The Minister agreed, “And next is education.” He agreed again but
added: “All that depends on the economic position of the country.”
I said, “You have your soil full of richness, your country is richer
than almost any other country, why do not you Mexicans get up and
possess it, instead of allowing the foreigner to come in and exploit
it?”
“Understand ...” he answered, “that after years of oppression, when we
were, as it were, a nation of slaves, we gained our liberty, and before
we knew what use to make of it, the experienced foreigner came to show
us and he took things into his own hands. Today it complicates our
machinery beyond words.”
Conversation began to be a mix-up of Spanish, French and English. When
the Minister’s interpreter failed in his English, Malbran came to the
rescue in French. The Minister understood enough English to prompt in
the translations, and I understood enough Spanish to get the spirit of
his meaning.
“It must be a wonderful thing,” I said, “to be in a position of power,
and to be able to help in the uplift of the workers.”
He said he had devoted twenty years of his life to this task, at the
risk of being abused and misunderstood. He told us of his organization
of a labor representation within the Government as early as 1916,
before Russia ever began her revolution. He said it had been hard
work, and things had not gone as they should go, they had been wrongly
organized. The revolutions that had occurred one after another in
Mexico had not helped the masses.
“Revolution,” he said, “is composed of three factors. The first is
propaganda,--the second is armed force and the third is evolution; and
we began unfortunately with armed force, the propaganda followed and
the evolution was only partial.”
We discussed the difference between proletariat and democracy, he
quoted Lenin, who believes in the one, but he believes in the other.
He rather deplored the fact that the Third Internationale had broken
away from democracy. I cannot quote the discussion, it was too long
and too intricate, and I would risk to misquote. But he spoke with an
earnestness and a keenness that even interpretation did not spoil. He
said that he did all he could, and all he dared to do, to further the
cause of the laboring masses, but he was handicapped, out of loyalty to
his President and a desire not to compromise his country, by going too
far in the world movement. But he insisted several times upon the fact
that there would be no real amelioration of suffering in the world,
until people had generally realized their duty towards their fellows,
of helping and sharing. I said I did not know why I interested myself
in the destiny of the “proletaire” but that I could not help it, and
that it was a subject that always roused me.
The Minister, with visionary eyes, said almost passionately, “Sometimes
I feel like a woman with a great love in her heart, that she longs to
tell but has to suppress because of the conventions of the world that
surround her, and which force her, almost nun-like, to preserve in
silence,” and it sounded beautiful in Spanish.
Malbran, whom he had referred to as “our conservative friend!” had
become interested, and towards the end he ceased to be interpreter and
joined in the discussion.
I thought of all the people in all the rooms who were patiently and
impatiently waiting to see their Minister of Finance, who was engaged
in Socialist arguments with this strange party! At the end, I said I
felt I had drunk deep of clear pure water! and he said chivalrously
that it had been a great pleasure to him to have opportunity of once in
awhile “letting himself go....”
He repeated his promise about fetching me Thursday, to see.... He did
not precisely define _what_.
We got down into the street, and found the car, and drove away with a
strange sense of excitement and stimulation, at least I did, and as for
Malbran, who had been rather silent on our way there, he was now quite
expansive. We talked animatedly all the way back to the Geneva Hotel,
where he dropped me. We discussed the psychology of de la Huerta, I
said I would hate to be disillusioned, but that my instinct told me the
man had all the passion and the sincerity of the Russians I had known
in Moscow. We agreed that if de la Huerta had been imprisoned for years
by a Czarist regime, he would be as fanatical and as ready to give his
life for the cause, as volcanic and ruthless as any of the Russian
Revolutionaries. Of the few people I have met so far in Mexico, de la
Huerta is by far the most interesting.