NATURE AND THE MEXICAN MARKET[2]
Every land upon this globe owes to nature that predetermination of its
products and its needs which are the vital factors of its commerce and
its industries. Even the nature of its races, which has so much to do
with the standards of living which affect the quality and volume of
business, is determined to a certain extent by climate and geography.
It is therefore a fundamental need of all who have a deep interest in
Mexican business to grasp something of the location, the formation, and
the climate of that country. For few nations in the world have a more
wonderful location, and few have a more disastrous climate.
The vast cornucopia-like triangle of land which comprises the territory
of Mexico lies south of nearly three-quarters of the southern boundary
of the United States. Its western tip touches Southern California at
the Pacific and its most easterly point is 500 miles south of the
Pensacola, at the western end of Florida. For 1,833 miles Mexico’s
northern border is contiguous to the United States, 693 miles eastward
along arbitrarily marked lines from the Pacific Ocean to El Paso,
Texas, and the remainder southeastward along the sinuous course of the
Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. Its jagged southern border is hardly
400 miles long, touching Guatemala and British Honduras (Belize).
This cornucopia, grasping the Gulf of Mexico on the east like a great
hand, swings southeastward from the Pacific contact with the United
States until the most westerly point of the Guatemalan border is 500
miles _east_ of Mexico’s easternmost contact with the United States on
the north.
Set apart, as Mexico is by her boundaries, she seems in form much like
a great peninsula, but she has, herself, two important peninsulas as
part of her territorial extent and configuration. One is the Peninsula
of Yucatan, which forms the eastern end of the cornucopia, the thumb
of the curving hand which grasps the Gulf of Mexico, an area of about
50,000 square miles. The other is the long, narrow peninsula of Lower
California, with 58,343 square miles, extending directly south of the
American state of California and connected with the Mexican mainland by
only a narrow strip.
That mainland comprises, with the two peninsulas, 765,762 square
miles, and the 1,561 square miles of coastal islands under Mexican
sovereignty bring the total area of the country up to 767,323 square
miles. The greatest width of the mainland is 750 miles, and the
greatest length is 1,942 miles, from the northwestern tip of Lower
California, where it joins the United States, to the southernmost point
in the jagged Guatemalan border in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The
narrowest point in Mexico is 120 miles, at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
once discussed as the possible site of an interoceanic canal, and in
the time of Diaz the route of a great transshipping railway between the
Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico) coastline
of Mexico is 1,727 miles long, that of the Pacific (including the long
border of Lower California) 4,574 miles.
Lying between 32° 30′ and 14° 30′ North Latitude and 86° 30′ to 117°
Longitude west from Greenwich, the triangular form of the Mexican
territory places it about equally in the temperate and torrid zones.
This is a primary factor in Mexican climate, but far more significant
is the contour of the country itself.
This is largely mountainous, for if we include the high but fertile
table-lands, nearly two-thirds of the country is covered with mountain
ranges. The Rocky Mountains of the United States, the great backbone of
the Western Hemisphere, cross the Mexican border into Sonora, in a low,
narrow range. Almost immediately south of the international line they
begin spreading eastward. A long, slowly rising valley a hundred miles
wide continues southward from El Paso, narrowing rapidly, while to the
eastward of this valley rises an apparently new range of mountains,
obviously a part of the great Rocky Mountain range, but unconnected
with it in the United States and south, indeed, of the broad flat
plains of Texas. This is the _Sierra Madre Oriental_, or Eastern Mother
Range, the continuation of the Rockies in Sonora and Durango being
called the _Sierra Madre Occidental_, or Western Mother Range. Further
south, these two join together, and spread to virtually the whole width
of Mexico, excepting for the Gulf coastal plain, some 300 miles wide,
to the east. All of Central Mexico is mountainous, flattened only by
vast plateaus which, according to the accepted geological theory, were
created by alluvial deposits and lava dust from the mountains which
rise still above them. At the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Sierra Madre
flattens out till, save for the relatively easy grades which climb from
the Gulf and from the Pacific to the summit of the low divide (less
than 300 feet above sea level) the mountains might be all but gone. The
narrow plane of the Isthmus passed, the mountains rise again until the
center of the state of Chiapas is once more a vast plateau accented
with towering peaks, a formation which continues southward through
Central America, lowers again at Panama, but joins directly, at last,
with the South American Andes.
In this sweep of mountainous territory are hundreds of deep cañons or
_barrancas_, great fertile plateaus, and many wonderful mountains.
Of these last those about the Valley of Anahuac, the site of Mexico
City and for ages the center of Mexican government and population, are
the most famous. Here are Popocatepetl (17,520 feet) and Ixtaccihuatl
(16,960 feet) the snow-peaked volcanoes, and to the eastward the still
more beautiful cone of Orizaba (18,250 feet). Virtually at the same
latitude, but far to the west, is Colima, (12,991 feet), a still active
volcano. Toluca (14,950 feet), close to the Valley of Mexico, Malinche
(14,636 feet) in the state Tlaxcala, the Cofre de Perote (13,400 feet)
in the state of Vera Cruz, and Tancitaro (12,664 feet) are those of
greatest height. Only the already great altitude of the plateaus
of Mexico from which most of the striking mountains spring keeps
hundreds of others from filling the eye of the traveler. The scenery
which results from the mountainous formations of Mexico is literally
unsurpassed, for Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl can give the climber all
the thrills of the Alps, and the crater lakes to be found in one or two
sections of Mexico rival in splendor the more famous resorts in Europe.
The deep and wide _barrancas_ which mark the mountainous formation all
through Mexico are magnificent to contemplate, but the day’s journey
down and up the sides of such a geological spectacle as the Barranca
of Beltran brings home to even the unscientific observer the terrific
handicaps which these vast cuts put upon the industrial development of
the country. Much of the conquering of these handicaps was achieved
under the broad railway policy of President Diaz, and the work done
still remains, but many years must now pass before the final conquest
is achieved. Such a work as the building of the Colima branch of
the Mexican Central, completing the only direct line for the first
time from the Capital to the Pacific, will hardly be repeated when
revolution threatens, for here, in less than 100 miles, twenty great
bridges had to be built, most of them crossing _barrancas_ and cuts of
mere geological formation, with virtually no streams filling them even
in the rainy season. The Southern Pacific line from the northern border
in Sonora lacks but sixty miles of linking up with the Guadalajara
branch of the National Railways, but thirty of those sixty miles are
through a mountainous territory cut with deep _barrancas_ which will
cost close to a million dollars a mile to build.
Such _barrancas_ and valleys do not, of themselves, indicate either
great natural water power or navigable streams. There are wonderful
water power possibilities in Mexico, to be sure, which come from two
factors, the sheer drops which give ideal power sites with tremendous
heads of water, and the heavy torrential rainy season. But the streams
themselves do not carry sufficient water the year round to justify any
plant, and tremendous reservoir development is vital to any power plant
design. Such reservoirs have been built in various parts of Mexico,
but at appalling expense, such as only great financial interests can
swing--only foreign capital or the government has been able to handle
them. There is an added and unexpected element of difficulty--the
porousness of much of the soil of Mexico. The mountains, indeed, are of
igneous rocks, but underneath the valleys is often soft limestone, and
more often still, under those places where a great impounding of water
might be made with a relatively low and inexpensive dam, is the soft,
porous alluvial and volcanic-ash land with which the valleys have been
filled up.
This porous soil and limestone are factors bearing on the absence of
navigable streams. Even in the lowlands the streams run underground in
Mexico, and while they can be tapped by shallow wells, they deprive
Mexico almost entirely of the advantages of river transportation. Even
the Rio Grande, on the northern border, is useless for navigation most
of the year. The Panuco, at whose mouth is located the great oil center
of Tampico, is navigable only a short distance above that port. The
broad, rich coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico is watered by tiny
streams, all of which, excepting the partially navigable Papaloapam,
are useless for steamers and even for launches most of the year. Not
until we reach the Isthmus of Tehuantepec do we find a river worth
considering for transportation. The Coatzacoalcos, at whose mouth
on the Gulf of Mexico is Puerto Mexico (the eastern terminus of the
Tehuantepec National Railway), furnishes a highway which made possible
the relatively great development of American tropical plantations
during the years of peace under Diaz. Its mouth was then the port of
loading for great ships, but only by continual dredging was it kept
open, and to-day the port is abandoned except for light-draft coasting
ships. Further south, emptying into the Gulf at Frontera, is the
magnificent system of which the Grijalva and the Usumacinta are the
chief streams. Here indeed have plied and in the future will ply great
river steamers, for upon the banks of the Usumacinta, at least, are
rich oil fields and the fairest farming land in all tropical Mexico.
Both the Grijalva and the Usumacinta are magnificent streams, and
the latter is comparable, in its majestic volume, to the Mississippi
itself. Only the bar at Frontera keeps them from being navigable to
ocean steamers. For a brief period under President Madero this bar
was dredged so that fruit boats could enter and go to the docks of
banana farms, encouraging a promising industry which was killed by
heavy taxation and government neglect of the dredging, under the
revolutionary presidents of recent years. But this one system of rivers
offers virtually all there is of navigation in Mexico.
Yucatan, the peninsula which separates the Caribbean sea from the Gulf
of Mexico, is virtually without rivers, the water from the abundant
rainfall of its interior finding its way to underground streams in the
porous underlying coral limestone.
On the west coast there are a few rivers. The most important is
the Lerma, which waters a large territory on the Pacific side of
the continental divide, and allows some local transportation. The
Balsas, in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, reaches far inland, but
rapids and shallows make its use for navigation expensive and all but
impossible. In Sonora is the Yaqui river, navigable for small boats and
of some value for transportation. The Fuerte is also in this class.
Another phase of the geography of Mexico which affects transportation
is the complete absence of good natural harbors well located.
The chief port of Mexico, Vera Cruz, has a harbor which was built
artificially around a partially protected bay. Tampico is a port solely
because of the jetties which narrow the mouth of the Panuco and, with
the help of dredges, keep the channel clear. Puerto Mexico has a
similar problem, but the smaller river makes dredging absolutely vital.
Frontera is solely a dredging proposition, as the Usumacinta and the
Grijalva, emptying together into the Gulf, have formed a vast delta in
the lowlands which can probably never be narrowed to take advantage of
the great volume of water which they pour out. Yucatan has literally
no semblance of a harbor, and its great crops of sisal hemp are loaded
from lighters at appalling expense.
On the Pacific coast, Acapulco has one of the ideal harbors of the
world, completely landlocked, and open for medium-draft ships. But it
is relatively small, and moreover as yet almost inaccessible to any
railway survey, although it was used by the galleons from Manila as a
port for trans-shipment of the treasures of the Orient across Mexico
to the galleons from Cadiz which came to Vera Cruz. Salina Cruz, the
Pacific terminus of the Tehuantepec National Railway, was built from
an open roadstead with two lines of jetties and seawalls, a work which
inattention has now all but ruined. Manzanillo, the terminus of the
only direct railway line from Mexico City to the Pacific, was also
built with seawalls and opened by dredges. Mazatlan, further up the
coast, and the chief port of the Southern Pacific Railway of Mexico,
is an open roadstead. Guaymas, the port of the state of Sonora, is
accessible only to light-draft ships.
These are all great natural handicaps, and have affected the life of
Mexico probably more than it will be possible to estimate. The mighty
and costly work of the Diaz régime in building harbors is a monument
to that “materialistic” era which will last through many years and has
already played a tremendous part in furnishing the sinews of revolution
to succeeding governments, for without that work Mexico would be far
from capable of sustaining herself in the period of her agony to-day.
But beyond all these factors of mountains and rivers and sea looms
a yet greater problem, and still more far-reaching--the problem of
climate. As noted, Mexico lies in about equal parts in the temperate
and torrid zones. But the geological zones are far more important, for
climate is affected not alone by latitude but by altitude as well.
These geological zones are three, the hot country or _tierra caliente_,
the temperate country or _tierra templada_ and the (relatively) cold
country or _tierra fria_. The hot country is the lowland section
along the coasts from sea level to 3,000 feet altitude, where the mean
annual temperature varies from 76° to 88° Fahrenheit. The Mexican
terminology includes not only the lowlands of the torrid zone, but the
whole coastal plain up to the northern border. The _tierra templada_
lies along the mountain slopes and in the lower plateaus, between 3,000
and 6,500 feet altitude, where the temperature is between 65° and 76°.
This zone takes in the higher northern sections which are within the
temperate zone proper. The _tierra fria_ takes in the high plateaus
and the mountains, between 6,500 and 12,500 feet, the yearly average
temperatures varying from 30° to 60°, although the important sections
record 50° or more. The three geological zones each include about equal
portions of the country, but half of the inhabitants live in the cold
zone, and only a quarter each in the temperate and hot sections. The
mean temperatures of the cold zone are approximately those recognized
as the most favorable for physical exertion, but in the hot country the
body struggles against a handicap of almost 20° F. more than the 65°
at which it normally functions best. More significant still are the
temperatures of all the zones in their relation to mental activity.
The human mind is at its best under the stimulus of a mean temperature
of about 40° F., but even at Mexico City, 7,600 feet above sea level,
the mean temperature of winter is as high as 53°. In the temperate and
hot countries the handicaps under which the brain functions run to 20°
and up to 45° above the 40° at which the human mind works at highest
efficiency. No stimulating winters, no clarifying cool spells, even, in
the midst of the endlessly beautiful summers of Mexico!
Only the cold zone has any advantages in temperature, and these
advantages are equally important with the fertility of the soil in
accounting for the predominance of population there. Yet even where
the temperature is favorable to at least physical work, there is the
debilitating sameness of the tropics, the assurance that there will
always be more difference between day and night than between the
seasons. There, on the heights, too, the nervous drain of altitude
and of lack of moisture in the air takes the place--with no advantage
to the human machine--of the humidity and heat of the hot country. At
every turn in Mexico climate takes toll of human energy, even if we
ignore the undoubtedly debilitating effect of tropical and sub-tropical
light upon the white men and upon their mixed-blood descendants as well.
All these climatic factors, then, have continuous influence on the
health of all the Mexican people as well as upon Mexican business. The
hot, humid weather of the hot country makes those who live there low
in resistance of disease, while the nervous strain of the altitudes and
dryness of air in the better portions achieves a not dissimilar result
in lowering resistance. It is axiomatic that the Mexicans as a people
are seldom well and, as has been recorded in detail elsewhere,[3]
this ill-health has been and is to-day one of the determinants of the
relatively low state of progress of the country. No people who are
continually sick and upon whose energies their climate is a continuous
drain can work well or achieve greatly.
The relation of this thoroughly recognized factor of ill-health to
Mexican trade and commerce must not be overlooked. It is at the root
of much of the apathy which keeps the Mexican people at their low
ebb of business enterprise. It determines with peculiar insistence
their predilection for the easy road, the “_mañana_ habit,” even for
the dominance of outworn traditional methods in agriculture and in
business. It has a great deal to do with the ease with which foreigners
develop a land which has for centuries lain virtually fallow. But it
places vast difficulties in the way of that development, for it keeps
the labor problem continually in the foreground and vitiates much of
the great advantage which the relative cheapness of that labor seems to
offer. It has and will continue to have a powerful effect on trade,
for it keeps even the enterprising among Mexican business men at a low
standard of efficiency and makes it almost imperative that foreigners,
for the present, do most of the jobbing and export and much of the
retail trade and export buying of the country. This element is too
likely to be lost sight of, because it is not a condition common to
other lands. But it explains much that seems at first inexplicable in
the difficulties of the American exporter and importer in getting the
adequate representation in Mexico which he must have.
Another vitally important effect of Mexican geography is the
uncertainty and untoward distribution of rainfall. This has forced
upon the Mexicans their diet of corn and with it their use of fiery
condiments which are probable causes of the digestive disorders which
ravage all classes. Moreover, the rainfall conditions have been vitally
important in the determination of the entire agricultural tendency of
the country.
The seasons in Mexico are marked, not by winter cold and summer heat so
much as by seasons of rain and drought. The winter is the dry season,
roughly between October and May, and the summer is the salubrious rainy
season, from June to September. The distribution of rain throughout
the year and the failure of the rains in the important growing seasons
in some of the otherwise fertile sections is due primarily to the
geography of the country. Professor Ellsworth Huntington, of Yale, the
great American climatologist, finds that Mexico’s summer rains are due
to the vertical rays of the sun which cause the rapid rising of the
heated air, with sudden expansion and condensation, first over the
low-lying hot country and later on the rising uplands of the _tierra
templada_, where the function of the mountains in bringing about
condensation is amply proven by the well-watered eastern slopes and the
dry western sides of the ranges.
This mountain contour and the peculiar shape of the Mexican mainland
(very wide at the north in proportion to the south) create another
important climatological effect--the broad stretches of desert in the
northern sections. The so-called continental type of climate which
forms the American deserts further north combines with the mountain
contour and the distance from the eastern seashore (driving the
rain-clouds southward) to make immense sections of Mexico desert,
capable of supporting, at best, only wandering herds. These deserts
lie between the broad arms of the great “Y” of the Mexican mountain
ranges, and combined with the mountainsides themselves render nearly
three-fourths of the area of Mexico unfit for cultivation, even if
irrigation were general.
The result is that of the 500,000,000 acres of land in Mexico, not
more than 25,000,000 acres are arable. Great sections are useless, so
that in the state of Chihuahua, 90,000 square miles in extent, only
about 125,000 acres, or less than two-tenths of one per cent can be
cultivated--and most of that arable portion is irrigated.
The most fertile sections of Mexico are rich indeed, and in the plateau
valleys, where alluvial deposits and lava dust have been poured in
together to form the soil, great crops can be raised--when there is
rain. Only in a relatively limited section, however, is rain sure to
come at the times needed by the crops. Often when it does come, it is
in torrential downpours which are likely to wash cultivated fields
away in a single night. It is this condition which makes the so-called
_tierra templada_, on the slopes of the mountains, in many ways the
least desirable of all the farming land of Mexico.
Uncertainty of rainfall is, then, one of the outstanding results of the
Mexican climate as influenced by Mexican geography. This uncertainty
works forever upon the mind of the Mexican farmer, making him a
hopeless fatalist, making it less than worth his while to attempt
scientific cultivation. If there is rain, his crops are good anyway,
and if there is not rain, the cost of labor and fertilizer and good
seed are lost. The Mexican farmer is the worst of gamblers, and his
fondest hope is that his average crop over a period of years will be
twenty-five per cent of normal!
Famine has ravaged Mexico periodically for thousands of years. It is
most interesting, in looking at the present stage (when the largest
items of import are foodstuffs), to realize that it has probably been
only the much-abused hacienda system which has saved Mexico from severe
ravages of recent famine. The hacienda system, which is the operation
of huge estates under an elaborate overseership, approaches as nearly
as the living conditions of the country permit to a businesslike
administration of the farming of the land. It was the stable factor in
Mexican food production in the time of the Spaniards and in the later
era of Diaz.
The small farmer of Mexico has worked, since the beginning of Indian
history, without a thought of supplying the market and thus feeding
the industrial workers of the towns. He has lived from hand to mouth,
and only when he chances to have a surplus does he transport it or
sell it on the ground for the needs of the city market. So true is
this that in the period of mining and industrial expansion under Diaz,
the draining of the labor from the haciendas to the mines and to the
few factories had an immediate effect on the food production, and the
imports of foreign corn and wheat grew almost in exact proportion
to the diversion of this labor to industry. The small farmers, the
Indians and peons, who had places of their own or worked in the village
commons, did not go to the mines, but continued their relatively easy
existence on their own little _fincas_. They learned only slowly the
possibilities of the increased market for their product, and only to an
infinitesimal degree did they rise to meet that market.
To-day, with the shutting down of hundreds of the haciendas, and the
return of the country to its primeval agriculture, the situation has
become extremely serious, and the food importations have grown out of
all proportion to the industrial growth of the country; in fact, almost
in inverse ratio to the industrial depression of the country.
This presents a serious problem, but it also presents a promise of
new opportunity when peace comes to Mexico. For then there must come
a revival of large-scale farming, the growth of a new farming system,
and with it a tremendously increased market for modern farm implements.
There has been much talk, on the part of the revolutionary governments,
of the needs of the new small farmers for agricultural machinery,
but this is almost entirely talk, for the new small farmers are only
falling back to the way of their ancestors, and are not in any sense
taking the place of the ruined haciendas in food production for the
cities and industrial sections. That development will probably come in
the form of an entirely new system of agriculture, in which foreign
machinery and of necessity foreign capital must have a vital part.
One of the inevitable developments of Mexican agriculture must be
in the direction of irrigation. There is literally not enough good
accessible land which will produce without irrigation to feed the
country or, what is more important, to make an increase of population
possible. This land must be created by irrigation, and irrigation,
owing to the geographical formation of the country, must of necessity
be carried out by great capital. Many of the village communes have
irrigation systems, of a crude sort. Water is brought from distant
streams, where it flows after the rainy season, and in some places
it is brought up from the underground streams by means of crude
water-wheels operated by man-power. But the total area watered by such
irrigation is relatively insignificant, and as dams can be built in
Mexico only at large cost, the true development of Mexican irrigation
waits on peace, on foreign capital and government investment and
encouragement.
Something of this sort had been begun before the present era of
revolutions. In the closing years of the Diaz régime (before 1911)
many franchises were granted to large private companies which planned
irrigation projects, and the sum of 90,000,000 pesos was ordered
expended on government irrigation over a period of years. A few of
the private companies had put their plans into execution, and many
others, on the way to accomplishment, were nipped and destroyed by the
subsequent revolutions. For the past ten years, nothing has been done
toward solving the problems of irrigating the fertile but unwatered
lands of Mexico, and it seems hardly likely that anything will be
done under the threats of confiscation which now hang over all great
enterprise there.
Rainfall conditions have had much to do with the overemphasis on the
land problem and indeed with the failure of succeeding governments
to solve that problem. As in all arid countries, water rights were
originally more important to the natives than were land rights. In
hundreds of the Indian communes which still persist, the communal
rights of the Indians are distributed, not on the basis of land
assigned, but of the water allowed; each Indian receives a proportion
of the water brought by the communal irrigation ditches, and may
take three or four times the amount of land which his water will
irrigate--for crop rotation, forage, etc. This inevitable emphasis
on water has perhaps had its part in directing the attention of the
Indians in their demands for land distribution, toward the cultivated
haciendas where water is available. But it also gives promise for
a future which will make possible the rehabilitation of the country
through great irrigation projects creating thousands of rich small
tracts available for distribution to industrious natives--and foreign
small farmers as well. In the government franchises given under Diaz to
private irrigation projects, provision was made that about one-third
of the land brought into cultivation should be turned over to the
government for distribution to small native farmers.
Aside from the indirect effect of these rainfall conditions, they
have determined, with imperative insistence, the type of agriculture
which is followed in Mexico, and so have affected her trade in foods
and raw materials. They have made corn (maize) the staple food of the
country, as wheat is the staple of the lands where there is winter
snow and regular rainfall throughout the year. They have allowed the
development of only the tropical products like coffee, sugar and rubber
in the rich districts of Vera Cruz and Oaxaca which were partially
opened by foreign stock companies under Diaz. They have, more than
all, enthroned, as the only important agricultural export of Mexico,
the sisal hemp of Yucatan. This desert product, which requires slow
growth for the maturing of the long stout fibers which make rope and
binder twine, is the greatest export of Mexico which is the product
of Nature’s bounty and human enterprise. Coffee and some rubber and
tobacco and a little sugar were raised for export in happier days,
but only sisal hemp, the product of the desert _henequen_ plant, has
become a wealth-producer in any great quantity. Mexico has long been
an importer of foodstuffs, for, as I have noted, before the days of
modern commerce, famine came with terrible regularity. Under Diaz, food
was imported in increasing quantities, and since his fall, Mexico has
been utterly dependent on the outside world for a large portion of the
nutriment of her people.
It is impossible now to predict when and how Mexico will become an
agricultural country in fact as well as in potentialities. Irrigation
must come, for only when it does will agriculture and the prosperity
of agriculture fill the land. In one section where irrigation has
been carried out on a large scale--the Laguna district near Torreon,
Coah.--cotton is grown in quantity. This product feeds into the native
industry of cotton weaving which flourishes near Orizaba and in other
sections where local, direct water-power is available.
It seems inevitable that the increase in irrigated lands will add
to the acreage of cotton and also to the number and importance of
agricultural products of the class of raw materials. The country
which irrigation will water in Mexico is of vast extent, and is
safely comparable, even at its worst, with what the lands of Utah
and California and the Imperial Valley were before water was brought
to them. Again, however, we wait on peace and on the great works of
modern scientific irrigation. And, however enthusiastic we may be as
tradesmen, our capital will not be rushing to seek Mexican investments
of this sort until civilized government again rules, with a promise of
relative permanency.
The desert character of the country in the north was responsible for
the establishment of a great cattle-raising industry, for the land was
cheap and the ranges were vast. This has to-day been virtually wiped
out, and Mexico imports meat from the United States--all the result of
revolution, so that when peace comes the cattle industry will surely
be revived. But always the cattle of northern Mexico have been of the
range, still unfit for profitable slaughter, and sections suitable for
their fattening have been badly needed. There was, in other days, much
shipment of range cattle into the United States, and to the better
watered southern sections of Mexico. But although peace will bring a
revival of the ranges, Mexico cannot look forward to becoming a great
meat-producing country until the irrigation problem is solved.
There are rich, well-watered sections of Mexico--this must not be
overlooked--but these have resulted in a crowding of population on
the plateaus and through the rich valleys such as that of the Lerma
river in Jalisco state, and have contributed but little toward the
broad development of the country. In fact, one of the characteristics
of Mexico’s population distribution has been the tendency to gather
into groups, so that a great city like the capital or like Guadalajara
or Puebla will have a dozen cities and villages of considerable size
close about it--and then stretches of sparsely populated country for
leagues until another group is found. This is essentially climatic--and
geographical.
The mountain contour of the country and this same grouping of the
important centers of population have been the chief influences in the
location of the railways. Owing to the absence of navigable streams,
the mere possibility of Mexico’s industrial and of even her true
national development had to wait upon the coming of the railways. The
first line was that completed in 1872 by English capital between Vera
Cruz, the chief port of the Gulf of Mexico, and the City of Mexico,
some 400 miles inland and a mile and a half above the level of the
port. This “Mexican Railway” touches the groups of cities along the
old Spanish highway, and gave them an industrial primacy which was
unchallenged until the very last years of the Diaz peace.
After the building of this first line railway construction turned to
follow the great natural avenues laid out by the mountain valleys.
There were, as we have seen, two main valleys, that between the Eastern
and Western Mother ranges, and that to the east of the Eastern chain.
Looking at a map of Mexico, the most casual observer is struck by
the fact mentioned more than once by Mexican revolutionists, that
both these valleys lead directly to the heart of the United States.
The railroads which were built there might indeed be taken to have
been built to drain Mexico’s resources into the United States. But it
was only because these roadbeds had been laid out by Nature herself
that the lines came to be built there, with the inevitable result of
increasing immeasurably the importance of the United States to Mexican
development. One early Mexican president (Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada,
1872-76), in fact, refused to allow these obvious roads to be built,
explaining, in a much-quoted phrase: “Between the weak and the strong,
let the desert remain.”
The roads were both built by American companies under President Diaz,
the Mexican National on the east, the Mexican Central on the west.
They had a mighty part to play in the modernizing of Mexico, and in
her development through the trade in the minerals and in the building
of such industries as followed them. Throughout their history to the
present, they have been of far greater importance to Mexico than to her
allegedly covetous northern neighbor.
After these lines were built, others came, to follow the mountain
valleys. One went from Mexico City westward to Guadalajara, tapping the
rich Valley of the Lerma, the granary of Mexico. Narrow gauge lines
twisted through the rich states of Mexico and Michoacan, lines which
when modernized and extended in some future time will open agricultural
and mining territory comparable to anything yet known to commerce
and Mexican industry. Another line found its way to Oaxaca, deep in
the mountains to the east and south of Mexico City. Others followed
the seacoast to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and crossed that narrow,
shallow neck of land to the Pacific.
Along the western slope of the Sierra Madre other lines were built
through Sonora, and then the Southern Pacific of Mexico, an American
company, pushed these roads still further southward, opening new
territory, not to the commerce of Central Mexico, but to that of the
United States. And last of all, the line to Guadalajara left its easy
grades and smooth roadbed to leap the _barrancas_ and climb down the
mountains to achieve the contact with the Pacific at Manzanillo. A
mighty hand, indeed, has nature had in the locating of Mexico’s
railway lines, and with their connection to the United States and our
trade.
The mountainous character of the Mexican territory has upturned vast
mineral resources, whose effect on the development of the country
has been greater perhaps than any other single fact. These minerals
gave the wealth of the Aztecs which tempted the Spaniards to take
and to develop the country so thoroughly. They were drained for the
three centuries that Spain ruled, and their exploitation shaped all
the policy of the colonial régime. They were the greatest of the
attractions to foreign capital at the beginning of the Diaz rule,
and they paid most of the revenue of taxes upon which the material
civilization of the Mexico of that day was built. It seems safe
to promise that when there is lengthened peace again in Mexico,
mining will take its place with the greatest industries of the
country--although oil may still retain its present primacy when it,
too, can spread out and develop itself.
Mining camps and groups of mining camps dot the country, and whole
distinct territories are devoted to the mining, here of silver,
there of gold, there of copper, lead, etc. Indeed, the geography of
Mexico has had a tremendous effect in the creation there of a country
primarily rich in minerals as she is poor in agriculture. Oil is to-day
the greatest single wealth of Mexico, but the other minerals have had
and will again have their important bearing on her development.
The mineral wealth (oil as well as metals) has as I have noted been
the chief attraction which has brought foreign capital to Mexico.
The Spaniards and to a lesser extent the Indians before them, mined
the mountains of Mexico, but it remained to foreign enterprise in
the time of Diaz to open up the great bonanza sections to scientific
development. In the train of this development, came more foreign
capital of every sort, for agriculture, for industry, for oil, and for
public service investment. This foreign capital, developing Mexico’s
latent wealth, opened her to the world, and brought forth her great
promise of the future, even though it also gave to the revolutionists
who overthrew Diaz a handy battle cry of anti-foreignism.
It seems unlikely that without the geographical and geological
conditions which offered the wealth of minerals to the development
of capital, Mexico would or could have entered upon the modern stage
of her development. In that was the hope of the past and in it,
too, is the hope of the future regeneration of Mexico. The tempting
possibilities of such development are the only bait which will bring
back to Mexico the stream of foreign capital to which alone she can
look for her prompt salvation, when peace comes at last.
The geography and climate have had their hand, too, in the industrial
situation in Mexico. Mining, in the time of Diaz, drained the available
labor away from the farms and away from the small factories which then
existed. The oil fields have more recently taken a large proportion of
the available workers. The supply of labor in Mexico is astonishingly
small--the development of the latent labor supplies in the Indian
communes waits on peace and education. Temperamentally (and in this we
find the hand of climate) the Mexican is not a good factory worker.
The raw products which the land produces, sisal hemp, cotton, rubber,
etc., all demand for their profitable manufacture large and intricate
plants, such as Mexico has not built and for whose operation she has
never trained her people. Therefore, save for the cotton factories
(which produce only the coarser staples) there is to-day in Mexico
almost no industrial development. The lists of industries of which
such a manufacturing town as Monterey boasts, include, for instance,
candle and match factories employing thirty or forty people, brass bed
“factories,” where the products of American foundries are put together,
soda water factories--the industries which no city in any other land
would find worth mentioning. Mexican industry, indeed, waits surely
upon the development of the crops of raw materials, upon the education
of her laboring classes, and upon the solution of the problems of
irrigation and water power.
Geography and climate have been cruel to Mexico,--of this we need
not seek to deceive ourselves. But throughout the list of unhappy
conditions which has been set down here there runs a promise of
advancement and of better things--when peace comes and when foreign
enterprise shall again be welcomed. All of the advance which Mexico has
made in her long fight against an unkind Nature has been made with the
help of foreign energy. First was Spain, and the 300 years in which she
built up the colony to a semblance of a modern state, creating great
cities and peace and prosperity. Then, after fifty years of destructive
revolution, Diaz, and his wise invitation to and use of foreign
enterprises and foreign money. Only in these two periods has Mexico
been prosperous.
The greatest advance was under Diaz, when in thirty years Mexico
rose from the ashes of her revolutions and flew toward the heights
of commercial advancement. In that time her railways were almost
all of them built, all the water power which she now has developed,
the one great and productive irrigation section--the Laguna cotton
district--reclaimed from the desert, the sisal hemp industry created,
the factories, such as they are, built and set in operation. Virtually
all of these advances were made with foreign capital and under the
control of foreign engineers and managers. Success rewarded the faith
and the efforts of all who devoted themselves to these developments and
it was their conquering of the great natural handicaps of Mexico which
made possible the glowing tales of her “treasure-house.” When such
times as those come again, and only when they come, will the battle
against Nature be resumed, and in its resumption, the signs of man’s
great conquest reappear.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] This chapter is based upon the author’s article on Mexican
Geography contributed to the important _Mexican Year Book for 1920-21_,
published in Los Angeles, Calif., concurrently with this volume.
[3] _The People of Mexico_, Book I, Chap. V.