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 j What the Mexican 
 | Conference 
 I Really Means 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 It Represents Desire of the People, Deprived 
 of Human Rights, to Re-establish Them- 
 selves in the Scheme of Social Evolution 
 
 Y 
 
 By MARY AUSTIN 
 
 Author of 
 
 The Land of Little Rain," "A Woman of Genius," Etc. 
 
 From "NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE" 
 
 4V, 
 
 Published by 
 
 LATIN-AMERICAN NEWS ASSOCIATION 
 1400 Broadway, New York City 
 

IN 1522 Cortez pinned the province of Mexico to Spain with 
 a sword. In 1821 Mexico took the sword in her own 
 hand and cut out of the original fabric of national sover- 
 eignty, which was all Spain had left her of her three 
 hundred years' servitude, the uniform of a representative 
 government. In September, 1915, Mexico, without any 
 authorized executive, without any properly constituted leg- 
 islative body, with no more than 15 per cent, of her popula- 
 tion educationally qualified, but with that uniform, a little 
 tattered, perhaps, but still buttoned bravely about her breast, 
 is sitting in conference with the greatest of the Americas. 
 
 Of all the incidents that fell in between those two dates 
 none is of such historic significance as those which lead 
 up to the conference at New London, in New England, the 
 original cradle of representative government in the New 
 World. It has been called ostensibly to consider one of 
 the breaks in the fabrics of Mexican sovereignty impartially 
 referred to by First Chief Carranza as "the Columbus in- 
 cident," but the incident itself is almost overlaid by con- 
 siderations which may result from it, considerations of the 
 utmost importance not only to the two republics, but to all 
 Latin America. "It ought," said Secretary Lane, the Chair- 
 man of the American Commission, "to indicate the line of 
 political direction in the New World for the next thousand 
 years." 
 
 Lane is a strong, easy man, who never muffs and never 
 makes the mistake of reading his own psychology into an 
 
alien situation. Dr. John Mott, the second member, is much 
 the same sort of man Lane is, with more velvet. He is 
 probably the first man ever appointed to a commission of 
 this kind whose approach to public questions is frankly ethi- 
 cal rather than political. If Judge George Gray, the third 
 member of the triad, gives the impression of being less of 
 a personality, it is only because he has tucked his personality 
 out of the way to give freer play to his remarkable gift for 
 administrative arbitration, in the exercise of which he has 
 a long and successful record. 
 
 But neither of these gentlemen nor the three Mexican 
 Commissioners who will be mentioned presently have the 
 case entirely in their hands. The real protagonists at New 
 London are the 15 per cent, of Mexico gathered to a head 
 under Venustiano Carranza, the 15,000,000 they are attempt- 
 ing to bring into line with modern national requirements, 
 the present Administration and the temper of the American 
 people. 
 
 So far as the attitude of the Administration has revealed 
 itself, it has been for a policy of constructive conciliation. 
 It has all been in keeping with the soundest Americanism, 
 in recognizing the right of a people to manage their own 
 affairs, even when they aren't doing it as well as we think 
 we could do it for them. It has clearly seen the obligation 
 of our pre-eminence among American nations, and measured 
 the cost of maintaining it against the relatively greater price 
 of a traditional "satisfaction." Very little study of the Mexi- 
 can situation is necessary to realize that no mistake in the 
 approach could compare with the irreparably greater mis- 
 take of violating the democratic principle of international 
 arbitration. 
 
 Secretary Lane found the touchstone of sanity in his wel- 
 coming address when he said that this conference must 
 be begun not only in the realization that we two countries 
 are neighbors, but that we are always going to be neighbors. 
 We must learn to be good neighbors, not only because it 
 will be much more comfortable but because we can neither 
 of us afford to have anybody take more interest in Mexi- 
 co than we take. And the Administration is in a better posi- 
 tion than any of us to know what interest is being taken 
 and what it will mean to us. 
 
 4 
 
 f 
 
The attitude of the American people toward Mexico is 
 characterized by a commendable absence of animus and a 
 general ignorance of things Mexican which would be appal- 
 ling if it were not kept company by equal ignorance of so 
 many things that we really ought to know about. It fails 
 most in not taking account of the Mexicans as a dislocated 
 people. 
 
 When Spain established herself in the country the respec- 
 tive tribes occupied a definite place in social evolution. They 
 had a native religion, a fruitful relation to the land, and a 
 Government of their own adoption. These are three indis- 
 pensable items of normal development, and these three the 
 Spaniard wholly disrupted. No doubt Spain hoped to make 
 over the free military democracy of Anahuac on the model 
 of the European feudal system a system fitted neither to 
 the temperament nor the capacity of the aboriginal Mexi- 
 can. What she did was to leave them a people dislocated 
 from all their natural habits, without any incentive to con- 
 form to the new system, and kept from any sort of knowl- 
 edge or freedom to acquire any sense of their social direc- 
 tion. Under these circumstances it is not possible that the 
 manners and morals of the peon class, as they present them- 
 selves to the American observer, can be a reliable index of 
 peon character. 
 
 To take but one item, so often quoted to the discredit of 
 the peon, the reaction of this dislocation on the problem of 
 marriage. Under Aztec rule marriage was strictly regulated 
 and the standard of sex morality was higher than that 
 of the Conquistadores. Common report is probably right in 
 putting the present standard very low among the work- 
 ing classes, but when the young peon wishes to marry now 
 he is confronted with two alternatives. He can have a 
 civil marriage, which his church has taught him to regard 
 as no marriage at all, or a church wedding for which the 
 fee is practically prohibitive. If scruple is stronger in him 
 than impulse, he borrows money from his employer, pays 
 the priest, and enters upon a condition of debt which 
 amounts to slavery. How many of our own young work- 
 ing people, obliged to legitimatize their marriages at such a 
 price, would decide to dispense with any ceremony what- 
 ever? Yet by just such frustrations of his natural im- 
 pulse toward thrift and decency has the character of the 
 
Mexican working man been debased. Without knowledge 
 of these disintegrating social factors, no judgment of the 
 Mexican as a neighbor and possible ally has any value 
 whatever. Back of every problem of the revolution, back 
 of the revolution itself, lies this problem of dislocation. 
 
 Historically, the Mexicans are a hard working, land lov- 
 ing, peaceable people. Current impression that they are 
 given to revolt as the sparks fly upward fails to realize what 
 a large part hunger, homelessness, low wages, and lack of 
 confidence play in men's willingness or unwillingness to 
 tight. Personally, the fear of those to whom the republic is 
 dear is that they will stop fighting too soon; as soon as they 
 are eased of their intolerable discomfort. When General 
 Blanco, after the earlier victories, began parceling out the 
 land, most of those who were fortunate to get a piece of it 
 resigned from the army. Prosperity never made any peo- 
 ple warlike. It only makes it possible when they do fight 
 to go on fighting longer. But when any people has actually 
 more to hope for from war — more things to eat, more to 
 look forward to and live for — then revolution may become 
 a habit. For a long time Mexico has been in that condition. 
 Her short, sporadic revolts are simply the index of the 
 desperation of the people and the short shift of their sup- 
 plies. Because they are fighting for relief, they snatch up 
 any leader that comes handy, Zapata, Madero, Villa, just as 
 the French peasants caught up bill hooks and scythes when 
 no better weapons were to be had. The extent to which 
 they will support the Carranzista program depends on the 
 edge it has to cut a path for them back to their normal re- 
 lation to the land and to one another. 
 
 It is difficult to say just how conscious the revolt is among 
 the 15,000,000. The working population is in a state of 
 stampede. They have been herded away from their natural 
 human rights and instincts as long as they can stand it, and 
 now they must get back to where they started from or die. 
 The success that any provisional government can have in 
 Mexico will depend on its ability to understand and satisfy 
 this struggle of a vast population to re-establish itself in 
 the scheme of social evolution. On our ability to sympa- 
 thize and assist at such a reinstatement depends our pre- 
 eminence among American republics — and, incidentally, 
 much of our commercial prestige and our chance to reform 
 
international law along more democratic lines. No matter 
 to what frame the Government of Mexico is attached, the 
 warp of it must be like the blanket the native woman weaves, 
 tied at the other end to her body. As she sways to her work, 
 it is tightened or relaxed and the pattern of representative 
 government appears. 
 
 The Administration knows this. The 15 per cent, knows 
 it, the Commissioners know it. If the American people fail 
 to know it they will miss their cue more completely than 
 they have ever missed it in the course of their history. 
 
 Every South American republic is made up of elements 
 similar to those which give so much trouble in Mexico, a 
 small, highly intelligent, Latinized class in whose hands are 
 the balance of property and power, and a numerically larger 
 group of tribesmen. They are all more or less successfully 
 engaged in the same problem of building up out of these 
 elements a self-governing, self-sustaining middle class. 
 South American distrust of the United States has been very 
 largely allayed by our refusal of the obvious opportunity 
 for territory and political conquest which the Mexican situa- 
 tion lays open to us. 
 
 There remain still the questions of trade and military 
 alliances which it will be important for all the Americas 
 to make to meet the reorganization of world-trade at the 
 close of the European war. It is not too much to say that 
 the general lines of those alliances, the spirit in which they 
 will be approached by Latin America, are being determined 
 in the commission now meeting at New London. 
 
 The questions which formally come before the Commis- 
 sioners are five in number: 
 
 The withdrawal of our troops from Mexico. 
 
 The future policing of the border. 
 
 The American claim for damage and confiscation. 
 
 The return of American investors to their properties. 
 
 The terms upon which Americans can continue to go into 
 Mexico for the development of her natural resources. 
 
 But the determination of all these points depends on the 
 ability of the Carranzistas to carry out any agreements which 
 may be made. They are not— Senors Cabrera, Bonillas, and 
 
Pani — Commissioners of a legally elected Government. With 
 an 85 per cent, illiteracy it is unlikely that anything like 
 representative suffrage can be expected from Mexico for 
 another fifty years. But to say that a country has not rep- 
 resentative government is not necessarily to say that it has 
 not that form of government which is, at the present, best 
 for it. With the bias of the present Administration toward 
 what is human and common-sensible, it is in order to in- 
 quire how far the Carranzistas represent the intimate needs 
 and deep-rooted tendencies of the Mexican people. For the 
 proper handling of the border problem there must be much 
 more arrived at than the order of the incidents that led 
 up to it. It is not to any game of bluff and bluster that the 
 Joint Commission has sat down, but to search the soul of 
 a nation. 
 
 To be in entire sympathy with the purposes of the com- 
 mission it is necessary to feel perfectly certain that the nation 
 has a soul, and that the ferment in which we find it is gen- 
 eric, rectifying to the. national spirit. It has worked for 
 years; it may spume and work again. It would be pleasant 
 to think that it is even now beginning to clarify, and that 
 the country is so soon and so cheaply pacified. But with 
 no disrespect to the First Chief of the present revolution it 
 is still possible that the national ideal may take some other 
 form at another time. New wine always needs new bottles. 
 We must deal, we must learn to think of ourselves as deal- 
 ing, in Mexico with a spirit rather than a party. If we 
 would be saved future fumblings and embarrassment we 
 must commit ourselves not to a man, but to the thing which 
 for the hour he represents, the destiny of the Mexican 
 people. 
 
 It is significant to note that the three men to whom have 
 been intrusted the conduct of the Mexican interest are all 
 very much of the type we would have chosen ourselves. 
 They are all "business men" rather than politicians — two 
 of them engineers and one a railroad man. Senor Luis 
 Cabrera, Secretary of the Treasury, distinguished for his 
 handling of the disorganized fiscal system of Mexico, might 
 easily have acquired that intent, far-directed look some- 
 where below Twenty-third Street in New York. Senor Ig- 
 nacio Bonillas, holding the portfolio of Communications 
 and Public Works, did acquire not only his engineering 
 
 8 
 
education, but his wife and his accent in Boston, U. S. A. 
 Senor Alberto J. Pani is the President of the National Rail- 
 way Lines of Mexico, and looks it, done into Spanish, of 
 course, and young enough to excuse his not yet having at- 
 tained the girth with which American newspaper cartoons 
 invariably credit a railway magnate. Really a very pretty 
 man whose bright, reflective eyes hint without revealing 
 his extraordinary acquaintance with the physical phases of 
 every plan of national betterment. These are the men who 
 not only believe in the ability of Mexico to maintain her 
 place among the sovereign nations of the world, but ex- 
 pect to have a hand in the process. 
 
 They offer as the credentials of their party some really 
 amazing achievements in practical rehabilitation; so many 
 miles of railroad rebuilt, such and such harbors cleared, 
 lighthouse and coast protection all in working order, a 
 more effective postal system. These are the sort of things 
 we expect from the 15 per cent. They are testimonials to 
 the quality and efficiency of the Carranza Cabinet. No one 
 who talks with the Mexican Commissioners can doubt that 
 they have come to their work in a spirit of high intelli- 
 gence tempered by the sobriety of practice. But it is not 
 in these we must look for the guarantee of their ability to 
 prevent violations of our border, protect the lives of our 
 citizens and advance the interests of American investors 
 in Mexico. The real touchstone of the Carranzistas is, as 
 it is with all Governments, their handling of the 15,000,000. 
 The body of Mexican citizenry must be replanted in its na- 
 tive environment, its roots must strike and spread. It must 
 be made to branch and grow. 
 
 We have to look to the land policy of the Carranzistas 
 to find corroboration of their claim really to represent the 
 majority. We have to look for something in their prac- 
 tice of reform that connects it with the native tendency of 
 the Mexicans as a people. We find it in their recognition 
 of the tribal element, in the communal use of public utili- 
 ties. 
 
 The peon class of Mexico has no sense of private property 
 in land. It is difficult for us who inherit ten or fifteen 
 centuries of land-owning habits to realize that they never 
 had any. No such thing as ownership of land in fee was 
 ever heard of in ancient Anahuac, which is not so much 
 
 9 
 
more ancient than Plymouth Colony. No office or man 
 owned any land, title to it did not even pass by conquest. 
 It was as free as air; like air, you used as much or as little 
 of it as answered your necessity. 
 
 There was a kind of relationship between the tribe and 
 the particular land in which it was bred, like the relation 
 of wild animals to their habitat and plants to their climatic 
 zone. It was as natural as that and as difficult to eradicate. 
 Descendants of generations of dispossessed races, as we are, 
 we have failed to understand that not the peon's house is 
 his home, but the mountain, the valley. When they want 
 a fleeing criminal in Mexico, if he is of the peon class, they 
 do not spend much time looking for him. They go and sit 
 down in his tribal home and wait. Sooner or later, as 
 swallows return to the eaves, he must come back to it. 
 
 It is plain from this that just a piece of land anywhere 
 isn't going to solve the unrest of the peon. He must be re- 
 turned to his tierra. And because he hasn't any property sense 
 of land, when he gets his allotment it must be made in- 
 alienable. Otherwise somebody will take it away from him 
 as easily as Spain did. 
 
 That the new land policy of the Carranzistas takes ac- 
 count of all these things is the best indication it gives of 
 achieving permanence. Nor is the communal element neg- 
 lected. Wherever possible communal lands are being re- 
 where they have legally passed fo private owners they are 
 stored to the pueblos, where these have been stolen, and 
 repurchased by the State and restored. Mexico is never 
 going to be pacified by the sword. Spain tried it and failed. 
 Diaz tried to do it with a political despotism. History and 
 social science are both on the side of Mr. Carranza's at- 
 tempt to substitute a plowshare and a spade. 
 
 The Carranzistas hope for a great many reforms beside 
 the land reform — they hope to accomplish a good many of 
 them by virtue of an element in Mexico which they under- 
 stand because they were born to it. But only a very big 
 American, like Franklin K. Lane, can understand it. Almost 
 anybody can know a lot of facts about Villa and Carranza 
 and the Columbus incident, but it takes a statesman to 
 grasp a simple principle of human society, such as that 
 man is an animal who, in his natural state, does better for 
 
 10 
 
himself living and working in groups. In normal human 
 society group activities are higher than any individual 
 achievement. This is not true of us, who are made up of 
 the remnants of other Old World groups. Our public poli- 
 cies are more hesitant, our public business less efficient, our 
 public art, our public sanitation are all on a lower level 
 than the individual effort of great numbers of our citizens. 
 But in Mexico on her own this was not so. Every public 
 building was nobler than any private house. Communal 
 activity reached a plane higher in several points than the 
 Europe of that day. 
 
 This is one of the things Spain disrupted. But you can't 
 really eradicate a genuine racial tendency like that, any 
 more than you can get the kinks out of an African's wool. 
 You can absolutely bank on Mexico united and functioning 
 as a people doing things that no Mexican would ever think 
 of doing for himself. That is why people who know Mex- 
 ico feel more hopeful of the situation than those who only 
 know Mexicans. 
 
 I do not mean to suggest that all the work of the com- 
 mission will be carried on in high C like that. The Car- 
 ranzistas have a well-defined program which has a definite 
 relation to the problems of the border and the 
 settlement of American claims. They are also 
 fully alive to the international bearing of any entente 
 which may be reached by them in conjunction with the 
 American Commissioners. Foreign investors have suffered 
 the sarnie damage and inconvenience during the revolution. 
 European nations have served notice that as soon as they 
 have disposed of more pressing matters at home they will 
 attend to their Mexican interests. It will be every way to 
 the advantage of Mexico to have established a world pre- 
 cedent with the United States which Europe will think 
 twice about overriding. And on the other hand, the noblesse 
 oblige of nations to some extent compels the United States 
 to take a world view; riot to press the personal instance too 
 much. 
 
 The policing of the border is, in fact, almost the only 
 intimate concern of the United States, and even that has to 
 be conducted with one eye on the other border of Mexico, 
 where Guatemala is feeling out the limit of forbearance. 
 We don't hear much of Guatemala in the newspapers, but 
 
 11 
 
it is no secret in Mexico that First Chief Carranza is 
 merely holding that matter in abeyance as being a little 
 more in the family and susceptible of less public adjust- 
 ment. 
 
 The Carranzistas have undertaken many reforms in which 
 we have almost no interest, certainly no right to meddle, 
 such as the reform of marriage and the guarantee of re- 
 ligious freedom. They even contemplate the — for them — 
 wild radicalism of inviting all religions into Mexico so that 
 every citizen may choose the one which pleases him. They 
 have attempted many things which should work di- 
 rectly to the advantage of foreign investors, such as a reform 
 of the civil, penal and commercial codes more in line with 
 modern methods, and a reorganization of the judicial pro- 
 cedure to rid it of the delays and indirection of which 
 Americans in Mexico so frequently complain. They propose 
 to abolish the obnoxious jefe politico which tied local af- 
 fairs to the central political powers. 
 
 Now, anybody can see that a regime which favors a free, 
 reasonably paid, land-owning population is not only going 
 to be more comfortable for Americans working there, but 
 it is also going to react immeasurably in favor of Americans 
 who live at home producing bathtubs, electric heaters, mil- 
 linery, phonographs,, cultivators and moving pictures to sell 
 to anybody who will buy. Honesty compels me to admit 
 that there isn't any wild rush yet on the part of the peons 
 for bathtubs, but they are strong for phonographs and 
 cinemas and farming implements. 
 
 The items of the Constitutionalists' program at which 
 vested interests take alarm are, of course, the reform of 
 mining and land laws, and the land tax system. Mexico 
 in the past has been not only the land of poco tiempo, but 
 the paradise of special privilege. And the man who has 
 looked upon Mexico as a place to make 25 per cent, on his 
 investment is the one who thinks that the only thing we 
 can do is to go in there and run things ourselves. 
 
 Such people are always in a hurry. They don't know 
 that a reconstructed Mexico will be any the worse for their 
 business, but they don't want to take time to readjust them- 
 selves, to learn to operate under a new system. In their 
 hurry these absentee investors are supported by the Ameri- 
 
 12 
 
cans who live in Mexico and work their properties them- 
 selves, who, without having any particular quarrel with the 
 revolutionists are impatient of the delays and vexations 
 which keep them from their means of making a living. 
 These people differ in their ideas of how the pacification of 
 Mexico can be best accomplished, but they all agree in one 
 thing, they want it done quickly, and if that is the quickest 
 way they are willing it should be done with a sandbag. 
 Their chief objection to the Carranza way is that it will 
 take time. And to the prevailing American cult of right 
 now this appears a reasonable objection. 
 
 We hear a great deal of the disqualification of the Mexi- 
 can temperament for dealing with national values, its incon- 
 tinence, its quick shifts of enthusiasm. But there is a much 
 greater menace to the situation in the American tempera- 
 ment, with its impatience of delay, its refusal to deal with 
 conditions a little less than obvious. 
 
 It is true that the terms on which mines and plantations 
 can be worked in Mexico are not going to be quite the same 
 under the Carranzistas. The whole tenor of the new laws, 
 too complex to go into in detail, is to make it unprofitable 
 to hold unworked mining claims and uncultivated lands. 
 This is true not* only for foreign investors, but for their 
 own capitalists also. Wages and taxes are both going to 
 be higher. Wages and taxes always go up with the pro- 
 cess of nationalization. And whether or not the present 
 regime maintains itself, it is highly desirable that the pro- 
 cess of nationalization should go on in Mexico. 
 
 It must always be borne in mind that what has been 
 going on there is an economic revolution. The Constitu- 
 tionalists are men who have learned by heart the lesson 
 that national wealth doesn't necessarily imply national wel- 
 fare. That was the mistake Diaz made. That he made it 
 with a degree of sincerity did not keep him from the un- 
 pleasant consequences of his people finding out that it was 
 a mistake. There are not wanting signs that even America 
 is not as satisfied with her apportionment of wealth and 
 welfare as she used to be. It will come as a shock in some 
 quarters, but it has to be admitted that First Chief Car- 
 ranza and his compadres don't want our system foisted 
 upon Mexico, because they jolly well don't approve of 
 it. 
 
 13 
 
That is the situation before the commission at New Lon- 
 don. Of other elements that enter, Mexican jealousy of 
 their national sovereignty as affected by the presence of a 
 large body of troops within their border, American resent- 
 ment of the occasion which sent them there, the pressure 
 of private interests, the tendency to play politics — for all 
 these things do enter to some degree — we can only hope that 
 they will not rise high enough to confuse the main issue. 
 It is too early to predict an outcome. Any day some new 
 phases of the border problem may bring about that coali- 
 tion of forces which will put an entirely new complexion 
 on international feeling. In the meantime the best thing 
 that the country at large can do is to entertain toward the 
 six Commissioners and their undertaking a serious and 
 informed attention. 
 
 14 
 
 /■ 
 
Does Mexico Interest You? 
 
 Then you should read the following pamphlets: 
 
 What the Catholic Church Has Done for Mexico, by Doctoiv 
 
 Paganel ) 
 
 The Agrarian Law of Yucatan f 0.10 
 
 The Labor Law of Yucatan ' 
 
 International Labor Forum 
 
 Intervene in Mexico, Not to Make, but to End War, urges { 
 
 Mr. Hearst, with reply by Rolland f 0, 15 
 
 The President's Mexican Policy, by F. K. Lane ^ 
 
 The Religious Question in- Mexico \ 
 
 A Reconstructive Policy in Mexico > 0.10 
 
 Manifest Dec + iny ) 
 
 What of Mexico \ 
 
 Speech of General Alvarado • V 0.10 
 
 Many Mexican Problems J 
 
 Charges Against the Diaz Administration ) 
 
 Carranza V 0.10 
 
 Stupenduous Issues ) 
 
 Minister of the Catholic Cult ) 
 
 Star of Hope for Mexico > 0.10 
 
 Land Question in Mexico ) 
 
 Open Letter to the Editor of the_ Chicago Tribune, Chicago, 111. \ 
 
 How We Robbed Mexico in 1848, by Iiobert H. Howe > 0.10 
 
 What the Mexican Conference Really Means j 
 
 The Economic Future of Mexico 
 
 We also mail any of these pamphlets upon receipt of 0.05 each. 
 
 Address all communications to 
 
 LATIN-AMERICAN NEWS ASSOCIATION 
 1400 Broadway, New York City 
 

 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 015 830 591 4