Waugh, Evelyn - Robbery Under Law The Mexican Object-Lesson
Waugh, Evelyn - Robbery Under Law The Mexican Object-Lesson
Waugh, Evelyn - Robbery Under Law The Mexican Object-Lesson
:a )a :./// \il/,
:a
:a .:.
\\\r/7
\\r///
:a
\\tr/z
\l r///
:a
\l ///
\a Y :a
Y Y Y
:a :. Y
\l r///
:a :a
\\i ///
r
\\r// \\l r///
:a
ROBBERY UNDER LA\{:
THE MEXICAN OBJECT-LESSON
ROBBERY UNDER LAW:
THE MEXICAN OBJECT.LESSON
BY
EVELYN WAUGH
rfl
\u
A CouruoN RBenBn EorrroN
THr AreorNp Pnnss
Robbery Under Law: the Mexican Object-l,esson
ISBN l-888r73-69-9
10987654321
CONTENTS
Fonrwono
t*n"'I.
IxrnooucrroN I
II. Tounrsr Mrxco r9
III. A CouNrRy wHERE THERE ARE NO
CorsrnverrvEs 5o
IV. Orr. 7B
ullt
ROBBERY UNDER LAW
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
I
HIS is a political book ; the sketch of a
foreign country where I spent a day or so
under two months I of a country which
has already provoked a huge number of books,
many of them by residents of life-long experience.
I do not see how-it is possible to escape the imputa- x
tion of presumption. ' The fellow mugs up a few
facts in the London Library, comes out here for a
week or two with a bare smattering of the language,
hangs about bothering us all with a lot of ques-
tions, and then proceeds to make money by telling
us all our own business.'
It is a charge to which professional writers are
commonly exposed and I know no answer except
the truth : that this, in fact, is our professional
habit. Superficial acquaintance is one of the
materials of our trade. Other professions are
equally culpable ; the barrister spends an evening
or two studying his brief, pleads in court as though
he had never had any other interest in life than the
welfare of the litigants, and, over his luncheon,
forgets their names, their faces and everything
ROBBERT U},|DER LAW
about them. The medical specialist gives his
diagnosis in an hour on a patient he has never
seen in health and of whose life history he knows no
more than a fewroutine questions will elicit. Com-
pared with them a journalist is less presumptuous.
His trade is to observe, record and interpret. He
does not claim that in a month or two of sight-
seeing he has made himself an expert on local
history and archaology; still less that he has
fitted himself for the post of benevolent dictator
who can put right troubles which perplex the
statesmen. His hope is to notice things which the
better experienced accept as commonplace and
to convey to a distant public some idea of the
aspect and feel of a place which hitherto has
been merely a geographical or political term, so
that subsequent events reported thence in the
newspapers-events which in the vagaries of con-
temporary history may quite suddenly have a
rude impact on their own livelihood and lives-
may have more interest and actuality. For this
purpose even a few weeks may sometimes be too
long. How many travel books open vividly and
end in a mere catalogue of transport difficulties !
The truthful travel book rarely works to a climax;
the climax is sometimes the moment of disembarka-
tion and everything beyond it an attempt to revive
artificially, under the iron lung of rhythmic, day
to day observations, the revelation of first acquaint-
ance.
I went to Mexico in order to write a book about
it; in order to verify and reconsider impressions
formed at a distance. To have travelled a lot, to
have spent, as I had done, the first twelve years of
adult life intermittently on the move, is to this
2
INTRODUCTION
extent a disadvantage that one's mind falls into
the habit of recognizing similarities rather than
differences. At the age of thirty-five one needs to
go to the moon, or some such place, to recapture
the excitement with which one first landed at
Calais. For many people Mexico has, in the
past, had this lunar character. Lunar it still
remains, but in no poetic sense. It is waste land,
part of a dead or, at any rate, a dying planet.
Politics, everywhere destructive, have here dried
up the place, frozen it, cracked it and powdered it
to dust. Is civilization, like a leper, beginning to
rot at its extremities ? In the sixteenth century
human life was disordered and talent stultified
by the obsession of theology ; today we are plague-
stricken by politics. It is a fact ; distressing for us,
dull for our descendents, but inescapable. This is
a political book ; its aim, roughly, is to examine
a single problem ; why it was that last summer a
small and almost friendless republic jubilantly
recalled its Minister from London, and, more
important, why people in England thought about
this event as they did ; why, for instance, patriotic
feeling burst into indignation whenever a freight
ship-British only in name, trading in defiance of
official advice-was sunk in Spanish waters, and
remained indifferent when a rich and essential
British industry was openly stolen in time of peace.
If one could understand that problem one would
come very near to understanding all the problems
that vex us today, for it has at its origin the universal,
deliberately fostered anarchy of public relations
and private opinions that is rapidly making the
world uninhabitable.
The succeeding pages are notes on anarchy.
,a
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
2
rB
CHAPTER TWO
TOURIST MEXICO
I
HE colonial flavour that still lingers every-
where in Mexico for those who care to find
it, is nowhere more marked than in the
abrupt division between rural and urban life.
One is reminded of Africa, where village life,
unaltered in centuries, exists within a mile of the
new European cities. Mexican culture is not
homogeneous ; it exists, as it did in the fifteenth
century, in a system of towns, which lie scattered
like a constellation over the great plateau and
beyond it, varying in splendour and importance
with their distance from the capital. For the
plateau is still the centre ofwhat survives ofMexican
culture. Nearly half the whole area of the Republic,
it is true, lies North of the most southern point of
the United States ; South of the plateau are great
tracts of tropical forest, and to the East the remote,
ill-reputed peninsula of Yucatan, but in common
speech and in historical fact, Mexico zs the table-
land-the Mesa Central de Anahuac, a vast,
rocky, temperate area tilted towards the Pacific,
r,5oo miles long by 5oo or 6oo miles in width.
It is superb country, mountainous, volcanic, cracked
and pitted with green cultivable valleys and wooded
slopes rising above the snow line, into angular
shining peaks ; graced, every few miles, by the
r9 c2
ROBBERT UJ\IDER LAW
domes and faEades of the conquerors' churches ;
when the clouds lift, everything is a shade sharper
a-nd brighter in the thin, dry air of the highlands
than seems natural to Northern eyes. Cirtainly
it is now a spectacle of decay ; the little valleyr u.L
often rank and deserted, where the peasants have
edged in towards the larger centres of population,
or have been transported hundreds of miles away
to other states to be settled on the unfamiliar,
stolen lands of the great proprietors ; the wooded
slopes have been prodigally stripped for charcoal ;
the churches and monasteries have been sacked in
turn by rebels and government and left to fall in
ruin, for the governing Mexicans are ashamed of
their Spanish past and, except in the main tourist
centres (and pretty shoddily there) do nothing for
its preservation, squandering instead the small sums
available for the Department of Arts on recon-
structing the infinitely tedious pyramids and
terraces of their Aztec and Mayan conquerors. But
even in its decay the plateau is a spectacle of
intoxicating beauty ; this is the Mexico-of history ;
of Montezuma, Cortes, Iturbide and Maximilian.
Roughly at the centre of the plateau, lies the
capital. Just as the towns have unusual import-
ance in the country, so Mexico City has a unique
position among the towns. It shelters nearly a
tenth of the whole population of the Republic.
It is the centre of government. Mexico, in this
respect, is the exact opposite of France, whose
government comes from the provinces and revolu-
tion from the capital. In Mexico the vice-regal
tradition persists ; the Federal Constitution has
never had very much significance; it was a half-
sincere compliment to the powerful neighbour in
20
TOURIST MEXICO
the North ; the political habits of the Republic
remain consistently autocratic and centralized.
From time to time savages come from the North
and South, either in armies or single adventurers
to capture the seat of power ; from time to time
the local governors achieve a temporary inde-
pendence, but in successive revolutions the people
of Mexico City have usually declared for the
existing regime, and it is from the city that such
order as exists, emanates. It is to Mexico City
that the tourist naturally goes, and from there
that he plans his journeys.
It is a huge, crowded, cosmopolitan, infernally
noisy place where everything contrives to puzzle
and stun the stranger, so that in the first days of
his visit he lives in a kind of breathless trance-
actually breathless, for the altitude plays tricks
with even the most robust constitution, so that the
even-tempered find themselves liable to sudden,
unreasonable explosions of rage, the heartiest eaters
lose their appetite, and the most energetic are over-
come by lassitude. It is doubtful how much
humankind can become properly at ease in this
climate ; perhaps one may attribute to it a great
part of the otherwise unaccountable alternations
of listlessness and violence that have made Mexican
history.
3o
TOURIST MEXICO
VISITOR !
The authoriu of this aillage, faaouring the interuting
ptan of the bepartmento Forestal y de -Caza-y
P.r.ui tending io suppress the ugQ adobe fence that
surrounds th; THEE, of worldll reputation, to be
substituted b1 an artistic iron railing that does not obstruct,
as at preseit, the integral aiew d the adrnirable GIANT,
atteniioeQ inaites yi to hetp us carr) on this noble end,
bulting the ont2 illustrated and complete monograph lhat ye
-TREE.
kiow- of the It is sold in the Suretary) ofice
of the-City Hatt that I preside, in Spanish or English,
at the tow price of one Mexican leso each..
The tree of worldly reputation was certainly vast,
but the wall of the churchyard in which it stood
was a sympathetic,.rough old thing marked with the
traditionai Stations of the Cross, so I hope that
nothing comes of the plan. Those who know the
districisay that there is no cause for apprehension'
Elsewhere in the world revolutionary regimes
have usually been manifest in a campaign ofpublic
architecture. In Mexico City there are only two
post-Diaz buildings of any real prominence. Each
of them is significant.
There is thi Monument of the Revolution through
which most of the innumerable public processions
are conducted. It is a formidable structure two
hundred feet high, consisting of a single dome sup-
ported on four irches. One need not b-e suspected
if political prejudice in condemning its startling
ugliness, fof ia was designed for qyilg another
pi.pose, to be, in f;act, the central lobby of the
i{or'rt.t of Parliament. In 1934 the present presi-
dent decided to commemorate his election and the
topical scepticism of representative institutions in
3r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
the same
-ingenious undertaking, of clothing the
metal skeleton, which had stood for years,- and
transforming it into a triumphal arch.' It is cer-
tainly o-ne of the most tediously hideous buildings
in the New World, and Mexiians of all politicil
views regard it with the kind of fascinated hor.o,
with which Romans accept the Victor Emmanuel
Memorial and which, uniil a few years ago, used
to be devoted in London to the Albert Mimorial.
It is one of the sights. Another, still more recent
'sight' is the new offices of the Mexican Eagle
Company. It is a very different structure, "of
traditional design and local material. That too
was-never put to its original purpose, for it was
confiscated at the moment of itJ completion at
the same time as the oil fields ; the co-nfiscation,
1n{eed,_ was delayed until the last plasterer had
finished work; it is in many *uy, a worthy
member of the long succession of fine buildings
ryh1ch
Mexican .governments have acquired b;,
theft. After a time, however, it became a great
bore. I soon lost count of the number of t]imes
this building was.pointed out to me. One passed
it two or three times a day, for it stands in the
main arterial boulevard of the town. Taxi drivers
would swing round in their seats and say . Aguila ,
;
passing strangers would stop one in thl stre-et with
the same word. It was repeated with every pos-
sible inflexion of tone-chagrin, derision, triuniph,
indignation, awe, venom, regret, appr.he.rsion
. . for no one in Mexico City was indifferent to
its fate. It seemed to symbolize the precarious
condition of all their lives.
Add to this architectural background a number
of squares planted with tropical vegetation and
32
TOURIST MEXICO
ornamented with patriotic statuary, here, as every-
where else in the world, decreasing in merit as it
becomes more modern, and you have the physical
scene of Mexican life ; and yet, reconstructed, say,
in a film studio, it would lack a certain essential
quality which is hard to describe in other terms
than those of shabbiness and untidiness. It is no
dirtier than many large cities ; you do not return
covered in grime after a morning's shopping as
you do in most English towns ; you do not see more
distressing evidence of poverty than in Paris ; the
smells are no stronger than in Venice. Neverthe-
less there is a persistent and curiously depressing
air of disorder and dirt as of a seaside beach after
a Bank Holiday ; the side streets tail off into waste
land ; the sidewalks of the main streets are muddy
and littered with cigarette ends and waste paper ;
broken things never seem to get mended ; it is
partly the evidence of a race who have ceased to
keep up appearances, partly of an invading people
who do not quite know what to do with their
acquisitions. The people have a kind of listless
shabbiness that has nothing to do with poverty;
they just do not bother to shave or to wear clean
collars; they are always eating; Indian families
squat in corners preparing the national dish of
pancakes and pepper; men and women wander
aimlessly about in groups munching huge dripping
fruits ; at the government offices pedlars display
trays of delicatessen in the colonnades I police-
men and sentries have mouths covered in crumbs.
The Mexican street crowds are the most inelegant
I have ever seen.
By this I do not simply mean that they are not
rich. It is not necessary to have big motor-cars
33
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
and fashionably dressed women for a town to have
style. There are no motor-cars in the old town of
Fez and the women except for a few uniformed
slaves are invisible, but that town has incomparable
grace and dignity. There are, for that matter,
quite a number of politicians in Mexico City with
substantial American banking accounts ; there
are numberless cars as expensive as anything one
would find in Bath or Cheltenham. The sense of
shabbiness comes from something uneconomic, in
the way the people move and talk.
It has for some years now ceased to be a gay
city. The Jockey Club, which was formerly the
centre of expensive life, has been disbanded ; the
gaming houses from which former presidents derived
part of their incomes have been shut down I
gambling of every kind is illegal and there is a
strong temperance movement, which is following
the laudable programme of substituting the very
excellent national beer for the spirits which were
formerly the usual drink; on public holidays the
bars are shut. There is a large and formidably
drab quartier toleri, where the licensed prostitutes,
each in her separate cabin, stand all day at little
guich6s soliciting custom ; there is a good country
club where Mexicans and foreigners mingle on
cordial terms; the drug trade which was once
extensive and highly profitable is now being
efficiently checked. There is one more or less
respectable night-club and dancing for tourists
at some of the large hotels. There is practically
no private entertaining on any large scale. There
is an occasional concert and an occasional week or
two of opera at the great Opera l{ouse, but the
building is becoming more and more used for
34
TOURIST MEXICO
purposes of Government propaganda. Those who
io-e to Mexico with picturesque ideas of a volup-
tuous, Latin-American night life, are usually dis-
appointed.
-
Films, of course, are rapidly driving out other
forms of entertainment. There are Cinema
Theatres doing brisk business all over the town,
showing everything from the latest American
products-the dialogue in English, roughly trans-
iated in a profusion of Spanish captions-to native
works which specialize in costumed orchestras,
funny men and a type of beauty refreshingly
unlike the established models of Hollywood. Here
too one can still find those serial thrillers which
seem unhappily to have disappeared in Europe,
which leave the hero, at the end of each instal-
ment, in positions of apparently inescapable danger
from whiih he is effortlessly relieved the following
week. Prices vary from theatre to theatre but are
uniformineach house ; aconcession totheMexican's
habit of destroying the upholstery when he is
dissatisfied with his place and to the bull-ring
tradition of climbing the barriers and invading any
more expensive seats which are empty or held by
people who look pusillanimous. But this is the
only democratic feature of the entertainment.
There seems little demand for the Russian instruc-
tional films which delight European socialists.
Indeed the Mexicans seem to have a dispropor-
tionate relish for the spectacle of the stiff shirts
and chinchilla that have disappeared from their
own country. While I was there three films on
consecutive weeks were drawing crowded houses ;
all dealt with the single theme of a girl who goes
to a fashionable hotel with borrowed clothes and
D2
35
ROBBERT UNDER LAI,T
an assumed title and ends by marrying a real
millionaire. But, more curiously still, the film
which had the greatest popularity was Tlu Drum,
a romantic story of British Imperialism in the East.
How the crowd cheered when the good Highlanders
shot down the bad Afridis !
37
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
luxury hotels 1 and a film producer at luncheon.
I was in Mexico both for a holiday and for work
and both kept me in soft conditions.
Soft, let it be said, in contrast with Mr. Graham
Greene's. There are more thorns than roses
everywhere in Mexico. But no one wants to hear
about my bed-bugs and my film producer when
the country all round one was full of deadly germs
and desperadoes. I can only say that the small
discomforts and inconveniences that the tourist
suffers are prodigally repaid by the beauty and
interest of the country.
Various small incidents stand out as typical, if
not of the country at least of my trip there :-
The Indian chambermaid at the simple inn at
Tenancingo who, as we left, pursued my wife into
the street with a 20 peso bill which she had found
on the floor of our room.
The little janitor at the museum in Oaxaca who
was learning English ; he had transcribed in
pencil, in an awkward hand, the verses of the hymn
'All things bright and beautiful' and asked our
Mexican companion to explain some of the words
to him in Spanish ; I see them now against the
glass cases full of Mixtec gold construing the poem
together.
A very drunk mestizo at the hotel in Oaxaca.
The dining-room was the former patio of the
house, now roofed with glass, the floor bare tiles ;
every sound swelled and echoed monstrously; he
sat with a friend shouting, spitting and singing
uproariously and glaring round the room as if
he expected someone to start a fight. He was quite
r Ncither, I hasten to say, both from fear of libel and in gratitude to a
placc whcrc I was very comfortable, the Ritz.
3B
TOURIST MEXICO
mirthless and curiously lonely in his cups. His
sober friend sat opposite him eating impassivelv.
Presently he made the plain and slatternly waitress
sit at the table with him. She tried to make him
take her to the cinema ; instead he took her up
to his room where he sang and shouted most of
the night. I asked who he was. 'He must be a
politician,' they said. 'Otherwise he would not
behave like that.' Further enquiry discovered
that he was a commercial traveller.
A cloud of dust, a galloping horse, a swarthy
figure in a wide sombrero, attended by three or
four young men, more modestly mounted. The
peasants in the roadsides bowed low as he passed.
A brigand ? No, the parish priest coming in to
say Mass. Another priest, an Englishman who,
because he had been born in Mexico, was allowed
to remain. He lived in the corner of a deserted
cloister. The patio was waste land ; once he tried
to make a garden there and found in the rubble
an old fountain which he re-erected. Then he
went to Mexico City for a week. While he was
away the soldiers came and stole the fountain;
the people of his parish lay down in the street to
stop them rolling the stone but the soldiers
won; now his only ornament ^way;
is a brilliant and
ferocious parrot ; he has not been out of Mexico
for thirty years.
A ride into the hills above Tenancingo, through
pine woods, to a deserted monastery. An Indian
family were housed in the porter's lodging ; it
was Sunday morning and they were washing their
heads in the tiled basin of a disused fountain, the
lather startlingly white on their dead black hair.
We walked round the garden where an elaborate
39
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
system of irrigation was choked and dry and the
monks' fruit trees sprawled untended, full of dead
wood.
A burst tyre on the road to Puebla. While it
was being mended we walked round the village;
it had once been of some size but most of the houses
seemed empty now, and the garden walls were
mere heaps of stone ; from above-the place
sloped sharply up the hillside-one could see that
it had once been carefully planned with level
terraces and symmetrical, transecting streets. A
great fortressJike building stood at the further
side of the central square. It had once been an
important college, said an old Indian; he had
been to school there himself as a child. The
fathers had managed a fertile estate there where
all the villagers worked. When the fathers had
been sent away the village began to disappear.
No one looked after the gardens now. He lived
by collecting onyx on the hillside and making
souvenirs for the shops in Puebla. Tourists never
came his way directly and he did not try to sell
anything.
Cuernavaca, two hours drive over the hills from
Mexico City, where the foreign business community
go for week-ends. AII the villas have swimming
pools and frigidaires and verandahs. It is the most
uncompetitive and friendliest of communities, both
to themselves and to strangers. They have the
kind of mutual loyalty that comes of being under
siege together. They wander in and out of one
another's houses, play cards, drink cokokola and
beyond an occasional joke about 'Article 33 '
(the enactment by which the Mexican government
may expel aliens) seldom talk of their week-day
40
TOURIST MEXICO
worries. There is a seaside atmosphere in the
foreign villas. Outside there always seems to be a
wedding in progress. The women in the piazza
are smarter than in Mexico City. The recreations
are walking round the bandstand and revolver
practice. The old shrine in the main street has
quite lately been destroyed by communists. Of
Borda's famous garden nothing remains except
some dry, cement tanks and the great mango trees.
The Cathedral and the group of buildings round it
are splendid.
Taxco, the only consciously picturesque place in
Mexico. Mr. T. Philip Terry becomes lyrical in
his descriptions of the hotels. The one where we
stayed was certainly admirable. The tow'n is full
of silversmiths' shops; every turn of the steep
cobbled streets offers a shot for the amateur
photographer. The church is one of the few
buildings in Mexico whose interior is finer than the
exterior. Its pictures and altars have been left
intact. It is the only place in Mexico where the
children have learned to be impudent. It is no
place for the kind of tourists we were. Either you
must be very simple indeed and treat the place
like Coney Island, or a resident. The residents
are said to be the last survivors of the international
Bohemianism of the 'eos-the army of semi-intel-
lectual good-timers who once overran half Europe ;
it was, by nature, a mobile force, living on the
country; they have moved from Capri, Berlin,
Villefranche, Fez, Majorca suffering mass deser-
tions in the slump, and providing material for
unnumbered light novels. At the moment they
have set up their camp in Taxco-so they say in
Mexico City.
4r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
Puebla, the only town in Mexico of dignity. It
is hard to realize that it has constantly been a
centre of revolution and that Toledano is stronger
there, probably, than anywhere in the country.
Every street is beautiful ; there is a good restaurant
and antique shops where objects of real antiquity
and beauty are for sale-(normally in Mexico
' antique' and 'curiosity' are synonymous terms
referring to souvenirs, things as frightful there as
I have ever seen anywhere in the world). The San
Domingo chapel, which escapes notice in Terry's
guide, is the finest of its kind in Mexico.
Chapultepec Palace. It was supposed to be
shut for the day, but a soldier let us in. General
Cardenas does not live there ; he has a villa of
his own in a flood-lit pine grove. Chapultepec is
full of memories of his predecessors ; Maximilian's
chosen site, then outside the city, now a suburb ;
it is his view; his stained glass windows in the
best taste of his time, the worst in the world, his
trees billowing below the windows but the windows
themselves bear the mark of the Republic-M.R.
in frosted, public-house glass ; Diaz's billiard
room and brass stair rails; Rubio's swimming
bath. The terrace is curiously like a seaside pier
with glass shelters and kiosks where one expects
to find cigar sellers; Carranza and his captains
used to sprawl about herq in the happy vinous
interlude between battle field and firing squad.
A garden in the outskirts of Mexico City with
an eighteenth century grotto made of Chinese
porcelain set in cement; glimpses of crowded
patios in the poor quarters ; a morning in the
prison. Tourists are quite welcome there. There
are workshops for about a tenth of the inmates;
+2
TOURIST MEXICO
the others lie in bed or lounge about the yards
and beg money from the visitors ; some of them
have started small retail businesses selling sweets
and tobacco. The men are allowed visits from
women once a week in cells specially set aside for
their meetings ; that and other humane privileges
are prescribed by law ; it depends on your posses-
sion of money whether the gaolers allow them ;
with money you can get most things, from cocaine
to an evening's dancing at el Retiro. There is an
English homicide there, of unsettled mentality,
who is said to be often seen treating his gaolers in
the fashionable bars. General Cardenas was a
gaoler once and stepped into history when he
liberated his only prisoner and set out in his
company to join the revolutionary army.
The September crisis ; all the Mexican papers
making the worst of it-Guerra Ineoitabile on all the
posters. As a result no one taking it seriously.
We read that children were being sent out of
London ; that they were digging trenches in
Hyde Park. We thought, 'no wonder foreigners
think us odd when they are told stories like that
about us.' A little later thousands of people in the
United States were thrown into panic by the belief
that there had been an invasion from Mars ; that
is how the September crisis looked in Mexico for
the first few days. People with wireless sets said
they had heard snatches from London ; things
looked very bad there. In the Ritz bar there was
a certain amount of discussion among men of
military age as to how they were to get home.
Then the papers came out with enormous head-
lines 'President Cardenas Appeals for Peace.'
Shortly after that peace was arranged I many of
43
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
his supporters believed it was his doing until the
American newspapers began to say it was not
such a good peace after all. The war in Spain
was very much more real to them than any other
piece of contemporary history; more real even
than Roosevelt's New Deal. They understood
the Spanish issue in Spanish terms, without any
English and French and American confusions,
and felt strongly about it one way or the other.
ft was like part of their own lives. In the vestibule
of the Public Library hung a picture called' Spain'
woman in travail among the bombs, painted
-a
with Indian ferocity ; a really frightful picture.
There was a sweet, heady cocktail on sale at the
smart bars called a ' Franco'. Even a partisan of
Franco like myself, could see something ironical in
these two different modes of expressing sympathy.
A taxi driver had the Franco flag on the front of
his car.
A week of vexations in the attempt to buy a
picture. There was a large eighteenth century,
stylized, decorative St. Michael on sale at San-
bornes for the very modest price of loo pesos.
They are building a church for my parish at home.
It seemed to be just the thing. The lady in charge,
who throughout bore my vacillations with heroic
patience, warned me that there might be difficulty
in getting it out of the country. It had clearly
come from a church and as all Church property
had been confiscated by the Government its export
was forbidden; a sensible law which has done
much to preserve what has been preserved. We
went to the Ministry of Arts for permission to take
it away. They were charming and said they would
send someone to look at it. Days passed and our
44
TOURIST MEXICO
departure became imminent. We called and tele-
phoned; if permission was given we should have
to have it photographed and obtain a special
passport for it. At last we got someone from the
Ministry to see it. It was too big, he said, and
tried to console us by deploring our taste; an
ugly picture, he said, of no value or interest.
Then someone told us of a smuggler who could
get anything one wanted out of the country. He
was blandly reassuring; yes, nothing would be
easier ; he was sending a cargo of contraband at
the moment; if we could bring it at once he
would have it crated up and we should find it
waiting for us at San Antonio. We told him the
day of our train ; it would be there in time.
We paid for the picture and carried it through the
streets to his office ; he was quite unembarrassed
by the ostentation of its delivery. An old Indian
carpenter was summoned to make a crate for it.
I was to call next day, when it had been weighed,
and pay for transit. I called. The smuggler was
not there. His clerk said he might come that
day or might not. We called repeatedly and hung
about the door. At length we caught him. The
picture was crated up. It would be delivered in
San Antonio in a week or so. But, we protested,
he had promised it for three days' time. We were
going straight through to New York. Well, he
said, that was impossible. Why had he not told us
that before we bought the picture ? He had been
busy and forgotten the date. It was all one to him
whether he handled it or not; he was only trying
to be obliging.
Then the deal was ofl we said. The lady at
Sanbornes patiently received us. Would she take
45
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
the picture back ? Very well. We carried it
through the streets and it was re-hung in its place
in the gallery.
A lengthy dispute now began with the smuggler.
Was it fair to him, he asked, to call the deal off.
He had been to great trouble about it. We offered
to pay for the crate and the carpenter. That, he
said, was of no consequence; the carpenter was
his father. But what of the risk ?
The risk ? Did he mean the risk of the authori-
ties intervening.
No, no, the authorities were his friends. What
of the risk he had run in housing the picture all
night. Suppose his warehouse had been burned
down, he would have been liable for the picture's
value. It had been an anxious night for him,
housing our picture. Anything might have hap-
pened. He was not pressing his claim as a business
man but as one gentleman to another. He did
not profit by his smuggling; he did it simply to
oblige gentlemen. I said, as one gentleman to
another, that I
thought his anxiety exaggerated.
He began to appeal on grounds of national
honour. What about the prestige of England ?
What would people say if it became known that
an Englishman had behaved in this manner. I
asked him what price he set on his anxiety. That,
he said, was a matter for an English gentleman to
decide for himself.
At this stage the Mexican friend who had been
my support in every predicament intervened. I
was handling this affair from quite the wrong angle.
Did the smuggler realize, asked my friend, that
England was faced with war ? I was returning
to fight for my King. How could I, in the circum-
46
TOURIST MEXICO
stances, be expected to concern myself with pic-
tures. The smuggler was moved to sudden affec-
tion. Why had I not mentioned this significant
fact instead of wrangling about risks of storage.
He perfectly understood my predicament. How
could I go into action carrying a six foot canvas
of St. Michael. Of course there could be no ques-
tion between us of payment. To clinch matters
I gave a peso to the porter who had done nothing
in the matter except wriggle his bare toes among
the shavings. This convinced the smuggler of my
inherent generosity. We parted friends.
Ironically enough, when we got to the frontier,
the Mexican customs officers never came into our
carriage. We could have carried off a hundred
pictures.
An exhilarating day in search of a fiesta. The
bulletin issued for tourists in Spanish and English,
This Week in Mexico, announced a fiesta at a village
named Chalma. ' fn part,' it said, 'it is a religious
fiesta and due to the folk lore, traditions and the
hundreds of Indian dancers that come from all
over the country it will probably outclass other
fiestas during this month.' We decided to go.
Our only concern was that we should find it
overrun with fellow tourists. We need not have
worried.
Chalma was not on any map. Enquiry at the
Tourist Bureau elicited the advice to drive in our
own car to Toluca, hire another for the bad road
to Tenancingo, from where it was two or three
hours' ride by horse. We set out the day before.
At Toluca we ate delicious little white fish cooked
in black butter ; the first good food we had met
in a restaurant (on our return the fish had doubled
47
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
in price because, they said, some foreigners had
eaten so many-ourselves). The waiter at the
restaurant said it was eight hours' ride from
Tenancingo to Chalma. We found a car with a
negro driver. He knew a man who kept a hat shop
who came from Chalma; he would be able to
direct us. The hatter said the fiesta was not at
Chalma but at another village beyond, a village
named Santiago, not through Tenancingo at all.
It would be a beautiful fiesta. We could sleep the
night at Santiago and go there next day. We
drove off over appalling roads, through lovely
country to Santiago, a decayed village where no
one knew of a fiesta. We went to see the village
priest, an old man with a full white beard who
was sitting in silence in his sacristy with a younger
man in shabby civilian clothes, another visiting
priest. There was nowhere to stay in Santiago
they said ; there uas a fiesta at Chalma but a
very small one, without dancing. The govern-
ment did not allow dancing. But at the next
village, the one we were going to, there would be a
beautiful fiesta next day. How far was it ? About
two hours.
We stopped in the piazza to ask a soldier the
way. How far was it ? Ten minutes. It was a
question I suppose of the prestige of the motor-
car. It took us about half an hour. When we
reached the village we found a statue ofJuarez, a
small church, a few houses. The Indians were
decorating the church with branches of leaves.
We asked about the fiesta. There would be High
Mass, they said, in the morning. And afterwards ?
In the evening some actors were coming from
Toluca to sing in a tent. Dances ? No, nowadays
48
TOURIST MEXICO
the soldiers did not allow that outside the Church
and the priests would not allow it inside. We
heard afterwards that they do still dance, at these
village fiestas in the yard outside the churches, but
the_practice has come into vague discredit and they
will not talk about it to strangers. We drove on to
Tenancingo and arrived there some hours after
dark. An enjoyable day.
These were our holidays. There are few coun-
tries that still offer so many surprises to the tourist.
put there were graver interests which have no part
in this chapter.
49
CHAPTER THREE
A COUNTRY WHERE THERE ARE
NO CONSERVATIVES
I
77
CHAPTER FOUR
OIL
I
fT-1HE National Museum was full of school-
I children. Crocodiles threaded their way
I from Huitzilopochtli to Tlahuizcalpante-
cuhtli, Chac-Mool anh Teotihuacan, pausing and
stopping at the command of their guide,- gazing
about t]h.- with that air of sullen bewilderment
common to schoolchildren in museums in all
parts of the world. An eager, English-speaking
guide had attached himself to me in the courtyard'
" There are too many childrenr" he remarked'
" Yes."
" It is their holidaY."
Together we struggled to the huge Calendar
Stone"which is the hili-mark of the more expensive
souvenirs. You can get the Calendar Stone in
china as an ash-tray, or in gold the size of a three-
penny bit on a ring, or in silver the size of a soup-
ilut.'.t a salver; you can even get it-oddest of
^.lI
ao**.morative conceits-engraved on an onyx
egg, but no one knows what it means' Ingenious,
ciJst-*otd minds have played with this z4 ton
puzzle for r5o years and devised various explan-a-
'tions
flatteriig to its Aztec caryers. It has been the
base of a pai-iotic claim that before the -Spanish
conquest, the Indians had advanced beyond.Europe
in the scilnce of chronology. We stood and looked
7B
OIL
at this stone ; the schoolchildren swarmed round
us.
" It is better to see this very interesting stone
early in the morning," said the guide. " There
are some beautiful objects in the room across the
patio."
We passed into a very nice jumble of bric-a-
brac : costumes, snuflboxes, Imperial regalia,
lace and needlework . . . " This," said my guide,
" is one of the sn ords of Maximilian's body-
guard."
It was one of those triple daggers, ornamented
with cairngorms and silver thistle, that form a part
of Highland full-dress. Heaven knows how it
had found its way here (or did Maximilian keep a
piper ? I have not seen him mentioned in any of
the biographies, but it is quite conceivable that he
imported the idea from Balmoral in his romantic
Miramar period.)
" That has come from Scotland," I said.
" Scotland ? "
" A part of Great Britain."
" Ah." This gave my guide the chance to satisfy
himself on a point that had been puzzling him for
some time. " You are not American ? "
" No, English."
" The English are more elegant."
" Yes."
" They have more nobility than the Americans."
" Vary true."
" I am surprised to see an Englishman here since
we took your oil. What do they think in England
aboutthat? ..."
The eternal question, with which all conversa-
tions in Mexico began and ended : what was the
79
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
British Government going to do ? What did the
Rritish people feel about it ? The true answer, I
suppose, was that though there was only one large
international question for the Mexicans, there
were a hundred for the British Government. We
had stated our views uncompromisingly and were
quite prepared to wait a year or so before dis-
cussing them. And as for the feelings of the British
public, these are only aroused when they see
politics in simple terms of underdog and oPpressor.
They have not yet got used to thinking of British
Companies as underdogs. Moreover the confisca-
tions had been accompanied by a number of
potent phrases about democracy. If the Japanese,
or Nationalist-Spaniards, or Germans or Italians
had taken our oil, then there would have been a
series of meetings in the Albert Hall ; but the
Mexicans had a Left Book Club vocabulary. It
so happened that the Mexican regime showed
features which elsewhere would be damning :
the government was autocratic ; the autocrat was
a General ; there was only one political party;
educational appointments were political and the
teaching purely state-propagandist ; history books
were being edited on the lines of nationalist self-
assertion Some of the British public knew
these things, some did not; but to the politically
minded, vocal minority, one thing was of para-
mount importance : when the Mexicans saluted
their bosses they raised the arm with clenched fist,
not with extended fingers. So they were all right ;
they were democrats, like ourselves and the French.
It is true that the majority of Englishmen do not
think in quite such simple terms, but it is the
minority who edit the weeklies and hold meetings
Bo
OIL
in Trafalgar Square. It is they who are quoted as
expressing ' British opinion'. Sober citiiens had
more on their minds than Mexico in the summer of
Ig3B. The Oil Qgestion, however, makes a very
nice working model of a modern international-
economic problem. It has practically all the
features of the larger problems that are disturbing
our lives and may be examined conveniently in the
Iarge, but not overwhelming, volume of conflicting
p.r-opaganda that has been issued by the opposing
sides.
The main facts are not in dispute. On March
r8th, r938, General Cardenas, by Presidential
decree, confiscated the properties of a dozen or
more oil companies representing British, Dutch,
American and other foreign shareholders valued
by them at about d8o,ooo,ooo. Since that date his
action has been confirmed by judicial decisions
and amplified by the executive officials to include
business premises in Mexico City and the Isthmus
which had no direct connexion with the production
or sale of oil. The decree of expropriation was, in
form, the General's answer to the refusal of the
companies to accept the award of the Mexican
Labour Board in a dispute between them and their
employees. The British Foreign Office, unsup-
ported by the State Department at Washington,
protested on April Bth, in a note from which the
following salient points may be quoted :
3
Did the oil companies, as is commonly asserted,
establish themselves piratically in Mexico ? The
answer, so far as the British intcrests are concerned,
is that they came rvith every encouragement from
the existing government and were at great pains
to satisfy every lawful requirement of title. Imper-
sonal corporations are at a disadvantage in dealing
with dictators, in that the latter can deny all
continuity with their predecessors. General Car-
denas, for example, chooses to regard his advent
into Mexican politics as the initiition of a new,
apocalyptic regime of righteousness and joy. Mus-
solini, Hitler and Stalin (who rvould no doubt
courteously include Lenin) live under the same
rosy illusion. It makes government, in certain
respects, vastly more simple if you can repudiate
previous history. The fact remains, howevir, that
the oil companies came to Mexico less than forty
years ago with the full encouragement of the
President, Porfirio Diaz. His successors, transient
arrd often fugitive figures, have been willing from
time to time to sign away for ready cash concessions
that were not theirs to give. Diaz; at the beginning
of the century, was the undisputed ruler of a very
9r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
prosperous republic. He was the one man since
ihe ixpulsion of the Viceroys, who could without
affectalion, claim to speak with authority for the
whole Republic. He rvas, however, antecedent to
the Cardenas Six Years Plan and all his acts are
now officially anathema.
The man who created the Mexican Eagle Com-
pany was very far from being the penurious adven-
iurer who, in popular fiction, seeks his fortune
-peoples.
among backward -Mexican fle was, in fact, the
greate-st figure in development, second
only to the President in importance and esteem'
feetman Pearson (later Viscount Cowdray)
went to Mexico for the first time at Christmas
r88g. He was already one of the most prominent
.rrglr.... of his time, the head and sole motive
foie of the firm that had successfully executed
great engineering works in many parts of the world,
ind a min of substantial private fortune. He came
to Mexico at the President's invitation to cut the
Mexican Grand Canal, the largest public work
yet undertaken in the Republic. This contract
was the beginning of an association with the countfY
which endld only in his death, during which he
left his mark on every asPect of the national
organization. His largest rarorks in Mexico were
thE reconstruction of the Tehuantepec Railway,
and the construction of its terminal ports, Salina
Cruz and Coatzacoalos which until the opening
of the Panama Canal, provided the main trans-
continental route from Atlantic to Pacific, and the
creation of a new port at Vera Cruz, where, under
his impulse the old city was cleansed, its streets
..purr.i, water and drainage supplied-work so
*.11 don. as to withstand 25 years of wanton
92
OIL
neglect ; it is only now beginning to relapse into
its original squalor. Wherever his operations
moved, improved sanitation followed. He set a
new standard of healthy living conditions, draining
swamps, clearing bush, tapping sources of pure
water. His object was not primarily philanthropic ;
these things were the requirements of efficient
labour and appeared as by-products of his work.
The conditions of his labour gangs were not up to
the standard of modern European developments,
but they were superior to anything yet attempted
in Mexico. He worked in close association with the
President who found in him and his staff men who
could be relied on to keep their word and overcome
difficulties rather than plead them as excuses for
evading their obligations.
It was not until rgor that Pearson turned his
attention to oil, and he came to the subject without
any previous acquaintance with its complexities.
More than once there were rumours that he was
ruined, which approximated nearly to the truth ;
only his perseverance, his great financial resources,
his ability to learn quickly from experience, and a
little luck, brought him to final success. The story
of the venture is told in detail by Mr. J. A. Spender
in the official biography.
He needed oil for the use of his locomotives on
the Tehuantepec Railway ; his surveyors had
lately reported local seepages on the Isthmus near
San Cristobal on a tributary of the Coatzacoalos
River and at a place on the River Pedregal further
East. These reports were no doubt in his mind
when, stopping for a day at Laredo in Texas, he
found the place in a state of wild excitement over
the discovery, two months before, of the famous
93
ROBBERT' UNDER LAW
Lucas Gusher at Spindle Top. This fired his
imagination and he promptly cabled his agents to
secure options on large areas round his properties
where oil had been observed. These instructions
were amplified later from New York. He engaged
the engineer who had made the lucky drilling at
Spindle Top and with the least possible delay had
begun the development of the San Cristobal-
Capoacan field. He quickly learned, however,
that the discovery of oil was only the first stage of
the undertaking which needed a continuous series
of successes to make profitable ; the crude oil had
to be controlled, refined, conveyed and sold. For
a long time expenscs greatly exceeded the returns.
In rgoz he r,r'as talking of 'cutting his losses and
clearing out' when he had spent dI,5oo,ooo.
Before the end he had spent three times this sum.
It was not until I906 that he felt justified in erecting
a refinery and tankage, at the cost of a further
d5oo,ooo. It was not until rgoS that the refinery
began work.
Pearson soon gave up the idea of cutting his
losses and clearing out. He had learned the first
principle of the industry, that it must be conducted
on a huge scale, or not at all. In 19o6 he obtained
concessions from the Federal Government and the
State Governments of Vera Cruz, San Luis Potosi,
Tamaulipas, Tabasco and Chiapas for further
exploration and exploitation rights. In March
19o6 he owned about 6oo,ooo acres of oil land and
had zoo,ooo-soorooo acres more on royalty leases.
These were not obtained by mere strokes of the
Presidential pen, as is popularly believed in Mexico.
A staff of lawyers was continuously employed for
years verifying titles and scrutinizing the transfers.
94
OIL
The records of land-ownership were often inex-
tricably confused ; every kind of fraudulent impos-
ture was attempted on the Englishman who had
gone into the market so extravagantly for land that
had hitherto been held as valueless.
And still the business showed no profit. Drilling
had been continuous but San Cristobal remained
the only workable field as yet discovered. San
Cristobal only promised a two years' life and in
those two years things grew worse instead of better.
Pearson went in for marketing oil in competition
with the American firm of Waters Pierce who up
tillthen had enjoyed a profitable monopoly in
Mexico ; when the produce of his own fields fell
short of the market commitment, he was obliged
to buy and import ; he soon found himself buying
more than he produced. In June rgog he bought
4oo,ooo barrels of oil from Texas, while the input
of his refinery was dor.r,n to 3,ooo barrels a day.
A further field at Furbero which was allied with
Pearson proved a disappointment. In the end,
when success did come, it was not in the Isthmus
where he had originally started, but 4oo miles
north of it, where he had not been particularly
hopeful. In January rgro a shallow, highly pro-
ductive well was struck at Tanhuijo and in Feb-
ruary Potrero No r gave promise of a rich field.
Now, after he had borne all the costs and anxiety
himself, Pearson for the first time felt justified in
coming before the public and in May the Mexican
Eagle Company made its first public issue of shares.
In December of the same year Potrero No 4 was
struck; a mine that has become famous among
oilmen. For two months it ran to waste at a rate
of roorooo barrels a day, before the engineers could
95
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
succeed in getting the immense flow under control.
This well ran for eight years before it was exhausted
and yielded over roorooorooo barrels, having nar-
rowly escaped total destruction in l9r4 when it
was set on fire by lightning and burned for seven
months. It was the discovery of Potrero 4 which
proved decisive in the competition with Waters
Pierce Company, which until then was going none
too favourably for Pearson. With the end of this
conflict, on Pearson's terms, came the beginning
of the great system of commercial alliances of which
the Mexican Eagle now forms a part. By rgt8
Mexico had become the second greatest oil-pro-
ducing country in the world. It has recently lost
its position for reasons rvhich will appear later.
Oil is still there when conditions allow its produc-
tion. The history of its discovery is not the familiar
cinematographic tale of the destitute heroine finding
a fortune on her mortgaged farmyard and living
happily ever afterwards, but it is, in its own way,
just as exciting.
4
Did the oil companies exercise a malevolent
influence on local life and politics ?
Last summer a naive little pamphlet named Tlu
Good Neighbor, by Mr. Oscar Morineau was being
distributed free in Mexico City to tourists, who
looked as though they might have bourgeois sym-
pathies. Other, more outspoken literature was
kept for fellow socialists. The thesis which Mr.
Morineau had been turned on to defend was that
Mexico was not communist, still welcomed private
enterprise and further foreign capital investment,
96
OIL
but had been driven to drastic action in the par-
ticular case of the oil companies because of their
licentious behaviour. ' The origin t tl" oil industry
in Mexico,' he says, 'is stairud with blood, aiolerce,
plunder, corruption and intrigue of all kinds. We mal
forget crimes and mistakes of tlu past, prouided tie
organilation or industr2 committing them later justfies
its existerue from a social point of oiew. Unfortunitel2
tlu oil companies did not haae the necessar) foruight io
co-operate in the deaelopment of the regions in which
tluy operated . . . they teft no traces of culture . . .
only saloorc and places of prostitution flourished . . .
we are frml2 determined to preaent priaate enterprises frorn
becoming positioe factors of corruption.'
General Cardenas in his broadcast message to
the nation, of March r8th, r93B said '. . . Another
ineuitable cltnequence of tlte preserue of the oil companies,
strongl2 characteriled b2 tluir anti-social tendercies, has
been their persistent and improper interaention in national
ffiirs.'
' Tlu oil companies' support to strong rebel factions
against the constituted goaernment in the Huasteca region
of Vera Cruz and in the Isthmus d Tehuantepu diring
tluyears rgrT to rgzo zi no longer a matterfoi discussion
b2 an2one. Nor is an)one ignorant of the fact that in
later periods and eaen at the present time, the oil companies
haae almos't openly fanned the ambitiorc of elemenis dis-
contented with the country's gouernment They haae
-.
had mone2, arms and munitions for rebellion . . but
for the progress of the countr2rlfor establishing an economic
equilibrium with their workers through a just compensa-
tion of labour, for maintaining hygienic conditioru . . .
they haoe neither mone) nor the desire to subtrart it from
tlu aolume d their profits.'
A few days earlier, Sr. Lombardo Toledano,
97
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
speaking to the C.T.M. GeneralCongress, had said:
'- fou reiall, comrades, lnw tlu wealth of tlu oil cornpanies
was atquired in Mcxico . . . How nary wretched-
Indians in Vna Crul, in Tamaulipas, in Tabasco, and
in otlur parts of the countr2 were sacrifued !, Tlu2^
cmphyed iompany potice and, during tlu fatefu! dof .o.f
Rcaoiution, eaen-hid a wlule armlt at their seroice. Like
tlu condottieri of Renaissarce ltalt, these traitors to tluir
country were paid b2 the companies to protect their pro-
perties.'
' St.t.-.nts of this kind were the fuel for most of
the oratory which blazed in Mexico at the time of
the expropriation. They were widely accepted in
the country and even outside it where so much
pubtic opinion is formed by the readilg of heartlines.
Wetl-intintioned citizens of the U.S.A. and Eng-
land, who had no special interest in the questiol,
became vaguely awire that 'there was a lot to be
said on both sides ; the oil companies did not
behave at all well.' What is the truth ?
The charges are never substantiated by detail
against Mexican Eagle and the question is rather
philosophic than historic ; what ought the beha-
,io,rt t-o be, of a large, wealthy corporation in a
small and poor State ? The oil companies came to
Mexico *hen it was a wealthy and stable country ;
the revolutionaries brought it to ruin ; one by one
they obliterated its former sources of wealth except
petioleum, which the companies managed to keep
for ten years with a very
'decline)from rgzt
going (though
[."ry until they occupied a position -of
disproportional importance. - It was admittedly
antm-barrassing position for the republican govern-
ment to find tliemselves the sovereigns of a vastly
richer subject ; as we shall see the solution which
9B
OIL
commended itself to them was to ruin that industry
too and reduce the whole country to uniform
squalor. Was it improper for the Companies to
resist this solution ?
It is manifestly unreasonable for General Car-
denas to plead, as he did in his Note to the British
Government, that the Mexican Eagle was an
exclusively Mexican concern answerable only to
local law, and at the same time deny them the
right to take any interest in the procesrls by which
the law was made. The General, too, is,-like all
revohrtionary leaders, in a somewhat ambiguous
position with regard to revolutions. The Crown
of Spain might logically claim that all rebellion
was of its nature, wrong ; no subsequent govern-
Ignt- of independent Mexico has that right.
'Traitor' has come to mean one who did not
support the last successful act ofrevolution. General
Cardenas's personal vanity enables him to take the
logical hurdles without a spill. All governments
before th-e splendid day in 1935 when, with clemency
unprecedented in Mexican politics, he gave his
former boss, General Calles, twelve hourslo leave
the country alive, have been unjust and their
personnel traitors (he would probably make an
exception of Jtarez and Madero ; for the latter,
sentiment is still strong ; he and General Cardenas
would have found few points of agreement).
Thus a corporation which has attempted to *oik
harmoniously with his predecessors is damned as
an ally of the Enemies of the People.
- 'Working harmoniously' with any Mexican
institution involves a good deal thaf might be
regarded askance in Europe. On occasions no
doubt the oil companies, faced with the alternatives
E'
99
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
of curtailing their work or of paying the customary,
irregular levies of the political bosses, conformed to
local usage ; there are few concerns in Mexico,
native or foreign, private or public, which are
innocent of this. The majority of the courts and
the government officials are venal ; that is they
expect and are expected to supplement their
meagre salaries as best they can. A bought decision
is not necessarily an unjust one. The government
inspectors whose duty it is to examine machinery
and see that the prescribed safety devices are
employed, expect large tips not to certify defective
factories but to approve efficient ones ; if the tip
is not paid they refuse their certificate and the
company is fined ; if the company appeals, they
may be left unheard or a higher official may be
sent who will expect a correspondingly higher
bribe. A wealthy institution like the oil com-
panies naturally becomes the target for a con-
iinuous fusillade of malicious and irresponsible
litigation. They soon learned to their cost that a
clear case did not guarantee a favourable decision.
It is cheaper and quicker to conform to the custom
of the country however reprehensible it seems.
In the matter of political interference the truth,
as far, at arry rate, as Mexican Eagle is concerned,
seems to be the exact reverse of the popular belief.
If the company is censurable with regard to its
political behaviour it is that it did too little, not
too much. They were in Mexico for the PurPose
of producing oil and they stuck to their posts
resolutely through all the giddy changes of local
politics. When the American drillers fled, the
British stayed on, continued to drill, store, Pros-
pect, though rival armies were maneuvring all
IOO
OIL
round them. They paid their taxes to whomever
was in a de fado position to demand them. When
the whole country was given up to guerilla bands,
looting, burning and massacring, they armed their
men to defend their own lives and homes and the
company's property. When the Federal Govern-
ment had ceased to function and a revolutionary
general was in a position to demand blackmail,
they sometimes paid it ; that is what General
Cardenas means when he talks of their financing
rebellion. The Mexican Eagle staff stayed at
their work in conditions of imminent danger and
concentrated on their work. In the light of recent
events it is easy to say that they should have done
more ; that they owed obligations to the country
where they worked and should have defended more
than their own possessions ; that they were too
tolerant of the succession of scoundrels who emerged
from anarchy into brief periods of power. When
all the decent elements in the country were united
against Calles they did nothing and allowed the
successful revolt, when it came, to be the work of
Cardenas and Toledano. That is, I think, an
arguable indictment; but, as many American
ambassadors have learned to their cost, it is diffi-
cult to meddle profitably in Mexican affairs, very
easy to deplore events that take place there, very
difficult to foresee them. The companies' modera-
tion may yet be rewarded and the extreme folly
of Cardenas and Toledano may turn to their
benefit.
Ironically enough, at the early stages of the
conflict, one of the charges was that the oil com-
panies were anti-democratic in sentiment and sold
their oil to the fascist powers. Nothing has been
IOI
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
said about this lately, since the Mexican Govern-
ment has found little enthusiasm for the confiscated
oil in lawJoving countries and has been obliged
to deal mainly with the fascist states.
The further charge, that the oil companies failed
to promote culture among their workmen, is not,
I think, seriously made by anyone in Mexico and
is intended solely for foreign consumption. What,
I wonder, did Mr. Morineau expect the companies
to do ? They paid high wages and the men spent
them in Mexican fashion, on loutish enjoyments.
'Saloons and houses of prostitution flourished' ;
what does Mr. Morineau expect the companies to
do about that ? When, in time of manifest peril,
the companies organized protective guards, Mexican
patriots pretended to be outraged ; what would
they say if the companies had formed vigilance
committees and patrolled their workers' homes with
squads of women police ? That, indeed, would be
an intolerable imposition ; the workman may well
talk of slavery when his employer claims the right
to supervise his leisure and direct how his wages
are to be spent. The companies did much to secure
healthy conditions for their men, and were deliber-
ately prevented from doing more, but this point
belongs to the further question of whether the
men's claims were bona fde grievances. The com-
plaints quoted from Mr. Morineau and General
Cardenas mean nothing less than that the com-
panies did not usurp the proper functions of local
government. They paid high wages and high
tar(es; the workmen misspent the wages and the
politicians misspent the taxes, with the result that
the country did not benefit as richly as it might
have done had it been differently inhabited. That
r02
OL
is hardly the companies, fault ; but supposing
that t!.y had-
adopted a different podi ;;;
supposing, as would obviously not havi happened
in fact, the local authorities 'had allowed thim to
make.their- properties in a state within the state, a
model settlement standing in perpetual reproach
to the ramshackle and savage- lands surrounding
!h*. Supposing they had taken their worker"s
in hand from birth to death, had them born in a
company's-hospital, educated in company,s schools,
entertained in the company,s playing'fields and
theatres, edified in the co-pa"yt li-b.ury, p..r-
sioned offin the company,s alms houses and-buined
up in the.company's crematorium ; if they became
company's men instead of Cardenas,s. There
indeed would be an imperialism to enrage a patriotic
Mexican ; a development that could-ont1i end in
the political separation of the oil fields from the
rest of the country.
One can imagine the charabanc loads of proud
tourists driving out to the companies, domains . . .
" And here, folks, we turn our backs on the dark
ages and come into the_light of the zoth century
progress. You are now leaving Mexico and entei-
ing Petroland. Th-e queue outside the gates are
appryrnq for Petroland citizenshfi ; since
Y.A.T:
the Toledano-Cardenas war applications foi citire.r-
ship have greatly exceeded the quota ; but tem-
porary
*grkigS permits- are being issued to refugees
who satisfy the medical requirements. The blSck-
house on the right is the headquarters of the petro-
Iand gendarmerie. On the l-ef.! you see the Doheny
shrine. This beautiful marble statue was erected
at the cost of over a million American dollars by
admirers in Tea Pot Dome. On the right is thl
r03
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
Ambassador Wilson memorial note the native
woman laying flowers at the feet of Mr. Doheny'
I am glad-to tell you that in Petroland this cult is
rapidly replacing the retrograde devotion to saints
and crosses which we have noted uP country
the Company's post-office is here. You may buy
Petroland stampi in all denominations. No doubt
some of you would like to send a postcard of the
late Sir Henri Deterding back home and after-
wards, if you step round to the Hail and Farewell
Bureau you will each be given an ornamental
bottle of crude oil to take away as a souvenir . . ."
6
The expropriations, once decreed, were carried
out speedily and effectively ; property of all kinds
was taken without being inventoried, safes were
forced and documents, title deeds and cash carried
off. In practice, as in theory, the whole process
conformed to the new, Nazi statecraft.
Every feature of the Cardenas regime-except the
catch-phrases-is an echo of Central Europe.
Government is by a semi-military executive which
overrides judicature and legislature ; popular con-
sent is achieved by agitation ; education is a depart-
ment of propaganda, religion banned from the
schools and its place taken by nationalism and
national grievances; the basic assumption of
foreign policy is that the democracies will not fight ;
force may be used to steal what force will not
defend. There is the same chain of cause and con-
sequence ; the Government tells the people that
they are miserable and that the cure of their ills is
violent breach of international order ; when the
beneficial effects do not follow, the breach is held
up to admiration as a positive achievement-an end
in itself--which must be defended by further sacri-
fice. That has been the result in Mexico. The
expropriations were first proposed as a means of
raising social conditions; they are now an excuse
rrB
OIL
for depressing them. Finances are desperate.
General Cardenas has found that the law-abiding
will-not buy his petrol and the outlaws cannot pay
for it, _ The temptation to join the Barter Group
would be overwhelming were it not for the question
of indemnity. General Cardenas has repeatedly
offered to pay compensation for the exprbpriated
properties. Since the fall of Porfirio Diaz, Mexico
has been a consistent defaulter on her public debts,
which amount to about ten times herlotal annual
revenue ; she has paid neither the principal nor the
interest on her earlier expropriations of agricultural
properties. By taking the oil properties she was
adding a sum to her capital liabilities which she
could not conceivably pay, but until she has actually
defaulted it is difficult for the State Department at
Washington to accuse her of a breach of inter-
national law. Accordingly, in the face of all facts,
she maintains her readiness to pay. Suggestions
that she should pay for her theft by returning a per-
centage of the stolen property are too naive to be
considered seriously anywhere except in the Mexican
press. In March rg3B, General Cardenas attempted
to cash in on the popular
-Theseenthusiasm by raising a
loan of d5,ooo,ooo. bonds *e.e io bear-no
interest for ten years but to remain in the sub-
scriber's possession as 'diplomas of patriotism,.
Prodigious attempts were made to stimulate gene-
rosity. Government agents distributed live stock
to the peasants in the vicinity of the capital and
what had not been devoured overnight was returned
next mo-rning at the Opera House to the accompani-
ment of military music and news-cameras. About
dzo,ooo was raised. In July the loan was closed
and the fund diverted to pay the troops.
II9
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
The situation at the time of writing is a deadlock,
the issue of which must depend on the degree of
pressure which the United States can bring. There
is a market for bootleg petrol in Japan, Germany
and Italy; an exclusive barter agreement on the
Central European model might save General
Cardenas's finances, but he wants money not
material and within his country he has to reckon
with the Marxism he has fostered in every depart-
ment of national life; it would be difficult for
Toledano to accept the Nazification of the coun-
try ; can Cardenas now dispense with him ? And,
further, would the ' Good Neighbour' policy bear
the strain of the transformation ?
r20
CHAPTER FIVE
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
I
3
Ithink it is an open point whether, in r9ro, a
patriotic Mexican-or, for that_ matter, a dis-
interested foreigner-should have been a suPPorter
of Porfirio Diaz. It is characteristic of Mexican
r36
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
history that at almost any period one looks at
there are abundant reasons for deploring the
existing regime ; one turns the pages and realizes
that one was wrong ; the cure was always worse
than the ill. This consideration alone should make
one sceptical of betterment by the overthrow of
General Cardenas.
Politicatty the Diaz regime had the weakness of
all autocracies, that are not based on royalty, the
difficulty of succession. Socially there was every
reason to complain that the peons had not shared
at all in the general prosperity and that the
Mexicans of the more fortunate classes had not a
proportionate place of influence in their country's
development. After the long period of peace it
seemed reasonable to believe that the people had
become accustomed to orderly conditions and
would not again lapse into anarchy. The days of
bankruptcy seemed over ; I\{exico was now rich
enough to contemplate a more equitable distribu-
tion of her property. Wealthier Mexicans had been
educated in England, France and the United States
the Mexican educational system never re-
-for
covered from the Reforms-and had learned to
respect representative institutions ; they could be
trusted to work a parliamentary system in a public
spirited manner. These were the assumptions ofthe
Maderists ; they proved tragically false but they
seemed reasonable enough at the time.
It is not the object of this chapter to recount the
details of the decline and fall of Mexico, but to
trace their connexions u'ith the United States and
explain the peculiar relations that in consequence
subsist between the two peoples.
Francisco Madero had every reason to believe
r37
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
that his policy would be sympathetic to the greater
part of the American people ; everything which he
represented had long been a boasted feature of
their own system. His rebellion was not a prole-
tarian movement ; the peasants' revolt in Morelos,
which had been growing against Diaz, coincided
with his own but developed into a movement
against him. The kind of state which Madero
hoped to bring into existence was very much like
those that existed across the border. He was the
type of President Wilson's 'good man '. Yet of
the numerous causes to which his failure was due,
one of the chief was the open opposition of the
American Ambassador, another Wilson, who had
a different conception of the country's requirements.
The guilt of Ambassador Wilson has been
itemized by Gruening and seems indisputable. He
was appointed to Mexico in the last days of the
Diaz regime; he had no previous diplomatic
career to qualify him for the post ; his brother was
Senator John M. Wilson, Republican boss of the
State of Washington. There is a curiously
ambiguous phrase employed in American politics,
the 'tie-up' ; it may mean a family connexion,
a personal friendship, or direct paid employment.
Ambassador Wilson was 'tied up'-by means of
John M. Wilson and Richard Ballinger, Taft's
first secretary of the interior-with the Guggen-
heims whose American Smelting and Refining
Company had great interests in Mexico which were
in direct competition with the Maderos. It is
impossible for a foreigner to judge how much
importance can be attached to these political-
commercial 'tie-ups'. What is certain is that
from the moment of Wilson's arrival the American
I38
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
Embassy became the headquarters of a group of
American business men who had ambitions in the
country. It seems possible that at first this group
welcomed a change of government in the belief
that a weak President might be more amenable to
pressure. It soon became clear that Madero had
neither the inclination nor the authority to help
them. From then on Ambassador Wilson set
himself to destroy the administration, embarrassing
it directly by peremptory and sometimes unreason-
able claims, and undermining its prestige abroad
by the information he sent to Washington. It is
doubtful whether Madero would have survived
long, even if he had been given sympathetic
treatment ; Ambassador Wilson's opposition made
his fall a certainty. In the summer of rgr r he was
forecasting Madero's failure. In January rglz he
described the country as ' seething with discontent'
and the ' area of actual and open rebellion against
the Government' as 'not inconsiderable'. In
February of that year his reports persuaded the
Government at Washington to mobilize the entire
regular army of the United States along the border,
and to reinforce it rvith the National Guard and a
recruiting campaign. News of this man@uvre,
spreading throughout Mexico, was interpreted
as having only one meaning ; that public order
had broken down and that the American Govern-
ment believed Madero's regime was about to fall.
Immediately, all over the country, politicians who
had been suspendingjudgment declared forrebellion;
bands of brigands became armies and a period of
seven years civil war had begun.
On March r, the Orozco rebellion broke out in
Chihuaha; next day, before he had had time to
r39
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
inform himself of the gravity of the situation, and
while his colleagues were still waiting on events,
Wilson urged American nationals to evacuate large
areas of the country. On March I5 he was calling
for arms to defend the American colony in Mexico
City. Three days.later he_ telegraphed for a small
armoury-rooo rifles and r,ooo,ooo cartridges-
for the use ' for patriotic motives ' of two of his
American friends. One of these was Mr. George
Beck, who, among other activities, was a director
of a company known as the ' Tampico News Com-
pany' ; this company, it was found at the begin-
ning of Muy, was engaged in running guns to
Zapata, one of the most ferociously destructive of
the rebel leaders. On August zz, he reported con-
ditions in six states to be 'as bad as at any time
during the two revolutions, if not worse' and
Madero as 'incompetent to meet the situation'.
On the same day, two hours later, he was pro-
testing that the President, who, according to his
own reports, was no longer in effective control, was
evincing a 'growing anti-American spirit' and a
'preference for European markets' and was
'harassing and discriminating against American
interests'. As disorder spread Ambassador Wilson
pressed Madero for 'a comprehensive and cate-
gorical statement' as to the measures he proposed
to protect American interests. At the height of its
troubles the administration replied patiently and
in detail to all Wilson's complaints, showing such
a proportion of them to be unjustified that it is
impossible to attribute them to anything but
malice. On January 7th, rgr3, Wilson opened the
new year by describing the whole situation as
' gloomy, if not hopeless '. A week later he called
r40
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
for a warship. On February gth began the period
known as the ' tragic ten days'.
Up to this date, it is difficult to distinguish
between cause and effect. Wilson had said the
country was lapsing into anarchy; it did lapse
into anarchy; it is arguable that he was more
foresighted than his colleagues and that he was
merely doing his duty in communicating his appre-
hensions to his Government ; that is arguable if
not convincing. During the ' tragic ten days' his
conduct was grossly irregular.
The course of events is recent and familiar his-
tory. The rebellion in Mexico City was the work of
a garrison of Boo men, three batteries of artillery
and the palace guard. It was enough to suppress
normal activity in the city but not enough to
dominate it. Wilson wired that public opinion,
' both native and foreign', was 'overwhelmingly'
against Madero ; he called for 'drastic instruc-
tions, perhaps of a menacing character', which
were not forthcoming. Instead Wilson persuaded
his colleagues to ask for Madero's resignation. The
President refused. The American Embassy now
became, in the words of the Cuban Minister,
Marquez Sterling, ' the centre of a true conspiracy '.
The determining event of the ten days was the
defection to the rebels of General Victoriano
Huerta ; the day before this took place Wilson
wired 'Huerta notifies me to expect some action
that will remove Madero from power.' At noon
next day he wired that the coup had taken place ;
it had been planned for that time but actually took
place an hour and a half later. The evidence that
Wilson was a party to the plot is overwhelming.
That evening the meeting between the leader of
r4t
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
the rebellious garrison, Felix Diaz, and General
Iluerta, former commander of the defence, took
place in the American Embassy. Healths were
drunk to the new regime. Someone bothered to
ask, 'And what wilt be the fate of poor Madero ?'
'Oh they will put Senor Madero in a madhouse,'
said Wilson. 'Ai for the other' (Pino Suarez) 'if
they kill him it will be no great loss We must
not meddle in the domestic affairs of Mexico.'
Gustavo Madero and Basso, the Intendente of the
Palace, had already been murdered. It was clear
to everyone in the city that Francisco Madero's life
was in danger. Wilson concerned himself only with
the recognition of the new government. But
suspicions had already been aroused in Washington
about the part their ambassador was playing. He
was instrucled to see that no harm came to Madero.
' . . . This Government earnestly hopes to hear
that he has been dealt with in a manner consistent
with peace and humanity. You may in your dis-
cretion make use of these ideas in your conversation
with General Huerta.' Wilson, however, reassured
them that there was' no Prospect ofinjury ' to either
the deposed President or Vice-President ; he urged
the relognition of the new government as consti-
tutional, popular, and, in the unanimous opinion
of all observers, the only means to avoid further
bloodshed.
It is a gloomy coincidence that in the two
blackest crimes of recent Mexican history-the
murders of Madero and of Pro-there was in each
case an American Ambassador at hand who, alone,
could have averted it. In Mexico everyone
knew that Madero was in danger. The Cuban
Minister, Madero's father and his mother appealed
r42
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
directly to Wilson ; at last his wife overcame her
resentment and came to him in person ; she has
left an account of her interview, printed by Gruen-
ing, on whom most of the evidence quoted in this
section is drawn. She went with her sister-in-law ;
the two ladies were kept waiting while the Ambas-
sador was summoned from the Palace where he was
at that moment in conference with Huerta ; when
he came his manner was 'brusque'.
Mme. Madero said, 'I want you to use your
influence to protect the lives of my husband and of
the other prisoners.'
'That is a responsibility I do not care to under-
take, either for myself or my government.'
'Will you be good enough, then, to send this tele-
gram to President Taft.' She produced the draft
of a message which she had attempted unsuccess-
fully to send through the normal service.
Wilson said, ' It is not necessary to send thisr' but
on pressure, put it in his pocket saying, 'A11 right.
I will send it.' He then, in her distress, proceeded
to lecture Mme. Madero on the cause of her hus-
band's downfall. . . . 'He never wanted to con-
sult with me . he had peculiar ideas . the
people rvere not satisfied . . . I knew all this was
going to happen . . . it would not have been good
policy to warn him .'
Mme. Madero pressed that, whatever his short-
comings, he should be allowed to leave the country.
Wilson would promise no more than that his bodily
safety would be seen to.
Two days later the prisoners were murdered in
circumstances which left no doubt that the crime
was premeditated and condoned. It is charitable to
suppose that lVilson was not in Huerta's confidence
r43
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
in this matter, but however shocked he was by the
tragedy, he concealed his emotion in the telegrams
in which he announced it. ' I am disposed to accept
the Government's version of the affair,' he said,
'and consider it a closed incident.'
4
On March 4 the Taft administration retired,
Woodrow Wilson became President of the United
States, and the policy of the State Department at
Washington experienced a radical change. Huerta
was now in power-precariously and disgrace-
fully, but with the possibility of redeeming
himself and restoring order ; his prestige de-
pended very largely on the assumption that he had
the support of the United States. The onlyjustifica-
tion for the means he had taken to get power would
be the use he made of it ; the only justification of
the support which Washington, in the person of
their Ambassador, had given him when he was a
rebel, would be continued and vigorous support now
that he was de facto President.
Huerta was the antithesis of Madero ; it was pos-
sible he might succeed where his predecessor had
failed ; for generations, now, most Mexican Presi-
dents had reached their position by violence ; the
sort of problems-Villa and Zapata in particular-
which confronted the new government needed ruth-
less solutions ; besides the treacherous guards there
were many decent men in Huerta's party-Pedro
Lascurain, for example. It was not inconceivable
that a tolerable government might emerge. Ambas-
sador Wilson exerted himself in every way to pro-
TM
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
vide Huerta with a fair chance ; his dispatches
m^inimized the opposition, misinterpreted thl views
of his colleagues, suppressed unsympathetic consular
reports, and continually urged the State Depart-
ment to give Huerta their recognition. It- was
useless. In July he was recallid and retired.
President Wilson believed that Huerta had done
wrong and should be punished for it, no matter
who else suffered with him. The punishment has
lasted many years now and no one his suffered more
than the innocent.
. During the civil wars which followed, American
' recognition ' became the label of the d.e juregovern-
ment I these usually became defacto because ricogni-
tion meant the exclusive right to buy arms. On"e of
President Wilson's first acts was to reply to the
message- ofcongratulation from Huerta witha simple
acknowledgmentaddressed tohim as,General,. Tiis
was on March gth. In August, after Ambassador
Wilson's recall, the Presiderrf in his message to Con-
gress said, 'It is now our duty to show what true
neutrality will do to enable the people of Mexico to
set their affairs in order. We cannot be the partisan
of either party .'
Either party' was an unduly simple statement
^'
of the situation. There was in fact one party, then
in power, Huerta's, which still commandld the
adherence of those who preferred stability to
revenge or loot and there was ranged againsi it a
multitude of heterogeneous rebels. - For i time an
attempt was made to give them a semblance of
unity by naming them collectively , Constitu-
tionals' but they had nothing in common except
the desire to overthrow the gover.rment and weie
soon at war among themselves. All the leaders of
R.U.L,
t45
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
this period-Villa, Zapata, Catranza, Alvarado,-
Cedillo, Obregon-with the single exception of
Calles who liveJ in affiuent exile in the United States,
have died violently, all at different times and in
different circumstances. Villa, sniped one duy
during his retirement, Zapata ambushed by his
-when
hosts arriving for a dinner party, Carranza
murdered in his sleep in a lonely hut on the road to
exile, Alvarado before a firing squad, Cedillo
hunted to death in the hills ; Obregon, most
curiously of all, was attacked by a- gioul.young
artist ai a dinner table surrounded by his own
adherents ; the boy was tortured before he was
executed, tut no explanation was ever published
of the fact that while five cartridges were fired
from his revolver, fourteen bullets were found
in Obregon's body. Huerta died of his imprison-
ment irithe U.S.A. It is popularly believed in
Mexico that he was poisoned. The various rebels
represented different ilements of discontent' Cedillo
u.rd Cur.unza were of the type of rebel baron in
King Stephen's
- reign, Zapata led a kind of ' ja'-
qrr.r:i. ' ; Villa *is an intolerable blackguard,
guilty oi .r..y conceivable public and - private
itroiity, who iras lately been represented to the
cinemajgoing public as a rough and generous Robin
Hood ; et"iiuao a hooligan of the type--of the
gangster bosses of Chicago in the '2os ; Calles and
bUigo" appear somewhat more presentable than
"of
most theii fellows, with strenuous political ambi-
tions. The armies of these leaders included any
kind of follower, fierce Yaqui Indians from the
North, simple peons who had been told that by
taking armi they would get land and liberty, Pro-
fessioial soldiers'following their immediate superiors,
r46
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
pure criminals ; besides these there was an organi-
zation which was to play an increasingly important
part in local affairs-the 'Industrial Workers of
the World', later to be renamed less pretentiously
the Confederation Regional de Obreros Mexi-
canos ; this society, popularly known as the CROM,
had its headquarters in Vera Cruz with branches in
all the industrial centres ; it is led by Morones who
has made himself very rich by means of it. It was
a part of the international communistic organization
which developed in the great cities of the world
trventy-five years ago. In recent years its import-
ance has been overshador,r,ed by the rival organiza-
tion of Lombardo Toledano, the C.T.M., but for ten
years it ruled Yucatan, Tabasco and Vera Cruz and
exercised predominant influence on many occasions
in Mexico City ; Obregon was its ally. It differed
from other revolutionary organizations in its atti-
tude to the Church ; to the Liberals the Church
n,as something to rob ; robbery had to be justified
by abuse ; but the revolutionary leaders often
called for priests on the death bed, and encouraged
their womenfolk to attend mass ; the CROM rvas
fixedly and militantly atheistic and sought to destroy
religion as such. It w'as also narrower in its aims ;
the Liberals avowed a zeal for the general welfare,
some of them almost exclusively for the majority,
who lived on the soil ; the CROM aimed purely at
the power of the smail section who worked in indus-
trial concerns, to destroy the commercial organiza-
tion under which they worked and give them con-
trol of the wealth, and so of the policy of the nation.
It is customary for writers, according to their views,
to attach particular obloquy to one or other of these
parties. The truth is that the atrocities committed
r47 L2
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
by all r{ere so many and so hideous that it is icllc to
differentiate. Poor Huerta has gone down to his-
tory rvith the label of 'bloodstained', but his
crimes seem mild in comparison with those of his
successors.
President Wilson can hardly be blamed for not
foreseeing these developments. All he knew was
that a bad man was in power in Mexico ; he set
about looking for a good one. So ill informed was
he of local conditions that he flirted with the idea
of backing Villa-from every conceivable point of
view, patriotic, moral, international, the worst of
the lot. Finally he decided on Carranzawho had an
amiable, almost a venerable appearance. He had
been governor of the state of Coahuila under Diaz
and ruled with the usual accompaniments of the
padded army list, purchasable justice, and com-
mercial graft ; he was no worse, perhaps rather better
than the usual run of governors. He was prepared
to back Madero provided he was left undisturbed ;
he was prepared to back, had, in fact, already
backed Huerta on the same terms. But Madero
had squandered the savings of Diaz, Huerta needed
money and did not want a disproportionate amount
to fall into provincial hands. There was a disagree-
ment about the sum of 5o,ooo pesos which Carranza
had stolen from the banks, so Carranza declared
against him and for the ' Constitutionalists'.
Huerta meanwhile carried on government of a
kind and it became clear at Washington that more
definite steps were needed to upset him. In Febru-
ary ryr4 Wilson lifted the embargo on arms, thus
ensuring, if not their victory, the ability of the
' Constitutionalists' to remain in the field inde-
finitely. In April, on the flimsiest provocation, he
t48
THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR
went very much further; he occupied Vera Cruz
thus stopping a supply of arms that were due to be
landed there for Huerta. This decided Huerta's
fate, just as, three generations before, Miramon's
had been decided at the same place, but the n ar-
like intervention was not particularly welcome to
Carranza. A curious situation ensued in lvhich
Wilson attempted to assist Cananza, first on certain
conditions, then on no conditions at all, and Car-
ranza continued to repudiate his help. Villa was
already at rvar with Carranza; he now cheerfully
went to \r'ar on his own account with the United
States ; n'ith the arms the Americans had sent him
he began a series of outrages along the border. On
January roth, 1916 he lined up sixteen American
engineers at Santa Ysabel' and shot them ; on
March gth he attacked the town of Columbus and
burned it, murdering sixteen citizens. President
Wilson ordered an army into Mexican territory to
'get Villa alive or dead'. They failed to get him.
Carranza refused all co-operation ; General Persh-
ing's expedition marched through empty country
and finally rvithdrew ; Villa was pardoned and
paid off by Carranza. Still President Wilson con-
tinued to 'recognize' him. In March r9r7 he was
formally inaugurated as President. A party mani-
festo, knorvn as ' the Constitution of Queretaro'
\r'as promulgated. Carcanza settled down to a
brief but voluptuous period of authority, charac-
terized by orgies, that have become fabulous, in the
capital, and an abandonment of the provinces to
gangster rule. It u,as during this period that
Yucatan was reducecl to permanent ruin by
Alvarado. The persecution of the Church will be
dealt with in a separate chapter. Here it may be
r49
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
noted that Carranza's attempt to stop it, more than
any other cause, brought about his death. Presi-
dent Wilson was reluctant to admit the crimes of his
protig6s ; it was only after the facts had again and
again been set before him and Catholic opinion in
America was becoming seriously inflamed, that he
sent a protest. He asked for three things : freedom
for foreigners to pursue their businesses in peace ;
an amnesty for political opponents ; a remission of
the persecution of religion. 'Nothing will shock
the civilized world more,' he wrote, 'than punitive
and vindictive action towards priests or ministers
of any Church, whether Catholic or Protestant ;
and the Government of the United States ventures
most respectfully but most earnestly to caution the
leaders of the Mexican people on this delicate and
vital matter. The treatment already said to have
been accorded priests has had a most unfortunate
effect on opinion outside of Mexico.'
Carranza accordingly went before the Congress
in December rgIB to propose a modification of the
'Constitution of Queretaro' in favour of the
Church. But Obregon had now entered into an
alliance with the CROM ; the price for their sup-
port was the continued persecution of the Church.
Obregon's supporters in Congress were therefore
instructed to reject the amendments. Carranza was
driven out and murdered. Once again American
intervention had proved disastrous.
For the next few years United States policy took
the form of mild hostility. A highly capable and
honoured Ambassador, Mr. Sheffield, was charged
with the disagreeable office of watching the steady
deterioration of the country and at the same time
of patiently pressing a long series of legal and
t50
THE GOOD NEICHBOUR
financial claims against a government lvho would
yield to nothing but force and were perfectly con-
fident that force would not be employed against
them. At last a new and very different Ambassador
was sent to employ a very different policy.
r65
CHAPTER SIX
PLAN SEXENAL
2
Another department of the Six Year Plan Exhibi-
tion which was of particular significance, lvas the
Educational section. As has been said above, the
mid-nineteenth century confiscations of the educa-
tional and charitable endowments of three hundred
years created a gap in Mexican development that
has never been filled ; from being, in its continent,
outstandingly cultured, the country became notori-
ously barbarous. Many hacendados maintained small
private schools for their dependants; here and
I9I
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
there in the time ofDiaz the religious orders, though
still officially proscribed, returned to their work
with the connivance of the govcrnors and began
patiently restoring the tradition that had been dis-
turbed. Generally speaking, however, the peons
remained illiterate and those Mexicans who could
afford it, sent their sons to school abroad. A
vigorous educational policy was needed and General
Cirdenas's zeal is undoubted; a great part of the
work he hopes to do is laudable. The truth, how-
ever, is thai he has been able to do very little, and
that little has been largely nullified by rveaknesses
is workils.
-included on lvhich he
inherent in the principlcs -
The exhibits some examples of school
furniture, painted with animals from Walt Disney
films, examples of children's work and of their text-
books and plans and models of school buildings.
With rega.d to the latter it must be remembered
that no very clear distinction was made between
what had been done and what was proposed. A
cursory inspection rvas calculated to give the impres-
sion that the whole country abounded in new, con-
crete and glass, functional school houses, a small
fraction of which had in fact been erected. More-
over the organizers had been none too scrupulo-us
in their attribution of the work of others to the
Government PIan. For example there is on the
road to Guadalupe a prominent and very imposing
girls' school rvhiih cannot fail to attrzct the notice
6f passers-by. This great building is the creation of
private chaiity. A wealthy and pious co,uple having
iost their only child, decided to devote their fortune
to a free boarding school for poor Mexican gi-rls'
They themselves planned every detail of it and left
in their will that iti management should be entrusted
r92
PLAN SEXENAL
to a committee whom they could rely upon to carry
out their intention. It was intended to be more
than a single benefaction, but a model which might
be followed by others. It is a magnificent place
unlike anything that had been seen before in
Mexico-gardens, swimming bath, playing fields,
laundry, kitchens, dormitories, library, class-rooms,
r,r,orkshops are all equipped on the scale and quality
of the most expensive European and American
establishments. The girls, coming to it, are furnished
with clothes, books, even toothbrushes, entirely free.
One feature is absent, a chapel, for religious instruc-
tion or practice of any kind is forbidden in any kind
of school ; the girls may not even say grace after
their meals. The name, even, had to be changed
by government order, for the founders had wished
to dedicate it to a saint and that was illegal. For
some years this institution has occupied a peculiar
and precarious position. It is by law the property
of the state and subject to state inspection ; the
staffare, however, still those appointed by the bene-
factors. At any moment they may be discharged
and replaced by officials from the Ministry of
Education. The government is watching them for
a suitable excuse ; girls have been visited at home
and questioned about their religious beliefs in the
hope that they may be trapped into an admission
that their teachers are symPathetic to religion.
When, therefore, some weeks before the Exhibition,
the school was unexpectedly visited by a fbrmidable
deputation from the office of education, the staff
feared the worst. To their relief the invasion
proved to have no more sinister intention than to
photograph the place in order to display it as an
example of General Cardenas's initiative.
I93
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
The Government, with so many expensive pro-
jects on its hands, can scarcely be blamed for not
having built more. What it has done, with abun-
dant inergy, is to send out from Mexico City an
arrny of enthusiastic teachers, many of whom have
suffered acutely, losing noses, ears and occasionally
their lives at the hands of the ungrateful Parents.
For the education ordained by the Government is
strictly ideological ; and its aim primarily !o +1\.
surviving religious and moral prejudices and glorify
the personnel of the dominant regime.
Aiarming stories are told by opponents of General
Cardenas about the impropriety of the instruction
in his schools. Boys and girls are said to be stripped
and exhibited naked to mixed physiology classes. I
confess I find it hard to credit. There were numer-
ous examples of the government's hygienic Propo-
ganda on vie* at the Exhibition and it seemed per-
fectly inoffensive-lively little drawings commend-
ing the use of soap and toothbrush, glT warnings
thit are certainly needed in Mexico of the dangers
of venereal disease, advice about nutritive diets and
the extermination of bed bugs-the latter could
with advantage be studied by the managers of at
least two of the leading tourist hotels. The fact
remains, however, that the new school-teachers do
seem to have aroused storms of spontaneous moral
indignation in a people not unaccustomed to libidin-
ors officials. I cannot help thinking that it is in
their supercilious attitude of brand-new city-made
enlightenment and their avowed wish to make the
children critical of their homes that the chief
grounds of their unpopularity must_be sg"qh-!. .
- It is undoubtedly true, however, that the Ministry
of Education, which is largely the creation of a
r9,[
PLAN SEXENAL
fanatical fellow called Portes Gil, does represent
the most extreme opinions in the country. This is
true nearly everywhere ; a great proportion of
militant communists are or have been teachers ;
partly because those who hold their opinions very
enthusiastically, rightly regard school-teaching as
the best chance of propagating them and partly
because there is something about the work itself
which sensibly inclines the mind to bigotry. The
analogy between school and state is facile ; the
need for reducing all problems to their simplest
terms tends to the acceptance of ready-made
solutions ; the necessity for selecting facts and
arranging them memorably; the ambition to
provoke enthusiasm of any kind in dull little
minds ; the unremitting association with the
immature; the peculiar social position of the
school-master in a remote district-the lonely
intellectual closeted of an evening with his books,
so like, it is pleasant to believe, the exiled Marx
in the British Museum Reading-Room ; the longing
to believe that he is making some mark in the
world, preparing a new generation for a new order,
not just earning a meagre wage by forcing into
unwilling heads facts that will soon be forgotten;
the ever present anxiety about keeping order pre-
disposing the mind to a system of absolute decrees,
secret police and summary executions-all these
considerations, no doubt, contribute to make
school-masters and mistresses a subversive race.
At the Six Year Plan Exhibition no attempt was
made to disguise the Marxist character of the state
education. Even the products of the infant schools
showed the hammer and the sickle, and the clenched
fist represented in a variety of simple handicrafts.
r95 o2
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
I made a small collection of the publications of the
Ministry of Education. They are-mostly very well
producid. There is a series of alPhabets-Carteles
de atfabetizacion-octavo sheets,. printed in red and
blue] comprising on one side the characters of the
alphabet ind on the other certain elementary
initruction. One number opens with an exhorta-
tion to revere the teacher (and not to cut off his
ears). 'The rural master,' it saysr-'has been the
victim of the tendencious ProPaganda of Reaction,
which attacks the Socialist School' The heroic
rural master, nevertheless, has remained at his
post,
^frigfily
advancing and realizing - his magnificent,
patriotiJ and humane labour' He is the
apostle of the Socialist School '
".iitrUti
Countryman, spread in the rural population grati-
tude foi his altiuistic and self-denying work which
aims only at the well-being of the community'' - On
the next page is a large drawing of a clenched fist
with the le[end : 'We Protest. The Proletarian
protests aga'inst physical ind moral misery, insuffi-
lient salaiies, the rvorst food, etc.' Opposite it is a
drawing of a personable young 11n beqrr:rg -tI"
banner"of the e.T.M. Below it : ' The C.T.M' is
syndical front in the class war in the
a national,'thl
service of Mexican Proletariat ' and a briet
enthusiastic summary of its work against 'the
semi-feudal structure'of the country', 'the inter-
vention of imperialist powers', ' reaction' and
' fascism'. Another pige is decorated with a
hammer and sickle and a snake and an exposition
of ' the Origin of the Class War''
Another Editiot of the alphabet has the picture
of a boy under a shower-bath with an appeal
against the 'horror which is fett against water and
r96
PLAN SEXENAL
washing' and a list of the benefits of the daily
bath which among other things 'stimulates the
spirit'. There is also a diagram, in the best fascist
spirit, against the evils of slouching, and a page
devoted to the dangers of dust. Opposite these
salutary lessons are two political pages ; one shows
a workman carrying the banner of the strike
(Huelga). ' Comrades, the right to strike is positively
a constitutional right' ; the other a voter putting
his paper into the ballot box of the P.R.M. (Partido
de la Reaolution Mexicana). It is idle to speculate
what would be the outcry in a democratic country
if the government in power attempted to introduce
party politics into the school curriculum in this
way.
There is a children's magazine-Periodico Infantile
named Palomilla-issued by the Ministry of
Education ; it consists largely of contributions by
children and articles about hobbies. The centre
the Tiger Tim supplement in the magazines
-like
of English childhood-consists of a double coloured
page of picture-story. In the second issue of this
magazine the story is as follows : the first eight
pictures contrast the lot of the rich and poor ; the
poor woman works washing clothes n,hile the rich
lady, attended by three caddies, foozles her drive
at golf ; the man dressed as a chef prepares a
luxurious dinner while the millionaires dressed in
fur coats, white gloves and top hats (an object,
never seen in Mexico, rvhose presence in the cartoon
suggests foreign origin) and smoking large cigars
are concerned only with ' jokes and holidays ' ;
the daughter of the poor family makes clothes for
the rich girl to wear in her motor-car ; the poor
child mends the dolls which the rich one breaks.
r97
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
The last two pictures offer the remedy for this
invidious socia[ division. The poor family makes
itself into a syndicate ; we see their simple room
decorated with red flags and hammer and sickle ;
the father of the famity thumps the table command-
ing the attention of his womenfolk; finally-comes
thi great Mexican panacea-Je declara en huelga ;
the black and red flag of the strike is hung across
the gates of the rich man's villa and the poor family
sits idle outside. It is an interesting variation on
the exemplary tales of the Victorian nursery in
which by self-denial and industry the poor man-
raised himself until he, too, was able to treat of
' jokes and holidays ' and send his wife out to the
links.
It would be tedious to multiply examples to
prove a case which no one seriously disputes.
Mexican education, Iike that of all the totalitarian
states, is planned with the primary intention -of
' conditioning' the children in the interests of the
political regime ; transPose national expansion for
ilus *u. and you have a system very similar to
that of modern Germany. The school-teacher in
the small towns is the agent of government propa-
ganda. It is his duty to educate people ofall ages,
to read them the nen's from the capital with appro-
priate comments, to promulgate- presidential
i.....t, to stimulate hostility to foreigners and
gentlemen, to nose out and report evidence of
ieligion or political disaffection, to embody, in his
o*r, p.tson, the virtues of the Six Year Plan ; to
his friends he is, in the words quoted above,
'the heroic rural master advancing and realizing
his magnificent, highly patriotic and humane
labour . . . a veritable apostle'1 to his enemies
I98
PLAN SEXENAL
he is a professional prig and spy. The reports of
travellers from the interior seem to agree that in
most places where he has been allowed to remain
he is carrying out the work for which he was
appointed with greater thoroughness than is shown
by most Mexican officials. He has profited by the
popularity of the government in places and at
times when it has been popular. He suffers from
the general displeasure when things go wrong. As
things go progressively more wrong it is probable
that he will suffer more and that he will be the
victim of the next rising-a martyr to noble prin-
ciplesr-a martyr to General Cardenas's conceit,-
just a mischievous ass getting his deserts-according
as you like to look at him,-but doomed, I am
afraid, to an unhappy end. This is not the place
to debate the first principles of politics, and it
is by these he must be judged. The practical
question does, however, arise ; what apparent
effect is the educational drive having on the present
generation of Mexican children ?
The answer, of course, varies in different parts
of that vast country. In the rural districts, as has
been mentioned above, the reception has been so
hostile that the Government has sometimes had to
abandon or modify its policy. There is moreover
an underground organization of teachers who
refuse to concern themselves with politics and are
actively, at great personal risk, continuing religious
instruction in spite of the Government ban. As is
to be expected, the communist schools are most
influential in the large towns where the C.T.M.
organizers can keep a watch on them and the
C.T.M. parents are sympathetic. Here, the
evidence is overwhelming, political theory has so
r99
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
far dominated the ordinary school curriculum that
the standard of general culture and information
has deteriorated from its previous low standard,
while discipline has almost ceased to exist.
The teachers have not made their own lot easier
by the principles they support. The right to strike
is'taught as i civic duty and the children practise
it enthusiastically. The formation of school syndi-
cates is far from being a game ; every large school
has its student organization analogous to the
C.T.M. Meetings are called with great frequency
during school hours and the children spend their
time lobbying for votes and making speeches to
one another. The school becomes a factory in
microcosm, reproducing all the disorder of Mexican
industrial conditions. A children's committee
demands an equal share in the management of the
school and to their chagrin the teachers find that
in the immature mind, they, more often than not,
occupy the position of employers and the children
that of the proletariat ; the syndicates which they
encouraged have become a machinery for enforcing
changes of curriculum and personnel. Strikes
are called to protest against imagined cases of
favouritism, against severity in examinations,
against personalities that are generally unsym-
pithetic, and-a still more mischievous source of
wasted time-against the doings of foreign govern-
ments. While I was in Mexico, Vasconcelos, a
journalist and former Mexican minister of educa-
tion, who had been teaching in the United States,
lost his job. Vasconcelos is far from being the
model Marxist which General Cardenas'$ ministry
of education is trying to popularize ; he was a
patriotic rather than a proletarian leader ; in his
200
PLAN SEXENAL
exile he had said some very hard things about
General Cardenas. Nevertheless the children of
Mexico had a strike and a demonstration against
the 'Yankee imperialist fascism' of President
Roosevelt in sending him home.
The children do not stop at words. The head-
master of the Preparatory School-the chief secon-
dary school of the country-was lately physically
ejccted by his pupils ; the girls are said to have
taken a ferocious part in maltreating the poor
fellow.
It is not surprising that in this atmosphere
serious studies languish. The worst results are
evident at the University. The Royal and Ponti-
fical University, which held rank with that of
Salamanca, and was for centuries the main centre
of learning in the New World, had an unhappy
history during the nineteenth century. It was
closed in r833 by the radical Gomez Farias,
reopened in 1834 by Santa Anna, closed again by
Comonfort in 1857, opened again by Zuloaga in
1858, closed by Juarez in 186r, opened and shut
again by Maximilian. As on a Sunday in the United
States the train bar opens and shuts in accord-
ance with the moral feelings of the State through
whose territory one is passing, so the lJniversity's
existence varied with the prejudices of the govern-
ing gang. The cxisting University is its successor,
holding at the moment a somewhat anomalous
position of semi-independence ; there are I5,ooo
students few of rvhom have any ambitions to
scholarship ; they are qualifying for certificates
and diplomas which will enable them to get
government posts ; they contribute little or nothing
towards their education. The institution subsists
20I
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
on some small endowments that have survived its
former proud possessions and on capricious grants
from the Government. The salaries of the pro-
fessors and tutors are miserable and, even so, are
irregularly paid. The combined salaries of the two
important chairs, for example, amount to I3o pesos
a month-at the present rate of exchange a little
over d6. As works of scholarship have to be
bought with foreign currency, there is some con-
siderable difficulty for the professors in keeping
abreast of recent research. The total grant for the
purchase of books for all subjects, technical and
humane, is 4oo pesos a year, and there is a
recurring annual struggle to secure its payment.
Foreign languages have ceased to be an essential
part of the curriculum. As almost all the authori-
ties for the courses are in French, English, Latin,
German or Italian, lectures are given without
bibliographies ; the library does not stock the
books and the students could not read them if
it did. Lectures, in fact, consist purely of dictated
notes for the answers to examination questions.
Disorder is grossly rampant. The authority of
the University is vested in a Council on which a
students' committee has a 5oo/o voting power.
Meetings are held in public, to the accompaniment
of munching, singing, whistling, the throwing of
ink pellets and fireworks, with the governing body
so hemmed that they can barely raise their hands
to vote. Last year the entire faculty except two,
was expelled by the students, and in the last seven
years only one Rector has retired normally with
comparative honour.
It is gloomy atmosphere for those teachers-and
there are a few of them left-who have tasted the
PLAN SEXENAL
sweets of a life of real scholarship, but they at
least have the compensations of their own finely
made minds ; what is the prospect for the wretched
youths brought up to know nothing better ? What
equipment have they to inherit the world that
General Cardenas is preparing for them ?
There is much to be said in a very stable, pros-
perous, self-satisfied society for the presence of a
Bohemian student body. It is a thing we have
always lacked in England. One of the good effects
of discipline should be to provoke a healthy resist-
ance in the more enterprising and self-reliant
spirits. It is impossible to regard the Mexican
student disorders in these humane terms. The next
generation is growing up without any intellectual
or moral standards and they will come to manhood
in a country faced with every possible internal and
external problem in its most acute form.
3
There are other features of General Cardenas's
Six Year Plan whose beginnings could be traced in
the Exhibition. The President, in his electional
campaign, toured the country, enquired into the
particular local needs and promised attention-a
road was needed here, a canal there ; it should be
done. It was in fact begun. Then came the oil
confiscations and the cessation of public works all
over the country.
The last traveller to publish an account-and a
brilliant one-of conditions in the remote provinces
of Mexico is Mr. Graham Greene. His Lawless
Roads is an appalling account of the mismanagement
and miseries which are kept hidden from less cour-
203
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
ageous travellers ; it is all the more damning for
its author's obvious antagonism to capitalist society.
This is his description of the public works at Las
Casas-the former capital of the State of Chiapas.
" Herr F. led me oaer the rocks to show me examples of
Mexican engineering. First the reseraoir half finished
standing there to crack into ruin in the winter because
there was ru more mone) : all money was diuerted to Tam-
pico and the oil-fields . Seuen)ears ago there had been
a flood. Herr F. had been in charge of relief
disastrous
operations ; he showed me the loergrlwn, neglected canal
he had dug at the cost of only ffty pounds. Then Cardenas
aisited Las Casas ; he was not 2et president, he was on
his electoral tour, and he had promised, if he were elected,
men and moru). He kept ltis promise : mone) poured
into Las Casas : federal engineers began tlte work all
ooer again : the walls were made of loose rocks stuck into
cracking cement : in the next rains the walls themselaes
would help to block tlte channel. Then as a contrast he
showed me what tlte Spaniards had built eight2 years ago.
Thefine maslnr) of General Utrilll stood intact : onlt the
alteration in the leuel of the land made his works out of
date."
There's the rub ; the hopeless, universal deterior-
ation of things in Mexico ; that is what changes
General Cardenas's futile little exhibition from farce
to tragedy. The purser on board the Sibonel had
cautioned us to be tolerant of Mexican conditions.
" They are doing their best . . ."
If Mexico were a small, new country, just emerg-
irg from barbarism, house-proud of its little
achievements, pardonably anxious to conceal the
evidence where zeal had outrun capacity, then,
indeed, it would be ungenerous to wound the
national pride and abuse hospitality by uncovering
204
PLAN SEXENAL
its failures. But it is nothing of the kind. It is a
huge country with a long and proud listgry, taking
prJcedence in its nationil unity of half the states of
^Er.op.
; it has been rich and cultured and orderly
and has'given birth to sons illustrious in every walk
of life ; iro*, every year, it is becoming hungrier,
r.r,ickeder, and more hopeless ; the great buildings
of the puit ut. falling in ruins ; the jungle is c.losing
in and' the graves of tfr. pioneers are lost in the
undergrowth-; the people are shrinking back.to
the rirer-banks and riilheads ; they are being
starved in the mountains and shot in back-yards,
dying without God. And General Cardenas and
his {a"g stand on their balcony smirking at the
uppLrt. of communist deleg-ations ; the tourists
tiamp round the Exhibition of his work marvelling
at hammers and sickles in cross-stitch and clenched
fists in plaster of Paris and the plans of monstrous
public oflic.. that no one is ever going to build'
205
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
I
T is a common complaint against Catholics
that they intrude their religion into every
discussion, postulating a ' Church Question'
in matters which seem to have no theological
connexion. This is, in a way, true ; the Catholic's
life is bounded and directed by his creed at every
turn and reminders of this fact may well prove
tedious to his protestant or agnostic neighbours.
In the case of Mexico, however, no apology is
needed for speaking of the subject. It is not land
or oil or race or political organization but religion
which is the single, essential question of the nation,
and foreign writers may be judged, as to how far
they grasp the character of the place, pretty lvell
by the importance they attach to it. Those who
regard the religion of the people as a picturesque,
quaint local custom or as a mildly deleterious
survival of an earlier age, to be gently discouraged
and superseded by a more rational ethical outlook,
can have little of interest to say about any Mexican
topic. The issue is simple enough. There are, it
is true non-Catholic missions of various sects in
Mexico handsomely provided with funds from the
United States. It is their good fortun0 to be able
to distribute alms where the native clergy have to
ask for them; they collect fair sized congregations
206
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
and do considerable work in relieving distress and
encouraging hygienic habits ; their influence in
the life of tt . people,
-
however, is so slight an$ th-e
possibility of their ever founding a national,
ivangelical church which could exist independently
of Almerican financial aid, is so inconceivably
remote, that the authorities do not take the trouble
to suppress them. They provid-e useful testimony
for Gbiernment propagandists of the kind that was
lately heard from Barcelona, that the government
is not opposed to Christianity as such-only to
political p.iests. There are also paganl ; Indian-s
iescended from communities where the Spanish
missionaries never penetrated, or those who have
for generations been cut off from the life of the
Chuich and have lapsed into animism and odd
superstitions. But for the purpose of any-,fruitful
diicussion the politicians know that the religion of
the country is Catholic ; and it is in direct conflict
with merciless, fanatical atheism-an atheism that
at the moment adopts Marxist language, just as
in earlier generations it used Liberal language,
but which antedates either ; the atheism of the
impenitent thief at the crucifixion.
thir ir no place to argue the truth of Christianity-
The Catholii believes that in logic and in historical
evidence he has grounds for accepting the Church
as a society of divine institution, holding 2 unique
commission for her work, privileged on occasions
by special revelation, glorified continu-ally -by
me-6.tt of supernatural sanctity ; he finds in her
doctrine a philosophy which explains his own
peculiar posilion in the order of the universe, a
way of li6 which makes the earth habitable during
his existence there and, after that, according to
2(U-7
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
his merits, the hope of Heaven or the fear of Hell.
He may or may not be deluded in this belief.
But this is what the vast majority of Mexicans
mea-n by religion. They either hate it frenetically,
or cherish it above life itself.
It is a faith which, within its structure, allows of
measureless diversity and this is a fact which those
outside it find difficult to realize; the spacious
wisdom of St. Thomas More, the anxiety about
liturgical colours of the convert spinster, the final
panic of the gangster calling for the sacraments
in the condemned cell, the indignation of the Irish
priest contemplating the spread of mixed bathing
in his parish, the ingenious proofs of the Parisian
asthete that Rimbaud was at heart a religious
pget : . they are all part of the same thing.
The Catholic knows this and others do not, hence
the continual, unavailing attempt of the enemies
of the Church to represent the religion to which
they are opposed as something quite distinct and
peculiar to their own part of the world ; unavailing
as far as Catholics are concerned, but effective
enough among the general, indifferent, mildly
well-intentioned, ill-informed people of America
and England among whom public opinion is
formed. These know their Catholic neighbours to
be on the whole reasonable and law-abiding, with
certain odd practices on Sundays and an unac-
countable aversion to meat on Fridays, crema-
toriums, contraceptives and so forth ; at elections
some Catholics vote conservative and some of
them vote labour ; there is nothing at all sinister
about them. They know this from their own
experience, but when they are told that this same
society in other countries is corrupt and oppressive
208
THE STMIGHT FIGHT
it does not seem improbable. Foreigners are
different. Thus they are quite ready to accePt
official explanations for acts of brutality and
injustice which in their own country would inflame
them with angry sympathy.
For three generations now, offand on, the enemies
of the Church in Mexico have had it their own way
at home and abroad. The first question which an
intelligent foreigner asks is why, if the Church is
what her adherents claim, she should have enemies at
all. The answers are as diverse as human nature ;
just as there are infinite varieties of goodness,
there are varieties of wickedness. The Church
makes claims and imposes restrictions which many
men find onerous ; she reminds rich men that
their possessions are temporary and rulers that
there are higher laws than their own. In Mexico,
however, in general, anti-clericalism has been
based on the single vice of cupidity. The Church
was rich and physically defenceless ; robbery had
to be justified ; human nature is moved more
strongly by guilt than the will to vengeance ;
we hate most savagely not those who have wronged
us, but thosc whom we have ourselves wronged.
When it is said, usually with reproach, that the
Church in any particular place is rich, there are a
number of different things which may be meant
and should be distinguished. In Mexico, a hundred
years ago, the Church had great possessions
accumulated through the centuries by good hus-
bandry, pious bequests and state grants. The
figures of her revenue, particularly the diocesan
figures, seem formidable and often the reader of
popular history is left with the impression that
these sums were the personal allowance of the
R.U.L.
209
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
Bishop ; they were in fact the income out of which
not only the whole ecclesiastical organization but
what would now be called the 'social services' of
the district were maintained. Under the Spanish
system, as in mediaval Europe, education, poor
relief, hospitals, orphanages, lunatic asylums were
all managed by the Church ; it is always possible,
of course, for a bad official to embezzle public
funds ; no doubt in the long era of colonial rule
there were from time to time Bishops who did this,
but when accounts are found by contemporary
visitors of the magnificence of some episcopal
establishments it should be remembered that it
was no uncommon thing for a man of private
fortune to enter the Church and live in the same
style as his lay kinsmen. (Jrban Englishmen who
denounce the system of tithes by which the Mexican
Church was in part supported, seem to forget that
the same system is still in force in our own country,
where the national church represents a very much
smaller proportion of the population than it did in
Mexico. When I r,r'rite my cheque for the tithe on
my own few fields for the support of a body of
which I am not a member I do so reluctantly,
but with no personal animosity against our local
rector.
In the time of Juarez and Maximilian it may
have seemed arguable that the Church might
profit by being disembarrassed of some of her
duties ; that government specialists could better
administer the great funds that were then in clerical
hands. That, in the light of subsequent history,
can no longer be maintained. The clergy may have
been slipshod and dilatory in some of their methods,
but those who robbed her, squandered the booty
2ro
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
on private ends and left nothing in her place.
Nor, I think, would anyone seriously maintain
that the motive of the robbers was a desire to do
better; they simply saw great possessions in the
hands of those who could not protect themselves,
and they took them ; their sole defence has been
to blackguard their victim.
Another thing is also meant by the ' riches of the
Church' ; the splendour of the actual churches.
Even in their devastated condition they arouse the
tourist's wonder and the official guides are quick
to point a moral-'all this silver and gold round
the altarsr' they SZy, 'while the people wore rags
and slept in hovels,' and to those brought uP across
the boider in the austere tradition of the white-
washed meeting-house the contrast is indeed
striking. All along the tourist, route one heard the
same comment, sometimes prompted, more often
than not spontaneous. 'Think what it must have
cost ! Think what good they could have done to
the poor with all that money' ; it is a cry that
echoes back to Judas and NIary of Magdala-
' To what purpose is this $'aste ? '-and when I
heard it I thought of another incident in my
journey in a church that had nothing about it to
attract the tourist.
We stopped at the place by chance on the main
road bet*een Puebla and the famous t tiled church
of San Francisco Cholula. It was a drab little
village of Indian houses clustering round a shabby,
unremarkable church. The presbytery was empty
and desolate, for there had not been a parish priest
for ten years ; the people were not even sure of a
weekly Mass ; a priest rode out when he could
1 Though not to Dr. T. Philip TerrY.
P2
2tt
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
from Puebla ; there were dozens of surrounding
villages in his charge ; wherever he went there
were so many demands on him for christenings
and blessings, confessions, marriages. advice, arbi-
tration in disputes-that he could not keep to
any time-table. He appeared when he could, a
dusty fellow in lay clothes like an impoverished
ranchero to look at ; when he came he rang the
bells and the people stopped what they were doing
and flocked in to Mass. When we arrived the men
at first pretended that they had lost the key of the
church ; they thought we were 'from the govern-
ment' and had come to destroy something or take
it offto Mexico City. That was all they knew about
the government ; that . they were well dressed
people who arrived unexpectedly in motor-cars to
steal something ; (and this rvas in the most civilized
part of the country a few miles out of Puebla). We
assured them of our good intentions and at last
they gave way i even then half the male popula-
tion of the place followed us in to kcep an eye on
us. The dark little building n as full of the rough,
highly coloured carving in rl,ood and stone in
which the country abounds. It would create a stir
in a Bond Street gallery, for it has remarkable
qualities of design-but after a few weeks in Mexico
one gets used to it. Our genuflections to the altar
reassured them a little and they began showing us
their possessions, explaining, as had been explained
to them, the identities of the various saints and
telling us the stories of the biblical events portrayed.
Then they showed us with great pride what they
themselves r+'ere doing, for since the priest went
away the building had been in their sole care.
They had got hold of a tin of gold paint and were
2r2
THE STMIGHT FIGHT
' doing the place over'. It was the nastiest kind
of gold paint that dries with a dull, powder_y
surface and rapidly turns green, but they were all
poor men and it must have cost them considerable
iaving. They were dabbing it about everywhere,
even on the bells, and were about to start on a
pair of fine estofodo figures. All of-them lacked the
-thirgs
which we consider necessaries and they had
clubbed together to buy imitation gold paint ;
asthetically the result was deplorable ; they had
ruined the patina and rendered their statues quite
unsuitable for the drar+'ing-rooms of Cuernavaca.
. . To rt'hat purpose was this w'aste ? The answer,
quite simply, \t'as carved on the lintel A.D.M.G.,
t-o the greater glory of God. The splendid age o{
trained and directed craftsmanship, of gold leaf,
ivory and majolica, lt'as over ; it rvas left for the
peasants to preserve the memory of it. For the
impulse to adorn is a part of love, and those who
see i., the glories of Mexican decoration only the
self advertisement of a clerical caste and the
oppression
-
of a people, do not know love.
In the three hundred years of Spanish rule the
churches, particularly those rvhich rvere centres of
pilgrimage, became vast treasuries ; every inch
of ineir surface was carved, gilded, jewelled ; the
furniture and statuary was often of solid silver ;
an irresistible temptation to the politicians of the
new Republic ; all this rvealth in the hands of a
few old tarons, mumbling the Office in their great,
intricate stalls ; all this rvealth lying idle, paying
no dividends, when the national treasury had been
emptied by one gang and their successors had their
for[unes to make, quickly, before they too were
driven into exile. So the great steal began and
213
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
with it, inevitably, the campaign ofjustification, of
slander; and with the guilt and the hate, the
wanton destruction ; the libraries thrown out into
the gutters, the canvasses slit up, the statues piled
up and burned in the plaza, the whole bloody,
degenerate business which culminated a year or
two ago in the firing squads and the massacres ;
the red-shirts lounging over their guns in the early
morning sun, waiting in the square for the women
to come out of Mass, to fire a volley or two and
make off in their lorries . .
2t9
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
3
But, say Mr. Gruening and his readers, the Indian
is not really Christian. He may be willing to- die
for his religion but it is not the religion of Notre
Dame and Fordham ; it is a hotch-potch of poly-
theism and black magic ; with the foreign tongue
which the missionary taught him he pays lip
service to the Spanish God but in his heart he still
worships the old, bloody gods of the Aztecs.
Europians and Americans who attempt to stir
,rp symprthy for him are merely seeking to per-
pitrutea
- It is a form of degraded paganism.
disingenuous argument for its ultimate
aim is to discredit not the Indians' religion, but
everybody's ; it is the familiar thesis of the pro-
fessors oi 'co*parative religion' all over the
world ; that marl's disposition to worship comes
from his awe of natural forces and from his own
dreams ;that there has been no special revelation
but a cycle of myths, finding new rrames in the
differeni stages of man's Progress to rational
atheism ; just as churches were built on the ruins
of temples, pagat statues christened and giv-en the
names of saints, and the holidays of the Churctr
thi
synchronized with the Pagan calendar, so her
sacraments are merely the liturgy of the old mystery-
cults. Most knor,r'ledgeable Christians have con-
sidered this case at one time or another and, if they
have remained Christians, have rejected it, but it
is an arguable case and this is not the pl1c9 t9
attempt lts refutation. What is not arguable^is
Mr. druening's case ; that Christianity is true for
the American and the European but untrue for
the Indian. The christian believes that the par-
220
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
ticular historical events from which he takes his
chronology-the birth, life and death of Christ
which he calls the Incarnation and the Atone-
ment-meant the expression in humanly intel-
ligible form of truths beyond his comprehension ;
he knor,r's that the society which then arose, which
he calls the Church, on'es its form to a variety
of human influences-to Greek speculative philo-
sophy, Jewish poetry and theology, Roman political
organization and so on-all of rvhich have left
their plain imprint on its history and character. He
knows that in the centuries before the Incarnation,
human organizations and discoveries w-ere con-
verging on this particular point of time.
In just this way, before the coming of the Spanish
missionaries, the inhabitants of Mexico were
approaching similar ideas. They had, for instance,
the conception of sacrifice in a highly developed
but monstrous form. For the mass butchery
of the Aztec temples the missionaries substituted
the conception of a single, unique human sacrifice,
daily consummated on the new altars. They
found, too, habits of devotion curiously analogous
to those they sought to introduce ; the old priests
employed holy rvater and incense in their cere-
monial, they heard general confessions of sin and
dispensed absolution, they taught the existence of
a future life divided into heaven, hell and limbo.
Some of the simpler missionaries were disconcerted
by these resemblances and attributed them to the
devil, but they made the new teaching readily
acceptable, and the Church followed the policy
traditional to her, of accepting all that was assi-
milable in the existing order; the new churches
were built, just as they had been in Europe, on the
22r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
sites of the old temples. Sometimes the old idols
were found among the new statues. Mr. Gruening
found one still standing in a monastic cloister, still
honoured by the presence of a few flowers ; there,
he says, is the proof that the Indians merely follow
their old gods with a new name. But there is
another explanation ; he is on common ground
with many a zealous friar in neglecting it; it is
simply another rvay of regarding the same facts.
Before they had heard the story ofJesus and Mary,
the Indians lvorshipped them under other names ;
in the long memory of the race there is still room
for gratitude for the blessings they received in those
dark ages and they cherish those earlier, confused
intimations of truth as the mother of a family may
still cherish the dolls she nursed in her childhood.
The love of statues and holy places plays an
enormous part in the Indian's religion, and the
great shrine of Guadalupe is, certainly, far more
important to him than St. Peter's in Rome. It is
the Indian Virgin as distinct from the little Spanish
Virgin of Los Remedios, and Mr. Gruening is able
to make great fun, as many have done before him,
of the competitive nature of the various popular
devotions of the country. It is easy to say that
since God is everywhere, there is no reason why any
particular place should be more holv than any
other ; that since all statues and pictures are most
inadequate symbols of what they represent, that
none should excite special reverence ; it is easy,
for that matter, to say that there was no reason why
God should become man; it is on that central
theme that all christianity depends-word becoming
tangible flesh-and those who accept its illimitable
implications believe that it is only in material
222
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
symbols that man is capable of recognizing the
truth by which he lives, and that, because of his
own material nature, he has been allowed occasional
glimpses of divinity in material form. One of these
is the miraculous picture of Guadalupe.
Its history and its presence in Mexico cannot be
treated merely as a pretty piece of folk-lore.
Mexico abounds in picturesque legends of one kind
and another, but the Guadalupe stands entirely
apart. It is for all the Indians and for great
numbers of whites and mestizos the main focus for
their hopes and aspirations.
The story is notable as having no pre-christian
Mexican parallel r ; the account of its origin is
as precise as that of Lourdes. It has been told
countless times but never better than in its first,
contemporary form. One may well be cautious of
saying that any narrative has the ' mark of truth '
about it, but the author of the Diego story was
either relating what he believed, or else was an
extremely accomplished fraud. It is this : On
December 9th, I53r, ten years and four months
after the conquest, an Indian peasant, fifty-eight
years old, was on his way by foot to the mission
church of Tlaltelolco, to hear mass and attend a
class in the religion in which he had been christened
a few years earlier under the name ofJuan Diego.
No outstanding sanctity was at the time imputed
to him. After the event he became a guardian in
I Sahagun, a generation later, states that a temple existed on the site of
Guadalupe, dedicated to the Indian maternity goddess. He was a zealous
scholar and schoolmaster working in the neighbourhood at Tlaltelolco.
No mention, contemporary with Diego, is found of the temple, It is
reasonable to suppose that the friars of Tlaltelolco had already destroyed
it, bcfore the apparition. It would be a suitable place for the new church
to arise among the ruins of the old. ' Whorn thaetmcyc igoruntl2 uuship, him
I dcclarc ,ailo )ou', has been the text of the missionary church since the time
of Paul.
223
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
the new shrine and died a holy death at the age of
70. IIe was typical of the thousands of Indians
who had accepted the conquerors' religion after a
minimum of instruction ; accepted it, presumably,
in a kind of bemused resignation as part of the
many foreign introductions that had suddenly
revolutionized his world.
Following the track across the desolate area
where the town of Guadalupe now stands, passing,
it is likely, the ruins where in youth he had paid
homage to the native mother-goddess, he suddenly
saw the place transfused with unfamiliar light and
colour ; there was the sound of music and, on a
rock above him, he saw a woman, a fellow Indian
in colour and type, who called him to her, addressed
him as her son, told him that she was Mary and
that she wished a church to be built on the spot
where she was standing. He r,vas to tell this to the
Bishop.
He was received with the scepticism that such
tales usually arouse in the higher clergy, and sent
away. He returned to the spot; The Lady was
waiting for him ; he pointed out that it was no
good sending him on a mission of this kind ; why
did she not send a Spaniard or someone of import-
ance ? She told him to go back with the same
message. He vl'ent. On this second visit Diego
aroused the interest if not the sympathy of the
Bishop ; perhaps this was a case of witchcraft of the
kind which the Church was endeavouring to stamp
out. He told him to bring some sign with him and
sent two men to follow him and see what happened.
Next day, the roth, these men reported that Diego,
when he reached the rocks where he claimed to
have seen the apparition, mysteriously disappeared
224
THE STMIGHT FIGHT
from view. unaware of this himselfi he received
orders to return next day and receive his sign.
Then in Diego's slow, peasant mind suspicions
began to arise. He lvas getting mixed up in affairs
that were beyond his capacity. Besides his uncle
was ill. He did not return. On the tzth, however,
his uncle was worse and wanted a priest; that
meant going to Tlaltelolco again. Diego did not
like it and chose a circuitous path. But The Lady
was there, too, blocking his way. He told her about
his uncle being ill. She knew all about it; he
would get well, she said ; Diego had another duty
to perform. He must take his sign to the Bishop.
Above where they stood the rocks rose in a sharp,
barren hill ; The Lady told him to climb there and
pick roses. It was an improbable place but Diego
found them, miraculously blooming among the
stones ; enough to fill his sarape. So he trudged off
again, back to the suspicious Bishop and spilt the
flowers at his feet. He may have thought, on the
road, that it was not much of a sign ; after all,
there was only his word for it that they came from
the desert. But he did as he was told and revealed
not only the roses but a picture of his lady, Our
Lady, imprinted on the sarape. That is the picture
which now hangs over the high altar at Guadalupe.
The Church was begun immediately on the site
which Diego showed. In 1532 the picture was
solemnly conveyed there. It had already created a
sensation ; a disagreeable one to the many
Spaniards who regarded the Indians as animals.
There had already been some distrust of the policy
of baptizing the Indians, giving them the idea that
they, too, had souls equal before God with their
conquerors. And now Our Lady had appeared to
225 a
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
an Indian, more than this she had appeared as ai
Indian ; and here, for all time, was the evidence ;
a Virgin with an Indian face; a thing no painter
would have dared do without incurring the charge
of blasphemy. And the Spaniards accepted the
miracle. The important feature is not the repug-
nance it aroused but the fact that the repugnance
was overcome. The nobility of the country, from
the Viceroy down, solemnly prostrated themselves
in the new shrine and from that day until now
every christian ruler of Mexico, even Maximilian,
has made his homage there to the fact which it
had needed a supernatural revelation to enforce,
that the religion of the Spaniard was equally the
religion of the Indian.
The shrine has never been closed or pillaged,
though the neighbouring convent suffered with the
rest of the country. At the height of the Calles
persecution the Indians guarded it day and night.
A bomb was placed under the altar-the cross may
be seen as it was twisted by the explosion-but the
picture was undamaged. For the time a repro-
duction was substituted but now the original is
back in its place. While I was there the church
was being repaired and redecorated ; it is always
full of worshippers.
Mr. T. Philip Terry, whose Guide to Mexico has
been mentioned elsewhere in these pages, provides
the tourist with the kind of comment which the
present government encourages. ' One cannnt but
admire,' he says, ' the positiae genius of (urnarraga
(the Bishop) in planning that the Virgin appear in
Mexico not as a caraed figure, nor 1et in the likeness of a
Spanish u)oman, but rather in the guise of an Indian
priluess with some resemblarue to the reaered goddess
226
THE STMIGHT FIGHT
Tonantzin thus striking the Indian population at the
most aulnerable point . . the picture is perhaps oJ'
Spanish origin . . The fact that the apparition
occurred during the iruumbency of the Bishop /umanaga,
the bigot . . . is signiJicant . . . It is belieaed that
the Indiars regard the image of the Virgin as a diuine
manifestation of tluir primitiue goddess. . . On the feast
day the unhygienic and ignorant Indiaru oaerrun the
oillage to such an extent that tlu problem of preuurting
pestilerce is a serious one to the authorities. The church
is usua@ packed to sffication : the deaotees bring habits
and an entomological congress as aaried as they are astonish-
ing, all the church decorations within reach are kissed to
a hi.gh polish and thoroughly fumigated later, and all
breathe freer when the frenaied shriners haae returned to
their dffirent homes. Morry of the pilgrims are wretchedfit
poor and to maintain themselues on the journelt-which
not a few make on foot-they bring curious lwme-made
knick-kna*s . . . A carefut scrutinlt of the church is
dfficutt on Sundays . . . At these times it presents a
aerl animated and democratic appearance. Well dressed
Mexicaru, foreigners, ragged Indiaru, cr2ing babies . . .
are prominent features. Less oisible but just as pro-
minent, in a wa2, are the agile specimerc of the gemts
pulex which the oisitor to this sanctuary usually carries
away with him.'
These smug and facetious passages are an exact
expression of the wrong-thinking which the miracle
of Guadalupe rebukes. Mr. Terry starts with an
assumption which stultifies all his subsequent
observations, that a miracle is of necessity a fraud
. . . 'the positive genius of Zumarraga in plan-
ning.' The value of miracles anywhere is not in
the direct benefits they confer-a single cripple
among millions enabled to walk, one hungry man
227 c2
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
among millions given a single meal-but in their
manifesting the nearness of the supernatural. But
most miracles also show an immediate and local
purpose. The apparition of Lourdes came at the
height of French scepticism ; at Guadalupe it
came to teach the Spaniards that the Indians were
men and women and souls, to teach the Indians
that the Spaniards' god was the god of all human-
fi"d. Mr. Terry by his primary incredulity finds
himself led into denying these beliefs in order to
discredit the revelation that supports them. For
what- is his argument ? The Indians are a dirty
lot, they are crawling with fleas, the place has to
be fumigated after they have gone, t[ey have no
business at Guadalupe at all, everyone , breathes
the freer' w'hen they go, they come on foot
with 'curious knick-knacks', a pestilential mob
with whom no tourist cares to rub shoulders,
animals . . And, since they are like this, it is
absurd to pretend that they are worshipping the
same God as well-fed, expensively - eduiated
Americans and Europeans is beiieved , they
; 'it
l9gard the Virgin as ' their primitive goddess;.
She has 'some resemblance to the revered
Tonantzin'. The innocent reader might imagine
trut Mr. Terry had made an iconograph--ical
study, had found an image of Tonanizin and
compared it with the Virgin of Guadalupe ; what
he has really^ done is to read page 236 of Gruening,
and what Gruening has done is to guote whit
Father Sahagun wrote fifty years after ihe time of
Zumarcaga, that the Indians when going to
Guadalupe said, and, I believe still say, . Lit us
go to the festival of Tonantzin' ; and what does
this sinister word Tonantzin mean ? It is simply
228
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
the Indian word for ' Our Mother'. What more
fitting epithet could be found for the Virgin than
this, once unworthily applied to a member of the
old pantheon ? But the Indian is a subhuman
creature; if he once thought a heathen goddess
was his mother, he does still ; he cannot have
learned very much, otherwise he would be rich
and clean. This is the basis of the criticism.
The Christian point of view is to admit that
miracles are possible but exceedingly tare, and to
examine each on its evidence. The Guadalupe
stands the test well. Hostile critics have usually
weakened their case by preliminary abuse of Arch-
bishop Zumarraga. At the time of the conquest
quantities of Aztec painted manuscripts r disap-
peared, which w'ould have been of enormous interest
to subsequent historians. Zumarraga is charged
with their destruction. The authority for his
is the utterance of an eccentric
responsibility
friir named Mier, (who in rBrT disguised himself
as a Bishop and landed at Soto la Marina with a
small revolutionary force under Francisco Javier
Mina which was dispersed after a short guerilla
campaign). From him the tale has been copied
from book to book, even those published since
Francis Clement Kelly's exposure, until it is
generally accepted. The Indian historian Ixtlil-
xochitl of the seventeenth century mentions the
destruction but attributes it, inconsistently, both
to missionaries and to the Tlaxcalans who sacked
Tezcoco eight years before Zwarraga landed in
Mexico. The only certain association of Zwarraga
with Aztec manuscripts is that he made a collec-
I The Aztecs as has becn mcntioncd bcforc had no alphabct or real
written language, but a well devcloped system of hierolJlyphic rccord.
229
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
tion of all that had survived and took them to
Europe in 1532, where they are now preserved in
various libraries. As for the missionariCs in general,
by giving the Indians the alphabet they made it
possible for them to record their oral traditions.
Hundreds of volumes of this kind were kept in the
monastic libraries until the Liberal revolutions of
1855 and 186r, when they were sold as waste
Paper.
Zumarraga was outstanding in a generation of
devoted missionaries for his zeal in educating,
evangelizing and humanizing the Indians. tt
was he who petitioned the King against their
enslavement, smuggling his message out of the
country in a hollow image. 'If it is truer, he
wrote, ' that your Majesty has granted permission'
for the process of enslavement, ' you should out of
reverence to God, do humble penitence for it.,
It was he who founded the first ichool for higher
education of Indians, Santa Cruz in Tlaltelolco,
who started the education of women there, intro-
duced the first printing press and laid the founda-
tions of the great educational and charitable
system which only came to an end in the revolu-
tions. While others were making their fortunes,
the Archbishop died in debt. His ambition was to
see a new province of Christendom, in its widest
application, rising beyond the Atlantic. He was
one to whom the special revelation to the Indians
would be intensely welcome. Those who lack
strong moral feelings themselves, are ever ready to
credit their moral superiors with a disposition to do
lvil that good nray come of it. Earnestly as
Zumarraga may have prayed for a sign hom
Heaven, warmly as we know he accepted it, it is
230
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
scarcely conceivable that his stern conscience
rvould have bent to a fraud of the kind with which
Mr. Terry credits him; but even were one to
accept this psychological improbability, there are
many difficulties to explain.
The ground of the picture is certainly an Indian
sarape of the normal coarse weave with its central
seam clearly visible from the sanctuary rails. This,
and the native character of the model make it
highly unlikely to have been imported ready
made from Europe. It is stretching the imagina-
tion too far to conceive of the whole matter being
plotted and prepared in Madrid, yet the painters
who visited Mexico in the earlier colonial days
are well known and none of them did work re-
motely resembling the Virgin of Guadalupe. More-
over no one has been able to identify the material
with which it is painted ; it is not oil, water nor
kind. In r756
tempera colour of any recognizable
the best knou'n of Mexican painters, Miguel
Cabrera, published the report of a careful technical
examination in which he professed himself quite
unable to explain the process by which it was made ;
on two other occasions committees of painters
have been allowed to take it out of its glass and
have been able to give no explanation. Nothing
would suit the present government better than to
be able to expose the thing as a priestly fraud, but
they have been obliged to keep silent.
And yet, it must be admitted, the picture is
very like a human composition; the folds and
pattern of the robe, the rays of Blory, the crescent
moon at the feet, the cherub below, are all curiously
stylized. One cannot imagine a painter sitting
down to design the holy shroud of Turin, but one
23t
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
can imagine him drawing the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Looking at it I wondered whether perhaps some
human agency had not intervened to preserve and
ornament the true image which Diego and Zumar-
raga saw. The bodies of saints exposed for venera-
tion are often so overlaid with wax that the surface
is nowhere the actual skin of the body; there is
no fraud ; the body is there but the preservative
hides it; I wondered whether this might not be
the case with Guadalupe ; it was a purely personal
doubt and it seemed to leave more unexplained
than the frank acceptance of the miracle ; it did
not explain the actual pigmentation of the material ;
if one can accept a God who treats with human
beings in a way they will understand, one can
accept the miraculous appearance of a picture;
it is neither more nor less credible for having some
of the marks of a human composition.
Anyway, the appearance, or, as the guide-books
prefer it, the alleged appearance of Our Lady at
Guadalupe is one of the important features of
Mexican history ; to the great majority of Mexicans
it is something far more real and personally sig-
nificant than the coming of Cortes, and anyone
who treats of Mexico without considering it, is
necessarily superficial. Reproductions of the picture
are everywhere; even in the homes of the most
sceptical foreign business men. There was an
enorrnous output of replicas, some of them by the
greatest painters of the country, and today picture
postcards and medals are sold in millions. But it
is to the shrine itself that the people flock. There
is an air of gaiety surrounding the village, a per-
petual fair day. The path which Diego climbed
to pick the roses is lined with photographers'
232
THE STMIGHT FIGHT
booths and Indians who have tramped for weeks
to make the pilgrimage may, by sticking their
heads through a canvas screen, take home as a
souvenir the picture of themselves sailing over the
shrine in an aeroplane. It is, however, not only
Indians who come to Guadalupe; it is, as Mr.
Terry remarks with apparent distaste, very'demo-
cratic'. You see people of all nations there, as
you do at arry place of pilgrimage. (A great deal
of nonsense is talked and repeated about the par-
tisan loyalties of the various shrines. One is told
for example'that Our Lady of the Remedies is
'the Spanish Virgin'. I went to Los Remedios
on the morning of the feast; in the crowd that
queued up to kiss the little statue which a soldier
of Cortes's had brought with him in his saddle
bag, we were the only whites.)
There are votive offerings at Guadalupe, but
fewer than in most places of pilgrimage in Mexico
or elsewhere. In Mexico they take a form which
as far as I know is unique. They are little paint-
ings on tin portraying the danger from which the
pilgrim has been preserved-accidents with horses
and motor-cars and trams, attacks by bandits and
soldiers, fires-all graphically represented. Most
towns have an artist or two who specialize in this
work and will do you a disaster for a peso or so.
The Ministry of Fine Arts has collected some from
the shrines where they belong and added them as
a humorous contribution to the furniture at
Churibusco. But there were not many at Guad-
alupe for it is not principally frequented with a
view to particular benefits. Mexicans go there
several times in their lives; before journeys
abroad and on great occasions as a kind ofdedica-
233
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
tion, but more often I think as an act of pure
n'orshi5and for reassurance. As long as the
Virgin is there over her altar, however desperate
things may seem, there is still hope. If she deserts
them, then they are back again, helpless, on the
reeking altars of Huitzilopochtli. They believe
that it was at Guadalupe that Mexico became a
nation and that Our Lady took them in her keep-
irg; she is still there guarding them ; and they
have to come from time to time to make sure.
For myself, at any rate, the great twilit Cathedral
was the most impressive sight in Mexico ; it was
much the same at all hours of the day and on all
days of the week ; sometimes it w'as fuller, but
there was always the same atmosphere of hushed
veneration ; there were workmen high overhead
on scaffolding, hammering at the roof, but it
made no difference. It was the one place in Mexico
that never seemed noisy. People of every conceiv-
able kind were always there, praying. There were
family groups of all ages, candles in hand, working
their way up the aisle on their knees. There were
men who remained apparently interminably on
their knees with their arms stretched out on either
side of them ; they were like that when one came
in and still there, in the same position, when one
left ; rapt, their lips moving, their eyes open
fixed on the picture. There were women who, in
spite of their shabby civil costume, one knew to
be nuns, and swarthy, inconspicuous men dressed
like small shopkeepers who, to one's surprise, one
found to be priests. There were mothers guiding
their children in the sign of the cross. All the
limitless variety of the Church seemed to be
represented there. No doubt there were also
234
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
' members of the genus pulex 'hut it did not seem the
least important.
4
The present situation of the Church in Mexico
is the result of the truce effected with the mediation
of Dwight Morrow. Mexican Catholics profess
small gratitude to him for his intervention. The
promises then made by the government have not
been kept. The Cristeros were induced to sur-
render their arms under an amnesty which has been
broken by a series of retributive murders. The
hierarchy believed that their spiritual work was
to be allowed to continue without persecution;
they have been bitterly disappointed. For Catholics
240
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
the unhappy character of the compromise has been
emphasized by the grave warning of the late Pope
in the encyclical Firmissiman Corctantiam of Easter
rg17. For English radicals the situation was
explained in an article in New Statesman of February
r2th, rgg8. 'Although the power of the Church's
hierarchy has been broken, freedom of worship
continues to exist unhampered in Mexico.'
It is true that for the incurious tourist conditions
in the districts he frequents may seem more or less
normal. They find a number of churches put to
civil uses as garages, libraries, warehouses, fire-
stations ; 'There were too many of themr' the
to one surveying the g6S
guides explain, and
1 that surround the little village of
churches
Cholula, the excuse sounds plausible. The
churches that are open are perpetually crowded;
priests are at the altars and in the confessionals,
apparently undisturbed.
Landing at Vera Cruz, with an afternoon to wait
before the train left for Mexico City, I set out to
look at the town. I had read of Vera Cruz as a
state where the government were particularly
anti-religious and expected to find its churches
shut. The first I entered had been converted into
a public library. It is a curious thing, but churches
never seem suitable for any other purpose than the
one for which they were built. I have seen secu-
Iarized churches in many parts of the world being
used as museums, mosques, billiard saloons, draw-
ing-rooms-they never looked right. The library
at Vera Cruz was damp and stuffy; two or three
r This prodigality is exccptional, but is always quoted as thc o<ample of
clerical superfluity. The churches were built in conformity with mis-
sionary custom on the sites of existing shrines.
2+r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
children of high-school age were doing their lessons
there ; a few others were lounging over the picture
papers. It had a depressing air, but so have most
public libraries anywhere in the world. The other
church was open arrd very busy ; the decorations
were shoddy and shabby ; plaster statues had
taken the place of the rich colonial sculpture, but
at every altar there were people making their
devotions, not old women only but quite young
men, and in the nave a young catechist was giving
instruction to a large class of schoolchildren. They
were learning the responses of the Mass, repeating
them in unison. It looked as though the com-
promise were working quite well. The Church
was being allowed to compete with the State on
equal terms for support of the new generation.
Seeing it the Catholic tourist might be tempted to
think that the religious press in his own country
was making an unnecessary fuss.
Vera Cruz, as a matter of fact, is a place where
the Church had recently won a considerable
victory. A year before every church in the State
was shut as they had been in the time of Calles.
Dwight Morrow's bonhomie had had no effect
there. The Bishop had been forbidden to enter his
diocese; a few gallant priests moved in disguise
from house to house saying Mass in secret. Then
an incident had occurred which suddenly aroused
the patient people ; it was typical of what had been
going on all over the country for more than ten
years. Those responsible for it had no reason to
expect any trouble. They did no more than murder
a little girl, as had often been done before, but for
some reason the people who had suffered so much
in dumb resentment suddenly asserted themselves.
242
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
The child had been to one of the houses in
Orizaba where the police rightly believed Mass
was being said ; she came out alone, in the early
morning, straight from her communion; she was
not of those for whom the New Statevnan would
have us believe 'freedom of worship continued
unhampered' ; the police followed her ; she
took fright and began to run. They shot her down
in the street and returned to their quarters for their
usual torpid Orizaba Sunday. But it proved
different from other Sundays. News of the murder
spread in the town, which was full of peasants in
for the day. Suddenly they rose, broke open the
doors of their church, barricaded themselves there
and began ringing the bells. The C.T.M. bosses
telegraphed helplessly to Mexico for advice. All
over the State news spread of what had happened in
Orizaba. Everywhere the churches were re-
occupied. General Cardenas was just completing
his plans for the confiscation of the oil properties ;
he dared not risk another Cristero rising. The
local governor was made to give way. The Bishop
returned ; the priests came out of hiding, and the
people flocked back to their churches.
It is by means such as these, not by the exchange
of cigars in the Presidential train, that the Church
is being re-established in Mexico. A European is
tempted to write 'Faith' instead of Church. I
had, indeed, done so and struck it out, for the Faith
has never been lost to the vast majority of the
country. But the Faith cannot exist for ever
without its tangible expression ; it is not a mere
system of philosophic propositions and historical
facts ; though it may sometimes appear as this,
in certain intellectual types living in a sympathetic
a2
243
ROBBERT UNDER LAI,I/
atmosphere. It is a habit of life and a social
organization. The simpler a people, the ruder
their living conditions and the more limited their
information, so much the more do they need to
symbolize their ideas in concrete shapes. They
must have buildings in which they consort for
worship, statues and pictures to make the ideas of
their creed intelligible and memorable ; above all
they-equally with the most arid theologian-
must have the sacraments. The communist may
logically maintain that these things are futile and
mischievous ; tricks invented by his enemies to
delude man from his real duty in life, which is to
get through the largest possible amount of con-
sumable goods and to produce those goods in the
largest possible quantities so that he may consume
them. Isolate a people absolutely from tainted
contacts ; obliterate every monument to the old
delusions ; exterminate those who remember the
old order with regret; educate the children in
ignorance of its principles ; then, humanly speak-
ing, you w'ill produce a race of atheists, or at any
rate of non-Christians. Curious ideas will no doubt
take shape in their empty minds, but it is not con-
ceivable that a race, theologically sterilized in this
way, will evolve for itself the doctrines of the
Trinity and the Incarnation. This was the thesis
of the communist gang behind Calles ; it is reason-
able enough, by purely human standards. What is
not reasonable is the attitude of the extreme Nazis
and the present Mexican apologists-who have to
be double faced in their apologies, to their too
zealous international friends on one side, and the
too curious humanitarians on the other-that
religion is a purely private business; that if a
244
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
man is disposed that way he can sit at home and
be religious by himself ; that he needs no special
class to minister to him, no special association with
sympathizers, no place to associate and no means
of conveying his belief to his descendants. Either
his religion will die or it will find concrete expres-
sion in these ways.
The Church for her life, has to have a priest-
hood, an order of men peculiarly educated and
consecrated for a specific work; she has to have
property where she can preserve her sacred things
from outrage; she has to have the opportunity of
conveying her teaching to children whose parents
desire it. Deny her these elementary claims and
you deny her life. Each one of these is still being
denied in Mexico.
General Cardenas, himself, seems slightly fuddled
on the subject of religion. He is not, of course, a
practising Catholic; his party would not leave him
in office a day if he were, but there are signs that, in
his own classic phrase, he has begun to'weary ofthe
social struggle '. ' I am tired,' he said, ' of closing
churches and finding them full.' He is a man who
has spent most of his life in barracks in the masonic-
agnostic atmosphere of the revolutionary army; in
childhood he worked in a printing office but entered
government service at adolescence ; r9I3 found
him as a gaoler with a single prisoner; he let the
man out and together they joined the revolution ;
since then he has probably never come into contact
with anything that can be called Christian life;
at the age of z5 he was a general, an ally of Calles
and Obregon. He was taught that the Church was
invented for their profit by priests and harendados ;
the priests and hamndados have gone, and it
2+5
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
seems to come as a genuine surprise to him each
time that a popular disturbance brings it to his
notice that the people still value their faith. His
habit has been-as in the incident at Orizaba
quoted above-to give way. He is more interested
in pleasing the people than in following any logical
policy; but, relying as he does for his position
and safety upon the C.T.M., he dare not alter
the laws ; nor can he, until they are brought
forcibly to his notice, take any steps to see that the
laws are not exceeded. While I was there two
State governments, those of Tabasco and Chiapas,
still refused even the meagre freedom that the law
prescribed. In Tabasco, the churches were still
all shut-those, that is to say, that had not been
demolished. The late Governor Garrido had got
into trouble for carrying his anti-religious zeal too
far; he had sent squads of gunmen far beyond
the boundaries of his State to shoot up church-
goers near the tourist zone ; that had been too
much and he had had to disappear to Costa Rica,
but his successors maintained his policy of absolute
prohibition of every form of worship. In Chiapas
some of the churches were open but all were with-
out priests. There has lately been news of a
peasants' rising in Villahermosa, the capital of
Tabasco, where some peasants were murdered by
troops while trying to say their prayers in the
ruins ofone ofthe churches Garrido had demolished.
General Cardenas has promised redress.
Illegal atrocities may be matched by illegal acts
of clemency. In many parts of the countryr par-
ticularly in the tourist zone, greater indulgence was
given than the law allowed. In Oaxaca I met a
priest who wore clerical clothes in the streets with-
246
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
out molestation. One Sunday, while I was in
Mexico City, the Catholic students of the University
marched in procession to Guadalupe ; the matter
was kept out of the newspapers and no action was
taken against them. In general, however, the
regime in Mexico is still violently anti-religious.
The number of priests permitted in any State
is decided by the Governor. This is every-
where grossly inadequate. In the United States
and Europe the average is one priest to every
seven or eight hundred Catholics ; a priest with
I5oo in his charge, particularly if they are
in a rural district, would rightly regard
scattered
himself as overworked. In Mexico the average
is said to be one to ro,ooo ; this is a some-
what unsatisfactory figure since some States have
no priests at all; in some one is allowed to every
30,ooo, while Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca,
Cuernavaca and Taxco are fairly well provided.
Many of the priests whom the tourist sees in these
places, however, are there in defiance of the law
with the temporary connivance of the authorities ;
they are legally criminals and are liable to arrest
at any moment should the temper of the police
turn. In the conditions the priesthood have been
given exceptional facilities by the hierarchy and
say numerous Masses on days of obligation.
Seminaries are absolutely forbidden everywhere ;
this law knows no extenuation and the police are
active in searching for and confiscating any house
where theological instruction is given. A large
seminary has been established in Texas and this
has supplied many priests in recent years, but, as
well as this, seminaries do exist secretly in most of
the dioceses. The lot of the students is miserable,
247
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
for to the normal austerities and restrictions of
their life is added the necessity of keeping com-
pletely out of sight during the entire period-two
or three years--of their studies. Financial support,
moreover, is so meagre and precarious that they
live in conditions of genuine privation. In spite
of all this there is no shortage of applicants. Per-
secution is already having its normal result of
producing a priesthood of intense devotion. Only a
very small number, however, can be maintained
in this way; the law against the immigration of
foreign religious is still rigidly enforced and the
shortage of priests is acute. Added to this is the
fact that in the case of trouble of any kind they
have no civil rights.
The religious orders are still forbidden absolutely
as they have been since the time of Juarez. One
of the show places of Mexico is the hidden convent
of Puebla ; the place where Mr. Graham Greene's
acquaintance was disappointed of babies' bones.
It is, nevertheless, a thrilling place, and it is sin-
gularly obtuse on the part of the government to
make the show of it that they do. Here, in the
heart of the town, a community of enclosed nuns
lived for over seventy years without the knowledge
of the police. It was a seventeenth century foun-
dation of no particular importance in colonial
times; when Juarez drove out the nuns elsewhere
this little community escaped notice ; they were a
poor order, with few possessions to attract the
government agents ; they had always led a life of
strict retirement; now they disappeared from the
knowledge of all but a handful of friends; their
little patio was so built that no building overlooked
it; they had their chapel and a gallery with eye-
248
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
holes through which they could see the altar of the
neighbouring church and hear Mass on occasions
when it was too dangerous for a priest to visit
them. The only entrance to the world was through
a small private house whose occupants were in
the secrei. Great ingenuity was used to disguise
the two doors, through which provisions were
brought to them and needlework taken as payment.
Here they were professed, lived the strict rule of
their order, and died ; their bones were thrown
into a common pit which now provides a macabre
exhibit for the curious. In the more generous
times of Diaz novices were admitted but in the
last years of its life this was impossible ; about
forty elderly women were found there in 1935
when the police broke into the place.
One is shown it, as in a fashionable New York
restaurant one is shown the devices ofprohibition
days which conceal the piping hot cellars where
they ruin their wines. First the living room of the
private house ; the guide pulls some shelves from
the wall, presses a button and a door opens leading
straight into the cell of the Mother Superior ;
there is another concealed door in the house, at
the bottom of the stairs, leading into the patio.
The convent is still kept more or less as it was
found ; it disappointingly revealed few treasures
and no scandals. The most valuable find was a
collection of very ugly paintings on velvet. There
is still enough of the convent atmosphere left to
give an element of outrage to each new intrusion.
The guide himself, recruited with the rest from the
local masonic lodge, had a shamefaced air. It was,
to me at any rate, inexpressibly shocking to see him
jingling the little penitential chains which they
249
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
had found the nuns wearing; to hear him sneer
at the underground cells where the nuns retired
for meditation and at the three foot door through
which they crept to Mass. It affected others, too,
in the same way; one could hear them arriving
jauntily and noisily, with slightly lubricious expec-
tations ; they thoroughly enjoyed the secret doors ;
it was all part of a detective story ; then, as they
tramped round those secret places, they became
ill-at-ease and silent. They knew they had no
business there. A few of them asked questions,
'Why were the nuns turned out ? '
' It is against the law.'
'What harm were they doing ? '
'They were breaking the law.'
Some, who had never before had any acquaint-
ance with convent life, were obviously startled.
Their shock found expression in such phrases as,
' Morbid kind of place '. But I do not think they
really meant this. What they were feeling was a
sense of personal guilt. They were prying into
things with which their own lives had no contact.
They came out into the street in subdued little
parties.
I do not know what impression the Government
seeks to give in the Hidden Convent I the guile
of the religious, the zeal of the detectives, the use-
lessness of a devotional life ? I suppose all these
things. I am sure nothing could serve their pur-
poses worse. There are plenty of empty monas-
teries and convents in the country, now mere
architectural monuments with no keener spiritual
associations than the ruins of Fountains or Glaston-
brry; but everything is so recent at Puebla. It
is not merely that the sightseer can picture for
250
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
himself the scene of a few years back when the
police suddenly burst into the silence and bundled
the old women into the streets which they had not
seen for half a lifetime ; it is that he feels that in
his own trespass the outrage is being daily re-
enacted.
There is a repugnance for many people about
the idea of monastic life. No one suggests that
it is a suitable life for any except a particular
and relatively rare religious type ; for certain
people however it offers the highest happiness and
development. To deny these people the right to
live in the manner they require is a denlal of
religious liberty.
The churches, as has already been mentioned,
are the property of the state ; in some districts
they have been demolished ; in others locked ;
in the most favoured localities a proportion of
them have been returned on sufferanie to the
people for the use of their priests ; the furniture
and decorations, such as have survived, are the
property of the state ; even in the Cathedral of
Mexico City the vestments have been removed to
a neighbouring museum. Innocent tourists believe
it to be a kind of sacristy. While I was seeing them
a lady asked, 'Do the priests often weai those
things ? '
'No, madam,' the guide replied with a certain
grim humour, 'not often.'
'I should think not. They are far too valuable.,
'Yes, far too valuable.'
Pictures and statues are still constantly being
removed from churches, ostensibly to be put i;
museums.
Religious processions or the wearing of clerical
25r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
dress outside the church walls has long been for-
bidden. Some thirty years ago the Scottish colony
of the city held a banquet on St. Andrew's Niqlrt.
They had a piper ; many of them wore the kilt;
at tlre end of ihe evening they decided to walk
home in a body. The police did not like the music
or the bare knees. They were run in for causing
a disturbance, and innocently pleaded that it was
St. Andrew's Night. The fine was promptly
doubled ; they had taken Part in a religious
procession.
Outside the church walls no association of a
religious character is allowed ; this is-interpreted
in the most oPPressive way to proscribe any sort
of social gathering of Catholics ; not only are-the
bazaars ind sewing parties and recreation clubs
that make a part of normal parochial life, illega.l ;
a man's housi may be confiscated if he holds family
prayers
- with his own household.
The government is still active in trying to efface
its Chriitian past in changing the names of streets,
cities and nitural features, that have christian
associations ; pages could be filled with examp.les
of the minor discomforts and humiliations to which
practising Catholics are Put in every branch of the
-
iegime. The most vital question, next to the
e*istet ce of the priesthood, is education.
As has been mentioned above, the department
of education is in openly communist hands and the
teaching it prescribes not only omits religious
instruction but makes anti-religious instruction a
prominent part. No kind of alternative school is
alowed uth parents are obliged to send their
children to be taught doctrines which they
abominate. The only place where religious instruc-
252
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
tion is allowed is in the churches and it is necessary
for the catechists to coax the children there during
their playtime. It is one of the duties of the govern-
ment schoolmaster to watch these classes and when-
ever he knows that a class is to be held, to arrarige
other activities ; he also holds up to the ridicule
of the school those children who attend. They are
nevertheless well attended, and it seems to many
observers likely that if their success increases new
repressive measures will be taken, for the degree of
toleration now granted is on the supposition that
religious practice was a foible of the elderly that
would die out with them. ' I am tired of closing
churches and finding them full,' said General
Cardenas in a public speech at Oaxaca. 'Now I
am going to open the churches and educate the
people and in ten years I shall find them empty.'
Will he ?
So far I have only given an account of the situa-
tion from the outside ; the spectacle of an armed
minority blockading the Church and starving it to
death ; the resistance of the people has shown
itself only in spasmodic, spontaneous outbursts of
indignation, and in a wistful tenacity which, unsup-
ported, must in its nature f,ail. But out of sight
the work of the Church is going on. There are
no eucharistic congresses or mass nreetings of
Catholics in Mexico ; but there is, nevertheless, a
religious revival in progress that is transforming the
Mexican Church; driven into the catacombs, the
Church is recovering their spirit. I was allowed
to see something of this work while I was in Mexico ;
the workers must remain anonymous; they meet
in empty houses in shabby streets. They go in
constant danger and I must write nothing that can
253
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
give a clue to their identity. I may, however, say
something of the nature of their work. In per-
sonnel they are mainly laymen and women of
modest means and good education and they are
organized under the Bishops to carry out purely
spiritual work. There are no pistaleros among
them ; no talk of political disturbance ; they seek
to train and maintain teachers, within and outside
the government service, to counteract the official
atheism ; they facilitate the movement and con-
cealment of the priesthood in the proscribed areas ;
they issue simple doctrinal and devotional pamph-
lets ; they organize study groups where men and
girls of undergraduate age can discuss religious
questions and examine the official doctrines with
which they are stuffed in their classes. They have
taken as the basis of their discussions the encyclicals
of the late Pope, those relating to the particular
problems of Mexico and the ' Qudragesimo Anrn',
which owing to local difficulties was never, I
believe, fully promulgated in Mexico.l It was
this pronouncement which defined the Catholic
meaning of ' social justice ', and offered an alterna-
tive solution to the Man<ian class-war for the
problems of our industrialized world. There is
nothing reactionary, in the common use of the
word, about the aspirations of this lay orgariza'
tion in Mexico, nothing that will fit into the
idiotic dichotomy of Left and Right. Nor is
there anything specifically national. They believe
that the remedies they advocate are universal,
but that their need is manifestly acute in their own
1 Neither conscrvative nor socialist party was particularly anxious for
thc oeoplc to know how much Catholic doctrine has been borrowed by thc
S".i'"ti"L. Mr. Graham Grecnc ia lartless Roads mcntions a Bishop of San
Luir Potqi wbo Lept the eocydical Da Retwt Noosun ctacLcd in hir ccllar.
254
THE STRAIGHT FIGHT
country. For in Mexico nationality, colour and
race are so confused, the divisions of class so arti-
ficially emphasized and embittered and the whole
principle of golre.t -ent so disordered that _only
iome extra-national force can bring relief. Such
unity as the country ever enjoyed was the gift
of the Church ; it was the Church who saved the
Indians from slavery and established their funda-
mental equality and identity with their conquerors.
It is popular to believe that after the first genera-
tion the Church neglected her mission; so far as
that was ever true, she has paid for it and is starting
her work again on her old, true principles. The
problem of rebuilding the Mexican nation is the
difficulty of finding any common principle on which
to work. Identity of economic interests is a weak
enough bond even in a more or less homogeneous
country ; in Mexico the divisions of the urban,
unionized labourer and the peasant are unbridge-
able in economic terms. Every class and individual
is obsessed by grievances, real or imagined. Only
the broadest possible identity provides a common
interest ; the identity, in fact, which the theologians
defined at the time of the conquest ; the identity
of a common human nature and individual souls.
Even in the times when the divisions of caste were
most meticulously observed, the Church was a
reminder of this equality ; tiny, significant inci-
dents recur in her history ; to build the shrine of
the Pocito ladies offashion worked with the common
labourers ; in IB4g Pavil Robertson,l a rigid
protestant, was particularly struck by the freedom
with which classes and races mixed in the Easter
festivities ; the priesthood was recruited from
I A Visit ta Meico. tB5g.
255
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
Spanish and Indian alike; the lutmdado would
confess and take the last sacraments from the son
of one of his peons ; it was from this fundamental
identity that a healthy state might have evolved.
That it did not do so is indisputable ; so is the
fact that those who, in a hundred years, have
brought the country to her present pitiable state,
were, without exception, enemies of her religion.
The luy organizations believe that it is only
through the Church that Mexico can recover
health and unity. But they do not think this can
be done merely by re-establishing the hierarchy
and restoring the churches. They do not want a
Catholic government of the kind of the Emperor
Maximilian, who posed as a Christian prince,
while personally breaking the church's laws and
doubting her teaching. They have not, in fact,
any particular views on the kind of government
they want, believing that a good people will
evolve its own political organization. They are at
an earlier stage than that of preparing political
programmes ; they seek to restore the people to
a state of faith rvithout which no political pro-
gramme has any value.
It is a huge and simple ambition in comparison
with the slick new world proclaimed by their
enemies. but they are setting about it methodically
and devotedly. One could spend all one's time
in Mexico among Mexicans and know nothing
about it. But it is there and the men and women I
met who were engaged upon it were the only
genuinelv huppy and hopeful people I met in
Mexico.
256
CHAPTER EIGHT
INDEPENDENCE
I
EPTEMBER r6th is Independence Day in
Mexico. On that duy r8ro, Hidalgo, an
elderly priest who had for some time attracted
the suspicions of the authorities by his neglect of
his clerical duties and by his political interests, fore-
stalled arrest by proclaiming to his parishioners at
Dolores a 'new dispensation' and summoning the
Indians to recover from ' the hated Spaniards'
their stolen lands. His proclamation is called the
Grito, or shout, of Dolores. There is evidence that
Hidalgo had few religious convictions, but he used
his position as priest to give the revolt the air of a
crusade. The Madonna of Guadalupe was used as
his standard. He became temporarily master of
his district, opened the gaols, and soon found
himself at the head of a disorderly army of Bo,ooo,
armed with agricultural implements, who overran
the countryside looting and murdering. At Guanta-
juato, in two massacres, they killed about 5oo.
The Indians had brought their women with them
to carry the loot, but as they deserted others took
their places. They overcame one body of troops
and advanced on Guadalajara with roo,ooo men
and 95 pieces ofartillery. At the Bridge ofCalderon
they met 6ooo trained soldiers and were routed.
Hidalgo was caught while attempting to escape
257
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
towards the United States and executed, leaving
behind him a written statement of his rePentance.
His rebellion lasted less than a year. It is not an
incident which many nations would look back to
with particular pride ; it has nevertheless caP-
tivated the Mexican imagination ; its anniversary is
a public holiday and, on its eve, it has become the
practice for the President of the Republic to appear
on a balcony of the Palace and repeat Hidalgo's
C,rito.
We u,ere fortunate enough to obtain tickets of
admission to the ceremony. Most of the dip-
lomatic corps were there, the leading officials civil
and military, and a large assembly representative
of all degrees of Mexicans. Our sponsor, a member
of the former governing class, suffered a little from
social embarrassment which was shared by the
acquaintances he met. " Why, what are )0u
doing here ? " '( My English friends wished to
see it.But what are)ou doing ? " Each made some
excuse or other.
The whole range of state aPartments that give
on the Cathedral square were open and crowded.
People were shoving one another round the windows
trying to get a place as near as possible to the
Presidential balcony. The square was full of
people, but from the palace one could see very
little, for we were blinded by the floodlights that
played full on us. Fireworks went offspasmodically
in the darkness, rockets, squibs and now and then a
set-piece ; a large portrait in coloured fire revolved
and was consumed. Mickey Mouse flamed up.
There was more or less continual cheering, which
grew louder when the President appeared-and
drowned his utterance of the Grito. Then he came
258
INDEPENDENCE
back into the room and it was over. I reflected
on the divorce that flood-lighting makes between
public men and their audience ; we think of them
gazing down on a mass of eager faces ; all they see
is a blaze of electric light and a microphone ; they
might be speaking to the sea from the promenade
deck of a liner.
For the first time I saw the President at close
quarters ; he is certainly a supremely national
figure, squat and sturdy and clumsy, with a high
narrow head and that peculiar mirthlessness that
characterizes the Mexican Indian. People were
crowding round him now shaking hands ; he was
embracing the men with the awkward, national
hrg ; they were all about his height and weight
and build ; he seemed to be embracing a succes-
sion of relatives at a rather gloomy family gathering.
There had been a presentation of some sort ; a
relic of one of the revolutionary heroes, the hand-
kerchief, I think, which bound the eyes of Morelos
when he was executed. It was in a frame and the
photographers were trying to get a picture of him
and it together. It is not easy to make a satisfactory
picture of a little man with a heavy frame, par-
ticularly when he is surrounded with people trying
to embrace him ; at last they got him isolated
for a moment, held the relic like a halo behind tris
head and flashed their lights at him as he stood,
stolid and sombre, but not at all ridiculous because
he was not attempting to strike any attitude. He
just stood ; and then went on with the rough,
loveless embraces.
It is obviously impertinent to try to judge a
man's character from a glimpse of this kind, but
I had been talking about him, off and on, to all
259
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
kinds of people, for weeks, and the impressions I
had formed became concrete that evening. There
was nothing of the charlatan or the doctrinaire
about General Cardenas. Calles is said to have
remarked, as he went into exile, 'I never counted
on his vanity', but he does not seem to be a vain
man in any ordinary sense of the word. People
speak of him, and he speaks of himself, as a socialist,
but I do not think he is interested in ideas. He is an
excellent tactician ; he knows his terrain and he
never leaves it ; he knows how to become powerful
in Mexico. He came into authority in a country
that had been reduced to anarchy and acute
distress by a generation of revolutions. He knew
that the avowed aims of the revolutionaries-the
policy of the Party-had never been put into
practice. He had been brought up with this
policy on every lip as the only one which anyone
cared to admit to. Accordingly he set out to
consummate it. He has encountered difficulties
he never foresaw. It sounded so simple ; the
capitalists and foreigners are rich ; the peons are
poor ; take the possessions of the capitalists and
foreigners and distribute them ; then everyone
will be huppy ; if the results are disappointing it
is because not enough has been distributed ; take
some more ; then more still until no one is hungry.
It is a policy naturally intelligible to a general
accustomed to the exigencies of commissariat ;
let the army live on the country. Much cleverer
and more knowledgeable people than himself,
men like Lombardo Toledano, have told him that
this is the way to repair the ravages of his pre-
decessors.
A question that is often asked with particular
e6o
INDEPENDENCE
reference to oil confiscations but with general
application, is how can the President save his face
if he finds a reversal of policy necessary ? The
answer, I think, is that face-saving is not a problem
of Mexican politics; the question, there, is to keep
in power. Mexicans do not expect much of their
leaders ;
they have been disappointed and betrayed
too many times. The leader is not answerable to
an informed, critical and effective public opinion;
his position depends on maintaining supPort from
a balance of forces-mainly the army and the
trades unions. There are no hallowed constitu-
tional uses that he need fear to outrage ; there is
effective rule and anarchy, and the dual altruistic
aim of government in seeing that the people do
not starve and that the nation remains independent.
The change from the system in force in Mexico to
that of Germany is a matter of symbols and of
discipline. The people have adopted the clenched
fist and the hammer and sickle as Hidalgo's mob
adopted the Guadalupe ; they have fallen into
the habit of regarding the failure of a big industry
as a victory in the class war. If these victories,
fought under communist symbols, are found to be
barren of benefits they can effortlessly proclaim
a new allegiance ; a few executions perhaps would
be needed ; then the people would go back to
work as Nazi socialists and the nation would adopt
new protectors. DemocracY, for them, has meant
wealthy foreigners getting richer with their help.
Atrocity stories do not shock them ; they are the
commonplaces of their own political history. There
is a heresy in the Nazi party that is condemned-
but rather leniently punished-under the title of
National Bolshevism ; a combination of the race-
e6r
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
myth with the destruction of private property that
seems peculiarly apt for importation into Mexico.
And the trade routes for its importation are already
established.
2
Independence is perhaps the one national
achievement that has not lost its glamour for the
Mexicans. It has been accompanied by countless
disadvantages, many of which have been noted in
earlier chapters of this book-the loss of more than
half the national territory, the disappearance of
learning, the ascendancy of unworthy rulers, a
decay in prosperity which has borne most hardly
upon the poorest, the waste of whole provinces.
Perhaps it is unjust to attribute these entirely to
independence. Mexico has certainly proved quite
unamenable to representative government; on
the other hand Spain itself, in a less degree, was
suffering from similar disasters and experiments ;
nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain was
in no condition to govern a distant empire ; the
disability was increased by the loss of the empire ;
it has been a vicious circle in which both peoples
have suffered.
It was a natural reflection, on Independence
Day, to wonder what precisely Mexico was cele-
brating. There has not been a period in her century
of Independence when her rulers have not been
subject to effective foreign pressure ; at times, as
under Maximilian, she has been occupied by
foreign troops. At decisive moments in her history,
as when Miramon was forced to raise the siege of
Vera Cruz, the United States have intervened in
zGz
INDEPENDENCE
favour of a government they hoped would be
sympathetic. In the days of Diaz the country
enjoyed the kind of international status which
comes from the domination of big business. The
last ten years, perhaps, have been the time of
greatest freedom and they have been years of
almost unrelieved failure. But the Mexicans do
mean something by Independence which, I think,
works out to mean recognizable identity. A
foreigner, wherever he comes from, knows the
moment he crosses the frontier that he is a foreigner.
The place has its own aspect ; the people their
own liabits ; it is easy to say that these things might
survive political absorption ; the observable fact
is that they do not ; they vanish inexplicably and
have to be kept alive by folk societies and tourist
agencies. Mexicans cherish their usages and even
those who find the regime antagonistic are reluctant
to emigrate. They see w'hat, through annexation,
has become of California and obstinately prefer
their onn comparative disorder and desolation.
On the other hand it seems to be the trend of
industrial history that small units cannot survive.
Fifty years ago it was reasonable to think that a
system of universal free exchange in currencies
and commodities would result in a civilization in
which political divisions would be mainly senti-
mental ; here a king, there a republic ; nationalities
would become matters of dialect and costume ;
a universal banking system would provide a
lingua .franca. Marx accepted this contemporary
assumption in one set of terms ; the idea of the
Leagui of Nations is another. At the same time
it was pointed out that man's loyalties did not
embrace large systems; Scotsmen were patriotic
263
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
about Scotland, not about the British Empire.
There was a Scottish national movement and a
Welsh national movement, to match the Irish;
attempts were even made to revive Cornish as a
nationality. The less important political frontiers.
became, the greater was the attiaction of a dis-
integrating loyalty of each district to the traditions
in which it had its origin. Separatism of small
nationalities depended on the separation being
sentimental. A reasonable man of ihe last genera-
tion _might well have welcomed and expected the
indefinite multiplication of sovereign slates in a
thg-I., universal financial structure and a machinery
for international litigation and conciliation.
In the last ten years, however, the process has
changed. Political frontiers have beiome more
important than at any time in history, rival financial
structures have developed and ruthless mergers have
c_onsequently extinguished the small political units.
Central Europe had broken up ; it is now riveted
together; Spain began to break, Catalans and
Basques have been forced into national unity. More
remarkable still, as a symptom of this process a new
sentimentality has arisen which infects the younger
generations of every race and is unintelligible-to
most men over thirty-crowd-patriotism. Hitherto
the instinctive reaction of a self-respecting man to a
crowd has been one of revulsion. fn a mob people
will applaud oratory and themselves shout-woids
which.individually each one of them would regard
as ridiculous ; worse than that they will commit
atrocities from which they will recoil in horror
next morning. Of all forms of intoxication that
which comes from participation in mob enthu-
siasm is the one which should bring the bitterest
264
INDEPENDENCE
aftermath of shame. It was one of the great argu-
ments in favour of wider dissemination of general
knowledge-that the nineteenth century liberals
called education-that it would produce a race of
individual thinkers who would be proof against
demagogy and hysteria. By all reasonable exPec-
tation the discovery of wireless telegraphy should
have contributed to this new individualism ; a
man could listen to his political leaders at his own
fireside, uninfected by the emotions of his neigh-
bours; he had ample time to examine the argu-
ments before acting on them. Ten years ago, or
less, this would have seemed a sound assumption.
Events, however, have proved the reverse. As
traditional sources of intoxication have fallen into
increasing disrepute, mass hysteria has grown.
People find a masochistic relish in being jostled
and stifled in a crowd and in surrendering their
individual judgments. Instead of diversity of
opinion, they prefer rival orthodoxies. 'IIow does
so-and-so stand, Left or Right ? ' ' Well, it's hard
to say exactly.' 'Ah, sitting on the fence. No
contemporary significance.' They love a crisis
because a sense of universal danger, real or
imagined, draws them closer to the mob. In a
world where such influences are dominant, what
chance does a country like Mexico have of retaining
its independence ?
It is not a purely American problem. The out-
come of the Spanish war is vital to it. It may effect
it directly in more than one way. First, there is
the possibility of a large influx of population from
the defeated side, who at the time of writing are
corralled in France and towards whom cordial if
somewhat noncommittal sentiments have been
265
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
expressed. From the beginning of the Spanish
war the Mexican governing party expressed the
belief that the Spanish republicans were fighting
the battle which they themselves had already won.
Their contributions to the Republican side were
not extensive; they sent some obsolete armaments
which were sunk in transit and they received a
number of unhappy Basque children-whom one
General advised shooting-who are now interned
in the State of Morelos in circumstances which are
said to be rather similar to those of the legionaries
now in France. There were some Mexicans on
both sides in the Spanish war, more I believe, on
Franco's than the republic's. The responsibility of
finding a refuge for the republican army is one which
all parties are trying to impose upon one another.
When those who fought for local-Catalan
or Basque-patriotism, those who were prepared
to compromise on their economic doctrines and
those who merely found themselves geographically
in republican territory and were recruited for that
side, have been eliminated, there will remain
great numbers of stateless men-Italian and central
European communists, intransigent Spanish
communists and anarchists and the thousands of
criminals who, at the outbreak of the revolution,
were liberated from prison and armed-for whom
a home must be found. It appears that some-
thing like 5o,ooo men will come into this
category. An attempt will certainly be made by
the other nations to settle them in Mexico and
it is difficult to see on what grounds the present
government can refuse to take them. Their
arrival could only mean a vast increase of the
anarchical element which might drive the army
266
INDEPENDENCE
into revolt. A successful military usurPation would
almost certainly be followed by the adherence of
Mexico to the German trade group that is being
busily built up in Latin America. This is far from
being an imiginary danger ; it has been little
expoied in England except in the socialist press'
but it is a develoPment which is causing genuine
alarm in Washington. It is to counter this danger,
not to preserve European frontiers, that the U.S.
armaments programme is directed. There are
already large colonies of Germans in various pa{s
of South America, in particular on the Brazil-
Argentine border ; German and Italian business
firms-which under the Nazi system mean the
State-control important industries all over the
continent ; the air lines are predominantly German,
with control of the landing grounds ; the steel
industry in Chile and the port of Malbrego in Peru
are largely German. Italians are training the
Bolivian army and the Lima police force ; in the
South of Peru, in the Chichama valley, Japanese
troops protect extensive Japanese sugar properties.
Britiih ind American interests are still predominant
but every German settled constitutes a Nazi unit
under the direction of party headquarters ; there
is a wireless service and a chain of newspapers
controlled by Germany and devoted to Nazi
propaganda ; in certain Brazilian districts the
gori*-.t t is virtually in the hands of the German
Nazi leader. The competition everywhere is of a
totally different order from that of rival British and
American firms. At present German penetration
in Mexico is mainly confined to the Guatemala
border where German planters have imported
large quantities of arms and maintain a private
267
ROBBERT UNDER LAW
defence force. A movement to confiscate these
properties might be an international event of the
gravest consequences. Nazi negotiations to secure
the expropriated oil fields are open and, at the time
of writing, still liable to success. It is far from
fantastic to believe that in the event of political
conditions in Mexico being propitious, Germany is
prepared to intervene with vast, ready-made plans
for taking control. It must be observed in this
connection that the United States Government
will no longer be embarrassed by their radical
supporters from taking action.
279
INDEX
A CAPULCO, 36 //^t.R.O.M., 56-7, ro7,
f\ff:il'ifux;i" t t ,47, I5o-I, t53,237
57, 6o, 62,
Alvarado, t46, t4g -C.T.M.,
6+, 79, 98, ro6-8, I 14,
Amaro, General, 7r r47, rb3, r59, l6z, r68,
American Civil War, I3e r72, rgt, r96, r99-zoo,
Anahuac, Mesa Central de, z4g,246
r9 Cabrera, Miguel, z3r
Anahuac River, 5I Calais, 3
Argentine, 267 Calderon, Bridge of, 257
Arispe, Viesca, rr7 California, B, I zB-9, 229,
Arizpe, tz7 263
Austin, Moses, rzB Calles, General, 24, 36-7,
Austin, Stephen, te9 65,7o, gg, IoI, 146, r5I-
Ayestaren, Colonel, te7 2, r68, rBB, 2r9, 226,
Azorat, lt7 z3&-4o,244-s
Aztecs, 20, 5I, 67, 78, zzo Capri, 4r
Cardenas, General Lazaro,
9, 37, 42-2, 57-8,62, 7r-
4, Br,83, 9r-2, 97, 99,
DALLINGER, R., r3B roI-3, ro6-7, rrr, rrq-
_[Balmoral, 79 9, r37, 154-5, 16o, 162,
Barcelona, ttr 2o7 r66-7, t73-4, r78, IBo,
Bath, 34 rBB-94, rgg-2o5, 243,
Beachcomber, Io 245, 253, z6o, 277
Beck, G., r4o Carlotta, Arch-Duchess, 53
Berlin, 4r Carranza, 24, 42r 56, 69,
Biaritz, B, 65, r79 r46, r48-5o,297-8
Boers, rzg Catalonia, zz
Bolshevists, l5 Cedillo, General, 57, r46
Borda,4r Chac-Mool, 78
Brazil, 267 Chalma,47-B
Bustamante, rz8 Chapultepec Palace, 27, 42
z8r
INDEX
Cheltenham, 44 Dollfuss, r5
Chiapas, 37,94, zo4, z4G, Dolores, e57
272
Chicago, 15
Chichama Valley, 267 GYPT,6
Chichen-Itz a, 36 Elements of Chemistr2,
Chihuaha, r39 t23
Chile, 267 Elizabeth, Queen, z7o
Churibusco, 233
Cicero, rz3
Coahuila, r4B ARIAS, G., rzB, zor
Coatzacoalos, 9z Fascists, 74-5, r58
Coatzacoalos River, 93 Fez, 4t
Columbus, 149 Foster, J. W., r3z
Comonfort, lz8, zol France, 22, 70,265, z68-9,
Coney Island, 4r 274
Connolly, C., zz Furbero, 95
Corinth, Gulf of, 5
Cortes, 2or 5r, 69, ,85,
232-3 ARRIDO, Gov., 246
Costa Rica, 246 Germany, B+, l20,
Cowdray, Lord, 54, 9z-3, t58, l7o, rgB, zir,
95-6 zGB, 275
Cuba, 5r Gil, Portes, l95
Cuernavacar 361 4o,247 Goma, Cardinal, z7o
Gonzalez, t3z
Good Neighbor, The, 96
ANIELS, J., r53-5, Gosse,Edmund, r54
r59 Gray,Juan, lr7
Davis, 156 Greene, Graham, 37 -8, 2o3,
del Rio, M., re3 zr4, z4B, 2S+,272
Deterding, Sir Henri, ro4 Gresham's Lawr To
Diaz, Felix, t4z Gruening, Ernest, 66, tz4,
Diaz, General Porfirio, 42, r38, r43, tBB, zt4, z2o,
$-5,67-79, 76, 9r,. r 19, zzz, zz9, zg6
132-7, r4B, rB5, r92, Guadalajara, 36,257
237, z3g, z4B Guadalupe, 52, tg2, 222-5,
Diego, Juan, 22g-5, 222 227-9, 23r-4, 247, z6t
Diplomatic Memoirs, t3z uadalupe-Hidalgo, Peace
Disney, Walt, r9z of, rz9
Doheny, rcg-4 Guatemala, g7r 267
zBz
INDEX
Guffey, Senator, t 56 Kemal, Mustapha, 68
Guggenheim, I38 Khun, Bela, zg7
UERETARO, zg7
I\TAPOLEON III, 53
r\ N1lffu1iuti,,,,,,,
r6r-2, r84, r89,244, 26r,
267-8, 272,275
Nelkin, Margarita, r57
New York, 4,23,94,249
RIIliri6?,11,,,,
North Africa, r74, tgo zgr 66, r5z
Norway, 5 Riviera, r 79
284
INDEX
Robertson, Pavil, 255 Spender, J. A., gg
Rodriguez, r34 Spindle Top, 94
Rome, 54, zt6, z69 S.S. Siboncy, *-5, 7, tr-r2,
Romonoffs, 15 20.4
Roosevelt, President, 44, Stalin, 9r
r57, tiz, zot Stein, r6r
Royal and Pontifical Uni- Sterling, Marquez, r4r
versity, r22) 2or Stonyhurst, r 7 r
Rubio, 4z Suarez, 69
Rubio, Mr., r r7 Swafford, Rev. Mr., 16r
Russia, BB, 168, 237-8
286
*
\.\l r//
Y :a :a
\\\ r/,7
:a
\\1 I ///
Y
\\l r/r/
\< :<
\\\r// \\1ril
\i :a :.
\\tt72 \\\rz
Y '!a
\\\ r/,/
\lr// \\\r///
\1 \\\i/z
Y !/
ll,
\\\ r/z \\t r
777 \\\ r/z
i ///
\\\
\\.!a//
Y :a )< '!a