Diaz has been hurled from power in his eighty-first year! The rising
against him in Mexico has the character of a national revolutionary
movement, the aims of which, perhaps, Madero himself has not clearly
understood. One thing the nation wanted apparently was the stamping out
of what the party considered political immorality, fostered and abetted
by the acts of what they called the _grupo cientifico_, or grafters,
and by the policy of the Minister of Finance, Limantour, in particular.
Therefore, when Madero stood up as the chieftain of the revolution,
inscribing on his banner the redress of this grievance, with some
Utopias, the people followed him without stopping to measure his
capabilities. His promises were enough.
It is one of the saddest episodes in the history of great rulers, and
at the same time one of the most important in the history of a country.
Mexico, which has pushed so brilliantly ahead in finance, industry, and
agriculture, has still lagged behind in political development. The man
who made a great nation out of half-breeds and chaos was so sure of his
own position, his own strength, and I may say his own motives, that he
did not encourage antagonism at the polls, and "free voting" remained a
name only.
A German author has said that all rulers become obsessed with the
passion of rule. They lose their balance, clearness of sight, judgment,
and only desire to rule, rule, _rule!_ He was able to quote many
examples. I thought of him and his theory when following, as closely as
one is able to do six thousand miles away, the recent course of events
in Mexico. Would he in a new edition add General Diaz to his list?
Diaz has reached a great age. On the 15th September, 1910, he
celebrated his eightieth birthday. He has ruled Mexico, with one brief
interval of four years, since 1876. For thirty-five years, therefore,
with one short break, the country has known no other President; and
Madero, who has laid him low, was a man more or less put into office by
Diaz himself. A new generation of Mexicans has grown up under the rule
of Diaz. Time after time he has been reelected with unanimity, no other
candidate being nominated--nor even suggested. Is it to be wondered at
that, by the time his seventh term expired in 1910, he should have at
last come to regard himself as indispensable?
That he was so persuaded permits of no doubt. "He would remain in
office so long as he thought Mexico required his services," he said in
the course of the first abortive negotiations for peace--before the
capture of the town of Juarez by the insurrectionists, and the
surrender of the Republican troops under General Navarro took the
actual settlement out of his hand.
It was a fatal mistake, and it has shrouded in deep gloom the close of
a career of unexampled brilliancy, both in war and statesmanship. The
Spanish-American Republics have produced no man who will compare with
Porfirio Diaz. Simon Bolivar for years fought the decaying power of
Spain, and to him what are now the Republics of Colombia, Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru owe their liberation. But Diaz has been more
than a soldier, and his great achievement in the redemption of modern
Mexico from bankruptcy and general decay completely overshadows his
successes in the field during the ceaseless struggles of his earlier
years.
Had he retired in 1910 he would have done so with honor, and every
hostile voice in Mexico would have been stilled. All would have been
forgotten in remembrance of the immense debt that his country owed him.
He would have stood out as the great historic figure of a glorious era
in the national annals. It was the first time he had broken his word
with the people. Staying too long, he has been driven from office by a
movement of ideas, the strength of which it is evident that he never
realized until too late, and by a rebellion that in the days of his
vigorous autocracy he would have stamped out with his heel.
It is a sad picture to look on, especially when I turn to that other
one of the simple palace-home in Mexico City, with the fine old
warrior, with dilating nostrils like a horse at the covert side, his
face aglow, his eyes flashing as he told me of bygone battles, escapes
from imprisonment and death, and deeds of wild adventure and romance.
These inspiriting recollections he freely gave me for the "authentic
biography" which he had given me permission to write. Up to that time
he had refused that favor to every one; and in spite of his grateful
recognition of the "honesty and veracity" of the volume I had written
about his country five years before, he was long in giving his consent.
"I have only done what I thought right," he said, "and it is my country
and my ministers who have really made Mexico what she is." In the days
of his strength, corruption was unknown in his country, and even now no
finger can point at him. He retires a poor man, to live on his wife's
little fortune. Diaz had the right to be egotistical, but he was
modesty itself.
Yet he had risen from a barefoot lad of humble birth and little
education to the dictatorship of one of the most turbulent states in
the world, and this by powers of statesmanship for which, owing to want
of opportunity, he had shown no aptitude before he reached middle life.
Before that he seemed but a good soldier, true as steel, brave, hardy,
resourceful in the field, and nothing more. It was not until he was
actually President, when nearing fifty, that his gifts for government
asserted themselves. Such late developments are rare, although Cromwell
was forty before he made any mark. Chatham, again, was fifty before he
was heard outside his own circle, and yet a few years, barely months,
later, the world was at his feet.
It is rather the cry nowadays that men's best work is done before
forty; and even their good work no later than sixty; but among endless
exceptions General Diaz must take high rank.
His real career began at forty-six. Up to that time he had been an
officer in a somewhat disorganized army, and his ambition at the outset
never soared beyond a colonelcy.
He was nearly fifty when he entered Mexico City at the head of a
revolutionary force. Romance and adventure were behind him, although
personal peril still dogged his steps. He had to forget that he was a
soldier, and to be born again as leader and politician, a maker and not
a destroyer. In that capacity he had absolutely no experience of public
affairs, but such as he had gained in a smaller way in early years
spent in Oaxaca. Yet Diaz became a ruler, and a diplomat, and assumed
the courtly manners of a prince.
Paradoxical as it may seem, his overthrow is the result of a revolution
mainly pacific in its nature, and in substance a revolt of public
feeling against abuses that have become stereotyped in the system of
government by the too long domination of one masterful will. The
military rising was but its head, spitting fire. Behind was an immense
body of opinion, in favor of effecting the retirement of the President
by peaceful means, and with all honor to one who had served his country
well.
In 1908 General Diaz had stated frankly, in an interview granted to an
American journalist, that he was enjoying his last term of office, and
at its expiration would spend his remaining years in private life.
There is no reason to doubt that this assurance represented his settled
intention. The announcement was extensively published in the Mexican
Press, and was never contradicted by the President himself. Then rumors
gained currency that Diaz was not unprepared to accept nomination for
the Presidency for an eighth term. The statement was at first
discredited, then repeated without contradiction in a manner that could
hardly have failed to excite alarm. At length came the fatal
announcement that the President would stand again.
Hardly had the bell of Independence ceased ringing out in joyous clang
on September 15, 1910, in celebration of free Mexico's centenary,
hardly had the gorgeous _fêtes_ for the President's birthday or the
homage paid him by the whole world run their course, when the spark of
discontent became a blaze. He had mistaken the respect and regard of
his people for an invitation to remain in office.
By the time the Presidential election approached, signs of agitation
had increased. A political party rose in direct hostility, not so much
to General Diaz himself or Limantour, as to the Vice-President, who, as
next in the succession, in the event of the demise of the President,
would have been able to rivet the autocracy on the country.
Corral was the Vice-President. What little I saw of him I liked; but
then he had hardly taken up the reins of power. He did not make himself
popular; in fact, a large part of the country hated and distrusted him.
But for that, probably nothing would have been heard of the troubles
which ensued. As the party anxious for the introduction of new blood
into the Government increased in vigor, the people showed themselves
more and more determined to get rid of Corral. They wanted a younger
man than Diaz in the President's chair: they wanted, above all, the
prospect of a better successor.
But the official group whose interests depended on the maintenance of
the Diaz régime was, for the moment, too powerful, and it succeeded in
inducing the President to accept reelection.
To the general hatred of this group on the part of the nation, Madero
owed his success. He was almost unknown, but the malcontents were
determined to act, and to act at once, and they could not afford to
pick and choose for a leader. As a proof that the country thought less
of the democratic principles invoked than of the destruction of the
official "cientificos," may be cited the fact that it at first placed
all its trust and confidence in General Reyes, who is just as despotic
and autocratic as General Diaz, but has at the same time, to them, a
redeeming quality--his avowed opposition to the gang. Reyes refused to
head the insurrection, and it was then Madero or nobody.
In the spring of 1910 Francis I. Madero came to the front. He was a man
of education, of fortune, of courage, and a lawyer by profession. He
had written a book entitled the _Presidential Succession_, and although
without experience in the management of State affairs, he had shown
that he had the courage of his convictions. He consented to stand
against Diaz in a contest for the Presidency of the Republic.
The malcontents had found their leader. Madero not only accepted
nomination, but began an active campaign, making speeches against the
Diaz administration, denouncing abuses, more especially the retention
of office by the Vice-President and the tactics of Limantour, and
showing the people that as General Diaz was then eighty years of age,
and his new term would not expire until 1916, Corral would almost
certainly succeed to the inheritance of the Diaz regime.
Energetic, courageous, and outspoken, Madero had full command of the
phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own
party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The
officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency. A few days before the
Presidential election in July, 1910, when making a speech in Monterey,
Madero was arrested as a disturber of the peace and thrown into prison,
where he was kept until the close of the poll.
The election resulted, as usual, in a triumphant majority for General
Diaz, though votes were recorded, even in the capital itself, for the
anti-reelectionist leader.
As soon as opportunity offered, Madero escaped to the United States,
and from that vantage-ground kept up a correspondence with his friends
and partizans. Though the election had been held in July, the
inauguration of the President did not take place until December, 1910.
A fortnight before that date, a conspiracy, at which Madero probably
connived, was discovered in Puebla. The first victim was the Chief of
the Police at Puebla. He was shot dead by a woman who at his knock had
opened the door of a house wherein the revolutionists were holding a
meeting. The revolution had begun. Risings took place in different
parts of the Republic, but were quickly quelled, with the exception of
one in the State of Chihuahua, where the rebels had a special grievance
against the all-powerful family of the great landowner, General
Terrazas. These large landed proprietors are a subject of hatred to the
new Socialist party.
Trouble followed trouble in the north, which, be it remembered, runs to
a distance of over a thousand miles from Mexico City itself. But
nothing very serious occurred, until suddenly, in the early weeks of
1911, President Taft mobilized a force of 20,000 American troops to
watch the Mexican frontier. From that time events developed rapidly
till the end of the Diaz regime in May. One thing became clear, that
the revolution was rapidly making its way to victory, and that Diaz,
prostrate with an agonizing disease, an abscess of the jaw, was in no
condition to rally his disheartened followers in person. He saved his
honor, as the phrase goes, by a declaration that he would not retire
from office until peace was declared, and he kept his word. He was too
ill to leave his simple home in one of the chief streets of the city,
where he lived less ostentatiously than many of his fellow citizens,
but this did not prevent the mob from firing upon his home. On the
afternoon of May 25, 1911, he resigned, and Señor De La Barra, formerly
Minister at Washington, became provisional President until the next
election, fixed for October.
Madero was the hero of the hour. He entered Mexico City in triumphal
procession, June 7, 1911. His entrance was preceded by the most severe
earthquake the capital had known in years. Many buildings were wrecked
and some hundreds of people killed. An arch of the National Palace
fell, one beneath which Diaz had often passed.
Three days after signing his abdication, General Diaz was well enough
to leave Mexico City. In the early hours of the morning three trains
drew up filled with his own solders and friends, in the middle one of
which the ex-President, his wife, the clever and beautiful Carmelita,
Colonel Porfirio Diaz, his son, with his young wife, several children,
and their ten-days-old baby, were seated. Along the route the train
came upon a force of seven hundred rebels. A sharp encounter ensued.
The revolutionists left thirty dead upon the field; the escort, which
numbered but three hundred, lost only three men. The old fighting
spirit returned to the old lion, and, unarmed, the ex-President
descended from his car and took part in the engagement. He entered
Mexico City fighting, and he has left her shores with bullets ringing
in the air. This was but the second time that Diaz had left the land of
his birth.
His work is now imperishable. Mexicans, I am sure, will regret the
pitiful circumstances under which his fall has come about, and he will
live long in the hearts of his countrymen. Nothing can alter the fact
that he made modern Mexico. It was no easy task; the Mexicans are a
cross-breed of Spaniards and countless Indian tribes. There are still
half a million Aztecs. Diaz has given this strange mixed race
education, and a high order of education for such a people; he has
brought his country to a financial position in which the Government
can, or could, borrow all the money it wanted at four per cent.
Railways intersect the land in every direction. The largest financial
interests are American, the next in importance are British. Except
Germany, no other foreign country has much capital invested in Mexico.
Thus closes one of the most wild and romantic episodes of the world's
history--a peasant boy who became a soldier, a general who became a
President--a President who became a great autocrat, who raised a
country from obscurity to greatness, and was finally driven from power
by the very people he had educated, and to whom he had brought vast
blessings.
The great Diaz in his eighty-first year has passed from power, the
power he used so well. Verily a moving spectacle from first to last.