The Mexican Problem. Clarence Walker Barron
people until he sees Mexico, in comparison with the United States. Arizona and the Southwest, upon an almost waterless and comparatively barren soil, are prosperous from extensive grazing and minding interests, while Sonora, just across the border, far richer in water and soil and mineral, has slumbered for years, devastated by incursions of Indians from the North, and then rent with internal political dissensions, yet all the while hoping for the morrow to bring forth peace and prosperity. No wonder the Mexicans love the word mañana, for in to-morrow has lain their hope for years. But Sonora and Mexico are rapidly passing into a new day whence all that has been will be as yesterday, and to-morrow will be bright with promise.
The world now touches the sunshine of Southern California, eating its sun-kissed oranges, its sun-dried figs, its new seedless raisins, and the fruit of its alligator pear trees, transplanted from Mexico. Its deep valleys are raising the finest cotton; its motor highways are jewels in the crown of a State promoting intercourse over wide reaches betwixt its peoples.
HONEY AND THISTLES
The honey of human bee life is in California. In Mexico are yet the thistle, the nettle, and the hornet, the prickly cactus, sheltering the serpent, the poisonous herb shading the centipede and the political centipede.
I was surprised a few years ago to be notified that the Mexican Central forty-year bonds, to which I had so early subscribed, were coming due. They had been scaled down from seven per cent interest to five per cent, then to a lower rate, and now whatever has succeeded them is a wanderer in Europe with no return, and the property they are supposed to represent is sliding backward. Its rolling-stock goes into the mire, and bandits tear up the rails, shooting the soldiers of Carranza and looting and shooting the native and foreign passengers.
Scarcely a day passes that reports do not reach my desk from personal and sometimes confidential sources, of banditry, looting, and shooting, concerning which not a line can be found in the general press of the day. The almost daily occurrences in Mexico would be sensational and call for glaring headlines if the happenings were north of the Rio Grande; but nobody will buy a paper to read about lawlessness in Mexico.
RESTRICTED BUSINESS
It is generally known that the copper mines and smelters are only partially operating in the north, that travel is nowhere safe in that country, and that only in the oil fields around Tampico and south is there any real business progress. Even at Tampico every oil refinery has this spring been closed down for a greater or less number of days, interfering with oil supplies now so necessary in the world's progress through war.
It is difficult to place the blame as between I.W.W. agitators drawing pay from German agents and petty Mexico authorities, some of whom do and some of whom do not recognize any national authority.
Washington and Mexico City do not want these disturbances reported; nor do the business interests dependent upon American credit, and whatever protection may be afforded Mexico, invite publicity concerning Mexican disturbances.
Ask any director or official of a foreign enterprise in Mexico concerning the situation and he will give evidence only behind locked doors or with the understanding that his statements are confidential and his company is not to be mentioned. He knows that he is managing the property of others in a country where there is to-day no constitution and no law; but he dare not say so publicly, for there are several alleged constitutions in Mexico, many alleged laws, and very many decrees, and there is to-day the power to suspend every constitution, law and decree. Taxation has become only a matter of pressure to get something from anybody who has it.
A SIMPLE PROPOSITION
Yet, aside from the question of order and justice, Mexico is a simple proposition. The national expenses are less than $100,000,000 American gold, yet a little more than half must go to the national defense. The revenues have been but seventy-five per cent of the expenses, and because it never had any credit it never piled up any outside debt. Diaz not only built up Mexican foreign trade from $15,000,000 American gold to $250,000,000, but he built up the national treasury from emptiness to $30,000,000 American gold.
More than thirty years ago John Bigelow warned us that, notwithstanding the apparent peace and prosperity in Mexico under Diaz, it was a republic only in name, a slumbering volcano with a government by gunpowder only. At that time I refuted many of Mr. Bigelow's errors in his citation of facts, but history proved his main indictment. The people of Mexico have never had a chance, and the moment Diaz attempted to broaden the governing base in Mexico he was overthrown. The people have ever since been ground between political and social theorists both in the United States and their own country.
There are seventeen million people in Mexico ten million pure Aztecs, five million of partially Spanish origin, and two million pure Spanish and other foreigners. Where formerly it was estimated there were fifty thousand Americans there are not now five thousand.
The fact that the Spanish invader married the Aztec woman is not the curse of Mexico. The curse of Mexico is the faith that might makes right. Every schoolboy has heard the phrase "Conquest of Mexico." The idea of conquests, nationally and individually, is so strongly rooted in the world that Europe is now bathed in blood to uproot it.
THE RULE OF MIGHT
When Dr. Dernberg, formerly Colonial Minister in Germany, was in New York after the breaking-out of the Great War, he tried to convince me of the injustice of denying to Germany the right of conquest in foreign parts. He said: "What did England do a hundred years ago? What have they all done? Because Germany comes late into the family of nations, are we to be denied our part in conquering the earth, in the acquisition of new territory, in colonial empire?"
The idea was so barbaric to my freeborn American blood that I could only laugh at Dr. Dernberg and refer him to the dark ages. Yet the only army in Europe that has ninety-nine per cent of its soldiers able to read and write supports the right of conquest and territorial expansion. Have not Paris and London within three years been promised as compensation to a fighting people, that they might possess them or hold for ransom? What is the difference when Villa promises loot as compensation to those who will attack under his leadership? Sound government is by character and not by intellect. The redemption of Mexico can never be accomplished by conquest or loot.
GOVERNMENT BY JUSTICE
India is taxing herself and fighting for European justice because this alone has given her security where before in a hundred years a hundred different dynasties rose up and attempted rule by might. That country was redeemed only when government by justice came in.
It is said that between 1821 and 1868 more than fifty rulers attempted the government of Mexico. Mexico is too large a territory to be handled by legislative enactment from one city. Diaz himself never really ruled the whole of it. Mexico is largely composed of territories misnamed states. In these distant territories, of late, especially in the north, revolutions start and get under way before they can be reached or dealt with by the central authorities.
A just and lawful government should be established in the heart of Mexico with insured safe connection with the seacoast. From this, groups of states can be knitted in and distant parts should be treated as Mexican territory until its people can be educated and trusted with local self-government and show capacity to deal with the larger problems of nationality.
THE MEXICAN CHARACTER
At the present time the larger part of the good people of Mexico are children who want to be in debt and at the same time care-free. They want to work laughing. If they cannot laugh as they work, fighting is the next best thing. They have no other understanding of a revolution than that it is a sporty lark. They are exactly in the stage of the American country boy who on attending a new school must first find out who among the pupils can "lick the teacher." If the teacher is the stronger—sometimes by moral force and sometimes by brute force—there is order and discipline. But if the teacher enters a contest and is downed, he is no longer head of that school and, if he is to remain, some "big boy" must keep law and order for him.
On many a hacienda in Mexico, and over many years, a skirmish,