THOSE CHRONIC INSURRECTIONS!
I
It was another long day’s journey to the southern border, through a
warm sunny country of jungle and blue lagoon.
An air of peace and tranquillity pervaded the land. The engineer, as
though infected with the lethargy of the tropics, loafed along from one
tiny village to another, stopping at every high-peaked hut of thatch
that arose from the low forests of wild cane.
Indians came aboard in merry, chattering groups. They were clad in
brilliant rags, invariably tattered to shreds, yet blazing with
scarlets and greens, and rivaling the plumage of the parrots and
cockatoos that screamed at us from the bamboo thickets. They wore
narrow-brimmed straw hats, of Guatemalan type, that seemed diminutive
after the immense _sombreros_ of central Mexico. Each had a hollow rod
of cane slung over the shoulder--the local style of thermos bottle. And
each was laden with an armful of infants.
The engineer waited patiently while babies were loaded and unloaded.
Some of the Indians, embarking, would clamber aboard and receive
the children passed up by friends through the windows. Others,
disembarking, would clamber down and catch the children tossed to them
by friends inside the cars. The confusion was astounding. Every one
jabbered in a babel of native dialects. But the good humor of the warm
countries always prevailed. Every one seemed eventually to find the
right infant. And we would loaf onward through the wilderness, among
rolling hills red with coffee berries, past the blue lagoons where
schools of tiny fish leaped in silver showers, and wild fowl rose in
flocks to skim across the placid waters.
Looking upon the quiet landscape, one would never have suspected that
Mexico was on the eve of another chronic insurrection.
II
This railway was a link in the much-discussed Pan-American road,
which dreamers hope may some day carry passengers from New York to
Buenos Aires in a week. How soon the vision will ever become a reality
is problematical. The existing links are few. European merchants,
resenting the commercial advantages it would offer to Americans, are
uniformly opposed to the project. And native governments, always
suspicious of one another, particularly in Central America, fear its
military possibilities.
III
Nightfall brought us to Tapachula, a pleasant little city in a rich
plantation district.
A diminutive trolley, operated by a Ford engine, awaited us at the
station. The motorman climbed out to crank it. The passengers crowded
aboard. A host of hotel runners and porters attached themselves to
roof, sides, and platform, until the car itself was invisible beneath
its coating of humanity.
It rattled away upon wobbly tracks through a low-built plaster city--a
city almost overpowering in its scent of coffee from the warehouses and
drying floors--and landed us eventually at one of the most picturesque
_plazas_ in Mexico. It fairly blazed with color. Amid its green were
masses of flowering purple bougainvillea. All about it were red-tiled
roofs. Above it towered a grove of royal palms, tall and stately, and
bursting far aloft into dark olive plumage, through which the façade of
the inevitable aged cathedral gleamed white against a flaming tropic
sunset.
The streets, bordered by high, narrow sidewalks, were rudely cobbled,
and sloped to a central gutter. Horsemen with gay ponchos trailing
behind them clattered over the rough stones. Long trains of burros
plodded beneath sacks of coffee, driven by _peons_ in scarlet rags.
Tehuana girls, homeward bound from market, passed in their quaint
costume, balancing earthenware jars above their turbaned heads.
Before the _commandancia_ which faced the _plaza_, six musicians were
playing upon a _marimba_, the sweet-toned Central-American xylophone,
standing shoulder to shoulder, all tattered and barefoot, playing so
swiftly that their sticks were but streaks of light, yet playing with
perfect rhythm, with beautiful harmonies, and with a verve that would
have delighted the most blasé jazz-lover on Broadway. The horsemen
paused to listen. The Tehuana girls lingered at the curb. Army officers
in the bright uniforms of peace-time, were strolling through the
_plaza_, flirting with the _señoritas_.
Mexico was quiet, and charming, even on the verge of revolution.
IV
The De la Huerta revolt of 1924 was but a comparatively small incident
in Mexican history.
It will probably be forgotten by the time this book appears in print.
Yet it is fairly typical of such affairs. And it is rather significant
of current political tendencies which are likely to continue long into
the future.
To understand it, as to understand everything that happens in Mexico
to-day, one must glance into the past.
This originally was the land of an empire which combined savagery with
civilization. The Aztecs normally were peaceful tillers of the soil,
cultivators of flowers, and builders of monuments, yet they could fight
courageously upon occasion, and were addicted to human sacrifices. To
this empire came a handful of Spanish adventurers bent upon conquest.
They were great warriors, these Spaniards, but they conquered mainly
through their cleverness in playing one group of Indians against
another. During the three centuries of their rule, there was much
progress in Mexico--as the world of to-day judges progress, which means
the growth of European institutions--but the Spaniard held the Indian
in subjection which in many cases became slavery.
Into the soul of the Indian crept a spirit of rebellion. He rose and
cast out the Spaniard. He chose his own leaders, usually from the
_mestizo_ or mixed-breed population, only to discover that they were
as ready to exploit him as the Spaniard had been. Blinded by the
eloquent promises of one politician after another, he marched in every
revolution. The Spaniard had brought to Mexico the political doctrine
that a governor is not the servant but the master of his people.
Whoever gained office promptly forgot his promises.
To the foreigner, the one bright spot in Mexican history is the reign
of the Dictator, Porfirio Diaz. He pacified a disorderly country. He
built fifteen thousand miles of railway, established telegraphic
communication throughout the republic, placed Mexico upon a firm
financial basis, and raised it to a foremost rank among nations. He
gave the Indian prosperity, but failed to educate him; he kept him in
subjection as stern as that of the Spaniard. And rival politicians,
whispering to the Indian that Diaz had sold his country to the foreign
promoter, found him ready for more revolution.
Then recommenced the old story of one president after another. In
the blood of each was that strain of the Spanish adventurer who had
come to Mexico to reap a fortune at the expense of the native. The
first to keep his promises to the Indian was Carranza. Under his new
constitution, previously mentioned, the _peon_ enjoyed so many rights,
and the capitalist so few, that foreigners ceased to invest.
The Indian, theoretically, now owned Mexico. But he was penniless and
ignorant, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Its riches were the
sort that required money and engineering brains. Its varied climes
would produce any crop grown elsewhere in the world, but in most
regions they required extensive irrigation. Its rugged mountains
possessed a vast store of mineral wealth--iron, onyx, opals, topazes,
emeralds, jade, marble, mercury, lead, zinc, antimony, asphaltum, coal,
copper, silver, and gold--but they needed machinery and transportation.
Its eastern sands with their fortune in oil had already made this the
third petroleum-producing country of the world, when only a tenth of
the possible fields had been prospected, but they were of no value to
the untrained Mexican _peon_. He found himself poorer than ever.
When, in 1920, Obregon raised his revolutionary standard, the Indian
turned against Carranza. Obregon proved the most capable president
since Diaz. He was adept at compromise. He quickly pacified the
country, hanging the smaller bandits, and conciliating the larger
bandits (like Villa) with the promise of forgiveness. He pleased the
Indian with agrarian reforms, splitting up the larger estates into
small land-holdings. He brought back the foreign capitalist with new
concessions. Mexico did not become the heaven which Obregon’s American
propaganda would have had us believe, but it gave much promise.
Its one dark cloud was a rising tide of Bolshevism. Obregon, with all
his compromise, still favored the Indian. And the Indian, sensing his
new strength, gloried in it. In Vera Cruz, where the new movement was
strongest, workmen were striking constantly on trivial excuse or no
excuse at all, tenants had formed a habit of hanging out red flags as a
sign that they were tired of paying rent, and stevedores were refusing
to unload steamers until the principal port of Mexico was so constantly
tied up as to depress seriously all Mexican business.
The native landholders and property owners--not to mention many of the
foreign promoters--were becoming seriously alarmed at the menace of
this Bolshevism. When it became evident that Obregon was favoring as
his successor at the 1924 elections a man who favored the Indian even
more stoutly than he himself--General Calles--the moneyed interests
promptly started a new revolution headed by Adolfo de la Huerta. The
significant point about this revolution is that the Indian--or a part
of the Indian population--promptly rose to follow the De la Huerta
standard, deserting his own shibboleths to die for principles which
throughout all earlier Mexican history he had striven to overthrow.
Among the fifteen million people of Mexico, only one million are of
pure white ancestry. Six million are full-blooded Indians. Among the
other eight million _mestizos_ aboriginal strains predominate. With
employment and fair treatment the natives are peaceable. But like
their Aztec ancestors they are potential fighters. When discontent
awakens the old spirit of rebellion first aroused by the Spaniard, they
rise blindly to follow some new leader, believing that at last they
have discovered a friend, when they have merely discovered another
self-seeking politician bent upon their exploitation. When they do find
a friend, they are too ignorant to appreciate the fact. They are the
ready dupes of ambitious generals.
V
In Tapachula, the insurrection was marked principally by much blowing
of bugles on the part of the Obregon garrison.
The civilian population remained unperturbed.
The soldiery hailed the affair as another good excuse for drinking.
Possibly their officers had paid them as a first step toward insuring
their loyalty in the campaign to follow. They promptly filled the local
bar-rooms, and swaggered about the streets with the air of increased
importance which comes to a military man in time of war.
As always in Mexico, the martial spirit brought to the surface the
anti-foreign sentiment. The _peon_, whatever his opinion of _gringos_,
is usually polite, but inspired by thoughts of battle--and a few swigs
of rum--he occasionally tells the foreigner what he thinks of him. A
fat sergeant, careening wildly by on a little burro, so drunk that he
threatened at every lurch to overturn his diminutive mount, reviled
my ancestry as he galloped past. A group of soldiers, making merry in
a saloon near the _plaza_, set down their bottle of _mescal_ to damn
all Americans. One of them staggered out with the evident intention of
picking a quarrel, but his attention was distracted at the sight of a
Tehuana girl lingering at the curb. Seizing her arm, he grinned in an
effort at blandishment. She broke loose with an angry, “_Vaya!_ Run
along! _Andale!_” and hurried down the street, while a policeman on the
corner chuckled and twirled his own moustachios. The soldier turned to
me again, muttering something about tearing a _gringo’s_ heart from
the breast. He started toward me, wavered unsteadily, collided with a
house-wall and collapsed in the gutter.
For a day the soldiery swaggered all over town, but the next morning
their generals--now in business-like khaki--rounded them up and marched
them to the railway station, where all passenger traffic had ceased and
all cars had been commandeered for transport.
They passed beneath my hotel balcony--a motley crew of
evil-visaged little fellows, with cartridges glistening from many
bandoleers--cheering and singing. Behind them came a nondescript mob
of slatternly women, old and young and middle-aged--the _soldaderas_,
or camp-followers, who transport the baggage, cook the food, perform
whatever other services a soldier may require, and sometimes assist
in the actual fighting, occasionally with a rifle, but usually with
sticks or stones, wherewith they engage in combat the _soldaderas_ of
the enemy. Barefoot, bedraggled, unwashed, they were bent under loads
of fruit-baskets, blankets, saddle-bags, water-jars, and even live
chickens.
A few of the marchers glanced up at my balcony to hurl a last curse at
the _gringo_. Then they vanished around the corner, bound northward to
the scene of battle. Tapachula resumed its atmosphere of peace, quite
as though Mexico were untroubled by one of its chronic insurrections.
VI
One must not assume that a Mexican revolution is a comic opera affair.
The least conspicuous uprising sows something of death, destruction,
and a loss of feminine virtue in its wake. But Mexico is large and
sparsely populated, and can stage a dozen revolutions at once without
disturbance of its general calm.
The De la Huerta revolt raged principally in central Mexico. For a
few months the republic was aflame from Vera Cruz to Manzanillo.
But Obregon had the best generals. The United States, taking the
quickest means to bring about order, allowed him to buy arms denied
the revolutionists. The Huertistas, beaten and dispersed, fled
southward into the jungles of Tehuantepec, fighting sporadically
along the railway I had just traversed, until completely disbanded.
American newspaper readers settled back in their easy chairs with the
self-congratulatory comment, “There’s another revolution over! Those
Mexicans must be a cut-throat lot!”
VII
When one travels through Mexico one is amazed to discover that the
Mexicans do not appear a cut-throat lot.
The great masses of Indian and semi-Indian population appear quiet,
simple, peaceable folk. Now and then, after the _tequila_ has flowed
freely, some of them may beat their wives or cut their neighbors’
throats, but this is not their regular pastime. In fact, most
Old-Timers in the country deny that crime is any more frequent there
than at home.
Why then, the traveler always asks himself, can these people not elect
a president without bloodshed?
One finds the answer by observing their politeness.
This politeness is extremely personal. The man who talked for half
an hour to the ticket agent, keeping forty other persons waiting
while he asked after all the members of the other man’s family, is a
case in point. So are the two acquaintances--familiar to every one
who has lived in Mexico--who meet upon a narrow sidewalk, embrace
demonstratively, and stand there for another half hour, enjoying one
another’s professions of love and admiration to such an extent that
they force all other pedestrians to step out into the gutter.
It is a personal politeness which must be rigidly observed, no matter
how much inconvenience it may cause the general public. One finds it
everywhere in Mexican life--and this discussion might be extended to
apply to the life of the neighboring countries given to revolution.
It permeates business, where salesmanship follows the methods--now
comparatively obsolete at home--of concentrating upon favorably
impressing the buyer rather than demonstrating the superior merits of
one’s goods. And when applied to politics, it becomes the good old
principle of “What’s the constitution among friends?”
Mexican loyalty is an extremely personal loyalty. The Mexican may love
his home, and the immediate land upon which he resides, but he has no
conception of patriotism. He uses the phrase for oratorical purposes,
but the idea is vague. He would rally to his country’s flag to fight a
foreign invader, but beyond that, he has no devotion to his republic,
or to the ideals and principles--whatever they may be--for which
Mexico stands. He knows only loyalty to certain leaders. His political
parties do not go by the name of Liberal or Conservative, Republican or
Democrat, but by the name of the candidate. The Mexican is always an
_Obregonista_, or a _Villista_ or a _Carranzista_ or a _Huertista_.
Once in office, the successful politician practices the spoils
system, which is not unknown in our own republic, but which reaches
a far higher point of efficiency in Mexico. Into office come all his
personal friends. They have spent their money to elect him. Now
they must reimburse themselves. Graft, fairly common in other lands,
is an art in these countries. Scarcely a sum of money ever changes
hands in the course of government operations without shrinking at
least slightly. Political office is the quick, sure road to financial
success. No one knows how soon a term may end, wherefore every one
makes hay while the sun shines, for to-morrow it may rain bullets.
Should one administration reach the end of its term--and Mexico’s
latest constitution limits a president to one term--the old principle
of personal courtesy to a friend continues. The retiring president
names his own successor, whose election--since his troops control the
polls--he can definitely guarantee.
The Mexican believes in this loyalty to friends. He expects the
successful politician to give all the plums to his supporters,
regardless of their abilities for the several posts. Not placing a
high value upon honesty, except verbally, he takes it for granted that
most of them will rob the people. He understands that they are loath
to relinquish office. And in his heart, he would condemn the president
as disloyal if he did not stuff the ballot boxes in favor of a chosen
successor. His indignation is not aroused at such proceedings. He would
do the same things himself if he were in power. But if he happens to
be a rival politician, without power, and with no prospect of gaining
it except by forcibly dislodging the other fellow, he affects great
indignation. He whispers to the _peon_ his horror at the prevailing
misgovernment. “These villains,” he says, “are robbing you!” And
he rises in arms, followed by the _peon_, to save Mexico from its
unpatriotic despoilers.
As a matter of fact, it is only a comparatively small part of the
population that follows. The great bulk of the Mexican people _are_
peaceable; they are tired of revolution; they have lost faith in new
leaders; they prefer to remain neutral, and to cheer diplomatically for
whoever proves the victor. The revolutionary army is recruited like the
federal army from the unemployed, from those who have tired of working
and hope to obtain political office themselves, from young boys who are
thrilled by the prospect of carrying a gun, and from a certain lawless
element that welcomes the possibility of loot and rape.
Should the revolution prove abortive, the Government generals
quickly suppress it. A few of its leaders are hanged, a few soldiers
executed; the rest of the rebels slip away quietly, hide their
weapons, and return innocently to their work. Should the revolution
prove successful, the Government generals forget their loyalty to the
President; they jump quickly to the other side, taking with them their
ignorant troops--who are never quite sure whom they are fighting,
anyway--and fight valiantly, as always, to save Mexico. The President
flees. The revolutionists hold a banquet at the Palace, where they
make flowery speeches about their patriotism. They conduct an election,
make one of their number president, and accept his appointments to
office. And there they remain, until another revolution throws them
out, or until a squabble starts among themselves as to which shall next
succeed to the presidency.
The American reading public always condemns the revolutionist. It can
not seem to grasp the fact that elections are never honest in Mexico;
that whoever controls the polls is the man elected; that Mexico has
never had a constitutional president who did not first capture the
Palace by force of arms; that revolution consequently is the only
course whereby there can be a change of parties. Usually the revolution
is justifiable. But invariably it brings to office another man who,
like the man at the ticket window, is more considerate of his personal
friends than of the general public.
The Mexicans are not a cut-throat lot. They are merely too courteous.
VIII
Yet Mexico always weathers her storms.
Even in revolution, unless one chances to be caught at the particular
scene of the disturbance, this land is supremely tranquil.
In Tapachula the only evidence of the turmoil was an ever-lengthening
line of brown-faced prisoners sitting crossed-legged on the street
before the _commandancia_, picking with their machetes at the rank
weeds that grew up among the cobblestones.
As in Hermosillo a moon smiled down over the low flat roofs. The
lilting song of the _marimba_ echoed hauntingly through the dim
streets. And the plaintive notes of a _gendarme’s_ whistle assured the
world that all was well.