Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0239/02394.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 39KB | 611 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02394}
$Pretitle{279}
$Title{Mexico
Chapter 3C.   The Porfiriato}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Thomas E. Weil}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{diaz
mexico
states
united
mexican
cardenas
government
obregon
president
calles}
$Date{1975}
$Log{}
Country:     Mexico
Book:        Area Handbook for Mexico
Author:      Thomas E. Weil
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1975

Chapter 3C.   The Porfiriato

     A mestizo of Spanish and Mixtec blood, Porfirio Diaz came from a
Oaxaca family of modest circumstances, was a pupil of Juarez in law school,
and was an extremely courageous officer in the ranks of the liberal Mexican
army. Diaz had defied the 1854 plebiscite "set up" for Santa Anna and had
been a key leader in Mexico City after the withdrawal of the French army
in 1867. Diaz' Plan of Tuxtepec, which initiated the final overthrow of
la reforma in 1876, was ostensibly a model of liberal thought-denouncing
the idea of presidential reelection, calling for effective suffrage, and
criticizing the extensive presence of foreign capitalists.

     Diaz ruled through an informal political apparatus in which the major
state and local leaders depended on Diaz not only for their economic
well-being but for their freedom. Each district and city was ruled by a
local boss, whose accountability to the national leader was even greater
than it had been under the colonial system. The national congress and
judiciary were staffed with obedient and loyal clients who did their
benefactors' bidding. This political apparatus was sustained by spying and
spoils and backed by an army that maintained internal order and forced
subservience.

     Military power was retained not only because of the great respect
officers and enlisted men had for Diaz but also because of his appointment
of men he could dominate, his largesse for those in his favor, and his
frequent shifting of commands. Perhaps as nearly powerful, however, was
the highly centralized police force, the mainstay of which was the rural
police.

     Incorporating bandits into the well-armed mounted rural police, Diaz
brought rural crime and banditry under control for the first time, but he
also created a tool for terrorizing political enemies and troublesome
citizens. The whole system was built around the slogan "Bread or Club"
(for those who cooperated, "bread"; for those who rebelled, "club"). This
practice was often the product of the escape law, which permitted the
shooting on the way to jail of those who "attempted escape." This political
apparatus completely controlled the Mexican government from 1876 to 1911.
The only ostensible lapse in power was the administration of General Manuel
Gonzales Praia (1880-84), which was allowed in order to fulfill Diaz'
original commitment to no immediate reelection.

     The porfiriato was not unpopular-at least until its last years. Even
his critics admitted Diaz' skill in assuming, in the popular mind, the
mantle of Juarez. Of particular importance in sustaining popular regard
was the regime's ability to create and maintain a high level of material
and economic growth in Mexico. By 1894 Diaz was able to announce the first
balanced budget in the history of the republic. Mexico attracted great sums
of foreign money, matched by the growth of governmental concessions to
foreign enterprise.

     First railroads, then telegraph, and later the telephone brought in large
amounts of foreign capital. There followed the reemergence of the mining
industry, which in turn stimulated more railroad construction, opening up
regions that had become stagnant since independence. The growth in these
latter regions spurred the expansion of the livestock and agricultural
industries to the north. The growing national wealth created urban demands for
streetcars, electrical systems, and massive public utility projects. Finally
came the discovery in 1900 of the rich oil pools of the Gulf Coast, stretching
from Texas to Veracruz and centering on the port of Tampico. This contributed
to the rapid growth of the city of Monterrey, opening up a new and serious
regional challenge to the central monopoly of Mexico City and Veracruz (see
ch. 2).

     The pattern of growth, despite prosperity, tended to nourish an
ever-ripening xenophobia. The foreigner was protected from the police and law
courts, and government censorship and tax structure worked to his advantage.
Between 1902 and 1911, for example, United States holdings in Mexican
railroads approximately doubled to almost US$650 million. Total United States
investment in Mexico by 1912 was more than US$1 billion, exceeding the total
amount of capital invested by the Mexicans themselves.

     Labor and even the church shared in a growing displeasure with foreign
"colonization." Knowing the Mexicans as a whole were neither anti-Roman
Catholic nor anticlerical, Diaz had allowed the Laws of the Reform regarding
the church to fall into disuse. As a result, the church began to regain some
of its properties and accumulate moderate cash reserves. But even the native
clergy had its complaints. Although the number of priests rose from 3,000 to
6,000 during Diaz' period of power, most of this increase was accounted for by
a heavy immigration of Spanish, French, and Italian clerics. This growth
tended to please the church hierarchy, but it tended to arouse the resentment
of the lower ranks of the native-born Mexican clergy.

     Diaz had little sympathy for labor; he viewed union organizers as public
enemies and treated them severely. As material progress spread, the industrial
working class grew; as it expanded, its grievances against government and
industry swelled. As early as the 1890s Ricardo Flores Magon, an
anarchosyndicalist, began to attack the Diaz regime with demands for economic
equality for Mexican workers. In all, some 250 strikes occurred under the Diaz
regime, mainly in the textile, railroad, and cigar industries, all largely in
the hands of foreign capitalists. The strikes were put down quickly and
ruthlessly, which created a strongly anti-Diaz and antiforeign attitude among
the Mexican working classes.

     Perhaps the greatest indictment leveled against the porfiriato, however,
was that of the outraged liberals against the regime's flavor of white
supremacy. The notion of white racial superiority was an outgrowth of
quasi-scientific notions introduced into Mexico at the end of la reforma.
These ideas, however, were not in the long term a practical position for the
controlling groups. During the nineteenth century they had become a
progressively smaller proportion of the total population. The mixing of the
Mexican population, though gradual, was irreversible.

     The nineteenth-century liberal based his formula for rapid agricultural
development on small private holdings, not on the corporate holdings of the
church or the Indian communal holdings. Diaz continued this policy by applying
the anticorporate provisions of la reforma laws to the Indian communal
holdings. As before, however, the lands did not become small private farms but
were quickly bought up by wealthy Mexicans or foreigners. The result was that
foreigners were able to gain control of large areas. Thus, although more than
two-thirds of the population remained engaged in agriculture, production
declined, and increasingly toward the end of the porfiriato the country
required importation of foodstuffs.

     Just as the white-to-nonwhite ratio tended to work against the
maintenance of a white supremacist philosophy, so the landholder-to-peasant
ratio worked against the economic philosophy of depending upon large
agricultural landholdings. In fact, both weaknesses tended to work
hand-in-hand to undermine the porfiriato. Some 80 percent of the Mexican
population in 1910 was rural and dependent upon the land for subsistence. Yet,
over 95 percent of this rural population was landless and depended almost
entirely on the few thousand large landowners for their livelihood. The
peasant had to buy ne