmen and gangsters encouraged to buy automatics and ammunition in Jersey City, it is probable that there would be an increase of crime in New York, and there is no doubt about the effect of a similar policy for the last few years in Mexico. The number of murders of American citizens in the last nine years is the saddest of proofs that a definite policy is essential to peace along the border. Most of these murders were committed by outlaws armed with weapons of American manufacture, and trains have been blown up and bridges destroyed by dynamite "made in America."

Naturally the "flimsy" factory maintained by the interventionists in Washington, has been working double shifts behind closed doors for several weeks, for circumstantial evidence points to this as the propitious hour in which to force armed invasion of Mexico. The presidential terms of Woodrow [41]

Wilson and Venustiano Carranza are drawing to a close. Mr. Wilson, who has seized the republics of Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Nicaragua, without loosing the American grip on Panama, has tlirice invaded Mexico without a declaration of war, and might be persuaded to do so again. Indeed, the very terms of his latest proclamation make it possible for him to establish or overturn any Government in Mexico, simply by instructing Mr. Lansing! to whom munitions may be consigned. The next] president of the United States may be of a different moral and political type. Moreover, Mr. Car-I ranza may be replaced by one of those smooth di-l plomatists not uncommon in Latin-America, with! whom it would be next to impossible to pick a] quarrel.

But the "flimsy" factory has had a run of bad! luck. No sooner had it obtained first page in every daily in the United States for a picturesque story of an insult to the American flag than the Navy Department admitted that a party of skylarking sailors, who had gone fishing beyond the outposts i maintained by the Carranza Government around' Tampico, had been robbed; and that they had gone into the bandit-land (ruled by "the King of the Oil Fields") without permission, and had carried no flag. Eff'orts to fix on Mr. Carranza's soldiers responsibility for the murder of an American citizen and the outrages committed on his wife by bandits j [42]