BOOK III

THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY IN MEXICO,
CHILI, BRAZIL, AND PARAGUAY

These republics have stood aside from the normal evolution of Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia; they have known neither perpetual revolutions nor lasting anarchy. Social progress has been accomplished under the pressure of long-continued tutelage; the principle of authority has been a safeguard against disorder and licence. These are the more stable and less liberal peoples. In them liberty is not a spontaneous gift by charter, but something won from selfish oligarchies or tenacious despots. Such is the case in Mexico, Chili, Brazil, and Paraguay.

Chapter I

Mexico: The Two Empires—the Dictators

The Emperor Iturbide—The conflicts between Federals and Unitarians—The Reformation—The foreign Emperor—The dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz—Material progress and servitude—The Yankee influence.

In Mexico we find an alternation of revolutions and dictators. The principle of authority is supreme; it even gives rise to two empires and a permanent presidency; there has always been a well-organised monarchical party. Modern Mexico demonstrates the excellence of strong governments in a divided continent.

The Aztec nation was born into freedom in 1821, after the capitulations of Cordoba. The Viceroy O'Donoju recognised the triumph of Iturbide, and the rights of Mexico; the Spanish leader and the patriot caudillo decided upon the creation of an empire which should conserve the rights of Ferdinand VII., like the juntas of South America; the creation of a constituent congress, and the nomination of a provisional government, which should preside over the destinies of the nation during the indecision of the twilight of the old régime.

Iturbide very shortly came forward as an incarnation of the national characteristics; he was actuated by an imperious ambition, and haunted by the triumphs of Napoleon. He had studied the classics, and was a brilliant and persuasive orator. His courage and activity and his dominating character won him a sudden popularity. Bolivar, in a letter to Riva-Agüero, said: "Bonaparte in Europe, Iturbide in America: these are the two most extraordinary men that modern history has to offer." The clergy, the Mexican nobility, the troops, and the lower classes, who regarded him as the liberator of their country, flocked around him. Congress was in part hostile; Generals Bustamente and Santa-Ana supported him in the Assembly; Generals Victoria and Guerrero attacked him. The deputies understood that he aspired to absolutism, and that he aimed at becoming the heir to the overlords of Anahouac. A prætorian revolution proclaimed him "Constitutional Emperor of Mexico" on May 21, 1822. The political opinion of the country was divided. The monarchists wanted a Spanish prince; the republicans a federation, a democracy with full liberties. Of these latter Iturbide said: "They were my enemies because I was opposed to the establishment of a government which would not have suited Mexico. Nature has produced nothing suddenly; she acts by successive stages."[1] The Emperor responded to the aspirations of the populace, and flattered the imagination of the crowd by the pomp and pageantry of his coronation, and the splendour of his Court; he was the national monarch, the creator of his country, as were the feudal kings in Europe. Convinced of his prestige and impelled by ambition, he dissolved Congress. Thenceforward his government was menaced by caudillos, who defended the violated constitution. Iturbide abdicated in May, 1823, and when he returned to his country the sentence of death pronounced upon him by contumacy was enforced. He was executed by shooting in 1824.

PASEO DE LA REFORMA, CITY OF MEXICO, ON INDEPENDENCE DAY.
(From "Latin America, the Land of Opportunity,"
by the Hon. John Barrett.)

Santa-Ana, who had directed the revolution against the Emperor, was the Mexican caudillo, as Facundo was the caudillo of the Argentine pampas, or Paez of the Venezuelan plains. He professed no definite political doctrines; he was, first of all, a radical reformer, but afterwards, with prudent opportunism, he accepted the ideas of the conservatives. Crafty, ambitious, ignorant, a democrat by instinct, he finally became the fetish of the mob, the hero of the civil wars; as president, as general, as supreme authority, he governed his divided country. Between Iturbide and Juarez, between emperor and reformer, he was for twenty years a sombre and overpowering figure. His triumph in 1824 ratified the policy of federalism; the Constitution recognised two chambers; the presidential term was four years; the judicial power was irremovable, and the provincial assemblies elected the national Senate. Under this system General Victoria became president. It was then that a fear of Spain and the monarchy resulted in a policy of rapprochement with the great Northern republic. The yorkina lodges, radical in spirit, acquired considerable influence, and worked in favour of a North American hegemony; the prestige of the ancient Scotch lodges, on the other hand, decreased.

Santa-Ana led a new revolution which gave the Presidency to General Guerrero; General Bustamente was Vice-President. The economic crisis was accentuated by these successive revolts; the Government was carried on by means of onerous loans; the increasing debt drained the Treasury, and discontent evoked another revolution. A supporter of Iturbide, General Bustamente, autocratic and conservative, was proclaimed President; he had the previous ruler, Guerrero, shot, stifled the provincial rebellions, and re-established internal order. A civil war forced him, in 1832, to compromise with the director of all these political conflicts, Santa-Ana.

With him the liberals triumphed, and a social transformation commenced. The liberals were the "new men," as in Venezuela, under Guzman. The colonial oligarchy, the republican bureaucracy, the high clergy, and the wealthy classes composed the conservative group which had founded the Empire with Iturbide, and desired royalty with Lucas-Alaman. Against them rose the reforming democracy, liberal or radical; it was a conflict of principles and classes. The lawyers, the lesser clergy, and the coloured middle classes gained the upper hand in 1833, and the great economic, social, and religious reformation commenced; Juarez was presently to give it the dignity of constitutionalism. In the struggle against the conservative and monarchical Church the liberals disregarded ecclesiastical jurisdiction, confiscated by mortmain the goods of the religious communities, promoted lay education, and secularised the reactionary University, as Garcia Moreno in Ecuador condemned the liberal University, and, impelled by a pernicious radicalism, they suppressed the army of a nation a prey to anarchy.

After Santa-Ana a coloured caudillo, Benito Juarez, was the leader of the reformers (1839), and with him the liberal movement took on a profoundly racial character. Juarez represented the natives, the democracy, as against the colonial oligarchy; like Tupuc-Amaru, he was the redeemer of the Indians; like Las Casas, the protector of the vanquished. Better than Guzman-Blanco and Rosas he realised the ideal of those American republics which were oppressed by memories of colonial days; hatred of all privilege, a dream of absolute liberty, war upon the tutelary Church, and a strict despotism designed to create classes and ideals.

He proclaimed the separation of Church and State, and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property. Lerdo de Tejada was the economist and ideologist of the Reformation; Juarez was its muscle, its iron will; he realised without compromise the old liberal programme. Congress, divided into Juarists and anti-Juarists, elected him President. All the laws against the Church were applied, but that did not enrich the country. Stock-jobbing, scandals, waste, and bankruptcy accumulated and formed a terrible argument against the "pure" liberals; the latter defended themselves by means of proscriptions and new and violent laws of reform. Once more the shadow of the Empire hovered over the turbulent democracy.

It was no longer a question of the national Empire of Montezuma or Iturbide, but of the foreign eagles. Napoleon III., a conqueror by family tradition, intervened in Mexican affairs; like Louis-Philippe, he desired colonies oversea; he defended the Latin civilisation against the Yankee peril, protected the Church against the Reformation, and extended over barbarous countries the amiable empire of the French spirit, the spirit of lucidity, method, and harmony.[2] In 1861 the Mexican Congress suspended the service of the debt, as a remedy against financial bankruptcy, and this measure provoked French intervention; there was a crusade of ambitious creditors against Mexico. England and Spain signed an agreement in London; both were enemies of the insolvent democracy. The hatred of Mexico was then excited against Spain; the Spanish Minister was expelled; the federal Government refused to treat with the Spanish chargé d'affaires. The Reformation general, Zaragoza, organised the country for defence against the Spanish invasion; he was victorious at Puebla. The Mexican resistance was concentrated upon the central plateau, where dwelt the penates of ancient Mexico. Zaragoza died; Puebla, attacked by the French, defended itself heroically; the national war became also a civil war. The monarchists desired a prince, the restoration of the Catholic Church, and the consolidation of the conservative oligarchy; the clergy shared their ambitions. The Archduke Maximilian arrived, to whom the conservatives had offered the throne of Iturbide, and from 1863 to 1864, after some hardly contested battles, the invaders ruled the country. Maximilian, surrounded by the aristocrats, triumphantly entered the Aztec capital, and the people, overpowered by the splendour of the new court, accepted the foreign monarch.

This monarch, pompous and ambitious, wished, like Napoleon III., to found a "liberal empire," a democratic kingdom; he did not condemn the Reformation, but professed to be anxious to assist it and to purge it of its Jacobin origin. Heir to the viceroys and dictators, Maximilian re-established the right of "patronage" and favoured religious tolerance. A few reformers applauded his liberalism, but neither liberals nor conservatives were satisfied; the former because they had dreamed of a secular republic, the latter because they wished for a clerical monarchy. The revolution continued. The Emperor, effaced like any Mikado, did not govern; his tycoon, General Bazaine, at the head of a French army, was the real source of authority.

BENITO JUAREZ.
President of Mexico in the struggle against the French invasion.

His presidential term ending in 1865, Juarez proclaimed himself Dictator in order to continue his resistance against the Empire, which, between a monarch and a general, between the discontented clericals and the aggressive reformers, was tottering to its fall. The North American Republic condemned the monarchy in the name of the Monroe doctrine: this was intervention against intervention. The War of Secession in the United States was over, and the States feared their Imperial neighbour. From that time fortune abandoned the Mexican monarch. Napoleon III. had occasion to withdraw his troops; Prussia, ambitious of hegemony in Europe, and victorious at Sadowa, was causing him uneasiness. He advised Maximilian to abdicate; but the Emperor was by no means willing to give way; he had become a reactionary, and vigorously defended his Imperial dignity. The tragic hour of desertion and disaster struck, and the Mexican revolution was prolonged (1866). Porfirio Diaz, escaping from Puebla, which was besieged by the French, organised the reconquest of Mexico at Guerrero. Sombre and virile, he took refuge on the high plateau, as did the Gothic king in the mountains of Asturia. He captured Puebla after a day's glorious fighting. Surrounded by Republican troops, Maximilian took refuge at Queretaro; he was taken prisoner with his army and the best of his generals. He was condemned to death, and Juarez, inflexible as the Aztec gods, refused to show mercy. The Emperor was executed at Queretaro on the 19th of June, 1867. On the following day Mexico yielded to the legions of Diaz. The Reformation had vanquished two emperors and erected two scaffolds. In these struggles Juarez, the half-breed caudillo, and Porfirio Diaz, the invincible general, had acquired a lasting influence, and Juarez, as President and Dictator, proceeded to organise the country. He strengthened the executive power against anarchy, endeavoured to found a conservative Senate, maintained order by means of a disciplined army, and improved the condition of finances by severe economies. His ministers, better educated and more intelligent than their leader, realised sweeping reforms while he gathered the victorious generals about him. The new Government entrusted the Preparatory School to a great educator, Gabino Barreda; like Rivadavia in the Argentine, it applied itself to the moral and material transformation of the country. It protected foreign capital, established liberty of trade, favoured colonisation, fostered irrigation, and commenced to build a railway from Vera-Cruz to Mexico. The ideal of Juarez was the education of the native race, the nucleus of nationality; like Alberdi, he believed that Protestantism would be a fruitful moral doctrine for the Indians. "They need," he told Don Justo Sierra, "a religion which will force them to read, not to spend their money on candles for the saints." He established an industrial democracy, a secular State.

But between his political ideas and his dictatorial acts there was a discrepancy which explains the ultimate sterility of his efforts. "The only book he had read thoroughly was the Politics of Benjamin Constant, the apology of the parliamentary system."[3] Juarez relied upon the democracy, on the governing Chambers; he aspired to a position like that of a constitutional monarch; that of a glorified spectator of the quarrels of parties. His ideas urged him toward parliamentarism; his ambitions, to dictatorship. He professed to conciliate all the national interests, to be the personification of the Mexican democracy, but his dislikes were mean and paltry. Severe, impassive, a great personality in his strength and his silent tenacity, he had no great ideals; he was no orator, no leader of the subject crowd. He was merely the supreme cacique of a half-breed nation.

JOSÉ IVES LIMANTOUR.
Minister of Finance during the Administration of General Diaz
in Mexico.

Despite his government, anarchy continued in the States. The soldiers who had conquered in the national war disturbed the domestic peace of the nation by their ambitions; in Yucutan, Sonora, and Puebla revolutions broke out, which Juarez energetically suppressed. His presidential term at an end, he aspired to re-election, and defeated Lerdo de Tejada, the financier, and the warrior Diaz; but his victory was not lasting. The great revolution in which Diaz figured commenced, and Juarez died in the midst of the struggle for power. Lerdo de Tejada, who continued the reforms already commenced, was the next President; with him liberal principles figured definitely in the Mexican constitution. Lerdo strengthened the central power, and started a campaign against the cacicazgos, the tyrants of the Sierra, and founded a tutelary Senate. He, like Juarez, aspired to re-election, and a fresh rising at Tuxtepec prepared the way for his fall. The Supreme Court considered itself authorised to examine the titles of the presidential candidates, and invalidated his re-election. By 1877 the Revolution had conquered the country.

It imposed upon Mexico the hero of the re-conquest, Porfirio Diaz, who became the new national caudillo, inheriting the Imperial ambitions of Iturbide, the craft of Santa-Ana, and the moral dictatorship of Juarez.

The country was disorganised, its credit in the European markets was destroyed; its national finances were in disorder. The blood-stained soil was divided among petty caciques; radicalism led to demagogy and liberty to anarchy. Jacobinism had triumphed with the Revolution, and condemned the re-election of presidents and the conservative Senate; the omnipotence of the popular Chamber was proclaimed. The result was a feeble and ephemeral government; in the absence of a moderating power the radical Assembly was supreme. A man was needed to organise chaos; Porfirio Diaz was the necessary autocrat, the "representative man" of Emerson.

Stern and gloomy, he was preparing for the priesthood. Born in 1830, he was brought up in poverty. A half-breed, he combined the courage of the Iberian with the dissimulation of the native. He knew the efficacy of work, perseverance, and method; he was extremely ignorant, but was shrewd and perspicacious. He was six times elected President, for the last time in 1900, and peace was coterminous with his rule. A great hunter and a master of manly exercises, his intensity of will-power was supported by solid physical foundations. Above all he was a man of action; his character was served by a robust organisation; a powerful frame and a vast power of resistance enabled him to rule and to intimidate. His intelligence applied itself to concrete things; it was unable to examine facts in the transforming light of an ideal; he had no general ideas, no spacious plans; he was slow in deliberation and rapid in action. His politics were an organised Machiavellism; like Louis XL, he divided that he might reign and dissembled that he might conquer. His ideas of government were simple: "Not much politics and plenty of administration," said his deeds and his programmes.

Machiavelli, in The Prince, taught the means of ruling in states which have had autonomous governments; he suggested the implacable extermination of the reigning families. General Diaz followed this counsel in part. To overcome anarchy he attacked the obscure tyrants of the provinces, and had them shot or exiled, or else he attached them to himself by means of honours and rewards. He imposed peace by means of terror. He knew that order was the practical basis of progress, as in the formula of Comte, which the Mexicans are fond of quoting, and this order he firmly established.

The destruction of the revolutionary instinct constituted the negative side of his work; Diaz built upon this foundation an industrial republic, practical and laborious. Weary of barren ideologies, he put the Reformation and its Jacobin doctrines out of his mind, accepted and encouraged the Yankee influence which had made Lerdo de Tejada so uneasy, conquered barbarism and the desert by means of the railway, and raised a number of loans. He was the president of an industrial epoch.

His economic labours were imposing; in twenty-five years Mexico was transformed from a divided republic into a modern State, from a bankrupt nation into a prosperous and highly solvent people. Diaz recalls the gods who built cities and filled the earth with the gold of fruitful grain, and taught the virtues of the metals and of fire. "Modern Mexico," writes the Times in 1909, "is the creation of the genius of General Diaz; he is the greatest statesman the transatlantic Latin communities have produced since their foundation." This organiser of peace astonished the old-established nations, who listened attentively to the fruitful words of light which fell from the lips of the Aztec demigod.

In 1884 Diaz commenced to reorganise the finances of his country. He was seconded in his task by eminent secretaries like Limantour and clever financiers like Romero and Macedo. The gold of the United States invaded the market; it was employed in the construction of railways and in industrial undertakings. In 1905 Limantour established the gold standard as basis of the monetary system. The service of the debt was regularised by agreement with foreign creditors; the budgets ceased to present deficits; in ten years the surplus reached a sum of seven million pesos. By 1894 the exports were in excess of the imports. Thanks to this favourable commercial balance, credit increased, and industries were multiplied; the exuberant national prosperity attracted foreign capital and settled it in the country. Here are some figures touching this progress. In 1876, at the beginning of Diaz's rule, the Mexican imports amounted to 28 millions of pesos (silver) and the exports to 32 millions; in 1901 the amount of the former was 143 millions and of the latter 148 millions. The imports, a proof of the wealth of the country, had increased fivefold; the exports, a sign of agricultural and mineral production, had increased almost in proportion. In twenty years (1880-1900) the yield of the mining industry increased from 24 to 60 millions, and in the same period 20 banks were founded. A loan of 40 million dollars was contracted in 1904, being issued at 94, bearing 4 per cent interest, on the sole security of the national credit; that is, the security usual in such transactions in the case of the great European nations. In ten years the budget has doubled, increasing from 50 to 100 millions. The surplus of the fiscal revenue is devoted to decreasing the burden of taxation, and in providing the country with fine and spacious public edifices. The service of the foreign debt has been secured with a continuity rare in America, more than 30 per cent. of certain budgets having been used for that purpose. The result of the industrial evolution of the country is proving to the detriment of agriculture, as in the Germany of Bismarck and the Russia of Count Witte; looms, paper-mills, hat-factories, &c., have been established. The national requirements being satisfied, the products of agriculture are exported—tobacco, rubber, and sugar. The network of railways is being greatly extended, and irrigation works are being installed. Colonies of Boers have settled in Mexico. The invasion of capital goes on unchecked, as does the development of the economic life of the country, and its political progress, revealed by its external credit.

Thus, the President, by means of sound money, steady finance, and foreign gold, has founded a practical republic. He has overcome the traditional revolts—the ardour of the Jacobins and racial passions—by a utilitarian campaign; he has created a quiet and peaceful State, in which nothing is to be heard but the sound of its factories. A great leveller, he has been, according to the Spanish tradition, a Cæsar at the head of a democracy, the arbiter of national conflicts, the supreme caudillo, obedient to the voices of tradition.

Sierra, the Athenian minister, and Bulnes, the tempestuous historian, exalt him in admirable dithyrambics. Sierra states that Diaz created "the political religion of peace." But in the Aztec nation this cult demands its sacrifices. Bulnes considers that the Dictator procured peace by "the system of Augustus as expounded by Machiavelli"; he gave the caciques "riches and honours," but not the government. And, in fact, Porfirio Diaz has built up the new Mexico by freeing it from the sectarian struggles and the foreign invasion which threatened to destroy it; but his work has been marred by uncertainty, and a heavy shadow has weighed on uneasy spirits.[4] The President at last abdicated his powers after a bloody revolution, and it is not easy to say whether or no his removal will not result in anarchy or new Dictators. His minister, Sierra, has written that the political system of the Dictator "is terribly dangerous for the future, for it imposes customs which are contrary to self-government, without which there may be great men, but not a great people"; and Bulnes says: "The personal régime is magnificent as an exception," for "under its empire a people grows accustomed to expect everything as a favour and a grace; to be the slave of the first who strikes it, or the shameless prostitute of the first to caress it."

These criticisms prove that General Diaz has not applied the British methods of preparation for self-government by means of a firm tutelage. Those who condemn his long autocracy say that he enervated men's minds by means of terror, and has accentuated the Aztec gloom by a narrow and monotonous absolutism. Dictatorships are not societies of freemen; they give humanity uniformity and servility. In abandoning the supreme power after establishing order and peace, by presiding as moral authority over the free development of republican institutions, Porfirio Diaz, like Don Pedro in Brazil, might have been the supreme educator of the democracy.

He governed with the aid of the "scientific" party—a group which believes in the virtue and power of science, exiles theology and metaphysics, denies mystery, and confesses utilitarianism as its practice and positivism as its doctrine. The Mexican politicians, in renouncing Catholicism after the Reformation and the passing of the Jacobin laws, have not abandoned dogma and absolutism in doctrine and in life. As in modern Brazil, positivism in becoming the official doctrine. The heirs of Juarez are slowly returning to Catholicism; they aspire to definite certitudes; they have their "Syllabus." In the President political majesty and the religious pontificate were united, as in the Muscovite Czars and the Spanish kings.

In the restoration of the colonial order Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada attracted European capital, for the Yankee supremacy troubled them. Against this policy, which was based on racial interests, General Diaz protected North American capital; bankers and adventurers invaded the country, dominated its industries, and built railways. How check the fatal current which brings the all-conquering gold from the North? The national transformation is the work of the magnates of Wall Street; Mexico is becoming a "zone of influence" for the United States.

GENERAL PORFIRIO DIAZ.
President of Mexico (1876-1880 and 1884-1909).

The scientific party, intoxicated by an orgy of utilitarianism, has not sought to arrest the great plutocracy of the North by means of European alliances.

Unity, wealth, peace: these are the magnificent features of modern Mexico, the admirable work of the Dictatorship. The Yankee peril; lay dogmas which fetter intellectual evolution; a level of utilitarian mediocrity without ideals of expansion, without culture, without the true Latin characteristics; popular ignorance and fresh revolutions: these are the disturbing aspects of this long period of tutelage. If the country triumphs over the obscure agents of dissolution, the influence of Porfirio Diaz will be as durable as that of Pedro II. or Portales or Rosas.

[1] Memoires autographes, Paris, 1824, p. 28.

[2] The brilliant Mexican historian Bulnes states that French intervention was "the revolt of Napoleon III. against the Monroe doctrine" (El verdadero Juarez, Mexico, 1904, p. 816).

[3] Bulnes, ibid., p. 101.

[4] Diaz pacified Mexico by means of the weapon employed by Rosas—fear. Bandits and revolutionaries were shot. His victims are said to have numbered 11,000.