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| Benito Juárez |
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Dictatorship and Revolution
From 30 years of Porfirio to 79 years with the PRI
The republic was restored. Juárez returned to Mexico City in triumph, all but ignoring the troops and generals who had made the return possible. Indeed, he proceeded to disband the army. Generals seethed. Soldiers, having tasted adventure and the power of holding a rifle, turned to banditry. How, after all, could they be kept down on the farm?
Juárez, to his credit, called for elections and was returned to office. He had, his critics muttered, held onto the presidency long after his term had expired, but he really had no choice. Porfirio Díaz, heroic general in the war against the French invaders, opposed Juárez in the 1867 balloting, and very nearly defeated him four years later.
Like Juárez, Díaz came from Oaxaca although he was of both Spanish and Indian extraction. Unlike Juárez, he had little education. He had been in the army off and on since he was 15. Having lost in 1867 to Juárez, he then failed in attempt to be elected governor of Oaxaca, although he did manage to win a seat in Congress. He turned out to be a poor legislator, but insisted on running for the presidency again. When he lost, he attempted to stage a coup. He lost again. Then, a year after the election in 1972, Juárez died.
Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada replaced Juarez. Four years later, Díaz ran against him on a no-re-election platform. Again he lost. Once again he rose up in rebellion, and this time he won. His slogan “no-reelection was ironic in the extreme. No one in Mexico was ever reelected more than Porfirio Díaz. He held on to power for more than 30 years.
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| Once in power, Díaz ordered a new election. He won. His first accomplishment was pacifying a virtually lawless country. His methods were harsh, but they worked. And, after his first four-year term, Díaz yielded power to one he assumed would be his pawn, Gen. Manuel González. Díaz expected to retain the real power and return to office four years later. He and González would take turns. González proved to be an uncooperative puppet and Díaz never experimented with retiring temporarily from office again.
Forced into exile in 1911, Díaz officially is regarded today as a tyrant, although his greatest mistake, said one of the presidents who followed in his wake, was simply growing old. His powers were dictatorial. “Administration, not politics,” replaced “no-reelection” as his slogan. He ended banditry in part by recruiting bandits into the rural police force. He centralized power, crushing regional rivals. He solved the economic problems that had crippled Mexico by encouraging foreign investment and allowing these foreign investors to do virtually anything they wanted. Yet he kept them in check by playing the British off against the French and both off against the Americans.
Railways, telegraph and then telephone lines were built. The tracks across the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec served as the Panama Canal until the Panama Canal was built. Factories were built and haciendas – plantations – expanded as subsistence farms were swallowed up. The rich grew rich and the poor grew poorer. Workers had no rights. Things were not much different that they were in the United States and Europe at the time.
Today Mexican schoolchildren here about genocide practiced against the Indians in the United States. The Apaches and Comanche fared no better in Mexico. War was waged on the Yaqui and Mayo tribes in Sonora while rebellious Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula were sent off to be slaves in Cuba. All this was tolerated. Failure to retire was not. Others beside Díaz were growing old but refused to step aside. In 1810, Creoles found Peninsulars blocked their road to advancement. In 1910, old men did the blocking. And the old men were living longer than ever.
Once again it was an American who changed everything. In 1906 Díaz made the mistake of telling journalist James Creelman that Mexico now was ready for democracy and that this would be proven in the 1910 election. Maybe Díaz meant this when he said it. Maybe he though what he said to a foreigner would not be heard in Mexico. It was. A new generation believed its time had come. When, in 1910, it found Díaz was not quite ready to step aside, matters turned violent. What is known as The Mexican Revolution – in a country where revolutions were almost an hourly occurrence – began on November 20, 1910. A few months later, Díaz resigned and sailed off to Paris where he would die.
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| Diaz Tomb in Paris |
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| Francisco Madero |
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A mouse replaced this lion. Francisco Madero, sometimes referred to in official history books as the “Apostle of the Mexican Revolution,” was about as unlikely a figure as might be imagined to undo three decades of rule by Porfirio Díaz. Short to be point of being tiny, bald, Madero was a spiritualist who became convinced that voices out of the dead past had called him to action. He marched in where no one else dared.
That cost him his life. Although Madero did indeed become president, many opposed the changes he might have brought, although the only Madero ideology as “no-re-election.” The American ambassador at the time, Henry Lane Wilson, is credited with forging the alliance that overthrew Madero. Gen. Victorian Huerta replaced him. Huerta might have been selected by some Hollywood casting agency as a villain. He had a nasty face, favored tiny black glasses and practiced cruelty.
Coahuila Gov. Venustiano Carranza led the movement that deposed him, but there were others. Many others. Pancho Villa, a bandit leader had become General Villa, commander of the Northern Division. Emiliano Zapata already had risen up in arms in Morelos, the state south of Mexico City, demanding land absorbed by the great plantations be returned to those who worked it. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson had been replaced when Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States. The Woodrow Wilson administration eventually clapped Huerta into an American prison, where he died.
In Mexico, the fall of Díaz has been compared to the breaking of a piñata. Everybody was scrambling for a piece of the prize.
Eventually, Carranza triumphed to the degree that he was able to call for an assembly to draft a new Mexican Constitution. Until then – the year was 1917 – what is now called the Mexican Revolution was without any specific ideology. With the Constitution it became what Mexican patriots call the first social revolution of the 20th century. Agrarian reform was decreed along with universal make suffrage, the subsoil (in other words, of oil and mines) declared to belong to the nation and the right of workers to organize and declare strikes.
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| Venustaino Carranza |
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This was pretty heady stuff a century ago. The Constitution, it was understood, had to be honored, but not necessarily observed. Even so, it has since been amended more than 300 times. Carranza went on to be assassinated. So, too, did Alvaro Obregon, who often is blamed for the death of Carranza, succeeded him as president. Bullets killed Emilio Zapata and Pancho Villa. So many, many others also fell.
Out of these murders was born the PRI, the Party of the Institutionalized – or Permanent – Revolution. It began with another name, but PRI turned out to be quite accurate. Although as a party it held on to power for some 70 years, with almost every change in leadership revolution – peaceful revolution – followed.
It might be said that the PRI was formed by the lieutenants of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution, men who came to realize that violent struggle for power inevitably led to assassination. They went back to the original Porfirio Díaz ideal of no re-election. Mexican politics became a game of musical chairs in which new jobs opened up every three to six years.
Not surprisingly, things never went quite that smoothly. At the outset, not everyone was ready to yield. Individuals passed over for the presidency frequently remained ready to fight. They did, but too many enemies were aligned against them. Others, who hoped their turn might be next, stood allied with the establishment.
The no-election concept gave enormous powers to the president. Probably no one realized this when the system was initiated, but it worked out that way. Every elected official was in office for just one term. From the moment he was sworn in, he had to think where his career next would take him. Everything depended directly or indirectly upon the president.
To oppose the presidential will was political suicide. Congress, for example, could depose a governor. If that was what the president wished, no congressmen would vote against him. After all, a deputy’s term ended after three years, and where he went after that depended on his loyal service to the party and to the president.
Presidents named their own successors. On paper, this appeared to be ideal. By tradition, presidents selected someone from their cabinet, an individual with whom the president had worked closely and who he knew was the most capable of continuing to guide the destiny of the republic.
In practice it seldom worked that way. Among cabinet members the temptation was to become a slavish sycophant. “What time is it, Pérez?”
“What ever time you wish it to be, Mister President.” Presidents, in turn, were tempted to name a less than competent individual to succeed them, so that by comparison their own administrations would shine more brightly.
Former presidents were expected to retire from politics, retire or be retired. Some have been named ambassadors in distant lands. Others opted for self-imposed exile. The not quite accurate story is told of a PRI chief executive calling in the man he has chosen to take his place. He hands him three envelopes. “Open the first when your situation comes critical, the second during the next crisis, and, finally, the third.”
The successor does as he is told. Faced by his first crisis, he opens the first envelope. “Blame all your troubles on me,” is the instruction. Two years pass before the day arrives when the second envelope arrives. “Blame everything on the Gringos.” That works, but finally, toward the end of the term, the third envelope must be opened. “Find yourself another stooge and hand him three envelopes like these.”
Under this system, other parties were not prohibited. Indeed, the PRI gradually tried to build up its opposition to give some semblance of democracy. A limited system of proportional representation was instituted. Occasionally, other parties won elections, but not often. PRI nominees who had worked hard for their party and felt entitled to their reward, acted cheated if someone else won more votes. But mostly, the politically ambitious saw advancement possible only within the PRI. Leftists and rights carried out their struggles behind the party’s closed doors.
And that is what happened. Lazaro Cardenas, who served from 1934 until 1940, was close to being a Marxist. Miguel Aleman, who came to power in 1946, believed strongly in capitalism. In 1958, President Adolfo López Mateos declared that he was “to the extreme left within the Constitution.”
Luis Echeverria (1970-1976) extended government control of private industry. He was followed by José López Portillo, who nationalized the banks. Carlos Salinas de Gortarri (1988 – 1994) tried to sell everything back to the private sector. In other words, the party did provide permanent revolution.
To defy the PRI non-violently was not dangerous, but it was stupid. Businesses depended on government contracts, newspapers on government advertising, radio and television on government licenses. Labor unions friendly to the government found the government friendly to them.
But power corrupts, absolute power corrupting absolutely, as the sage once remarked. A cynic might say the only reason the PRI and its members sought to stay in power was in order to profit from power. And it may be this corruption that eventually wearied the citizenry. Young people grew up having known nothing but the PRI. They wanted to know something different. Eventually, their day came.
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| National Palace - Mexico City |
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