Essay on the reconstruction of Mexico

Front matter

ESSAY ON THE

RECONSTRUCTION

OF MEXICO

Foreword to the English edition 7

To our Fellow Citizens 9

I. Measures suitable to make democracy effective in Mexico IS

II. Checks and balances of the branches of Government. Impeachment

of Officials. Methods of substituting the President 21

III. Foreign Affairs 27

IV. The Naturalization and Civil Status of Aliens 31

V. Municipal Autonomy 35

VI. Education 39

VII. Administration of Justice 43

VIII. Railroad Policy 47

IX. National Army 51

X. Labor Legislation 57

XL Responsibilities Growing out of Disorders in Mexico 61

XII. Public Health 65

XIII. Development of our National Resources. 69

XIV. Economic and Financial Problems 81

XV. The Agricultural Problem 97

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION rWlHE ESSAY here presented to the English-speaking community embodies t . a message from certain Mexican citizens to the Mexican people as a whole. -*■ For this reason, although originally published in the United States, it was written and printed in Spanish. Since its appearance, however, the press notices it has received have led to requests from many sources for an English version. Accordingly, the authors determined to issue the present edition.

This exposition, summary as it is, gives an idea of the problems with which the Mexican people must contend in any attempt at the rehabilitation of their country. The authors do not pretend to have embraced all of these problems, but they do sincerely believe that those discussed are the most pressing and important.

The Essay was written during the provisional government preceding that of General Obregón. Therefore, when the authors refer to the "present government of Mexico " or use a like expression, they refer to the government of provisional President de la Huerta. The problems that existed during the latter's administration are, however, the same as those with which President Obregón's government is confronted, though in many respects they now assume an even graver aspect.

The names of the collaborators are arranged alphabetically, in accordance with the rules of arrangement of names in Spanish. It is believed that a brief statement of the professions and of the more important public offices formerly held by the authors in Mexico may be of some interest to the American reader... The following enumeration covers this point: —

Manuel Calero. — Lawyer, Member of the Chamber of Deputies,

Senator, Secretary of Justice, Secretary of Foreign Affairs,

Ambassador to the United States.

Francisco S. Carvajal. — Lawyer, Senator, Chief Justice of the Federal

Supreme Court, Provisional President of the Republic. Juan B. Castelazo. — Lawyer, Governor of the State of Guanajuato,

Mexican Consul General in France.

Toribio Esquivel Obregón. — Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury. Jesús Flores Magón. — Lawyer, Senator, Assistant Secretary of Justice,

Secretary of Gobernación.

Tomás Macmanus. — Banker, Member of the Chamber of Deputies,

Senator.

Rafael Martínez Carrillo. — Lawyer, Senator, Assistant Secretary

of Gobernación.

Miguel Ruelas. — General of Brigade in the former Regular Army,

Director General of Military Education, Second Assistant Secretary

of War.

Jorge Vera Estañol. — Lawyer, Member of the Chamber of Deputies,

Secretary of Public Instruction.

TO OUR FELLOW-CITIZENS

FOR MANY long years, through the bitterness oj the partisan governments dominating Mexico, those who sign this document have been com^pelled to live in exile, deprived of the rights of citizenship and even of the civil rights which the laws of Mexico accord to aliens; but as no government could rob us of our love for the land that gave us birth, nor destroy in us the consciousness of our duty toward our country, we determined to unite our efforts with a view to examine the fundamrcntal problems of the Mexican situation and to offer to our fellow-citizens the result of our study. If we can thereby contribute, in some degree, to alleviate the domestic distress of our country and to avert the international dangers which threaten her sovereignty, we shall be amply paid.

The essay on the reconstruction of Mexico now made public was drafted, in its essential points, during the last months of the Carranza administration. The recent change in the personnel of the government is no reason why we should desist from our task; rather are we of the opinion that the present moment is even more propitious to our disinterested efforts. However small our experience in public matters, the program we submit has, in the first place, the advantage of being inspired in a spirit of compromise between the teachings of pure theory on which our system of government is based, and the limitations and shortcow,ings of the Meodcan people. We have not sought to formulate a program of Utopian recommendations, but a series of applications of scientific principles to the practical realities of Mexican life. This means that we do not interpret politics as a science discovering and formulating laws, ' but as the very difficult art which, with due regard for such laws, studies national forces and the method of harmonizing them, so that, instead of destroying one another in perpetual conflict, they may be combined and cooperate to the advancement of the Nation.

Nor is it a revolutionary plan that we have written, false panacea to which the disgruntled and the ambitious ever resort in Mexico. We deem our work a program of national salvation. Withdrawn as we are from active political life and without the possibility of intervening therein, and living outside the country, we address those who can translate our lúeas into deeds, ij after careful study they find them satisfactory and practicable.

We are not unaware of the fact that the faith of some of our fellowmen in the capacity of the Mexicans to redeem themselves by their own efforts is beginning to fail and falter; nor are we oblivious of the existence among foreigners of the belief that, without outside aid, we cannot be saved. We still have faith in the virtues of the Mexican people, and believe that if their activities are guided along the proper path, they can, alone, set up a regime of law which shall be a sure guarantee of progress and a firm foundation upon which to reconquer the respect of the ivorld.

Those of our fellow-citizens who are familiar with our antecedents will see how ive have begun by sacrificing our former political differences to the exigency of national interests. Some of us, moved by the same lofty purpose, have also sacrificed favorite theories sustained in public office, or defended in the press and in the forum. All of these sacrifices, which possibly expose those making them to the charge of inconstancy, are imperative requirements of the purpose animating us. Today we are united, and our efforts are combined under the guidance of a superior and sacred aspiration, compelling our gaze only to the future with no time to glance backward to the dismal days of the past, unless it be to draw from them the lessons of experience, and so justify our present position.

Before submitting the various portions of the program which, in our judgment, the Mexican Government should follow in laboring for the reconstruction of Mexico, we must set down as a fundamental observation that neither the most conscientious surveys nor the wisest laws can solve our social problems, unless the work be done on the solid foundation of the integrity of those in authority. Without this, every effort would be futile.

If now we consider the method followed in our work, we must state that we regard it as essential, at the outset, in considering the reconstruction of Mexico, to fix its general lines, and the end which Mexican statesmen ought to have in view. Many disinterested and intelligent efforts have been wasted through a lack of method; and the policy of our government has been at the mercy of the capricious influence of individuals or of the exigencies of each new day.

In dealing with the problem of reconstruction, it would be a vital error to regard Mexico as an industrial country. Its present stage of development is not the industrial stage. Nor is it our judgment that preference should be paid to the mining industry, despite the prominence that this branch of economic activity has attained in Mexico. What is of capital importance, quite fundamental in fact, — and this seems to us axiomatic, — is to guarantee an adequate and nourishing foodsupply for the people. Mexico is an agricidtural country, capable of great agricultural development; and yet, by a lamentable paradox, its population is inadequately fed, because the soil does not yield enough for their sustenance. This condition reveals the existence of an economic-social problem of grave character, which points the way to the principle that must be paramount in any program of reconstruction; only by frankly recognizing it, can we hope to have a national economic policy, a regime of our own, drawn from our oiün experience and adapted to the essential conditions of our own life.

From the strictly political point of view, we believe that a prerequisite to the carrying out of a program of national reconstruction is the restoration of the constitution of i8jy. Apart from its historic value and its intrinsic merits {broad and great enought to guarantee the most progressive program), the constitution of i8jy has the supreme virtue of having been recognized by the whole people as the national constitution. Its restoration as the supreme law of Mexico ivould eliminate the protests now made, and which will continue to be made throughout the republic, against the imposition of the constitution of 191 7 by the Carranza revolutionists, in violation of their most solemn pledges.

Neverthless, the constitution of 1857 is not an immutable law; nor do we believe that all its precepts respond to the admitted" demands of progressive thought. Experience has shown the expediency, — the urgency we might say, — of introducing several amendments ; but in order that they may have the same sanctity as the constitution itself, they should be effected by constitutional means, that is to say, through the action of the federal congress and a majority of the state legislatures. Any other process is to be rejected as illegal — no less illegal than the meeting of the so-called Constitutional Convention which f rammed the constitution of 191 7.

A return to constitutional order, to a status of legality accepted by all {even by those who have sought to subvert it), would amount to the elimination of the first cause of discord among the Mexican people. The men who are today in control in Mexico should convince tliemselves that respect for legal traditiuji is the most poiverjul tie in maintaining the cohesion oj a social group that is not yet definitely integrated.

In recommending the restoration oj the constitution oj iS^y, ive do not mean that the present Mexican Government should be overthrown through a jresh revolution. Should the governmefit itselj find the means oj realizing this salutary measure, the main purpose we seek would be attained. We are indifferent as to the method chosen to restore the, legitimate constitution, inasmuch as there is no law to prescribe it or even point the way; but we shall condemn the use oj jorce, so long as there exist other means to attain the desired end.

Much capital has been made oj the statement that the constitution oj igij m-arks a great step jorward jor the .Mexican people, with the corollary implication that the restoration oj the constitution oj 1857 would be a step backward, a reactionary step. This concept is jalse, as we shall readily show in the course oj this study. Nay more; taken in its entirety the constitution oj igiy is less liberal than that oj 1857, while certain oj its precepts embody the most intolerable tyranny, and even the subversion oj principles essential to any regime oj democratic jreedom.

In support oj this statement, we may point to the jact that the constitution oj 191 7 sanctions, as a legal institution, the dictatorship oj the executive branch by making the President virtually non-impeachable, and by reducing the sessions oj Congress to barely jour months a year. During this term, Congress must devote its attention prejerably to the enactmefit oj tax measures, to passing the budget and to auditing the accounts oj the executive branch. Such a task leaves Congress no jreedom oj action, unless to the prejudice oj these jundamental duties. On the expiration oj these jour months, Congress cannot junction unless called into extraordinary session by the President, iphen its legislative sphere is limited to the matters specified in the call. A congress thus shackled cannot represent a jree people.

Again, while the constitution oj 1857 guarantees jidl religious jreedom, that oj 191 7 persecutes all creeds and all religion. No one would dare to say that this jorm. oj tyranny over the conscience is an achievement in the path oj liberty.

So, too, the constitution oj 1917 mutilates the democratic principle oj the liberty oj education, which is jully guaranteed by that oj 1857.

It has been said that Article 27 oj the new constitution, which undermines the right of property, is an achievement. We can neither endorse this theory, nor close our eyes to the palpable fact that the application of this article has only served to work extortion, without bettering the condition of the masses who continue sunk in age-long squalor and poverty.

We shall point out, in the course of our study, other innovations of the constitution of 1917, which constitute lamentable retrogression, as lúe shall, with no less impartiality, note in what respects the later instrument excels that of 1857. Were we to admit, however, that the new code is as a document superior to the former constitution, not even then would we declare ourselves in favor of it, for we cannot fail to take into account the fact that our people, like all peoples, is subject to historical and social forces of the sort which no statesman can afford to overlook if his work is to endure. One of these forces is that of Law, which builds the framework of the political structure of a people throughout its history. Until such time as a social convulsion shall break this framework, — as the French Revolution shattered that of an older order, — it must be preserved, if for no other reason than to prevent the establishment of the fatal precedent, which seemed to have been forgotten in Mexico, that every change of rulers can bring a new constitution, thereby sowing ineradicable seeds of discord. The only thing that the revolutionists might properly have done was the modification of those provisions of the constitution of 1857 i^hich they deemed incompatible with the doctrines or pet theories of their revolution. Had they thus proceeded, they would have satisfied their program of innovations, without wounding public sentiment, nor furnishing fuel for future revolts, which will at any moment have the same justification as the movement initiated by the Plan of Guadalupe, namely, the restoration of the constitution.

What force can be given to the constitution enacted at Queretaro by the provision of its Article 136 which prescribes that the very same constitution shall not lose its force and vigor even though its observance be interrupted by rebellion? An identical provision exists in Article 128 of the constitution of 1857. Yet this did not prevent Señor Carranza and his partisans from supplanting by another the very constitution for whose restoration they were fighting. By this attack on the legal principle that the constitution is one and insubvertible, although subject to amendment, those who called themselves "constitutionalists" in advance made impossible any efficacy in their own constitution and destroyed all the force oj the precept oj its Article 136 which they themselves had jailed to respect.

In a word, we doubt the effectiveness of any constructive labor in Mexico without the vindication of the principle of legality, the only memis of averting the anarchical tendencies of those who dream 0^ attaining the triumph of social justice by the destruction of society itself. Legality, represented hy a constitution historically sanctioned and 'wholly identified with our justly-earned glories, will be the sole beacon to the Mexican people in the midst of the storm of passions and conflicting principles 'which now engulfs the world. The constitution of 1&57 opens the doors to social progress in every respect, and is susceptible to far-reaching amendment, which would insure real progress for the people, as we hope to show in the course of this study.

Having stated our purposes, we shall proceed to analyze them in the chapters of the folloiving program.

New York City, September, 1Q20.

MEASURES SUITABLE TO MAKE DEMOCRACY EFFECTIVE IN ME?CICO

IT IS NOT to be gainsaid that with all the disastrous effects of the convulsions that have shaken Mexico for the last ten years, certain results quite beneficial to our political advancement have been attained. Among others, we must not overlook the full realization by the people of the fundamental concept of sovereignty in a democratic government. Civic duties, which for so many years had seemed dead or forgotten, are taking root more and more in the public mind; and the people have begun to realize, as the fruit of bitter experience, that only by the unflinching fulfillment of those duties which a democracy imposes on each citizen, can the Republic be freed from tyrannies which degrade, or anarchical convulsions which destroy.

Nevertheless, we are far from priding ourselves upon the establishment of democracy in Mexico; and we would be guilty of lack of sincerity if we were to say that the government that brought about the so-called constitutionalist revolution was a regime where liberty and justice ruled, in other words, a democratic government. Had this been the case, we should never have thought of offering, from exile, our feeble contribution to rescue the Republic from the terrible dilemma to which the Carranza Government was dragging it: disintegration in a whirl of disorder and immorality, or a collapse into foreign hands which, at the cost of our sovereignty, would redeem us from our own helplessness.

And yet, it is with a feeling of sadness, that we record the fact that the disappearance of the Carranza administration has not made, as if by magic gesture, a radical and definitive change in the government of Mexico. However much of an effort may be made to prove that the revolution which overturned Carranza was inspired by lofty and legitimate purposes, and the motives of those who seized the reins of gQvernment disinterested, — and we admit this fact without qualification, as to certain of its members, — there is still a formidable barrier to the unencumbered progress of our political development, which is not surmounted by the mere substitution of a new governmental personnel, even though the new men are animated by a genuine intention to respect popular liberties. This obstacle is the appalling illiteracy of four-fifths of the Mexican people.

A people whose vast majority is wholly illiterate, a people which does not read because it cannot read, a people in part consisting of groups speaking only their native tongues, is not the demos that a system of popular government requires and, indeed, takes for granted. This situation is not peculiar to Mexico; it occurs throughout the nations of Spanish America in which the classical despotisms of the American continent have flourished. By the side of a substantial group, well qualified to comply with the obligations imposed by democracy, there are in Mexico twelve million human beings in the lamentable state of backwardness we have just described. Our professional politicians lack the necessary moral courage to admit that these twelve millions must be transformed by education before they can be called upon to exercise their civic duties, and choose rather to endorse the conventional allegation that all Mexicans are fitted for self-government. This attitude should be attributed not so much to a fanatic regard for the democratic principle of universal political equality, but to a desire to flatter the masses by references to their rights, and then use them to furnish the brute force with which the government can be seized by violence, and retained by terrorism.

The "constitutionalist" revolution, like every other revolution in Mexico, promised us the reign of liberty; but the Carranza regime fell far short of fulfilling its promises of liberty, even though it could not wholly stay the political progress of the Mexican people. We should say on its behalf that no government, however well disposed, can fulfil such promises in Mexico, so long as the people do not do their part. When governments in Mexico respect liberty, it takes on the form of anarchy under the influence exercised over the masses by nefarious agitators; and then the governments, facing the danger that society may be engulfed by anarchy, restrain liberty, and finally fall into the opposite extreme — despotism. If democracy, with universal suffrage, were practicable in Mexico, the movement that overthrew Carranza would have had no possible justification. Carranza sought to impose his will regarding the election of his successor in the chief magistracy. Could he have achieved this end, if the people fully grasped the significance of their political rights? What fear could the other presidential candidates have entertained, if the people were really to decide the election by their ballots? In countries where the people act through the force of public opinion and the ballot, — and these are always the countries in which illiterate citizens form an insignificant minority, — it is unnecessary to appeal to violence to prevent electoral impositions. The mere mention of such fraud in these circumstances is a paradox. In any event, the people protest of their own accord, and do not need nor tolerate that the army should become the interpreter of its will. The Republic of the United States has never known an instance where the army, in defense of popular rights which have been violated, has overthrown a government and set up another in its place. In Hispano- America, with two or three relatively recent exceptions, the army makes and unmakes governments, and the popular vote merely serves to ratify the violent acts of military chiefs.

We are ready to admit that the last movement in Mexico was in part provoked by Carranza himself in illegally persecuting the most conspicuous among the presidential candidates; but were the people the decisive factor in electoral contests, neither would Carranza have dared to engage in this persecution, nor would the persecuted candidate have witnessed the practical wholesale defection of the army to his cause. Pretorian armies exist only in those countries where liberty is not held by the people as a precious and inviolable patrimony.

The only excuse, the sole plausible explanation that can be given to the latest political movement in Mexico, is that which its initiators and beneficiaries do not dare to state, namely, that the great mass of citizens, by reason of their own impotence, were obliged to remain inactive while others officiously defended their possession of the fundamental civic rights which Carranza sought to violate. When a people is in such a case, democracy becomes a fiction and cannot be said to exist.

We are convinced that those Who attain power under the role of "champions of the people's rights" cannot honestly admit our true condition. The adult illiterate must be educated, or at least afforded every facility to rise from his abject condition; the Indian who can only speak his vernacular tongue most be taught to speak, read and write the national language — Spanish. Until these results are attained, the illiterate should be kept in a state of political minority, which will automatically end the day that he acquires that elementary knowledge which the law should demand for the exercise of civic rights. The government, on the one hand, the cultured classes, on the other, and, in general, all citizens who love their country and are interested in its progress, should leave no stone unturned to efface, as rapidly as possible, the widespread stain of illiteracy. One of the chapters of the present program is devoted to this subject. Considering the c]uestion now solely from the political point of view, we hold that the most radical measure, the most progressive and the most democratic, that a party seriously engaged in the reconstruction of Mexico can adopt is to restrict the ballot to those who, in fact, know how to use it.

Although at the moment ot decisive action our politicians show their profound distrust of the people, — we have indicated that the overthrow of the Carranza Government was a manifestation of this distrust, — they do not, however, seem resolved to abandon the false theory that it is a duty to render homage to ignorance and incompetency. It is common knowledge that the section of the electorate which may be regarded as qualified to vote abstains from doing so because they know that their ballots are overwhelmed by the mass of votes of the illiterate; and it is common knowledge, too, that these are cast recklessly and irresponsibly, or manipulated by unscrupulous politicians. We thus deprive the population of its best elements, as well as its fittest directors, and we stifle civic spirit in the very groups which ought to be the bulwark of our institutions. Consequently, the caste of "champions of the people's rights" will continue to flourish among us.

The government in Mexico which is to follow the present provisional government should seek a basis of support more in keeping with the facts and with the true condition of our democratic elements. If it fail to do so, it will have 1o be satisfied with living a precarious existence, until it is in turn overthrown by future defenders of the rights of the people. The work of reconstruction in Mexico will thus be subject to the hazards of fresh upheavals.

Our views on the subject matter of this chapter may be summarized as follows:

Bearing in mind thai the Mexican people has now begun to take the first step in the exercise of self-government, by electing, although imperfectly, its magistrates and by exercising the correlative rights of petition, assembly, organization for political purposes, and of freedom of speech and the press, we believe that it is a paramount duty of each administration to guarantee the exercise of these rights, to see that popular liberties are exercised in a peaceful and orderly manner, and that the laws regulating the exercise of political rights are fitted to the condition of our people, in order to assure the effectiveness and sanctity of the ballot.

We therefore deem it indispensable that, in federal and state elections, the ballot be exercised only by Mexican citizens of more than twenty.one years of age, of honest means of livelihood and able to read and write the Spanish language.

This last condition is not to be required in municipal elections in the case of persons occupied in an industry or trade as defined by law, or owning real state within the respective municipal area. *

* Note to the English Edition. — We have heard the opinion expressed that our recommendation with respect to limiting suffrage in Mexico may be regarded by the American reader as an undemocratic measure. We are satisfied, however, that no American conversant with our social conditions would regard this recommendation other than as a step toward the establishment of true democracy in Mexico. Only those whose pohtical knowledge is confined to the boundaries of the United States and who for that reason believe that pohtical standards prevaiHng in this country are applicable to countries of entirely different social and economic structure, will condemn our attitude. Such condemnation must, of necessity, lack weight.

To us a century seems long enough to experiment with a system of government. During one hundred years Mexico, like other Spanish-American countries, has experimented with democracy on a basis of unrestricted qualification for the voter; and the result has been a continued failure. Are we not entitled to try another system more in harmony with the scientific principles of the government of a true democracy?

With only two exceptions, revolutions in Mexico have not been revolutions m the social and historical sense; they have been the bloody, nay, demoralizing and destructive form in which the personnel in power has been replaced The ballot is used only to ratify and endorse the result of an act of violence This happened with Gen. Porfirio Díaz; similar was the procedure adopted by Madero- Carranza followed the same path; and Gen. Obregón was forced to resort to th¡ same method.

This experience is more than enough to prove that democracy in Mexico has not been achieved through universal suffrage. Eighty per cent of the citizens entitled to vote are illiterate. Half of this number are Indians of whom a considerable proportion do not even know Spanish. While in the United States out of every one hundred electors only eight are illiterate, out of one hundred Mexican electors more than eighty are illiterate.

Nor is illiteracy the only scourge of our democracy. There is also the misery prevalent among the great majority of our people. Had we but spent m schools and in uplifting the masses sunken in poverty the countless millions we have wasted in unwholesome political strife! Instead, politicians and müitary leaders, while proclaiming the rights of the masses, have brutally used them as cannon fodder, as the element of force to ruin the country in their mad struggles for power.

Our five million iUiterate Indians, so long as they remain illiterate will be incapable of understanding political issues. Democracy has succeeded only where the electorate has been intelligent and sufficiently cultured to understand the issues.

The accuracy of this principle has been appreciated by the American people in several instances. We refer to the policy employed in handling the American Indian problem and the situations in Hawaii, the Philippine Islands and Porto Rico. The American people have seen fit to keep under the Nation's guardianship, without any political rights, a few hundred thousand individuals of Indian race inhabiting the United Stales. And yet the number of these Indians is insignificant, in absolute and relative terms, compared to the number of Mexican Indians, and could not, by reason of its insignificance, jeopardize American democratic institutions. In Hawaii, the Philippines and in Porto Rico the first thing the American people did in laying the foundations of democratic government was to establish, as a qualification for the voter, the ability to read and write. Why, then, should a similar system be regarded as undemocratic in Mexico?