When Porfirio Díaz moved into the Presidency, he did so
championing a political philosophy of "no reelection"; yet, of all
the rulers of Mexico, he managed to stay in power longer than any of
them.
Although his longevity in office can be attributed in part to
his skill as a shrewd politician it also owed much to the tenor of
the times: on the one hand, the Mexican people were eager for peace,
and on the other, foreign capitalists were anxious to develop the
country's resources. At this juncture in Mexico's history it probably
wouldn't have mattered much who occupied the presidency, as long as
he was in tune with these concerns, and Don Porfírio
definitely was. "Order"
and "Progress" quickly became the key words of his
administration.
A mestizo from Oaxaca whose grandmother was a full-blooded
Mixtec, Díaz rose through the ranks of the military to the
grade of Captain before moving first into local and later into
national politics. Though as an army officer he had shown no mercy
for captured Conservative rebels, ordering them shot in cold blood,
once he moved into the presidency he adopted a more conciliatory
posture by showing clemency to his enemies. A pragmatist rather than
an ideologue, he soon abandoned the Liberal policy of promoting
regional autonomy and established in its place a strongly centralized
government. He also realized that to advance national harmony and
stability he would have to work with the Church, so the Reform laws
passed by Juárez administration were quietly ignored. He kept
the army loyal by overlooking graft and corruption and by making
regular promotions, while at the same keeping it small and relatively
powerless. Early on Díaz had learned to trust no one,
concluding that the best way to accomplish this was to keep his
associates suspicious of one another so that they wouldn't ally
themselves against him; thus, his philosophy was one of "divide and
conquer" and he made fear a cornerstone of his regime. He brooked no
dissent and consequently had no use for a free press. Convinced that
Mexico could not afford the luxury of political dissension and still
enjoy economic growth, he summarized his ideology as "Little politics
and lots of administration."
The so-called "Revolution of Tuxtepec" which helped put
Díaz in office in 1876 had mandated that there be no
re-election of the President or of state governors, so when it came
time for him to step down at the end of his term in 1880, he did so
by naming as his successor Manuel González, a loyal and pliant
hacendado on whom he could count to retire from the political stage
when directed to do so. As luck would have it, during
González' term in office the speculative activity of foreign
capitalists and the graft and corruption of Mexican officials reached
such proportions that riots broke out in the larger cities, and in
1884 Díaz was literally welcomed back to the presidency with
open arms. As his second term neared its end in 1888, he managed to
push the Congress into amending the Constitution to allow him to be
re-elected one more time. However, this did not prevent him from
intimidating Congress into granting him two further terms in office,
and in 1902, he pressured the Congress to amend the Constitution
again, this time permitting him to be re-elected indefinitely. When
he took office for the seventh time in
1904 (now aged 74), he
had the Constitution re-written to extend the President's term from
four to six years and at the same time had the office of
Vice-President created so that he could groom someone to take over
when he decided that he could no longer continue in office himself.
Don Porfirio gave Mexico such "stability" that virtually
nothing changed in the political arena during his tenure in
office. Cabinet ministers, governors, legislators, supreme
court justices, and, most especially, the lesser bureaucrats, all
hung on to their own offices almost as tenaciously as Díaz did
to his. Surely, death finally put an end to the tenure of the most
senior of the party hacks, but nepotism usually took care of filling
such vacancies with an efficient
alacrity. Few were they
who "bit the hand of he who fed them", so the "establishment" managed
to keep itself firmly in power throughout the three decades that
Díaz occupied the presidency.
In the economic sphere, the first capitalists who had been
desirous of obtaining a toehold in Mexico had been the English and
the French, building railways, reopening old mines and developing new
ones, and establishing plantations to grow specialty crops for
export. But, when Mexico defaulted on its international obligations
in the 1870's, credit from Europe quickly dried up, and the country
turned to the United States for economic help instead. The rapidly
expanding "Colossus of the North" saw in Mexico a treasure house of
minerals and tropical commodities waiting to be linked to its growing
market by the railway, so some of the earliest U.S. investments were
in improving the country's infrastructure. In the wake of the steam
engine came electricity, the telegraph, the telephone, and a modern
banking system. The restrictive colonial tax on local commerce known
as the alcabala was abolished and free trade became the order of the day.
The large landowners could now abandon antiquated, traditional
methods of agriculture by expanding their holdings and increasing
their production through mechanization. For the hacendados, the
merchant class, the mine-owners, and the bankers this was a period of
optimism and promise. Mexicans wealthy enough to travel abroad were
accorded such deference that they returned with a new sense of pride
in their nation. Theirs was a country "on the go" and most of them
were quite prepared to thank Díaz for finally putting it on
the right track.
Among Díaz' more outspoken supporters were two
so-called "Científicos", or "scientists", members of a
"brains-trust" on which he often relied for advice. Francisco Bulnes frankly
concluded that Mexico was not ready for democracy, the reason being
that it had so large a population of Indians who he characterized as
being both lazy and rather
stupid. Justo Sierra,
for his part, argued, "the dictatorship of a progressive man,
provided that he is an honorable and intelligent administrator of the
public funds, is generally of great benefit to an immature country
because it preserves peace." Such sentiments were echoed
throughout the upper classes who had become the beneficiaries of
Díaz' laissez faire philosophy, although they were probably
not shared by the great mass of the Mexican people. Abrogating
democratic principles and giving away the country's resources to
foreign investors had scarcely improved their lot at all. Indeed, in
many ways they were worse off than they had been before Díaz
had stepped into the Presidency.
The construction of railways had not only materially impacted
land values, but in some states had gone so far as to alter the local
balance of power between those areas through which the lines had been
built and those which had been by-passed. Geographically, the railway
served to substitute a national market for regional ones for the
first time in the country's history. Relative ease of movement
likewise encouraged migration within the country, as poor, landless
rural dwellers sought employment in the urban areas with their
developing industries. Contrasts in living standards between the
cities and the countryside were widened further, while in the
expanding urban centers themselves the disparity between the
districts of upper and middle-class housing and those of the
impoverished hordes seeking employment in the shops and factories
grew steadily more pronounced.
The appalling housing conditions of the urban working class
led to mortality rates in Mexico City that were higher than those
recorded in many of the major cities of Africa or
Asia. Tuberculosis,
syphilis, and pellagra were endemic among the lower-class population,
and typhoid, smallpox, and gastrointestinal infections took heavy
tolls as well. Working conditions in the shops and factories were
just as abominable, with workers being required to put in 10 to 12
hours per day in dark, unsanitary locales for wages which averaged
three pesos a week for men and about half that for
women. In many firms,
deductions were made from the workers' wages for contributions to the
Church, for fines imposed for minor infractions of the work rules,
and even for the wear and tear on the equipment in the factory.
Management, the government, the courts, and the Church were all
aligned against labor to such an extent that workers who joined
unions were punished, strikes were made illegal, and a law was passed
making it a crime for anyone to even attempt to change wages. Accident coverage on the job
was left entirely up to the "munificence" of the factory and mine
owners, and often went no farther than paying the hospital bill and
providing a cash payment of five to fifteen pesos for the loss of one
or more limbs.
Apart from the railways and mining, foreign capitalists
financed few of Mexico’s new industries. The latter were more
interested in extracting the country's resources and raw materials
for use abroad than they were in promoting the development of
domestic manufacturing. As a result, such industries as arose in
Mexico were those producing for the home market -- textiles, iron and
steel, paper, breweries, glass, soap, explosives, tobacco products,
cement, henequen, and sugar. Many of these nascent industries soon
realized that they could not compete with those in countries such as
Britain and the United States that were flooding world markets with
products priced considerably lower than Mexico could match, even with
its miserably paid work-force. In order to protect its small,
inefficient industries, Mexico felt obliged to erect high tariff
barriers; moreover, lacking a viable domestic market with adequate
purchasing power, many Mexican firms soon found themselves glutted by
overproduction. When world economic conditions took their periodic
down-turns, as happened in 1873, 1893, 1900, and 1907, Mexican
industries were even more depressed, and foreign investment all but
ceased following the latter "panic". Adding to Mexico's misfortunes
was the fact that none of its industries produced capital goods, so
any replacement of machinery and equipment inevitably had to come
from abroad.
During the Díaz era not only did a major geographic
re-distribution of Mexico's population take place, but also a major
increase in its size as well. Despite the sordid living conditions,
which prevailed in the burgeoning towns and cities, the number of
Mexicans almost doubled during the thirty-odd years of the
Porfiriato. Urban growth was reflected in many new buildings, paved
streets, electric lights, and often by the construction of
wrought-iron bandstands in the centers of the town plazas --
certainly some of the more charming relics of the Díaz age. In
the social arena, women became more active in the labor force, modest
steps were taken in the realm of public education, and even some
cognizance was given to the indigenous contribution to Mexico's
cultural heritage. No less a writer than Justino Sierra hailed
Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor of the Aztecs, as Mexico's first
"true hero."
As long as the Mexican upper-classes and the Yankee investors
continued to prosper, they saw no real reason to worry about the
niceties of democratic government or social justice. As far as they
were concerned, Díaz could stay in office for as many terms as
he wished or by whatever means he chose to employ; what mattered to
them was that their "good life" continue. Certainly, with the elite
so well satisfied economically, there was no cause to "rock the boat"
politically.
During the tenure of González, the ancient law that
reserved the sub-soil rights of Mexico to the government was
abolished and from 1884 on all minerals and water found beneath the
surface belonged to whoever bought the land. Among the most
remunerative investments realized by foreign investors in Mexico were
those made in the Gulf coastal plain just after the turn of the
century. American geologists had every
reason to believe that the same oil- and gas-rich formations that
underlay Louisiana and Texas continued southward along the coast of
Mexico as well. So, beginning in 1900, Edward Doheny started buying
up large sections of the lowland surrounding Tampico, some of it at a
cost of a dollar an acre, and within a few years his properties
totaled over a million and a half acres, much of it underlain by the
"black gold" which he had surmised to be there but which was totally
unsuspected by the Mexicans. Not to be outdone, Weetman Pearson, an
English wheeler-dealer, proceeded to do the same some miles farther
south, and by 1910 the annual production of oil from Mexico totaled
13 million barrels, almost all of which came from these foreign-owned
properties. When these lands were later re-sold, Standard Oil
purchased Doheny's holdings and Royal Dutch Shell acquired
Pearson’s properties, both yielding substantial profits to
their original investors.
In the northern border states of Sonora, Chihuahua, and
Coahuila, huge parcels of land were quickly surveyed and sold at
ridiculous prices, both to wealthy Mexicans and Yankee speculators,
in order to open up vast new cattle ranches in the eastern plains,
timber operations in the western mountains, and mines in the
intermediate foothills.
One consequence of this "land boom" was that during the final
decades of the 19th century, the unscrupulous survey companies
expropriated the tribal lands and water rights of such peoples as the
Yaqui and Mayo in northwestern Mexico. Of course, such practices were
nothing new, for similar seizures of indigenous holdings had been
going on in central and southern Mexico ever since the Spanish
Conquest. However, once these Indians had been alienated from their
fertile, irrigated valleys, survival for them was impossible. When
they rose in revolt, they were quickly crushed by troops rushed in by
the central government, and many of the Yaqui were deported to
Yucatán where they were conscripted to work as slaves on the
large henequen plantations. In the latter region, the local Maya had risen in
revolt several times themselves, protesting the taking of their lands
by the plantation owners, but had likewise been put down by
force.
Its Mexican sponsors saw the enactment of the so-called
“Idle Land” Act of 1893 as a method of encouraging
European immigration, similar to the Homestead Act in the United
States. This desire on
the part of the Mexican elite was to promote the "whitening" of the
national complexion, for they believed that it was only by "diluting"
the Indian presence that they could "raise the level of civilization"
in their country, or, at the very least, "keep it from
sinking." While the law
failed to attract many Europeans, it certainly did open the doors to
a large-scale land-grab by the "gringos", among who were some bona
fide small farmers with Mormon and Mennonites backgrounds. However, when several of the
larger American land-owners started fencing their vast domains with
barbed wire and patrolling their properties with armed guards to keep
the Mexicans out, friction between the local population and their new
Yankee neighbors quickly began to
escalate. In any event,
by the end of the Díaz era, Americans owned over 100 million
acres of Mexican territory, most of it in the northern border states
and comprised of much of the region's richest farm and pasture land,
its largest tracts of virgin forest, and almost all of the copper,
silver, lead, and zinc mines which dotted its foothills. In the
country as a whole, one percent of the Mexican population now held
legal title to 97 % of the country's land, while five-sixths of the
campesinos, or rural
dwellers, had no land at all.
Virtually all of these large land-holdings in the North, as
well as many in the central and southern parts of the country as
well, were oriented to the American market. Cattle, timber, minerals,
cotton, and guayule (a source of rubber) all were funneled out of
Mexico and into the U.S. on American built- and operated
railways. From central
Mexico came sugar, peanuts, flax, tobacco, and coffee, and from the
Yucatán, the prized cordage fiber, henequen. Yet, because of
the heavy emphasis on commercial agriculture for export, Mexico had
been steadily falling behind in the production of staple
foodstuffs. Despite the
country's rapid growth in population during the Díaz era, its
production of both corn and wheat were actually lower than when Don
Porfirio took office. As a consequence, the import of grain from
Argentina and the United States had increased steadily, as had food
costs in general. With the daily wage of a landless peon averaging 25
centavos, there was simply no way that most Mexicans field-hands
could feed themselves, much less their
families.
Unfortunately, the prosperity that the hacendados, the
mineowners, the industrialists, and the wealthier merchants enjoyed
during the first decades of Díaz rule began to crumble as the
country moved into the 20th century. Beginning about 1905, the
summer rains on which the farmers and ranchers of northern Mexico
depended for their annual moisture supply began to fail and for the
next four to five years they were so undependable that water-courses
dried up and pastures were parched. The already-low productivity
of the country's agricultural sector was further curtailed by
drought, and imports of expensive corn and wheat now became even more
costly. Ranchers suffered serious losses as their cattle
herds were cut back; tenant farmers and sharecroppers were literally
"blown away" as desert winds eroded the dusty soils around them. Even in good years, Mexico's
landless campesinos could count on scarcely half a year's employment;
now they had none. The
specter of starvation hung menacingly over the desolate
countryside.
In 1907 the bottom totally dropped out of Porfirio's economic
miracle: the international "panic" of
that year all but closed the American market to Mexican exports.
Prices dropped drastically.
Mines, factories, and sawmills closed. Railways that once
bustled with traffic now stood almost idle. Mexicans who held jobs in
American-owned enterprises were either let go immediately or had
their wages cut severely as the company struggled to somehow weather
the storm. Mexican industries, already suffering from
over-production, now lost even more of their domestic market as the
middle class saw their life-style increasingly
endangered. Land
speculators, investors, and bankers lost their shirts, as one
financial institution after another went belly-up. Wildcat strikes
and riots broke out in some of the mining and saw-milling towns and
in the larger industrial
cities. What had been a
climate of hope and rising expectations, at least for the upper
classes of Mexico, had suddenly become clouded by insecurity, doubt,
and disillusionment.
But, even as they struggled to find some explanation for the
precipitous decline in their fortunes, they stopped short of
condemning Don Porfirio himself; they chose instead to place the
blame for this ominous reversal in Mexican affairs on his ministers,
his cronies, and, most of all upon the Americans in whom Díaz
had put his trust. Nonetheless, in 1910 when Díaz announced
his intention to run for President for an eighth time, virtually
everyone knew that the "honeymoon was over ". Things had already gone
too far; the landless peons were starving; the miners and factory
workers were out of work; the banks were defunct; Mexico was
seriously in debt; and most of the country's resources were in
American hands.
Something drastic had to happen if the people of Mexico were
to regain their hope for a better future!