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POR Fl RIO DIAZ.

A NEW ERA IN
OLD MEXICO
By G. B. WINTON

jViva la independencia! — Hidalgo.
El respeto al derecho ageno es la paz.
— Juarez.
Es preciso tener fe en la justicia. — Diaz.

Nashville, Tenn.; Dallas, Tex.
Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South
Smith & Lamar, Agents
1905

COPYRIGHT, igoj
BY
Book Agents M. E. Church, South

A Mi Esposa.

PREFACE.
This is not a history, but a clew to the meaning of
history. The history of Mexico in English remains
to be written. It ought to be written. But to write it
is not so simple a matter as to turn off a volume like
this. Wishing to give some account of Mexico as it
is, after a residence there of a good many years, the
author has found himself under the necessity of ex
plaining the things that are by the things that have
been. He trusts that this book may be a guide to in
telligent observation and to further studies upon the
part of others. That it may contribute to a better
understanding between near neighbors is the hope
that more than any other has set him the task of its
preparation. He is aware that it is repetitious, and
fears that it may be tedious ; yet he believes that inter
est in Mexico and its affairs is in our day so deep and
so sincere among those who read the English language
as to make welcome even a faulty and hasty volume
concerning that country and its people. (v)

CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.

PAGE
Geographical  T

CHAPTER II.
Products 

9

CHAPTER III.
Population  id
CHAPTER IV.
Early History  28
CHAPTER V.
The Spanish Conquest  38
CHAPTER VI.
Spain in Mexico  51
CHAPTER VII.
The Revolution Begun  59
' CHAPTER VIII.
The Revolution Consummated  75
CHAPTER IX.
Evolution of the Republic  86
CHAPTER X.
Catholicism and Revolutions — Imperium in Imperio. . 94
(vii)

PAGE

viii Contents.
CHAPTER XI.
The Reform Laws and the Constitution of 1857  103
CHAPTER XII.
The French Intervention, (i.)  113
CHAPTER XIII.
The French Intervention, (ii.)  124
CHAPTER XIV.
What the Republic Faced  1 33
CHAPTER XV.
Legacies of the Spanish Regime  141
CHAPTER XVI.
The Republic Triumphant  151
CHAPTER XVII.
Porfirio Diaz and the Arts of Peace  160
CHAPTER XVIII.
Thirty Years of Progress  j.71
CHAPTER XIX.
The Situation To-day  j^o
CHAPTER XX.
Modern Religious Movements  I8o
Statistics of Protestant Missions  198
Bibliographical Note  ing
Index  201

A NEW ERA IN OLD MEXICO.

CHAPTER I.
Geographical.
Few sections of the earth's surface containing the
same number of square miles as Mexico have so
great a variety of geographical conditions. On the
whole, the country may be described as high, dry,
and cool. This last adjective is sure to be a sur
prise to those who have not made conditions there
a study. Yet it is a fact that, even in summer, the
climate of a large part of Mexico is often uncom
fortably cool. The country is a great triangle, slight
ly curved like a cornucopia and spreading toward the
north. Down either side, near the Gulf on the east
and the Pacific Ocean on the west, runs a high wall
of mountains. The western range — Sierra Madre
del Occidente, as it is called in Spanish — is a con
tinuation of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Cali
fornia. The eastern range corresponds in a general
way with the Rocky Mountains, though lying further
to the east and not forming with them, by any means,
an unbroken chain. These mountain ranges are a
fence to the interior of the country, shutting off from
it much moisture and the greater part of the bois~
(0

2 A New Era in Old Mexico.
terous weather of the coasts. They divide the whole
topography of Mexico into three sections, with fairly
well marked distinctions of climate. The lands ly
ing in these three altitudes, — for it is mostly a ques
tion of altitude, — are commonly spoken of as hot,
temperate, and cool.
The hot lands, tierras calientes, are the lowlands.
With the exception of a few valleys of the interior, —
gorges rather, — which drop downward to levels so
low that the tropical sun creates within them a trop
ical climate, these lands lie exclusively along the
coast. They form a narrow band, widening a little
at the northeastern corner of the republic into the
lower valley of the Rio Grande, but, for the most
part, less than a hundred miles in breadth, which ex
tends around the edge of the whole republic, except
ing, of course, the northern boundary. This band is
a strictly tropical region, more than half of it lying
south of the Tropic of Cancer. It is a flat and badly
drained country, subject, for the most part, to heavy
rains in their season, and then to long periods of
drought and heat. The vagaries of the trade winds
leave much of it poorly watered, and its natural con
dition is that of a somewhat arid jungle alternating
with marsh and sluggish streams. It is the habitat of
countless varieties of pestiferous insects, of gaudy
tropical birds without number, of wild game and
wild cattle which hide in its jungles, and of compar
atively few people.
As will be readily inferred from the conditions

The Three Zones. 3
indicated, it is by no means a healthful section. Yel
low fever is rarely absent, and mosquitoes and mala
ria abound. Only a few centers of population of any
consequence have ever been established in these
coastal belts, and they only because of the necessary
business connected with the seaports. At present
Vera Cruz, Tampico, Acapulco, and the termini of
the Tehuantepec Railway, are the most important of
these cities. Guaymas, Mazatlan, and Tepic are also
places of some importance. Monterey, on the north
ern foothills of the great range of the east, just where
it begins to bend to the south, is only seventeen hun
dred feet above sea level, and in some respects should
be mentioned as one of the hot country cities. It is
far from the seacoast, however, and so near to the
higher ranges of mountains that its climate is quite
distinct from that of the coast towns.
Next above the hot country is what is spoken of
as the temperate zone. It is not, for the most part,
temperate so nearly as subtropical. It begins at an
altitude of some three thousand feet, where the mois
ture flowing from the Gulf and from the Pacific
strikes against the swelling sides of the lofty moun
tain ranges and pours down a life-giving flood of
rains. Frost rarely comes to this section, which, ex
tending upward to five or six thousand feet of eleva
tion according to the latitude, forms a zone of living
green which belts the triangle of the republic from
the northeast around by the south and up the west
side. Similar conditions, with slight variations as

4 A New Era in Old Mexico.
regards rainfall, obtain on the interior of these high
mountain ranges, especially toward the north, where
the interior plateaus are usually less than five thou
sand feet in altitude. These temperate lands, so
called, are the home of the orange and, in the South,
of the coffee berry. Their abundant vegetation and
countless and gorgeous flowers, as well as the splen
did scenery due to the fact that for the most part this
zone lies on the mountain sides, make these lands
ideally beautiful. The very fact, however, that it is
mostly but a belt on the slope of the mountains re
duces the territory within this zone which is arable to
such a degree that the population which it supports
i.s necessarily limited. Where the topography and
latitude allow, bananas and oranges, as well as many
other fruits, coffee, and certain grains of the temper
ate zone, may be cultivated to great advantage.
Beginning in the same altitudes with the tierra
templada, and extending upward to the valley re
gions from eight to ten thousand feet above sea level,
is the tierra fria, or cold country. The word applied
with exactness would signify only those very high
plateaus and mountain sides where frost must be con
tended with and vegetation is at a grave disadvan
tage. In practice, however, most of the lands of the
great interior plateau, which has an average altitude
of about six thousand feet, are spoken of as the
tierra fria. Some geographers, on the other hand,
insist that this region is, properly speaking, the tem
perate zone — certainly a more exact description of it

The Great Interior Plateau. 5
in English. Its products are precisely those of that
section of the earth's surface usually spoken of as
the temperate zone. It is true that they are modified
in a large measure by the circumstance that this re
gion in Mexico is an interior and arid plateau. The
development of vegetable life is not simply a ques
tion of the proportion between heat and cold. Other
influences must be taken into the account, notably
the question of rainfall and of the relative tempera
ture of night and day.
This great plateau of Mexico conforms in general
outline to the triangular shape of the country itself.
It has been, from the beginning of its history, the
home of the bulk of Mexico's people. Cut off by the
high fence of mountains, on either side from the
moisture of the seacoast region, it is a land of abun
dant sunshine and equable climate. The rainfall
over most of its area is not sufficient for anything
like heavy vegetation. The water supply is further
limited by the circumstance that this rainfall is con
fined to three or four summer months known as the
rainy season. Since the stratification of the rocks
underlying most of Mexico's interior has been great
ly broken and tilted from the horizontal by heavy
volcanic action, there are on this high table-land
comparatively few perennial springs and almost no
permanent running streams. Over the greater part
of its surface crops of Indian corn and beans, of
wheat, barley, and other grains, may be raised with
more or less certainty without irrigation. Wherever

6 A New Era in Old Mexico.
running streams or carefully hoarded rainfall can be
taken advantage of for the purpose of irrigation,
crops are absolutely assured. The unfailing sun
shine and the remarkable fertility of the rather sandy
and rocky soil, which does not appear to be fertile,
give abundant reward when the labor of the hus
bandman is supplemented by the water supply which
is the one absolutely essential requisite. So essen
tial, indeed, is it that, in certain sections of Mexico,
it is the custom in transferring agricultural lands to
sell the water right and let the land go with it.
In a general way it may be said of Mexico's high
lands that the rainfall, and with it the possibility of
human habitation, increases toward the south. At
its northern extremity the plateau is wide and dry.
Somewhat lower than at the south, its climate is
warmer, and the wide plains are so scorched by the
ardent sun that they are valuable chiefly as pasture
lands. Toward the southern extremity the whole
land grows narrower, and the moist winds from
either side more frequently sweep over the mountain
tops to water the plains within. The mountains also
there are mostly covered with heavy vegetation, and
from them flow streams which are usually soon dis
sipated in irrigating the wide plains. Into this nar
rower and more mountainous section toward the
southern apex of the table-land are gathered most
of the cities of the republic. Many of them have
grown up around rich deposits of mineral, though
their permanent prosperity would have been impos-

The Mountain Peaks. 1
sible without the food supply which comes from the
neigboring plains.
As would be naturally inferred, these interior
plains, high, dry, and cool, are, in so far as concerns
the conditions of climate and health, an almost ideal
place for the habitation of man. The climate is
equable, the temperature rarely falling to the freez
ing point, and never reaching sultriness from heat.
Indeed, the air is so dry and crisp that on the warm
est days one has but to enter a house or the shade of
a tree to be instantly comfortable.
Above the general outline of the two mountain
ranges, which are rarely above twelve thousand feet
in height, shoot upward three or four great volcanic
peaks. Two of these, the best known perhaps, stand
sentinel over the valley in which the City of Mex
ico lies. Between Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl
marched the Spaniards under Cortez, and from the
high pass which unites these snow-covered peaks
they looked downward to the west upon one of the
most beautiful valleys in the world. The panorama
is a splendid one still, though the advance of civiliza
tion has filled the limpid air about the City of Mex
ico with dust and smoke. On either side of the coun
try stands a mountain looking out to sea. One peak,
Colima, constantly sends forth a banner of smoke
which may be seen far out on the Pacific. From
time to time it becomes an active volcano pouring out
ashes and flame. On the east, Orizaba, eighteen
thousand feet high, in shape an almost perfect cone,

8 A New Era in Old Mexico.
clothed with four thousand feet of perpetual snow,
stands bathing its feet in the tropic sea by Vera
Cruz. It is like Fujiyama in Japan in the circum
stance of running the whole gamut of vegetation
from the sea level to the snow line. It also resem
bles Japan's famous peak in the perfection of its sym
metry. It excels it in range, however, as it stands so
far south that the vegetation at its base is strictly
tropical. It also overtops it several thousand feet
in height. Besides these more noted peaks is the vol
cano of Toluca, as it is called, whose ragged and
narrow crater, seamed with lava set off by a tracery
of snow, looks down upon the thriving little capital
of the state of Mexico. These snow-capped moun
tains add a finishing touch to the romantic and at
tractive scenery of Mexico — a country which sup
plies a greater variety of natural growths and of
scenic effects than any other on the North American
continent, or perhaps in the world.

CHAPTER II.
Products.
From the beginning of its history Mexico has
been known as rich in minerals. It was the rumored
abundance of gold and other precious metals which
lured on the Spaniards there as well as in the other
countries which became the scenes of their adven
turous invasions. Yet both previous to the conquest
and at the present time the chief resources of Mex
ico have been agricultural. By virtue of its surpris
ing variety of climate, nearly all the products of both
the tropic and the temperate zone find their home in
some part of the republic. The chief reliance of its
people for food has ever been Indian corn. The dis
covery of this cereal by the Europeans who came to
America has added vastly to the well-being of the
world. Mexico is also the native habitat of the to
mato, the potato, and the tobacco plant.
The primitive method of availing themselves of
Indian corn is still in vogue among the people of
that country. The grain is soaked in weak lye or a
solution of lime till the outer coat is softened and par
tially dissolved. It is then washed, and, while still
moist, crushed between two stones. The nether mill
stone of this primitive mill is a flat slab, set in a
sloping position, over which the upper millstone, in
stead of being turned, is rubbed back and forth. The
(9)

10 A New Era in Old Mexico.
product of the grinding is not meal, but dough, which
is then patted thin and baked over an open fire with
out salt or other condiment. This is the food of the
bulk of Mexico's population. Next in order of eco
nomic value for the feeding of the people comes the
bean (frijol). The brown bean, of several species,
which is cultivated throughout the whole country,
both lowlands and highlands, is boiled and eaten to
the accompaniment of the thin corn cakes. If the
family is well to do, these boiled beans are also fried
in lard before being served. It is an extremely poor
man whose dinner consists of only one of these two
elements. Yet one or both of them is sure to appear
on the table of even the wealthiest and most cultured
of Mexican families.
In some of the highlands, where the conditions of
soil are favorable, wheat is sown. More generally
still, on account of its hardiness in resisting cold, is
planted barley. The green splotches that the chance
traveler will see far up the sides of the high moun
tains toward the timber line are usually of barley.
It can be coaxed to an altitude several hundred feet
higher than the hardiest varieties of Indian corn.
In the tropical and subtropical regions of Mexico
sugar cane is extensively grown. Also, where con
ditions favor — that is to say, where a sufficiency of
water can be obtained — in the tropical sections rice
culture is beginning to be common. The cultivation
of cotton, which always commands a high price in
Mexico on account of its universal use among the

The « « Century Plant. " 1 1
laboring people for clothing, has been greatly ham
pered in recent years by the ravages of the boll wee
vil. Besides these products common to other lands,
there are one or two almost peculiar to Mexico,
which are of notable economic value. The principal
of these, as regards at least the value of its product,
is the maguey, or agave. This plant, resembling the
aloe, produces an enormous quantity of starchy
growth from which may be extracted alcoholic liq
uors. In the regions adjacent to Mexico City it is
the juice of the plant, slightly fermented and called
pulque, which is consumed. In other sections the
alcohol which the plant contains is extracted by dis
tillation, and goes under the name of mezcal, or te
quila. These latter liquids are heavily charged with
alcohol and very deleterious in their effects if drunk
freely. This same plant, with one or two other re
lated species, furnishes a very fine fiber which is com
ing to be a commercial product of no little value.
This fiber, spoken of under the general name ixtle,
was produced during 1902 to the value of $1,706,-
892. Closely related with the plants producing it is
the henequen, of which the product in Mexico the
same year, 1902, amounted in value to $16,937,809.
There are other fibrous plants in Mexico which will
be utilized in future, when their merits are prop
erly known. One of their products of special merit
is a fine grade of paper. So far the development
and utilization of these fibers have languished some-

12 A New Era in Old Mexico.
what for lack of satisfactory machinery for the ex
traction of the fiber from the succulent leaves.
Within recent years much attention has been
drawn to the cultivation of coffee in Mexico. Cof
fee, rubber, and oranges have been the occasion of
many investments on the part of foreigners ; it may
be added, also the occasion of many disappoint
ments. All these, including also bananas, are so
exacting in their requirements of climate, soil, and
cultivation that the sum total of the conditions nec
essary for their exploitation is hard to obtain. And,
often, when it is obtained, there is a vital defect in
the situation caused by lack of transportation facili
ties. The coffee plant is extremely sensitive to cold.
It must be also protected from the tropical sun. It
must have a liberal supply of water. The berry,
when mature, requires most careful handling; and,
after all, it may be found that the soil, in a section
where all these conditions are satisfactorily met, is
such that the product is deficient in flavor. Like
tobacco, there is an elusive somewhat in coffee, im
parted by a certain savor and delicacy of soil, which
can only be discovered by experiment, and can,
by no means, be duplicated where conditions are
unfavorable. There are a few sections in Mexico
which produce coffee of a very high grade. Un
fortunately, those yielding the best quality are ex
tremely limited and so situated that extensive culti
vation is impossible.
The raising of citrous fruits and bananas will

The Labor Supply. 13
probably be greatly developed in the future. Or
anges and lemons will stand the somewhat rougher
climate of the high plateau, and there are extensive
regions of the flat tropical jungle that might be
profitably cultivated in bananas. The lack of trans
portation facilities has hitherto limited the produc
tion of all these various fruits, and the clog of im
port and export duties has not encouraged the ship
ping of Mexico's products to other countries. The
cultivation of the rubber plant, — or plants, for there
are several, — is still in its experimental stage and
confined to the southern extremity of the republic.
The difficulties to be solved have to do chiefly with
the labor supply and the matter of transportation.
The climate where these plants will grow is un-
healthful and enervating for the white races. The
Mexicans native to that section are averse to phys
ical exertion, and up to the present no satisfactory
plan for supplying the necessary manual labor has
been devised. The transportation facilities are for
the most part equally inadequate.
At the end of this chapter is appended a table of
the agricultural statistics of Mexico for 1902. This
has been found to be scarcely a typical year, since
most of the products were greater in other seasons,
notably in 1898, which was a year of good rainfall.
However, these statistics are given, since they are
the latest available.
The mineral wealth of Mexico has been notorious
through all its history. In silver, especially, it has

14 A New Era in Old Mexico.
excelled, having produced a quantity of this metal
during the time of the Spanish occupation which is
simply prodigious. Some mines seem inexhaustible
still. From time to time new ones are discovered.
Within recent years old and abandoned workings
have been reopened by virtue of modern and eco
nomical processes of reduction. In gold it is not
quite so rich, though the annual output is of consid
erable value. Copper and quicksilver form impor
tant elements in the total mineral product of the coun
try. It has iron mines in only a few places. But
one of its deposits of this metal, the iron mountain
at the side of the city of Durango, is one of the
most famous in the world. It is a longitudinal hill,
about a mile long and four or five hundred feet high,
composed of almost absolutely pure magnetic iron
ore; the largest single lump, it is believed, in the'
world. The monetary circulation of Mexico is on the sil
ver basis. This makes a large demand for the white
metal at home. Mexico's silver coins also circu
late extensively in China, Japan, and other parts of
the Orient. In spite of this, however, the ratio of val
ue between silver and gold has steadily declined
within recent years, a matter that has seriously
cramped the financiers of the Mexican republic. The
development of that country has nevertheless gone
forward with unusual rapidity during the last two
decades, due principally to the fact that in the early
eighties several lines of railway were completed,

Some Statistics.

IS

traversing most of its territory, and greatly fa
cilitating the shipment and sale of its products.
These railways have also contributed to the settle
ment of political and military disturbances, and
have thus become one of the most important
agencies in promoting the present era of peace. Sta
tistics of the mining products are appended along
with those of agriculture. Products in 1902.
(Value in Silver.)

Rice  $ 2,540,233
Barley  4,916,523
Corn  . 78,41 1 ,844
Wheat (8,428,400 bu.) 24,522,429
Beans  13,328,903
Chickpeas  r, 797,587
Sweet potatoes  421,670
Potatoes  580,844
Dried red peppers. . 3,244,239
Sugar  17,103,760
Sirup  7,141,529
Juice  2,735.940

Peanuts  $ 355,739
Cane brandy  7,028,616
Corn brandy  954, 197
Mezcal  2,530,812
Tequila  1,183,686
Pulque  6,267,680
Henequen (120,114,-
500 pounds)  16,937,809
Cotton (49,564,659
pounds)  8,629,109
Ixtle  1,706,892

1901.
(Statistics for 1902 defective.J

Coffee  $ 8,733,778
Chocolate  1,622,844
Tobacco  3,009,874
Vanilla  1,372,462
Rubber  344>I45
Oranges  723>597

Bananas  $ 445,792
Tomatoes  1 13,607
Gold  14,595,93'
Silver  65,554,875
Copper  24,631,289
Lead  5,602,075

CHAPTER III.
Population.
Since the early part of the fifteenth century, the
population of Mexico has been made up principally
of three elements. Occupying the superior place
among these, in wealth, education, and power, have
been the Spaniards and their pure-blooded descend
ants. For a time these were not counted one class,
but were divided into Spaniards and Creoles — that
is, those who had actually been born in Spain, and
their descendants born in "New Spain," as it was
then called. Very early in the history of the re
lation of the Spaniards with Mexico began the habit
of intermarriage with the native population. The
children of mixed blood, called Mestizos, have mul
tiplied with the passing of the years until, at present,
they form a second large element in the population.
The third, a sort of substratum, as it were, is found
in the native races. The Indian tribes of Mexico
were quite numerous at the time of the conquest;
one usually reputable authority placing the popula
tion at sixteen millions, doubtless a very consider
able exaggeration.
Taking up these several classes in their inverse
order, the first thing to be said of the Indians is
that their origin is shrouded in mystery. Physical
and linguistic peculiarities point to a kinship with
(16)

Are the Mexicans Japanese? 17
the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and California.
There are certain racial indications which hint
vaguely of connection with the Japanese. It would
not be a difficult supposition to explain the pres
ence of these peoples on the western coast of Amer
ica by the coming of some prehistoric clan across
the ocean on the warm Japanese current. The tra
ditions of the Mexicans point, without exception,
to the north as the direction from which their fathers
migrated to the Mexican plateau. There can be
little doubt that those early peoples, who marked
the valleys of Arizona with their irrigation canals
and left their dwelling places to puzzle the archae
ologists of our day among the barren cliffs of the
New Mexico mountains, were connected with the
tribes which, later migrating toward the south, built
up the civilization of the valley of Mexico.
Just which were the aboriginal tribes of Mexico
cannot be clearly made out. Ethnologists of that
country who have made the subject a matter of
study hold that at least three separate migrations
swept over the greater part of the southern end of
the plateau. Some believe that the first of these
came from the south, its tribes identical with the
highly civilized peoples found by the Spaniards in
Peru. It seems more likely, however, that the In
dian traditions are correct, and that, one after anoth
er, the early tribes came down the Pacific coast,
across the Sierra Madre del Occidente, and thus into
3

18 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the highlands of the interior, where each left traces
of its occupancy.
Among the earliest of these were the Mayas.
This tribe has left most of its more notable monu
ments on the peninsula of Yucatan, into which low
and sultry region it was forced by a more warlike
and less civilized tribe, which later took its place
and defaced its records on the central plateau. In
Yucatan there are to this day extensive remains in
architecture and hieroglyphic inscriptions which tes
tify to an advanced stage of civilization on the part
of* the Mayas. The language has been preserved in
a somewhat fragmentary form, but all attempts to
decipher the picture-writing hidden away in the jun
gles of Yucatan and Central America have been un
successful. After the Mayas came the Nahoas, the
most prominent tribe of which division were the
Toltecs. It is true that some writers believe that the
Mayas themselves were of the general division called
Nahoa, though there is so much confusion as to
their language and history that nothing definite has
been determined.
The Toltecs and other better-known tribes of the
Nahoa division unhesitatingly trace their origin to
the west, their early traditions plainly teaching that
their tribe reached the interior plateau from the di
rection of the Pacific. Their traditions, to which
the early historians give the weight of history, — and,
indeed, they did exist at the time of the conquest in
a sort of picture-writing, — trace the whole itinerary

The Nahoas or Toltecs. 19
of the migration from southern California to the
valley of Mexico. There they rapidly developed the
arts of civilization. The tribes of this division of ab
origines appear to have been of a pacific temper. It
seems quite within the range of probability that their
migration from the valley of the Gila River was due
to the pressure upon them there of savage neigh
bors. The elaborate plans for protecting their homes
and the products of their labor which may yet be
seen in the cliff dwellings of Arizona point in the
same direction. They were an agricultural people,
not inclined to the barbarities of war. In Mexico,
however, thrown into contact with the robust and
energetic tribes which had preceded them, notably
the Zapotecs and Mixtecs,— fragments of a general
racial division made by some historians under the
name of Mecas, — they developed a vigorous national
life. The period of their greatest prosperity was
only a very brief time preceding the arrival of the
Spanish. They had extensive and well-built cities
at Tallan (Tula) — from which place was derived the
name Toltecs — Cholula, and Teotihuacan. They un
derstood the raising arid manufacture of cotton,
wore clothes, hats, and sandals, and were a tall,
sprightly people, devoted still to agriculture and pa
cific pursuits rather than to war.
From some uncertain quarter, apparently the
west, came a migration, immediately succeeding the
Toltecs, which built up upon the fragments of their
cities a vigorous military government. When these

20 A New Era in Old Mexico.
were about to reach the summit of their civilization
and strength, the third or, as some believe, the
fourth general migration reached the central Mex
ican plateau from the west. These were a group
of five or six tribes, called by some historians Na-
huatlacas. The most famous of these tribes later
became the Aztecs, who derived their name from
having migrated from Aztlan, or "land of herons."
This name doubtless referred to some laguna toward
the west of what is now Mexico, some think to Lake
Chapala in the state of Jalisco.
The Aztecs have become for modern times the
typical Mexicans. The facts of the case, however,
seem to be that they and their sister tribes reached
the valley of Mexico, then inhabited by a mixture
of Toltecs, Otomis, Chichimecs, etc., after having
fbught their way through numerous settlements fur
ther west, with nothing in the way of civilization
except a tolerably perfect tribal organization, tre
mendous racial vitality, and a warlike temper, which
latter proved to be their chief asset in first making
a place for themselves among the civilized tribes
about them, and later making a fierce stand against
the Spanish invaders. Upon their arrival in the val
ley of Mexico they were so exhausted from constant
traveling and fighting that they were forced to take
refuge upon a rocky island in Lake Texcoco. There
they built themselves huts of reeds, and lived on the
fish and game in which the lake abounded. The
soothsayer of the tribe had settled upon this island,

Coming of the Aztecs. 21
because he found there what had been indicated as
the final resting place of their migration, a Mexican
eagle sitting on the flat leaf of a nopal cactus (opun-
tia) devouring a snake. This symbol has become
the Mexican coat of arms.
The Chichimecs, a warlike people themselves, had
rapidly absorbed enough of Toltec civilization to de
velop a vigorous government. It was somewhat
of the nature of a kingdom, though the king, — or
kings, for frequently there were more than one, — was
really no more than an Indian sachem. But as the
wealth of the people increased and their tribal cities
became more extensive and substantial, the naked
warriors who had formerly taken the field with bow
and spear came to understand the military strength
which inheres in the substantially built city. Thus
their larger towns soon came to be military centers,
and the tribute which they exacted from the neigh
boring tribes increased the wealth of the governing
bodies and made military organization and a stand
ing army possible. Their principal city, important
previous to the conquest, was Texcoco.
Meantime, the Aztec tribe, warriors to begin with
and made all the hardier by their life as hunters and
fishermen on the lake, rapidly multiplied and, began
to make inroads upon the agricultural regions adja
cent. Their reed huts gave place to more sub
stantial buildings of adobe, and later even of
stone. Whether they brought with them the
skill in the builder's art which made such prog-

22 A New Era in Old Mexico.
ress possible, or whether, as seems more prob
able, artisans came to them from the neighboring
cities, especially those representing the then down
trodden but somewhat highly civilized Toltecs, it
is impossible to determine. At any rate, whether
by virtue of their own skill in the arts of peace
and war or by means of what they learned from
their neighbors, their island city rapidly grew into
a vigorous stronghold, soon rivaling, in both wealth
and military strength the neighboring capital of the
Chichimecs. For a time these rival governments
engaged in fierce conflicts. Later, peace was made
by the intermarriage of what had now become the
royal families. By the time the Spaniards came,
the reigning chief of the Aztecs was the practically
undisputed ruler of the whole valley of Mexico, and
of numerous tribes in the neighboring mountains,
which preferred accepting his rule to risking an in
vasion by his warriors.
This brief account of the peopling of the country
will -be followed up in a later chapter. It seemed
necessary here, in order to give the reader some
conception of the multiplied racial strains which
contributed to the native populations of Mexico. Be
sides those already mentioned there were, at the time
of the conquest, two or three other extensive fam
ilies of aborigines, of some of whom distinct strains
remain to this day. The principal of these were the
Tarasco Indians, inhabiting the mountainous re
gion west of the lower end of the plateau now em-

The Tarascos. 23
braced in the states of Jalisco and Michoacan.
These number, it is believed, even yet some three
hundred thousand, and are physically of a small
but robust and vital type. They had not acknowl
edged the authority of the Aztec emperor, but had a
king of their own, with a capital and numerous other
towns and cities. They were a pacific and agricul
tural people, whom Cortez reduced to subjection
through a trick played upon their king. Besides
these were the mountain Indians of the eastern Sier
ra Madre, now known under the general designation
of Huastecos. There were also the numerous scat
tering and somewhat vagrant tribes of the dry plains
of the central northern part of the country, drifting
back and forth from Mexico into what is now the
United States.
Such were the ancestors of the native Mexican.
They were Indians in the sense that they were abo
riginal Americans, but they bore only a slight resem
blance to the Indians of the Mississippi valley and
the Atlantic seaboard. It is difficult to estimate
with any degree of accuracy what proportion of the
inhabitants of Mexico to-day are pure-blooded de
scendants of these Indian ancestors. So easily did
the native tribes mingle with the European invad
ers, and so slight is the difference in complexion and
general appearance between the native Mexican and
the swarthy sons and daughters of southern Spain,
that the strains of relationship at the present day
are about as intricate in Mexico as in the United

24 A New Era in Old Mexico.
States. Just as here Huguenots, Germans, Scan
dinavians, English, Irish, and the rest, have been
fused into one homogeneous race, so in Mexico
Spaniard, Creole, Mestizo, and Indian have be
come inextricably confused. There is, however, as
I have already said, the general division into three
sections, namely, the people of more or less pure
European blood, those of mixed blood, and the full-
blood Indians.
The Indians who live in the high mountainous
sections and have preserved their languages and cus
toms are, in many instances, doubtless full-blood In
dians still. So also many families of wealth and so
cial position have kept their European blood intact.
This has been largely by the accident of association
and local influences, rather than of purpose. There
is practically no prejudice among the Mexican peo
ple either for or against the amalgamation of the
races. Families that are of purely Spanish de
scent take no special pride in it, but speak of them
selves simply as Mexicans. Those, on the other
hand, who have mixed or purely Indian parentage
often plume themselves upon it. Many of the great
men of the country have been Indians. This stock
has exhibited and still exhibits every element which
goes to make up the best there is in humanity. In
view of the oppression and degradation which the
Spaniards deliberately inflicted upon the Indians in
the earlier centuries of their contact with them, it
is scarcely short of marvelous that the native stock

The Mestizos. 25
should have shown so much of vitality both in num
bers and in producing its proportionate share of the
great men of Mexican history.
With reference to the people of mixed blood, it
must be confessed that they often exhibit the well-
known tendency to follow the vices and weaknesses
of both sides of their ancestry rather than their vir
tues. This has been due, however, not solely to the
accident of blood. Their anomalous position in the
nation has had its effect. The Spaniards and their
descendants have been to some extent a caste. In
dians who are Indians, especially since Mexico
achieved her independence, are proud of it, and hold
doggedly to their racial integrity. They are also,
to a large extent, agriculturalists, and lead the hardy
and independent life of sons of the soil. Between
these two extremes are the people of mixed blood,
who form the bulk of the population of most towns
and cities. They are the servants, the artisans, and
the detached element in the population generally,
without the strengthening influences of wealth or
family position, and subject to the insidious tempta
tions which beset a servile class. They should con
stitute the great middle class of the people. But
Mexican society has for four hundred years been or
ganized in such a way as to eliminate the middle
class. Those, therefore, who should by rights be
members of it are constantly oscillating between at
tainment to the standing and privileges of the rul
ing class and subjection to the accepted poverty and

26 A New Era in Old Mexico.
submission of the lower. They affect to despise man
ual labor, a weakness that has always been exhibited
by the upper class in Mexico, and thus often under
take to live by their wits when they should depend on
honest toil. The thievery and general unreliability
which are frequently harshly attributed to the whole
Mexican people have really grown out of this unset
tled position of a large element in the population
of the cities and towns. The Federal census of 1900
estimates that the Indians constitute thirty-eight per
cent, of the population, the people of mixed blood
forty-three per cent., and those of pure European
blood nineteen per cent.
The Spanish language is in general use through
out the country. A few of the Indian tribes still
speak their native languages, and many individ
uals among them, especially in remote mountain re
gions, are ignorant of Spanish. But with one or two
exceptions these languages have not been reduced
to writing, and even when this has been done, the
slender opportunities for culture open to the In
dians have prevented any notable literary use of
them. The result is that Spanish is the language
of the literature and business affairs of the whole
country, the Indian dialects lingering stubbornly
nevertheless. Some of these — the Aztec, or Mex
ican, the Otomi, the Tarascan, and the Huaste-
can, among others — are well-organized languages,
quite capable of a flexible and literary use. The
Spanish one hears in Mexico is pure Spanish, though

Mexico and Egypt. 27
exhibiting one or two slight peculiarities in the pro
nunciation and having in common use a large num
ber of Indian terms, together with not a few provin
cialisms. In their manner of life, both in city and country,
the Mexicans have much in common with the peo
ple of western Asia and northern Africa. So man
ifest is the resemblance to the latter that, taken with
certain traits of the stone carving and architecture
of the pre-European period, it has suggested to
many a racial connection with Egypt. The ingen
ious theories propounded to account for this, such,
for example, as the revival of the myth about the
buried continent of Atlantis, have not commended
themselves to careful students. It seems more prob
able that such resemblances as antedated the coming
of the Spanish were purely accidental, and that the
rest are to be accounted for by the strong Moorish
influence in Spain about the time of the conquest of
Mexico, and the similarity in climatic conditions
between the dry mesas of Mexico and the arid pla
teaus east and south of the Mediterranean. The
domestic animals, the utensils, the pastoral atmos
phere and phraseology, the manner of building hous
es, stables, granaries, sheepfolds, and the like, are all
so similar to what obtained in Palestine two thou
sand years ago, that a visit to Mexico serves as an
instructive commentary on the Bible.

CHAPTER IV.
Early History.
It will be interesting to follow up briefly the be
ginnings of Mexican history as outlined in the pre
vious chapter. The earliest inhabitants of the coun
try who were sufficiently civilized to leave traces of
their existence were, as has been stated, the Mayas.
The origin of this race is unknown. They lived
principally in Yucatan, though some believe that at
one period they occupied also the interior of the
country. After them came the Nahoas, the princi
pal tribe of which, the Toltecs, reached a state of
civilization which resulted in the building of cities
and the impression of their culture upon their suc
cessors, the various tribes of the Chichimecs. Both
these and the Nahoas traced their origin to the west ;
some think the southwest — that is, South America ;
others believe that-they came, as did the Aztecs later,
from California or Arizona.
Last of all was the irruption into the fertile val
leys of the lower apex of the Mexican plateau of
seven kindred tribes from Arizona and regions
thereabout. Of them the best known came to be
the Tecpanecas, Tlaltolecas, and the Aztecas. The
latter arrived last of all, their fellow tribes having
preceded them and settled mostly in the valley of
Mexico, as it later was to be called. This is a large
(28)

Early Aztec History. 29
basin in the mountains, containing a series of fresh
water lakes terminating at the bottom in a salt lake,
Texcoco. Near the margin of this lake the Tec
panecas already had their capital, Azcapotzalco —
now a suburb of Mexico City.
Thus it came about that when the Aztecs arrived
and, under the direction of their medicine men, set
tled upon a rocky island in Lake Texcoco, they found
themselves in a region claimed by their cousins the
Tecpanecas. These had developed a vigorous gov
ernment with a king or chief in Azcapotzalco. The
Aztecs accepted allegiance under this king, paying
tribute each year of fish and ducks from the lake.
Meantime, other branches of this same migra
tion having settled adjacent to the capital city of the
Chichimecs, Texcoco, situated on the eastern side of
the lake, for a time admitted the sovereignty of its
king. Later, when they had grown strong and self-
reliant, they threw off his authority, fought among
themselves, and brought on a period of great con
fusion. Then a shrewd Chichimec king adopted some
new-comers of the same stock into his tribe, married
his sons with their daughters, and thus braced his
tottering throne by a hardy, civilized, and warlike
addition to the population. Such was the state of
affairs when the Aztecs, tiring of their position
of subjects to the king of Azcapotzalco, and having
themselves grown numerous and built up their island
city, — which they called Tenochtitlan, — elected a
king or chief of their own and forced the Tecpanecas

30 A New Era in Old Mexico.
to recognize them as allies instead of subjects. It
was not long, of course, before war broke out be
tween them and the king of Texcoco. Their capitals
were on the same lake, not far apart, and irritating
conflicts of authority were not wanting. So fierce
and successful were the Aztec warriors, under young
Moctezuma, that they soon vanquished the Chichi-
mec king and began to force their way to the very
front among the various tribes of the valley of Mex
ico. During something like fifty years, the latter part
of the fifteenth century, they were engaged in a
series of bloody wars, mostly wars of conquest. So
fierce and arrogant did they become that if a tribe
dared to offer resistance to their arms, or refuse
tribute to their king, nothing prevented their going
at once to reduce it, unless it was at such a distance
from their capital as to make the expedition seem
futile. The huge multitudes of captives which they
brought back from their forages seem to have been
the original prompting of the bloody rite of human
sacrifice which so shocked the Spaniards on their
arrival a little later. Something had to be done
with these captives. Many became slaves and col
onists. Others were too brave and dangerous to be
left alive. Nothing was more natural than that a
warlike people should have as one of their deities a
God of War. So by easy stages came about the
sacrifice of war prisoners to him. Some even sus
pect that these bloody rites involved cannibalism. If

Human Sacrifices. 31
so, it was of the nature of a religious ceremony.
There is no reason to believe that the high-minded
warriors of Mexico ever ate human flesh because it
pleased them as an ordinary article of diet
The human sacrifices were a sad and bloody af
fair. Only the heart of the victim was offered, and
it was believed to be more acceptable living than
dead. Hence the ceremony consisted in extracting
and holding it up before the grewsome image while
still throbbing. For this purpose the condemned
prisoner was held upon his back on a huge stone, one
of which is still to be seen in the National Museum,
his head strained downward by a heavy stone yoke
on his neck, while the officiating priest opened his
chest with an obsidian knife, rudely tearing out the
palpitating heart. The Spanish priests and soldiers,
with that fondness for exaggeration which never
forsook them, gave most unreasonable and impos
sible estimates of the number of victims thus sac
rificed from time to time.
Moctezuma from being the commanding general
of the army was later made king, since he was of
royal blood. After extending the power of his
tribe throughout almost the entire valley, he died
in 1469, and was succeeded by his grandson, Ax-
ayacatl. After twelve years, Tizoc, brother of Ax-
ayacatl, succeeded him and began the construction
of a new and sumptuous temple to the God of War,
Huitzilopochtli. Dying himself of poison in i486,
he left the conclusion of it to his younger brothei

32 A New Era in Old Mexico.
and successor, Ahuitzatl (beaver). Having, ac
cording to a custom, waged a campaign of conquest
to celebrate his accession, this new king brought
back a swarm of prisoners to be victims in hon
or of the dedication of the temple. The chron
iclers would have us believe that twenty thousand
(some go as high as eighty thousand) were sacri
ficed. The number is not merely incredible ; it is sim
ply impossible. A brief calculation on the terms of
their own narrative, which says the ceremonies last
ed four days, will show that the number of victims
could not have gone beyond three or four thousand.
This dedication of the temple of the War God
took place in 1487. The vast concurrence of peo
ple, the shedding of so much blood, the throwing
out to decay of so many corpses, the general ex
citement and relaxation of the occasion, produced,
so it seemed, and so it may well be believed, a whole
sale demoralization of the capital city, ending in a
pestilence. Such a religious festival was a melan
choly degeneration from the clean and wholesome
rites by which the Toltecs, and even the ancestors of
the Aztecs, a peaceful and agricultural community,
adored the sun as the origin of their blessings and
offered to him the first fruits of their harvests.
Five years later Columbus touched the shores of
the New World. The savage and warlike monarch
who had presided over this dedicatory ceremony,
slaying himself the first victim, had continued his
course of war and conquest. His people learned to

Moctezuma II. 33
work in the soft stone which was discovered near
the shore of their lake about that time, and built
still more ample and substantial edifices in the cap
ital city. In 1499 ^ was a victim of one of the great
rain storms that visit that region from time to time.
The other lakes in the valley empty into Texcoco,
which, having no outlet, rose on this occasion higher
and higher till it overflowed ,all the lower stories
of the city's houses. The king, happening to be in
a basement when the water began to pour in, ran
out hastily, striking his forehead against the low
doorway, a blow from which he never recovered.
At his death, three years later, another Moctezu
ma was made king — Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (the
younger). This Moctezuma was a great-grandson of the one
who had been a famous chief previously. Elevated
to the position of supreme power at the age of thirty-
four, after he had become famous as a soldier, and
while exercising the prerogatives of high priest in
the temple of the God of War, he became a tyran
nical and autocratic ruler, with exalted conceptions
of his own dignity and importance. With his army
he at once went upon a campaign of conquest to ob
tain prisoners for the human sacrifices that were to
mark his accession to the throne. Having subdued,
one by one, the tribes in the adjacent valley, he and
his generals later sought occasion to declare war
against the vigorous republic of Tlaxcala. The peo
ple of Tlaxcala were one of the kindred tribes from
3

34 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the North, who, having settled a little further east
in a beautiful valley among the mountains, had de
veloped a vigorous government republican in form.
The Mexicans invaded this republic on some pretext,
but really because the ambitions of their king de
manded its subjugation. But the Tlaxcalans were
people of the same hardy stock, and by surprising
the invading army in the mountain passes they in
flicted upon it a disastrous defeat. The attack was
followed by a second, even more formidable, which
was also repulsed with great loss to the invaders.
Domestic affairs then for a time claimed the at
tention of the Mexican king. He extended the
buildings of his capital city, brought fresh water in
from a spring at the foot of the hill of Chapultepec
on the neighboring main-land, and took such meas
ures as were possible to relieve his people after the
ravages of a fierce drought. From time to time he
renewed the war with Tlaxcala, and also sent out
more than one expedition against the Indians of
Michoacan. Of both these independent enemies of
the Mexican emperor, as some historians have cho
sen to call him, there will be occasion to make men
tion later. The people of Tlaxcala became friends
and allies of the Spaniards when they arrived, and in
all likelihood saved the little army of Cortez from
annihilation. Far to the west, among the green mountains of
Michoacan, was the independent monarchy, if so dig
nified and serious a term is admissible, of the Taras-

The Tarascan Kingdom. 35
cans. Their king had his capital on the margin of
Lake Patzcuaro, one of the most beautiful fresh-wa
ter lakes on the American continent. Embowered in
pine-clad mountains, it is still surrounded by a neck
lace of towns inhabited mostly by full-blooded Tar
ascan Indians. The town, which was at that time
the capital of an extensive government — though one
that was not at all compact in its organization — is
now a somewhat dilapidated village ; still called,
however, by its ancient name of Tzintzuntzan, or
"place of humming birds." A great painting by the
Spanish master, Titian, said to have been the gift of
one of the kings of Spain to the Indian king of Mich
oacan, still hangs in the parish church. The efforts
of Moctezuma to reduce this tribe of Indians to sub
jection to his Mexican empire were as fruitless as
were his attacks upon Tlaxcala. The Tarascans
were not a warlike people, but were too numerous
and too secure in their mountain fastnesses to be sub
dued by any military expedition which Moctezuma
was able to send against them. Such was the situa
tion in Mexico at the time of the Spanish invasion.
Much has been written, first and last, concerning
the civilization, languages, customs, and state of ad
vancement of the Mexican Indians at the time of the
conquest. Certain it is that they had developed an
admirable calendar, had mastered some of the funda
mental principles of architecture in stone, and had
devised civil institutions concerning the elaborateness
of which there are many and various opinions. The

36 A New Era in Old Mexico.
early records left us by the soldiers and ecclesiastics
of the invading Spanish forces are so frequently
contradictory, and in many respects so manifestly
exaggerated, that they do not command absolute cre
dence. In contrast with their exaltation of the civ
ilization and power of the native races was the unrea
sonable urgency on the part especially of the priests
to destroy and obliterate all records and evidences of
the religion and civilization which had preceded their
advent. The social and political institutions of the
people were, according to a well-known law, largely
the outcome of their religious faith ; and the best pos
sible gauge of their quality would be a study of the
religions upon which they were founded. But the
Spanish priests were unhesitating in their belief
that all the religious rites, ceremonies, temples,
and records were a work of the devil. They
therefore destroyed them, right and left. As
usually happens, the priests of the aboriginal re
ligions were also the learned men of the different
tribes, and such records in picture-writing, and the
like, as existed were usually written and kept by
them. This treasure of accumulated manuscripts
(in parenthesis it may be remarked that the In
dians understood the manufacture of an excellent
grade of paper made of maguey fiber) was almost
completely lost to the world through the zeal of men
who could not understand that, in order to convince
people of other faiths of the truths of Christianity,
it is well as far as may be to accept their own reli-

Mexican Agriculture. 37
gious ideas as legitimate in their sphere and as hav
ing in themselves also a basis of truth.
In spite of the fact that at the time when America
was discovered by Europeans the Aztecs and their
neighbors had developed into a warlike and power
ful nation, it is true still that the Indian tribes of
Mexico were essentially agricultural in their habits.
They were not mere wandering warriors living by
rapine and the chase, as were so many tribes inhab
iting the territory which is now the United States.
Before the coming of the Spaniards they cultivated
corn, beans, chocolate, pepper, tomatoes, cotton, on
ions, garlic, pumpkins, various succulent roots, and
a number of different nuts and fruits. The Span
iards added comparatively little to the aggregate of
agricultural products, only bringing in wheat, barley,
and oats, with a few kinds of fruits, and introducing
domestic animals and better tools. It is interesting
to note that the plow which they brought is the
Moorish plow, and dates back in northern Africa and
Asia to prehistoric times. It may be seen in Mexico,
unchanged to this day, an evidence of the conserva
tism of the people and of the unfortunate fact that
they remain yet almost in the same state in which
they found themselves immediately after the Spanish
conquest. With that conquest we must now deal.

CHAPTER V.
The Spanish Conquest.
No more hardy band of adventurers ever landed
upon an alien shore than the company which, under
the lead of Hernando Cortez, drew to land on the
2 ist of April, 1 5 19, inside the rocky island of San
Juan de Ulloa and on the sandy beach where now
stands the city of Vera Cruz. This point had been
visited a little more than a year before by Hernandez
de Cordova, who, with Juan de Grijalva, had ex
plored the coast of Yucatan and the adjacent islands,
turning back at last from the shore of the main-land
with stories of an immense empire, rich in gold and
precious stones, which lay far in the interior.
Cuba and other West Indian islands had been set
tled by the Spaniards in the years following the voy
ages and discoveries of Christopher Columbus. In
151 1, Diego Velasquez, who, from having been a
servant in the house of Diego Columbus, brother of
Don Christopher, became later the colonial governor
of the island of Espahola, was transferred to the
larger island of Cuba, recently vanquished by the
Spanish arms, taking with him, among others, his
private secretary, Don Hernando Cortez. This
young man was a native of the Spanish city of Me-
dellin, where he was born in the year 1485. Run
ning away from school at the age of sixteen years,
(38)

Early Years of Cortez. 39
he had, after various difficulties, secured passage to
the New World, where, on the island of Santo Do
mingo, he was living as a farmer and land-owner at
the time when his friend, Don Diego, was made gov
ernor of the island of Cuba. In the skirmishes which
preceded the settlement of this new government he
distinguished himself as an intrepid soldier, and
when the lands and slaves captured in the conquest
were divided among the followers of the governor
general, he received a large assignment of both in
the province of Santiago.
The voyages of discovery among the islands and
along the peninsula of Yucatan mentioned above
were undertaken under the direction and at the ex
pense of the new governor general of Cuba. Having
become convinced by the reports brought back by
his two captains that there were great opportunities
for procuring booty on the main-land of Mexico, he
organized a new and larger expedition under the spe
cial pretext of sending it in search of Grijalva, who,
having gone out with one or two ships on an explor
ing trip, had not been heard from. Velasquez was
much concerned to find a proper captain general
for this new and somewhat formidable expedition.
It was of the utmost importance to him that both the
glory and the booty of the voyage should be his. Yet
it was easy to see that the man having charge of it
might put himself into communication directly with
the royal government of Spain, and thus rob the real
promoter of the expedition of all credit that might

40 A New Era in Old Mexico.
accrue. For it was well known that the Spanish gov
ernment was as greedy for added territory and added
spoils as any of the ardent adventurers who crossed
the waters in this crusade. After much hesitation,
the governor finally decided to offer the command of
the expedition to his friend and former secretary,
Don Hernando. They had not always been on good
terms, and one disagreement had well-nigh proved
serious for the adventurous secretary. But his abil
ity was well known to his superior, who, after all,
was chiefly interested in the success of the expedi
tion. So, toward the year 1515, the ships of the new
flotilla were gathered at Santiago de Cuba, from
which point they sailed away, stopping for a week
at Macaca, and a little later at Habana. The fleet
consisted of eleven ships carrying five hundred and
eight soldiers, thirteen of them armed with muskets
and thirty-two with crossbows, sixteen horses, ten
pieces of brass artillery, and four falconets. The sol
diers had been recruited under the royal banner of
Spain, beside which Cortez had the presumption
to raise another in imitation of that of Constan-
tine, bearing a cross with this inscription in Latin:
"Friends, with true faith let us follow the cross, for
thereby we shall conquer."
On the peninsula of Yucatan they picked up a cap
tive Spanish priest and a few natives. Among these
was an Aztec slave girl named Marina, who still re
membered well her native language. She also knew

The Pounding of Vera Cruz. 41
Maya, the language of her captors, in which she was
able to converse with Father Aguilar, the priest, who
had learned it during his captivity. She was of at
tractive person and sprightly intellect, and became a
devoted attendant of the captain general. When ne
gotiations with the Aztecs were later entered upon,
she translated their messages into Maya for Father
Aguilar, who then gave them to his captain in Span
ish. Long before the conquest was consummated,
however, she had herself acquired the Spanish lan
guage. Landing on the shore of Mexico where it is pro
tected by the rocky island of San Juan, Cortez
shrewdly took advantage of the Spanish law giving
a certain power of autonomy to municipalities, and
founded the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz — that is, the
Rich City of the True Cross. The proper officers
were elected according to the royal law, and, as sym
bolic of the power of the new government, a gallows
was set up, and hard by a picket for exposing the
heads of those who should be executed. There is a
grim significance about these finishing touches in the
organizing of the first ayuntamiento on Mexican soil
which will not escape the reader. So soon as the city
government was duly established the captain general
resigned to it the commission he had received from
the governor of Cuba. He was promptly elected
commander "in chief, and at the same time appointed
civil governor. Thus at one stroke he cut himself
loose from every obligation to Velasquez and put

42 A New Era in Old Mexico.
himself at the head of all the powers, both civil and
military, of this newest of Spanish colonies.
Cortez soon decided upon the bold and daring step
of destroying his ships. Having selected two or
three of his most faithful and loyal friends, he sent
them with one ship and its crew to report directly to
the King of Spain, giving him an account of the
expedition and protesting the loyalty of his new col
onists. Then, in the month of July (15 19), having
removed from the ships all the sails and cordage
and all metals that might be of service in building
others, he sent them to the bottom. Such were these
hardy sons of a race which in that day had no supe
rior in physical and intellectual vigor and in all the
traits which go to make up the successful soldier and
explorer. The courage, the calmness, the resource
fulness, the endurance, both physical and moral, dis
played by Cortez and his men, during the two years
following this reckless act, form a contrast to the
qualities found in the soldiers of Spain to-day which
is worthy of careful study.
Meantime, the Mexican king and his court were
shaken with the most profound anxiety. Moctezu
ma, though he had been a bold and successful war
rior in his youth, had been much affected in more re
cent years by the superstitions and prognostications
of the priests. He was himself high priest at the
time of his election to the position of ruler. A tra
dition was current that Quetzalcoatl would reappear.
The description of this fabled god as fair-skinned

"The Fair God." 43
and bearded tallied so with the appearance of the Eu
ropeans that the superstitious king could not shake
himself clear of the feeling that the Spaniards were
divine. Their muskets, their cannon, and the terrible
horses on which they mounted and rode to victory,
augmented this supernatural impression. Some of
the priests who had but recently essayed the role of
prophet had interpreted certain mystic signs and in
cidents to signify that the king, Moctezuma, was
soon to be destroyed. In view of all these things, he
had fallen into a profound melancholy, and instead
of boldly preparing to resist the encroachments of
these invaders, he began to send them embassy after
embassy with the anxious request that they leave him
in peace. To secure their compliance, these mes
sengers went loaded with gold and precious stones.
These presents, far from encouraging Cortez and his
followers to leave Mexico, served rather the purpose
of loadstones to attract them more and more. Scarce
ly anything in history is more humiliating than the
consuming avarice which, like a burning thirst, drew
the Spanish invaders on wherever they touched the
New World.
On the 1 6th of August, 15 19, followed by his own
troops, except a small garrison which he left in Vera
Cruz, by several thousands of the inhabitants of
Campoalla, a neighboring town, and some hundreds
of Indian burden-bearers dragging his artillery, the
Spanish captain set out in the direction of the interior
highlands. His army consisted of four hundred foot

44 A New Era in Old Mexico.
soldiers, fifteen cavalrymen, and six pieces of artil
lery. On the way to Mexico lay the republic of Tlax
cala. Its people were not friendly to the Aztecs, and
after they had suffered a series of bloody defeats due
to the superiority of the Spanish arms, they at last
made an alliance with Cortez to help him against
Moctezuma. Thus reenforced, the Spanish rapidly
advanced~upon the valley of Mexico. The first town
of importance belonging to Moctezuma's domain
was Cholula, which they captured and pillaged with
inexcusable brutality, the Tlaxcalans wreaking their
hatred upon hereditary enemies.
Pressing forward as autumn drew on, despite con
stant protests from the Aztec king, early in Novem
ber Cortez reached without further serious fighting
the island city of Tenochtitlan, before whose gates^
the now intimidated monarch met him. Having pre
sented himself in state before Cortez, who received
him with the brusque frankness of the soldier, he told
the Spaniards that since they had come from the
East and were evidently sons of the sun, Mexico
looked upon them as the rightful rulers of those lands.
(The worship of the sun had long been a primary ele
ment of the native religion. ) A day later, November
10, 1519, Cortez returned the official visit and entered
the sacred city. Under the guise of reasonable curi
osity he carefully examined its approaches, streets,
buildings, and natural defenses. Several of his fol
lowers, as well as the captain himself, have left ac-

Cortez Reaches the Capital. 45
counts of Tenochtitlan as the Spaniards found it.
Bernal Diaz, Alonzo de Ojeda, Andres de Papia,
Alonzo de Mata, and an anonymous conquistador, all
wrote descriptions of the city which agree in their
essential particulars. It was substantially built, of
mud bricks for the most part, but with some struc
tures in stone, along streets which on the east and
south terminated in the lake, while to the west and
north several of them were continued in causeways,
extending to the main-land but bridging frequent ca
nals through which canoes might pass.
Having been assigned a spacious palace as a place
of residence, the Spaniards made themselves at home
in Mexico, setting up an altar for their worship and
fortifying their house. As if further to excite their
cupidity, an evil fortune led them to discover a se
cret door in the palace which had been turned over
to them, which, on being broken open, revealed a
treasure-room containing a large quantity of gold.
About this time word reached Cortez of a disastrous
battle in which his Vera Cruz garrison had engaged
through coming to the support of their neighbors,
the Campoallans, against an Aztec army. A number
of the Spaniards, including their commander, Juan
Escalante, were killed, and one taken prisoner. The
Aztecs sent the head of this prisoner all the way to
Mexico, that their king might be convinced at last
that these invaders were not immortal beings. Ad
vised of this, Cortez called a council and appeared
with several of his leaders before Moctezuma, charg-

46 A New Era in Old Mexico.
ing him with treachery. The king made the very just
reply that the conduct of his soldiers in their cam
paign against a rebellious province was not under
his immediate supervision, but that he would sur
render the commander of these troops, with his prin
cipal officers, to the Spaniards so soon as they re
turned. When,, true to his promise, he had done this,
Cortez, after investigating the incidents of the death
of his fellow-countrymen, though, with the exception
of one prisoner, they had been slain in warfare, nev
ertheless condemned the general with his son and fif
teen of his principal associates to be burned alive.
This cruel and inexcusable sentence was carried out
in the presence of Moctezuma and his people, and
the king himself was henceforth kept a prisoner in
the palace of Cortez, loaded with chains. He con
tinued to beg Cortez to withdraw, insisting that his
people were reaching a state of mind such that he
could not be responsible for the consequences.
About this time Cortez and Moctezuma each heard
with no small satisfaction that ships had arrived off
Vera Cruz. The Indian king took it for granted
that as the Spaniards now had ships they would at
once sail away to their own country. Cortez was
pleased, because he expected to find in these new
arrivals the recruits which his messengers to Spain
had sent out. Both were destined to be soon unde
ceived. The new arrivals proved to be a fleet of fif
teen vessels, bringing some eight hundred soldiers,
which had been sent by the governor general of

He Recruits His Army. 47
Cuba. The messengers of Cortez to Spain had, con
trary to his orders, touched at Cuba on their way, and
Velasquez, perceiving at once, from the accounts they
brought, the purpose of Cortez, had organized and
sent this expedition to arrest him, that he might
secure for himself the fruits of the voyage of con
quest. Leaving Pedro Alvarado with a small garrison in
Mexico, Cortez set out at once with such of his own
troops as he could gather — for many of them had
been dispatched to interior towns — and marched rap
idly to the coast. His hardened veterans made a
fierce onslaught by night on the sleeping city of Vera
Cruz, now in possession of the new arrivals, captured
the commander, and secured the surrender of his
troops. There were few lost on either side, the whole
result of the movement being the addition of this
new force to the army of Cortez. Scarcely any other
episode in the history of this daring adventurer dis
plays him to greater advantage.
In possession now of a respectable army, he at
once began to send detachments hither and thither
throughout the country in order to establish formally
his position as its ruler. Scarcely had he begun to
plan these new measures, however, when word came
to him that his little garrison in Tenochtitlan was
hard pressed and in need of immediate succor. This
had come about mostly through the stupid cruelty of
Alvarado, who had without provocation murdered
a multitude of prominent people there.

48 A New Era in Old Mexico.
Cortez, hurrying back, arrived in Mexico June 24,
1 520, greatly to the relief of his beleaguered lieuten
ant. He visited upon Alvarado, however, no severer
punishment than a reproof for his conduct. But,
thoroughly ashamed of it, he declined to see Mocte
zuma, and, in order to propitiate somewhat the peo
ple, liberated a brother of the king that he might help
to quiet the disturbed city. This brother, however,
who was of a vigorous and warlike spirit, instead of
quieting the insurrection, did all in his power to pro
mote it. Within twenty-four hours after being liber
ated, he advanced to attack the Spaniards with a
huge army. Then began the bloody struggle in the
streets of the Mexican capital which resulted at the
last in the complete defeat and ignominious retire
ment of the invaders.
For five days the attack went on. Finding himself
hard pressed, Cortez undertook to take advantage of
the influence of Moctezuma as in a critical moment
Alvarado had done. The king again ascended to the
roof of the palace where the Spaniards were forti
fied, and exhorted his people to desist. The sight of
him on this occasion, however, instead of quieting
only irritated them the more, his own nephew call
ing out in a loud voice that he was no longer their
king. This youth then bending his bow sent an ar
row flying at the unhappy captive, and the shower of
stones and arrows which followed drove Moctezuma
mortally wounded from his place. The Indians re
newed their attack with redoubled bitterness.

"La Noche Triste." 49
The position of the Spaniards finally becoming in
tolerable, Cortez decided to force his way out. Pro
viding his troops with a movable bridge for spanning
the gaps in the causeway, he led his little band forth
at midnight. Before they were fairly started, how
ever, the huge tom-tom on the high Teocalli alarmed
the city, and the attacking host swarmed upon them
like angry bees. That was the famous Noche Triste,
or mournful night. Cortez at dawn sat down, weary
and wounded, under a cypress which is still shown,
and shed tears over the gallant men left behind, some
dead, others prisoners — a fate worse than death, for
these were destinied to be sacrificed before the dread
ful God of War.
Harassed by the Mexicans, whom they constantly
repulsed with huge slaughter, the Spaniards slowly
retiring reached the city of their allies, the Tlaxcal-
ans. Here they rested during the winter, recruited
somewhat in numbers by the crews of chance ves
sels arriving at Vera Cruz, which crews Cortez al
ways managed to attach to himself.
The next summer, 1 521, he again attacked the cap
ital. This time the city was approached by water,
as well as by land, the Spaniards having built and
launched a number of brigantines. The warlike
brother of Moctezuma, who had succeeded him, had
died of smallpox, a new scourge brought by the Span
iards, which decimated the whole Aztec empire. He
had been succeeded by Cuautemoc — "last of the Az
tecs" — a valiant and high-spirited youth, one of the
4

50 A New Era in Old Mexico.
most romantic figures in history. The melancholy
story of how he lost his kingdom and his life may be
read in the pages of Prescott. It need not be detailed
here. A noble bronze statue of him, surrounded by
figures which are a grim commemoration of some of
the crudest deeds of the Spaniards in that time of
blood, stands on the famous Paseo de la Reforma,
placed there by the government under Porfirio Diaz.
In August, 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan passed
into, the hands of the Spaniards. Since that date it
has been known as Mexico.

CHAPTER VI.
Spain in Mexico.
For exactly three hundred years, from 1521 to
1 82 1, Mexico was reckoned a province of Spain and
called Nueva Espana, New Spain. From the year
1535 onward the administration was vice-regal. The
viceroys, though their terms were limited at various
times by royal decrees to six and even to three years,
virtually had unlimited tenure of office, since these
decrees were systematically disregarded. Autocrat
ic in power, they were nevertheless subject to the
whim of the King of Spain, who could depose or re
call them at will, and to the supervision of a self-
perpetuating royal council associated with him called
El Consejo de las Indias. They were trammeled also
by an Audiencia at the seat of their government, a
sort of court of review, ostensibly appointed to au
dit their accounts and see that the royal treasury re
ceived its due share from the income of the province,
but becoming with time a check upon their actions
and a medium of communication between the people
and the court of Spain. At one time, for exam
ple, a viceroy had occasion to borrow three millions
of dollars. The money was cheerfully lent by the
merchants of the City of Mexico, since, as one of
their own historians remarks, the system of checking
the accounts of these representatives of the Spanish
(50

52 A New Era in Old Mexico.
throne was so strict that the lenders ran no risk of
losing their money.
It is unhappily to be recorded, however, that so
unbounded were the prerogatives of the viceroys, and
so vague is the border line between government and
oppression, for abuses inflicted by these officers upon
the people at large there was virtually no redress.
The native population was indeed looked down upon
by the Spanish crown itself to such a degree that
treatment of them which would have been thought
intolerable if inflicted upon Europeans seemed to
their Spanish majesties to call for no special censure.
These natives of Mexico labored from the begin
ning under at least three great disadvantages. First,
they were "infidels." A great deal of the cruel hos
tility with which the Mohammedan Moors had in
vested that term lingered in the so-called Christian
theology of Spain. It originated the Spanish Inqui
sition in the very years in which the government of
that country's colonies was taking shape. It justi
fied barbarities in the administration of that govern
ment, and even in the propagation of the Christian
faith, that the clearer vision of a later day sees to be
quite out of harmony with the Christian spirit. Sec
ondly, the Indians of Mexico were to the governing
Spaniards of alien race. Race hatred was not so
acute in the commingling which took place in that
country as it has been in many others, yet it was nev
er wholly absent. In the third place, the Indians
were helpless. Only one or two tribes of them had

Early Catholic Missions. 53
developed a warlike temper, and these had been sub
dued by the overwhelming superiority of European
arms. The remainder were, almost without excep
tion, pacific and timid. They yielded to their op
pressors without resistance, almost without protest.
Not to abuse a situation like that, where the owner
ship of fertile lands and of princely deposits of min
erals is involved, is not in human nature, least of all
in Spanish human nature.
The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, es
pecially of the great religious orders within that
Church, made haste to enter upon the undertaking
of converting these gentle pagans to the true faith.
In this the soldiers, having altogether mechanical
notions of the nature of true religion, cheerfully as
sisted. They even made it a pretext for new cam
paigns of conquest, and had the assurance to adorn
the banners which waved over some of their bloodiest
and most inexcusable ventures with the cross of the
gentle Christ. The story of their manner of pro
moting the cause of Christianity is enough to bring
a blush to the cheek of any Christian who reads it.
The missionaries, it is true, were often, especially
in the beginning, self-denying and devout men. They
were a little narrow, to be sure, and broke up idols
and destroyed records that would be of inestimable
value now had they been preserved. Some of them.
notably Fray Bartolome de las Casas, became ardent
and fearless champions of the Indians and their
rights as against their oppressors. A Mexican paint-

54 A New Era in Old Mexico.
er, in a powerful canvas which now hangs in the San
Carlos Academy in Mexico City, has paid tribute to
las Casas as the "Protector of the Indians."
Unfortunately the doctrines of the Catholic
Church, and its practice of the monastic system, are
not calculated to perpetuate gentleness and justice in
the administration of missionary affairs. The teach
ing of implicit obedience, for example, paid under
vows by the monks to their superiors and under the
whip of the confessional by the converts to the
priests, is one which tends powerfully to the corrup
tion of human nature. In addition to this, the rival
ries of the different orders in Mexico made each
greedy of property and of power ; and the result was
soon seen in such a concentration of the wealth of
this new and fecund country within the establish
ments of the monastic orders as permanently to dis
turb its peace and well-being. As early as 1644 the
city council of Mexico City forwarded to Philip
IV. of Spain a formal petition to allow the estab
lishment of no more convents and monasteries in
New Spain. The document declares that there were
already so many monks and nuns there that they
were quite out of proportion to the total population ;
besides which, there seemed to be great danger that
they would get possession of all the property in the
country, of which they already owned half. It goes
on to request a special order to the bishops that they
should ordain no more priests, since there were al
ready more than six thousand who were absolutely

Religious Orders. 55
without occupation ; and that steps should be taken
to diminish the number of holidays, of which there
were two or three each week, a state of affairs tend
ing greatly to the increase of laziness! This naive
petition unhappily received no notice on the part of
the court of Spain, a neglect which was afterwards
bitterly atoned for by all concerned. The activity of
these religious orders resulted finally in a total of
one hundred and seventy-nine monasteries and
eighty-five nunneries. The Franciscans led, with
fifty-two out of the one hundred and seventy-nine;
the Dominicans had thirty, and the Augustinians
twenty-six. The vicegeral period in Mexico, though so long,
was singularly uneventful. The administration of
Mexican affairs during that period derived its char
acter from the two influences most potent in Spain,
the Spanish monarchy and the Roman Catholic
Church. Both these were cast in molds so fixed that
for three hundred years their variation was insignifi
cant. The viceroys came and went. They rarely
held the position more than four or five years,
though, as has been remarked, no attention was paid
by the Spanish crown to the limits once or twice set.
A humane and popular man, with a diplomatic tal
ent equal to the task of keeping down complaints
against himself, might remain a dozen years. Usu
ally, however, they returned voluntarily, or were re
called, after terms averaging about four years.
It seemed to be considered one of the perquisites

56 A New Era in Old Mexico.
of the position that the viceroy should enrich him
self. He was absolute master of the financial admin
istration of a rich and productive province. His es
tablishment was an expensive affair, to be sure, but
his salary was forty thousand dollars a year. By
farming out the taxation, selling special grants and
privileges, and, in spite of constant surveillance, oc
casionally tampering with the bookkeeping, most of
them managed to make the office a productive one
and to retire from it rich.
The viceroys were in more or less constant con
troversy with the aristocratic land and mine owners
and with the haughty chiefs of the Catholic hier
archy in Mexico. Early in the history of that coun
try a most pernicious system of peonage originated.
When the land was divided off into grants by royal
decree, — regardless, of course, of the rights of the
Indian owners, — with each grant native laborers to a
certain number were assigned to the favored citizen
— "commended" (encomendados) to him that he
might educate and Christianize them. As might
have been guessecl, given the hard-hearted avarice of
the average Spaniard of that time and his crude no
tion of the nature of conversion to Christianity, this
system almost at once degenerated into slavery, pure
and simple. In the same way the laborers in the
mines virtually belonged to their employers, who
controlled their food supply, administered their
courts of law — such as they had — and represented to
them that ominous and invisible power across the

Las Encomiendas. 57
sea which they hated but feared to resist. The Cath
olic Church, in this matter, as in many others, set a
melancholy example which those who accepted it as
monitor were glad enough to follow. Vast archi
tectural piles, churches, colleges, convents, monaste
ries, crowded each other in every city — almost in
every village — built by the unrequited and forced la
bor of timorous converts. Huge supplies of candles
and other accessories of the religious ceremonials
were constantly contributed by indigent worshipers,
only to be resold in the market and thus made to en
rich the priests and friars.
The enslavement of the Indian mine laborers and
the melancholy situation of the encomendados were
the occasion of numerous and pointed protests to the
Spanish crown on the part of generous-hearted eccle
siastics, and even of viceroys. The whole system of
encomiendas, so often denounced, was finally abol
ished by royal authority, an act which, though it
prevented the further extension of it, operated very
slowly indeed to interfere with the feudal pride of
men who controlled previous grants of docile slaves.
Nevertheless, in places, mining regions especially,
where the abuse had become particularly heinous,
or where there was a dogged and perhaps eloquent
prior or bishop who took the Indians' part, there
were from time to time outbreaks of justice highly
creditable to the Spanish crown and to the viceroy of
the period. A few of these viceroys were so consid
erate of the native population, and so resolute in pro-

58 A New Era in Old Mexico.
moting their interests, that their names are embalmed
in history with epithets fragrant yet of a people's
gratitude. At the very beginning were two of this
type, Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy, and
Don Luis de Velasco, the second. Mendoza was so
careful of the interests of the Indians, especially in
connection with a plague which broke out during his
period, that they called him "Father of the Poor."
Velasco, who died in 1564, was universally mourned
as the "Father of the Country." It was during his
term that the Emperor Charles V. issued express or
ders that there should be no more encomiendas, and
that those already granted should expire with the
death of the men to whom they had been made —
that is, should not be inherited. This order, as we
have seen, was not immediately carried out. On a
certain occasion, however, Velasco took advantage of
the royal attitude toward this subject to liberate one
hundred and sixty thousand slaves, mostly miners,
with the noble remark that "the freedom of the na
tive Indians was worth more than all the mines in the
world, and that the royal share in the income of these
mines [one-fifth] was not so important as to justify
the breaking of all law, both human and divine."

CHAPTER VII.
The Revolution Begun.
Three hundred years after the Spanish govern
ment had asserted its sway in Mexico, it was shak
en off by that country. The immediate cause of this
successful revolution was the Napoleonic interven
tion in Spain. How that disturbance served to pro
mote and bring to a crisis the feebly stirring senti
ment in favor of liberty and independence in nearly
all of the Spanish American countries is a story that
has perhaps never been adequately told. It will be
sufficient here to give an outline of it in so far as it
concerns Mexico. The essential phases of the situ
ation are really few, though both in Spain and in her
American colonies the political and social movements
of the first two decades of the nineteenth century
seem infinitely complex.
The success of the political revolution in Mexico
may be explained by a single statement: It became
possible when the Catholic Church was alienated
from the Spanish government. All other influences
making toward independence would have come to
naught without this final and decisive element. The
uprising under the lead of Hidalgo in 1810 failed
utterly, though, as later transpired, events in Spain
so affected the situation of Mexico that this abortive
movement there became in fact the beginning of ul-
(59)

60 A New Era in Old Mexico.
timate independence. But so great was the wealth
and influence of the Catholic Church, so thoroughly
had the people of Mexico and other Latin American
countries been trained in the habit of loyal submis
sion to that Church, that so long as the Church and
the government of the mother country acted in con
cert there was not the slightest likelihood that any
movement toward independence from Spain would
succeed. It is true that the success of the English
colonies in North America, which had set themselves
up into the independent United States, and the far-
reaching influence of the sentiments which had cul
minated in the French Revolution, had agitated even
the submissive populations of Spanish America.
These dim strivings of patriotism would doubtless
have been even more pronounced than they were
had the indigenous races been allowed to attain to
that advanced and enlightened intellectual condi
tion to which their number and their native intelli
gence entitled them. For it was among them espe
cially that the love of country was essentially linked
with the love of liberty, and to them that freedom
and patriotism seemed one and the same thing.
But so systematically and so successfully had the
ecclesiastical power combined forces with the polit
ical and the social that the Indians, after three hun
dred years of so-called Christian training, were as
ignorant and as helpless as before the Spanish came.
The very language, which had little by little forced
out their native dialects, was full of terms that point-

Napoleon in Spain. 61
ed out and enforced their inferiority. People of
Spanish stock were called gente de razon, "rational
people," whereas it was commonly accepted as a mat
ter of course that the reason of a peon or indito was
not sufficient to justify any effort to educate him.
Judge Ignacio Altamirano, one of the greatest liter
ary critics ever produced by Mexico, used to relate
with great glee that he became gente de razon, though
of pure Indian blood, because his father happened to
be appointed alcalde of the village. When that event
took place, the village schoolmaster decided that he
must teach young Ignacio his letters !
Events that later led to the complete independence
of Mexico, — and the story is essentially the same for
all the Spanish American colonies, — were taking
place both in that country and in Spain, during the
years 1808 to 1821. Bearing in mind the decisive in
fluence of the Catholic Church party, which party,
so soon as it was alienated from Spain, insured the
success of the revolutionary movement, we may un
dertake in a summary way to run over these move
ments. In 1808 Napoleon, following up his dream of
world-wide dominion, wrested the throne of Spain
from the weakling king, Charles IV., and his even
weaker son, Ferdinand VII. In the effort to recon
cile the Spanish people to this high-handed measure
and to the government he proposed to set up, — put
ting his brother Joseph on the stolen throne, — he
called for a gathering, "junta," of Spanish nota-

62 A New Era in Old Mexico.
bles. The Spanish patriots had been growing in
creasingly restive under the miserable subterfuge of
a government into which their kingdom had degen
erated, and this junta, called by Napoleon, became
the signal and type for others. Thus came about
the remarkable movement known to history as "the
Spanish juntas." The men composing these groups
presently asserted their right to govern Spain. The
juntas entered into treaties with England. They
declared war against Napoleon. They assumed
control of the colonies, Mexico among the rest.
They demanded liberal concessions from Ferdinand
as a condition of his restoration to the Spanish
throne. They quoted from the utterances of the
French revolutionists high-sounding principles con
cerning the rights of man. Most of their members
were openly hostile to the Catholic Church.
As the nature and purposes of these juntas grad
ually percolated into the thought of the colonists.
great anxiety was awakened, and with it, among
the conservatives at least, great resentment. The
Viceroy of Mexico, Iturrigaray, announced the
change in the home administration, July, 1808, and
required the Mexican people to submit to the de
mands of the "junta central" at Sevilla, at the same
time proclaiming his loyalty to the dethroned house
of Bourbon, and especially to Ferdinand VII. He
seems to have been under the impression that the
junta was working entirely in the interests of Ferdi
nand as against the French.

The Juntas. 63
It soon appeared, however, that the juntas had
many things in view besides the replacing on the
throne of the deported Bourbons ; and when their in
tentions concerning reforms, popular government,
and the like, became known, the viceroy found him
self between two fires. For the Ayuntamiento of
Mexico, which had never recognized any power but
that of the King of Spain, with whom it was accus
tomed to deal directly, flatly refused to have any
thing to do with the juntas. In this the people, loyal
to the crown, supported the Ayuntamiento. Some
suggested that it would be a good arrangement to
have Ferdinand come to Mexico, but the confusion
and uncertainty were so great that a plan for this did
not then take shape. Meantime the viceroy, trying to
carry water on both shoulders, excited the suspicion
of the Audiencia, made up as it was of ardent royal
ists, and was by them imprisoned and sent in chains
to Spain. For a time his place was taken by tempo
rary substitutes, but in 1810 Venegas, duly author
ized by the Junta Central, made his appearance in
Mexico and took command of the situation. His dis
agreement with the Ayuntamiento, and with the
large loyal element in the population, of which the
leaders of the Church were the guiding spirits, would
have reached an acute stage very promptly had not
events of a most stirring nature in the politics of
Mexico drawn away the attention of all concerned
from the situation in Spain. For a time the question
was not whether Mexico should be on the side of

64 A New Era in Old Mexico.
Ferdinand or of the junta, but rather whether or
not she should break all connection with Spain. To
the events which brought about this crisis we must
now for a moment turn.
From the beginning the Spanish administration of
Mexican affairs had, at least from the Mexican point
of view, exhibited grave defects. Every abuse of
sovereign power of which the colonists in Virginia
and Massachusetts complained was duplicated south
of the Rio Grande. To them were added many oth
ers. The native population had, as we have seen,
suffered much from various forms of slavery. One
peculiarly exasperating development of this kind
has not been mentioned. Various individual Span
iards, or associations of "Conquistadores," as they
rather insultingly called themselves, obtained from
the Spanish crown monopolies of sundry articles of
primary necessity. By placing an exorbitant price
upon these products they soon managed to have a
large number of natives constantly in their debt.
The old savage laws concerning debtors, in vogue
then throughout the world, were even more savage
in Mexico. The creditor virtually owned the debtor.
For a poor man, a laboring man, getting into debt
was equivalent to selling himself into slavery. And
industrial slavery of this kind is really worse than
domestic slavery, for if the slave is a chattel his own
er will take care of him so that his value may not
diminish. But nobody cares whether a peon lives or

Commercial Oppression. 65
dies. He cannot be sold, and his place, if he dies,
can easily be filled.
The government also had certain monopolies —
salt, tobacco, and gunpowder among them — besides
one-fifth of the income of all the gold and silver
mines, the sale of civil and ecclesiastical offices, a
stamp tax, and a poll tax exacted only of the Indians.
The king also demanded a share of the immense in
come arising from religious rites for which the peo
ple paid the priests vast sums. In addition to all
these abuses, the viceroys and their subordinates de
liberately planned to return to Spain rich after even
a brief administration, a thing which nobody seemed
to think amiss. Indeed, the viceroyalty was much
sought as a means of recouping the fortunes of de
cayed aristocracy. What financial burdens all this
imposed upon the productive population of Mexico
may be imagined. The people were also forbidden
to compete with Spain by raising grapes or olives,
or by erecting factories for the production of any
article important to the manufacturing interests of
the mother country. Moreover, Mexico could nei
ther buy nor sell in any market save that of Spain,
from whose ports all her shipments had to come
and to them all her exports be sent. The disastrous
effects on commerce of such laws need not be de
scribed. In the summer of 18 10 a little company of patriots
banded together in the city of Queretaro to discuss
plans for freeing Mexico from Spain. The move-
5

66 A New Era in Old Mexico.
ment seems to have had no immediate connection
with the disturbances then taking place in the Span
ish government, but to have been a growth from
slowly accumulating sentiments of patriotism and
from the stirring of the principles of popular liberty
then so generally sifting through the thought of the
world. The group was made up of men in the vari
ous walks of life, — two of them soldiers, a pair of
lawyers, a physician, some merchants, etc. They
were not generally Indians, or even Mestizos. The
Creoles — that is, Mexican-born Spaniards — had been
so much discriminated against by the government,
and were so commonly looked down upon socially
by the governing classes and the "old Spaniards,"
that they had come to identify themselves almost en
tirely with the other elements in the native popula
tion. They held themselves above the Indians, of
course, but at the same time felt themselves to be
Mexicans and not Spaniards, a feeling which is very
pronounced among them at the present time.
The Queretaro group, knowing how important it
was to conciliate the Church, and feeling the need of
an intelligent leader, made advances to Father Hidal
go, curate of the little village of Dolores, some sev
enty miles to the north of their city. Hidalgo had
been educated at the Colegio de San Nicolas, in Val-
ladolid (now Morelia), the oldest college in Amer
ica. He was a progressive and philanthropic man,
and had been much annoyed by the interference of
the government with his efforts to teach his parish-

MIGUEL HIDALGO Y COSTILLA.

The Conspiracy of 1810. 67
ioners horticulture. He found the restriction as to
grapes especially annoying, having already taught
his people silkworm and bee culture, besides estab
lishing a factory of earthenware and otherwise ad
vancing their worldly interests while ministering to
them in spiritual things.
Hidalgo having convinced himself by a visit or
two to Queretaro that the new movement gave prom
ise of a favorable development, at length agreed to be
the leader of it, and with the others began systemat
ically to plan for an uprising. In the city of San
Juan de los Lagos, situated in the same rich and pop
ulous state with Dolores, the state of Guanajuato,
there is a yearly fiesta in the month of December.
Thinking to take advantage of the throngs which
would be in attendance upon it and could easily be
drawn into a movement for independence, it was ar
ranged to spring the movement at that place and
time. But in September one or two members of
the band of conspirators, through motives which
history does not disclose, gave information to the
government of what was going on, together with the
names of all concerned. The local representative of
the Spanish government in Queretaro, holding the
office of corregidor, was Don Miguel Dominguez.
Without actually having given his name as an adher
ent, he was aware of the existence of the conspiracy,
and friendly to it. His wife, an even more ardent
patriot, also had knowledge of the whole movement.
But when the conspiracy was formally and openly

68 A New Era in Old Mexico.
denounced to him, Don Miguel was forced reluc
tantly to take steps to arrest his friends. Locking
his wife in their home for fear her zeal might out
run her prudence, he set out on September 14, 18 10,
to nip the revolution in the bud. Mrs. Dominguez,
however, was a woman for whom a mere lock and
key signified little. She managed to call to her win
dow a reliable policeman, himself inclined to the
revolutionary cause, and sent him flying to Dolores
to warn Hidalgo.
The priest himself, however, had been betrayed by
a hired agent, a soldier of the regiment then stationed
at San Miguel, a neighboring town, who had given
information to the commander there. Hearing ru
mors of this, Hidalgo had sent for Captain Allende,
the chief mover of the conspiracy, who lived in San
Miguel (since named for him), and the two were at
Dolores in consultation when the news from Quere
taro arrived. Aldama, the messenger, reached that
village a little after midnight of September 15, 1810,
and found Allende. Together they went to Hidal
go's room in the early hours of the morning of the
1 6th, and woke him. Having heard the definite
news, he arose to dress himself, saying coolly : "Gen
tlemen, we are in for it. There is nothing for us to
do but to set out on our hunt for gachupines" — a
slang term for Spaniards.
The priest's loyal friends and supporters in the vil
lage were hastily sent for, and in the cool September
dawn a group of men, humble laborers and farmers,

" El Grito de Dolores." 69
whose names Mexican history proudly preserves,
soon gathered about the curato. The village prison
was forced and the political prisoners set free. It
was Sunday morning, and when the parish bell1
called to mass it rang out a call to liberty which
echoes yet. For when the people came they learned
what was going on, and the patriot priest lifted up
his ever-memorable "grito" of "Viva la Independen-
cia!" Thus dramatically was launched the move
ment which, though it seemed soon to be blotted out
in blood, never stopped till Mexico was free.
Of that first outbreak, so unformed, so prema
ture, without military organization or equipment,
without programme, and with a more or less vision
ary ecclesiastic as leader, the wonder is not that it
failed, but that it came so near to success. The ex
planation, aside, of course, from the tremendous mo
mentum of sentiment in favor of independence, is to
be found in Hidalgo's shrewd instinct by which from
thevery beginninghe made it the cause of the Indians
against the foreign invader. On that first Sunday,
marching with his straggling mob in the direction of
San Miguel, where with Allende's help he hoped to
get hold of a few soldiers, as they passed the little
village of Atotonilco and swept up the villagers who
had gathered to mass, the patriot spied in the church
a banner bearing the image of the Indian Virgin of
Guadalupe. Snatching it down from the wall, he
"It now hangs over the door of the National Palace in Mexi
co City, and is rung once a year at midnight of September 15.

70 A New Era in Old Mexico.
waved it before the excited multitude as their ensign,
and to the cry of "Long live the independence of
Mexico !" he added another, to them even more in
telligible and inspiring, "Long live our Holy Mother
of Guadalupe !" Thus the enterprise of the Catholic
Church, which nearly three centuries before had sup
plied Mexico with a Virgin indigenous to the soil,
contributed in an unexpected way to the well-being
of the country by making it possible to combine reli
gious enthusiasm with patriotic fervor. To the bat
tle cries suggested by Hidalgo the people soon added
another and ominous one, "Mueran los gachupines !"
Death to the Spaniards ! In San Miguel a whole reg
iment of soldiers, the "Queen's Own," was added to
the mob of peasants, besides a welcome increase
of arms and supplies. The people were armed with
scythes, machetes, pikes, slings, and even hoes. On
the 1 8th of the same month of September they swept
on southward to Celaya, which was occupied on
the 2 ist without resistance, and sacked by the mob.
Here an effort at organization was made, Hidalgo
being appointed captain general and Allende lieu
tenant general.
From Celaya the expedition turned back to the
northwest to invest the capital city of Hidalgo's
state, Guanajuato, only a short distance across the
mountains from Dolores. It was, as it is still, a city
of much wealth, having then a considerable garrison
of Spanish soldiers and a sort of customhouse and
treasury building of great strength, but badly situ-

The Capture of Guanajuato. 71
ated for defense. The commander of the troops,
having heard of the revolution, had as early as the
17th begun elaborate preparations to defend the city,
calling on the people to rally to the help of the gov
ernment. This they did at first, but within the two
weeks which elapsed before the arrival of the patriot
army they had learned more of its objects and char
acter, and their ardor as defenders cooled. But the
Spanish commander haughtily refused when called
upon to surrender, and on September 28 was attacked
by the revolutionists with such fury that he and his
people were forced almost immediately to take refuge
in the alhondiga. From the neighboring slopes — the
city lies in a narrow mountain gulch — poured such a
storm of stones hurled by slingers that defense of the
walls soon became impossible, the gate of the for
tress was fired, and the invaders swept everything
before them. Riafio, the Spanish commander, fell
early in the engagement. During the night the city
was plundered, but the next day Hidalgo published
general orders reestablishing the Ayuntamiento, or
city government, and repressing disorder under se
vere penalties. Availing himself of the resources of
the city, he began to take serious measures for the
success of his movement. He ordered the establish
ment of a cannon foundry and commenced to gather
arms and supplies. Two weeks later he set out for
Valladolid (Morelia).
Meantime, as may well be supposed, the vice-regal
government was in a ferment. Venegas, the viceroy

73 A New Era in Old Mexico.
of the juntas, had just arrived. He was an energetic
man, and at once issued orders to General Calleja,
in San Luis Potosi, to go after the rebels with all
the troops at his command. The government's army
in Mexico was at the time made up of about ten thou
sand regulars and some twenty thousand provincial
militia. The viceroy set a price on the heads of Hi
dalgo and Allende, and the archbishop of Michoacan
anathematized his renegade priest publicly and by
name, the Inquisition following suit. Hidalgo re
plied in a spirited proclamation, declaring himself
a loyal Catholic still and calling on the people to
awaken to their rights as freemen.
To all appearances the people heeded him rather
than the viceroy and archbishop. On his way to
Morelia nobody resisted him, and the city itself fell
into his hands without objection. His following
now numbered probably one hundred thousand. He
took possession of $400,000 which he found in the
royal treasury at Valladolid, persuaded the ecclesi
astical authorities to remove the disabilities of him
self and his soldiers, ,and published a proclamation
abolishing slavery and the poll tax. These measures
gave him immense popularity with the Indians, and
his army swept on unopposed toward Mexico.
On the high ridge between that city and Toluca,
the rim of the valley of Mexico, he met the royalist
troops sent out to oppose him. While trying to ar
range with them for a parley the battle broke out,
and the viceroy's troops were soon disastrously de-

Hidalgo's Disastrous Retreat. 73
feated. There was nothing to hinder the advance
of the revolutionists upon the capital, but for some
reason Hidalgo hesitated a day or two and then
withdrew northward. His action has never been
fully explained. It must have been due in some
measure, at least, to the timorous shrinking from
bloodshed of a man unused to war. This battle was
his first, and, though won by his troops, seems to
have filled him with dismay.
Near Celaya he encountered Calleja, hastening to
the relief of Mexico, who promptly attacked and
routed the insurgents. Hidalgo went to Morelia
and Allende to Guanajuato. Calleja followed Al
lende and, defeating him again, captured that city.
Hidalgo soon passed on to Guadalajara, where he
was made welcome. The revolutionary movement
had spread through the whole country. There he
undertook the organization of a civil government,
appointed ministers, and sent messengers to the
United States. But the royalist troops, concentra
ted under Calleja, were again approaching. The fol
lowing of Hidalgo and of Allende, who had again
joined him, was not much more than a mob. They
went out to meet their enemy and again met defeat.
The leaders made their way out to Aguas Calientes,
thence northward to Zacatecas, and on to Saltillo,
from which place they set out for Monclova. Hidal
go had been persuaded to give the supreme military
command to Allende, — a thing he ought to have
done at the beginning, — and they were again finding

74 A New Era in Old Mexico.
sympathizers in all quarters. It was only a question
of obtaining supplies and arms, and they could soon
gather another army. But on the way to Monclova
they were betrayed by a young lieutenant, disaffect
ed because Allende had refused to advance him in
rank, and taken as prisoners of the royalist troops
to Chihuahua. There the local Spanish commander
promptly condemned them by court martial, and they
were executed, about midsummer of 1811. Their
heads were carried to Guanajuato and exposed on the
famous alhondiga, where they remained for ten
years. The first chapter of Mexico's revolution thus
came to an end.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Revolution Consummated.
How much more wisely Hidalgo was building
than he knew appeared after his capture. In the four
months that intervened between that capture and
his execution another revolutionary army had been
formed, and two or three important victories won
by it. When Hidalgo set out on his fatal trip from
Saltillo to Monclova he left in command at Saltillo
Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon, who, when he heard of
the disaster to his chief, almost immediately started
to make his way back toward the central part of the
country. His troops numbered between three and
four thousand, and on their way south they met and
defeated several detachments of the royalist army,
capturing a good many field guns and a quantity of
supplies. The rich and important city of Zacatecas
received the patriot army with open arms, an event
which awoke the representatives of the Spanish gov
ernment to the fact that the revolutionary ideas had
much more vitality than they had suspected. Indeed,
this is the most noteworthy phenomenon of the trou
bled and uncertain years which followed Hidalgo's
death. In the hearts of the common people the sen
timent of liberty burned like a quenchless flame. No
sooner were the patriot armies defeated and scattered
(75)

76 A New Era in Old Mexico.
than new recruits filled the depleted ranks as if rising
from the ground.
Rayon, threatened at Zacatecas by Calleja, sped
away again to the south, fighting by the way and
usually defeated, — at "el Maguey," "la Tinaja,"
and Valladolid, which city he failed to capture. Pen
etrating still further into the mountains of Michoa
can, he took possession of Zitacuaro, and- there, on
August 19, 181 1, called a "junta" of four men — him
self, Liceaga, Verduzco, and Yarza — which issued
a proclamation and became a nucleus for the con
gress of Chilpancingo two years later.
This reappearance of a governing center for the
revolution was joyously welcomed by the warrior
priest Don Jose Maria Morelos, whose daring and
breathless activity had for nearly a year been carry
ing terror to the Spanish forces all through the south.
A little dark- faced Indian, who had obtained his the
ological training after years of manual labor and
poverty, partly under Hidalgo while the great pa
triot was rector of the Colegio de San Nicolas, Mo
relos, when his old teacher came back to Valladolid
at the head of an army, was curate of a near-by vil
lage. When he hastened to join the revolutionary
movement, which exactly suited his tastes, Hidalgo,
instead of taking him along on his march toward the
capital, sent him flying southward with orders to
gather troops and, if posisble, take possession of
Acapulco, a port on the Pacific coast. Sallying forth
alone and without resources, the martial priest so

Persistence of the Revolution. 77
successfully carried out the orders of his superior as
to enroll his name among the really great military
leaders of the world. His exploits, if detailed, would
make a romance as thrilling as any ever born in the
imagination of genius. Without actually capturing
Acapulco he kept it in a more or less constant state
of siege, while at the same time systematically ter
rorizing the whole region south of Morelia to the
coast. Morelos, having united his counsels with those of
the junta, left Rayon secure, as he thought, in Zit-
acuaro, a place of great natural strength, to await
the attack of the royalist army under Calleja, while
he, dividing his own forces, made vigorous dem
onstrations against Acapulco, Toluca, and Oaxaca,
and even threatened Mexico City itself. But Calleja,
whose savage conduct after his capture of Guana
juato had earned for him the title of "the Cruel,"
easily routed Rayon, captured and devastated Zit-
acuaro, and once more dissipated the rallying center
of the Independents.
But the fire of revolution, instead of being stamped
out, was only scattered. It continued to burst into
flames on every hand. For two years the warfare
was scattering and guerilla-like, but often heroic.
The siege of Cuautla, where Morelos resisted the
whole vice-regal army for seventy days and then
withdrew with all his troops, was an exploit worthy
of any general and time. Not less so was the con
duct, on a critical occasion, of one of his subordi-

78 A New Era in Old Mexico.
nates, Don Nicolas Bravo. The government having
captured the father of this officer, Don Leonardo
Bravo, a brave and active patriot, Morelos offered in
exchange for him eight hundred Spanish prisoners.
The offer was refused. The prisoner was given
choice between death and allegiance to Spain.
Proudly refusing to take the oath, he was murdered
by means of the degrading garrote. Whereupon
Morelos, who was of iron temper, ordered Don Nico
las, son of the murdered man, to execute three) hun
dred Spanish prisoners in reprisal. The prisoners
were paraded and the order of the commanding gen
eral read to them in the presence of the insurgent
troops. "Now," said Bravo, "I do not choose, even
when ordered to do so, to imitate the wretched ex
ample of my enemies. I prefer a different kind of
vengeance. I not only spare your lives, but you are
free. Go." This "insurgent vengeance," as it was
called, produced a profound impression.
Two years after the Zitacuaro junta, Morelos, who,
had but lately captured both Oaxaca and Acapulco,
secured the assembling in Chilpancingo (now the
capital of the state of Guerrero) of a still more rep
resentative congress or council. This was in Sep
tember, 1813. The congress consisted of forty dele
gates, elected wherever the insurgents were in con
trol, and appointed by Morelos from other sections.
It included the members of the previous junta, and
besides them, Jose Maria Cos, Carlos Maria Busta-
mante, Jose Maria Murguia, Jose Manuel de Her-

Congress of Chilpancingo. 7g
rera, and other famous patriots. As an example of
the respect he wished paid to the body, Morelos
promptly surrendered to it his military command,
only to be at once elected by the congress captain
general of all the insurgent forces. After something
like a month of deliberation, the congress issued a
manifesto consisting in part of a declaration of inde
pendence for Mexico and in part of a defense of the
insurgent cause in the war then in progress. Among
the curious and contradictory features of this docu
ment, which is chiefly interesting as an example of
how liberal ideas grow, are its declaration that the
war which the opponents of the Spanish government
were then waging, was in favor of Ferdinand VII.,
to whom they affirmed their loyalty, and its assertion
that the insurgents were the true supporters of the
Holy Catholic Church, and that if successful they
would not admit into Mexico or tolerate there any
other form of worship. It is to be remembered that in
those years the Spanish government was in the hands
of the Cortes, a liberal body instituted by the juntas,
which had made sweeping reforms in the matter of
religious toleration, abolished the Inquisition, and
otherwise reversed the traditional policies of the
Spanish monarchy. Several members of this first
Mexican congress, and a number of the chief mili
tary leaders up to that time, were priests. These
facts will in part explain the statement made earlier
that the real secret of the success of the Mexican

80 A New Era in Old Mexico.
revolution was in the ultimate identification with
it of a strong Catholic sentiment.
But that which was even dearer to the Indians who
composed the insurgent armies than their devotion
to the mother Church was the dream of freedom.
The Chilpancingo congress spoke out boldly con
cerning the right of Mexico to independence. Its
members appealed in defense of their contention to
the very recent uprising in Spain against the French
intervention. Little by little, by the slow processes
native to the manner of life of that day — all the slow
er among a people of contented temper and slight en
lightenment — the sentiment of freedom was making
its way.
Venegas had been substituted in the viceroyalty by
Calleja, who represented to the common people the
very essence of scorn and cruelty. They might not
understand the intricate politics of Europe, where
just then Napoleon's power was tottering to its fall;
they certainly could not make out why good priests
like Cos and Morelos were fighting for the Guadalu-
pan Virgin, while the archbishop and the Inquisition
in Mexico were launching anathemas against all who
opposed the viceroy, but they could understand the
thought of freeing themselves from the exactions
and cruelties of men like Calleja. And this was to
them a very sweet thought. Thus it came about that
as fast as the insurrection was put down it broke out
again. And even though its leaders sincerely wished
to keep the movement loyal to the Catholic monarchy

Death of Morelos. 81
of Spain, they had nevertheless set in motion forces
which they could no longer control.
But Calleja, an able military leader, and now
armed with all the prestige and resources of his po
sition, pressed the insurgents hard. Opportunely
came the news that Napoleon had replaced Ferdi
nand on the throne of Spain, who in turn had rees
tablished the Inquisition, made tatters of the con
stitution devised by the Cortes, and inaugurated a
truly Spanish regime. This was after Calleja's own
heart. Overlooking completely, therefore, the loy
alty of the insurgents to the puppet king while he
had been fawning about the feet of Napoleon, he
availed himself of the king's abrogation of all con
stitutional guarantees and began to make cruel hav
oc of such rebels as fell into his hands. One of these,
erelong, was Morelos, who, anxious to preserve the
congress, which had meantime become a vacuous and
useless company of figureheads, exposed himself to
capture on a certain critical occasion in order that
its members might escape. He was loaded with
chains, carried to Mexico, condemned by the Inqui
sition, which Calleja had put again into operation,
and, for fear of the effect on the people, secretly ex
ecuted in a village just outside the city, December
22, 1815. This was probably the last auto-da-fe of
the Inquisition, that baleful institution having for
ever disappeared within a short time thereafter.
The insurgents were still numerous but scattered.
An ambitious general, Mier y Teran, dissolved the
6

82 A New Era in Old Mexico.
congress, and thus broke up the last nucleus of an
administrative center. In 1816 Calleja gave place
as viceroy to Don Ruiz de Apodaca, a reasonable
and conciliatory man. Nothing in the succeeding
year availed to draw together the disintegrated
forces of the revolution, and the kindliness of Apo
daca, and especially his disposition to favor the Cre
oles and Mestizos, brought many of the disaffected
to take again the oath of allegiance to Spain.
A romantic episode of the otherwise quiet year of
1817 was the meteoric campaign of Don Francisco
Javier Mina, a brilliant and bold young Spanish lib
eral of noble family, who, disgusted by the march
of events in Spain, landed on the northeast coast of
Mexico with a few companions, quite a number of
them Americans, captured three hundred horses, and
set out on a campaign in aid of the revolution so suc
cessful as to be fairly incredible. Reckless, watch
ful, fearless, indefatigable, he eluded or defeated
every expedition sent in pursuit of him, and for half
a year flashed like a meteor from mountain range to
mountain range, from city to city, through all the
central part of Mexico. Captured at last and shot,
he left a name and a story which warm the heart
and brighten the page of Mexico's historians to this
day. For three years the flames of revolution only
smoldered. Then again from Spain came a blast at
which they burst once more into a far-flashing blaze.
Ferdinand's foolish and childish absolutism had

The Last Straw. 83
proved too much for even patient Spain. Napoleon,
his protector, had gone into eclipse. The people
rose up and thrust the constitution of 18 12 into his
very face. The Cortes assembled, and he made be
fore it a pusillanimous and hypocritical address,
agreeing to all that the liberals demanded and pro
fessing sentiments he by no means felt. If Spain
seethed with these movements, Mexico was worse.
The last prop was at last knocked from beneath the
loyalty of the aristocratic Church party. They were
willing to support a Catholic government, but this
new Spanish constitution, with an angry people be
hind it, struck at the dearest "rights" of the Church
and its priests. At last the leaders of the Church
party in Mexico were ready to join hands with the
common people and cut loose from Spain. They
still clung to their pet, Ferdinand, and part of the
new plan was to have him leave Spain, where he was
so much abused, and come to set up a truly Catholic
monarchy in Mexico.
A tool was ready to their hand in Don Augustin
Iturbide. An ardent Catholic and a soldier of con
siderable military experience, they managed to have
him put in command of the next expedition against
the insurgents. Don Vicente Guerrero, one of the
undaunted patriots who had kept the field throughout
all these years, gradually increasing his band of
hardy troops, had made such rapid progress during
1820 that in the latter part of that year he was even
venturing to threaten the capital. Iturbide was sent

84 A New Era in Old Mexico.
against him with the flower of the royalist army;
but instead of fighting, he opened negotiations, and
disclosed to the insurgent leader a "plan" which he
and the aristocratic leaders in Mexico had concocted.
It proposed the union of all the forces then favoring
independence from Spain for the promotion of that
cause and the protection especially of religion. "Un
ion, independence, religion" were to be guaranteed,
symbolized by the green, white, and red flag which
had just been devised, and which still flies as Mexi
co's banner. Iturbide declared that the majority of
the troops under him were ready to accept the plan
and to fight if necessary for these "tres garantias."
The offer was joyously welcomed by the revolution
ists. Guerrero yielded the supreme command to
Iturbide, the troops of the opposing armies and their
leaders held a love feast, and the news went flying
among scattered and despairing patriots from the
Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. The viceroy cajoled,
bribed, threatened, wheedled, but could do nothing,
and in disgust resigned and went home to Spain.
He was succeeded July 30, 1821, by Don Juan
O'Donoju, sixty-fourth and last Spanish viceroy,
who died within a few months, having virtually
agreed to the proposals of the united revolutionists,
and having never attained in Mexico to other than a
nominal authority.
So acute was the quarrel in Spain during those
years, between king and people, and so debilitated
the mother country with her internal disturbances,

Independence at Last. 85
that not much could be done by her to break the
strength which now came to the cause of Mexican
independence through the coalition between the Old
Catholic and the Insurgent parties. So soon as the
Spanish Cortes heard of O'Donoju's acquiescence in
the revolutionary "plan," they repudiated it and de
nounced him as a traitor. But this served no pur
pose further than to register their protest. They
had neither the men nor the money to enforce Spain's
claims. Thus at the last, after so much of travail, almost
without effort and absolutely without bloodshed,
Mexico became independent. But fifteen years were
yet to lapse before Spain, reluctant still, acknowl
edged that independence and forgave her wayward
daughter.

CHAPTER IX.
Evolution of the Republic.
The fifty years that followed Mexico's final rup
ture with Spain witnessed two abortive attempts
to establish in New Spain the monarchical form of
government. Both failed for the same reason : they
were crushed by the weight of the sentiment in favor
of popular government. The "Plan of the Three
Guarantees," usually spoken of as the "Plan de Igu-
ala," from the name of the village where it was first
publicly announced, provided for the calling of a
constituent congress which was to devise a monarch
ical form of government over which a prince of the
house of Bourbon should be invited to reign. Fer
dinand VII., however, to whom this offer prima
rily referred, did not care to make the venture ; and
besides, the Cortes had somewhat to say concerning
the necessity of his remaining in Spain. No other
Bourbon prince seems to have been available. The
congress, of about one hundred members, met in
February, 1822. The Spanish element supplied one
of the three parties of which it was composed, but
this party were much set back by the news of Spain's
rude repudiation of the whole movement. A sort of
pro tempore government had been set up in which
Iturbide and others acted with O'Donoju, the de
posed viceroy, up to the time of his death. The two
(86) '

"Emperor" Iturbide. 87
other parties were, first, the adherents of Iturbide,
who had already conceived the idea of substituting
him for the proposed Bourbon prince, and who called
themselves "Iturbidistas" ; and, secondly, the Repub
licans, who openly favored a popular government.
Three months after this rather nondescript body
began its deliberations, in May, 1822, the soldiers
stationed in the city — whether at his instigation or
not, is not known — "proclaimed" Iturbide emperor,
and fairly stampeded the city. The congress found
itself bullied out of countenance by popular clamor,
and by a vote of seventy-seven to fifteen agreed to
the demand of the soldiers and made the young Mez-
tizo colonel "emperor." In March of the next year
he abdicated the throne, and was forced to leave the
country. The story of his "empire" is amusing and
pathetic rather than tragic. He was an amiable and
vain young man, really devoted to his country, but
not of the stuff emperors are made of. Besides, the
people were in no mood to trifle with the toys and
gilded shows of a puppet royalty. They had serious
business on hand and were serious men. The patriot
Indian element and the wealthy and privileged class
es, hereditary foes at best, were already closing with
each other in that death grip of a struggle, concern
ing the kind of a government the country was to
have, which did not cease for fifty years. The con
gress had succeeded in placing a loan or two at most
disadvantageous rates, one in England and one in
France, destined later in the century to become the

88 A New Era in Old Mexico.
storm center of foreign intervention. This money
was, however, rapidly dissipated. After the abdica
tion of the emperor, the supreme power was placed
temporarily in the hands of a governing board of
three. Congress banished and pensioned Iturbide,
and adjourned.
In November, 1823, another congress was sum
moned, and the work of formulating a constitution
seriously undertaken. About the same time Presi
dent Monroe announced his famous doctrine warn
ing European governments that they were not to in
terfere in American affairs. This no doubt contrib
uted not a little to the cause of Mexican independ
ence, since Spain, at the instigation of the Holy Al
liance, was at the time seriously considering the re-
conquest of her American colonies. This congress
was divided into the "Federalist" and the "Central
ist" parties, names which of themselves do not signi
fy a great deal, since the Centralists corresponded
to the Federalists in the early history of our own
country, and the Federalists were Republicans. It
was the old cleavage between the native and the
Spaniard, the poor and the rich, the progressive and
the conservative. It has not disappeared from Mex
ico to this day.
All winter they debated the constitution, the Re
publicans holding up the example of the United
States as an ideal, and their opponents showing only
too truly the many and grave differences between the
situation in Mexico and that in the American colo-

The Constitution of 1824. 89
nies forty years before. In January a tentative basis,
consisting of twenty-six articles, was adopted, and
by October of the same year, 1824, the constitution
itself was framed, adopted, and proclaimed. The
Federalists had triumphed at most points, and the
document was modeled in large measure upon the
constitution of the United States. The provisional
agreement had declared that the government was to
be "popular, representative, federal, and republican."
But the Centralist party was able, backed by the in
ertia of a situation in which nobody really knew
what to do, to force the insertion of two provisions
which were to be fruitful of mischief. One declared
the Catholic religion to be official, and that no other
would be tolerated; the other perpetuated the reli
gious and military fueros. This word describes an
inheritance from the dark days of the Middle Ages
when warrior and priest were masters of the. world.
The fueros were the vested right of soldiers and
churchmen to be tried by courts instituted by their
own orders instead of by the law of the land. It was
a much-coveted distinction, to which both orders
clung long and desperately, though its inconsistency
with popular government does not need to be pointed
out. The constitution of 1824, though virtually nev
er in full force, served nevertheless, twenty-three
years later, as an excellent basis for that of 1857.
The newly constituted republic consisted of nine
teen states and five territories. The constitution pro
vided that the president should be elected by the vote

go A New Era in Old Mexico.
of the state legislatures and for a term of four years.
Don Felix Fernandez, who had recently adopted
the rather boastful name of Guadalupe Victoria, de
scribing his devotion to the Virgin and his prowess
in war, was the candidate of the Federalists, against
Don Nicolas Bravo, put forward by the Centralists.
Victoria was elected and Bravo became vice presi
dent. Thus at- last Mexico was free, with a duly
constituted civil government. The conflict between
the opposing parties went on. Private ambitions
and jealousies afnong the leaders resulted in great
bitterness of feeling, and the recently introduced or
der of Masonry added fuel to the flames. The first
lodges formed were of the Scottish Rite, brought
from France, and were identified with the wealthy
Spaniards and the Church party. Presently, how
ever, an accredited minister of the United States
brought authority to establish a York Rite jurisdic
tion, which he did in connection with the strict Re
publican or patriot party. When secret, oath-bound
societies meddle in politics, disaster usually results.
"Escoceses" and "Yorkinos" long survived in Mex
ico as rallying cries, the symbols of much bitter feel
ing. Victoria was the only president who served out a
constitutional term tinder the instrument of 1824,
and his wound up in a bloody wrangle. Nicolas Bra
vo, Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Victoria, Anto
nio Lopez de Santa Anna — names all of them made
notable by the part their bearers had taken in freeing

War with the United States. 91
the country from Spain — together with other able
and ambitious military leaders, now began that pet
ty struggle among themselves which was to keep the
country in a turmoil for nearly fifty years. It is an
intricate and tedious story, and depressing withal.
The most prominent figure in it for many years was
Santa Anna, a man of considerable military ability,
but so despotic in his temper as to be absolutely un
fit for any position of civil authority. His only con
ception of a government for his country was a dic
tatorship, with himself as dictator. Once or twice
even when he had tired of governing — for which, in
deed, he had no real taste — and retired to the privacy
of his country estates, he seemed to think it perfectly
proper any day the whim seized him to assume again
the reins of absolute power.
It was during this period of virtual anarchy that
the unfortunate but unavoidable war with the United
States occurred. The citizens of the Mexican state
of Texas, who were largely Anglo-Saxons, weary of
the irregular and unsatisfactory mode of govern
ment, and desiring closer affiliation with their rela
tives in the United States, asserted their independ
ence in a glorious war for liberty. By the time they
were ready to apply for admission into the Union,
Mexico, realizing what she had lost, made a fierce
effort to stop the movement, only to lose before the
war was over far more of territory than that origi
nally involved.
Ten years after the war with the United States,

g2 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the patriot party at last began to take those decisive
steps so long needed. Partly impelled by the poverty
of the government and partly because of dear-bought
insight into the real cause of the persisting vitality
of the reactionary party as against free and represent
ative government, Gomez Farias, Miguel Lerdo de
Tejada, Benito Juarez, Melchor Ocampo, Guillermo
Prieto, and their immortal companions in the final
desperate struggle for liberty, laid hands on the treas
ures and vested rights of the Church. In 1855, while
Juarez was for a time in the cabinet of President
Alvarez, as Minister of Justice, he formulated the
first of the "reform laws" annulling the fueros and
declaring all citizens equal before the law. A year
later followed the fiscal decree of Miguel Lerdo de
Tejada, Secretary of the Treasury, nationalizing all
mortmain property — that is, property acquired by
people then dead in such a way that it could never
be alienated. Most of it was held by the several re
ligious orders. The Jesuits and Franciscans resisted,
and were promptly expelled from the country and
their vast properties seized. These things, of course,
consolidated the Church party against this new
movement toward republican government.
Suspecting that their constitution was radically
defective, and seeing that it had long been disregard
ed, the patriot party decided to formulate a new one.
This was done in the autumn of 1856, and it was
adopted February 5, 1857. It embodied the princi
ples as to the rights of man promulgated by the

The Republic at Last. 93
French revolutionists, and was based, as to civil in
stitutions, largely upon the constitution of the United
States. The fierce denunciation of the reform laws
by the Archbishop of Mexico, and the unalterable
hostility of all the leaders of the Catholic party to
the abolition of the fueros, to the confiscation of
Church property, the banishment of the monks,
and the freedom of worship, convinced Juarez and
his associates that they were going to have to fight
the Church party in any case, and they decided that
they might as well make a clean sweep of it. This
they did. But within a year Mexico was plunged
into a bloody civil war, which continued for ten
years and included as one of its tragic episodes the
uncalled-for intervention of the French emperor and
the brief and fatal reign of Maximilian. But nei
ther the foreign invader nor the retrogade party at
home could quench the undying devotion of the Mex
ican people to the ideal of a free and popular gov
ernment. Out of the smoke and dust of civil war,
triumphant on the ruins of the enforced empire,
emerged the republic.

CHAPTER X.
Catholicism and Revolutions — Imperium in
Imperio.
Having hastened though our outline of the shift
ing politics of Mexico during the middle decades of
the nineteenth century, we shall find it instructive to
go again over the same period, making a more inti
mate study of some of the intellectual movements of
which these kaleidoscopic political changes were the
outward expression. The rapidly succeeding revolu
tions which marked the early history of independent
Mexico, and which unfortunately still characterize
the effort at self-government of other Spanish Amer
ican countries, are not due, as some would have us
suppose, to the "natural incapacity for self-govern
ment of the Spanish-American peoples," nor wholly
to the unregulated ambitions of their military lead
ers. These are, no doubt, contributory causes, but
they themselves have their origin in, and obtain their
potency for harm from, the same great underlying
cause, namely, the hostility of the Catholic Church
to popular government. This hostility is a legacy of
the Church from its golden age, and though it may
be on occasion veiled, and is often flatly denied,
it exists nevertheless, showing itself in just that de
gree which the temper of any people or govern
ment will permit. The traditions of the Cath-
(94)

Obstacles to Self-Government. 95
olic hierarchy are autocratic. Unquestioning obe
dience is with it a fundamental tenet. If, there
fore, a people who for three hundred years have been
carefully trained by that hierarchy not to think for
themselves, and taught that virtue is wholly in obe
dience and subserviency and not at all in boldness
or initiative, displays afterwards as a consequence
of that training some degree of unreadiness for the
responsibilities of self-government, is it not invidious
to call such a state "natural incompetency" ? It may
be incompetency, but it is not natural ; it is acquired.
The nation so situated deserves sympathetic good
will from those who were better trained, not con
tumely. In the same way, the mischievous potency of the
unrestrained ambitions of leaders, — ambitions which
have so often plunged Mexico and other Spanish-
American states into war, — is to be traced directly
to the readiness of the Church party to develop and
avail themselves of these ambitions. The priests
and their associates do not exactly create them, to
be sure. But after a few experiences, the common
soldier is not ready to follow every new hero who
springs up with a patriotic pronunciamiento against
the existing government simply for glory. He
had rather stay at home and plow his field or
wield his saw and hammer. What will tempt him
to fight? Money; nothing else, especially when the
issues as to patriotism are so nicely balanced that
only an expert could decide on which side duty lies.

96 A New Era in Old Mexico.
That it was the money of the Church which fitted out
the expeditions that made havoc of the liberal gov
ernment in Mexico so often as that government be
gan to settle down to business, will be perfectly evi
dent to any one who cares to go into the details of
the country's history. Mexico stopped this inter
meddling at last. This she accomplished by the ef
fective measure of removing at one stroke the wealth
which ha'd been the source of the Church's power.
Since that time the country has had peace. Other
struggling republics may have to profit by her exam
ple. There was never a time in the history of any of
the colonies of Spain when the leaders of the Church
were willing to let the government alone. Often, it
is true, they interfered to the advantage of the peo
ple. Archbishops, bishops, vicar generals, abbots,
and even friars and priests, often made the lot of the
representatives of the Spanish crown an unhappy
one. Their power over the people was so absolute,
and their following so blindly devoted to them, that
in a crisis they could count on the support of prac
tically the whole population. The viceroys and cap
tains general did not, it is true, take much account
of the people ; yet nobody cared to govern a province
and be at the same time the best hated man in it.
Almost as soon as the independence of Mexico had
been secured, the conservative or monarchical party
regretted it. They had counted surely on securing
Ferdinand VII. to be king of New Spain, and even

Source of the Church's Power. 97
Emperor Iturbide, fervent Catholic that he was,
did not satisfy them. His "empire" fell still far
ther short of pleasing the hardy patriots who had
supposed that independence and liberty were synony
mous, and who had little mind to see all their sac
rifices and bloodshed result merely in the substitution
of one autocrat for another. This grim and patient
ly persistent fidelity to the republican ideal has been
a feature of Mexico's history from that day onward.
The distaste for popular government on the part of
the Catholic leaders has been no more deep-seated
than has been loyalty to freedom among the masses
of the Mexican people. So ineradicable has been this
loyalty on the one hand, and so incapable has the
conservative party shown itself on the other, of free
ing the governments set up by its representatives
from the practices and attitude of an odious tyranny,
that for almost a century, while the resources of the
two parties were more or less evenly balanced, it
seemed impossible for either to manage public af
fairs in a way satisfactory to the other.
The balance of power in the hands of the Church
party was soon found to be due to its immense wealth
and its compact organization. It had always been a
sort of imperium in imperio. Its authority was ex
ercised quite independently of that of the state. Sep
arate and special tribunals for its officials, with
awards of penalties and immunities in which the
state dared not interfere, and a complete financial
system with an immense revenue and a manner of
7

&

g8 A New Era in Old Mexico.
accounting independent of all outside observation,
placed the Church in a position to dictate terms to any
government which might affect to disregard its wish
es. Arrayed against this venerable and powerful
ecclesiastical machinery, with its spiritual sanctions
and its awards and punishments not confined to earth
but reaching also within the veil, were first, the pro
gressive and intelligent patriots who, having studied
the science of government and the needs of their
country, had espoused with unfaltering devotion the
cause of religious and political liberty. With them
were, secondly, the native instincts of the great mass
of native Mexicans, confused in their minds, it is
true, by the opposition to their course of the vener
ated Church and its priesthood, yet loving liberty
with all the ardor of their untutored nature, smart
ing under numerous and long-inflicted tyrannies,
and blindly devoted to their beautiful native land
which, despite the long-continued occupancy of the
foreigner, they instinctively believed to be theirs by
right. The Creoles and Mestizos fluctuated, now
joining themselves with great enthusiasm to the pa
triot party, and again, unable to grasp the ultimate
purpose of its leaders, or by reason of some step on
their part peculiarly offensive to the clergy, rallying
to the priests not less heartily, always subject to the
seductive persuasion of good wages and loot.
With such constituent elements, the revolutions
in Mexican government are seen to have been both
intelligible and inevitable. Following this clew, some

Revolutions Explained. 99
sort of sequence may be traced in that weary suc
cession of disturbances which long vexed that coun
try and which still puzzles students of Central and
South American politics. For though the pope has
kind things to say about strong republics, like France
and the United States, in all countries where repub
licanism is still weak and struggling the Church will
be found arrayed against it. If a Santa Anna be put
forward by the conservatives as their choice for
president, it will very soon be found that it is be
cause his ideal of government is the same as theirs,
and that once he is elected, instead of abiding by
the constitution he has proclaimed himself dictator.
This fashion of changing a constitutional presidency
into a military dictatorship, to meet emergencies, is
one which, unfortunately, commends itself to men of
ambitious temper, even though they have been put
forward by the patriot party. It has thus come to
pass in such countries as Venezuela and Colombia
that tyranny on the part of the man in power is the
rule, whether he be a liberal or a conservative.
Nevertheless the Catholic party must bear the
odium of having set the baleful example, and of hav
ing reduced the people to such a state, through its
management of their spiritual and intellectual af
fairs, that they are really not able to carry the bur
den of a representative government. It is something
of a puzzle to make out why, at least in the realm of
practical politics, the Catholic hierarchy should pre
fer the autocratic to the democratic form of govern-

ioo A New Era in Old Mexico.
ment. In no other countries in the world is that
Church so truly prosperous as in the United States,
England, and France. Where its people have been
raised by popular education to an intellectual level
such that public sentiment forbids and even makes
impossible that immorality and indolence of the
priesthood and those idolatrous superstitions on the
part of the people which are the disgrace and the
burden of Catholicism in purely Catholic countries,
that Church takes its place with others in a sphere cf
respectability and Christian activity such as at once
to win the esteem of the outside world and to increase
the vitality and promise of the Church itself. And,
in particular, a government like that of the United
States, which avowedly eschews all intermeddling
in ecclesiastical affairs, offers a field for the devel
opment of the Church far preferable to that under
some autocratic ruler whose assertion of his divine
right to rule in all things constantly brings him into
collision with pope and bishop. Such a statement ap
pears axiomatic, yet, strange to say, in France, in
Spain, in Austria, in Mexico, in South America, —
everywhere, indeed, where it has been able to wield
its influence, — the Catholic Church has stoutly set
itself against religious freedom, even against any
thing bearing the semblance of political freedom.
The explanation of this contradictory and ulti
mately futile attitude must be sought mainly, as
would appear, in two considerations. First, in the af
finity which an autocratic hierarchical system natu-

The Enemy of Enlightenment. 101
rally feels for a political autocracy. All the wrang-
lings between emperor and pope, king and bishop,
viceroy and vicar general, which have filled the
world with their din for a thousand years, have
not sufficed to eliminate the natural affinity exist
ing between civil and ecclesiastical autocrats. Rome
still believes tyranny to be the ideal government.
Not less powerful is the second consideration,
which is the fear that the enlightenment that comes
with a liberal and popular government will cause the
people to grow out from under the power of the
priests. A traveler in the West Indies who fell
sick of a tropical fever there says that during his
convalescence his black nurse constantly admon
ished him, Ne pense pas, ne pense pas! That is
the ideal of the papal system in dealing with men:
"Do not think, do not think!" The priest will
do all the thinking and the praying; he will read
the Bible, solve the problems of life, open the gate
of heaven, bear the whole responsibility of salvation.
A liberal government must set up schools, must open
avenues of commerce with the world, must bring
its people up to the level of competition with other
modern peoples. From the point of view of Catholi
cism, all this is anathema. That Church opposes the
public school everywhere. In Mexico it fought the
railways and the factories and the telegraph as so
many devices of the evil one. Thus it came about
that the hostility between the thoughtful patriots
and the Catholic party there waxed hotter and hot-

102 A New Era in Old Mexico.
ter as it became increasingly evident that if either
triumphed it would be by the defeat and the elimi
nation of the other. After nearly fifty years of the
constant setting up and bowling over of constitu
tional governments, the liberals at last in despera
tion took a step so radical that it brought on the
final, bloody, exciting, and decisive struggle. That
drastic measure and its consequences, dramatic, trag
ic, vastly significant, must occupy us in another
chapter.

CHAPTER XL
The Reform Laws and the Constitution of
i857-
Though the phrase in the chapter preceding this
which describes the final desperate measure of the
liberal party as a single step is in a sense correct,
it is true, nevertheless, that there were several dis
tinct elements in this decisive movement. It had
one purpose, to break the power of the Catholic
party. It proceeded to accomplish this in two ways
— first, by attacking the Church's exclusive prerog
atives and compact organization ; and second, by re
moving its wealth. Both these were destructive
measures. They excited much bitterness at the time,
and even yet many writers are unable to describe
them without using the language of harsh disap
proval. It is to be admitted, too, that the construc
tive work has not yet been completed, though the
history of Mexico for the last forty years shows that
it has been ably begun.
The two measures — that is, the abolition of the
fueros, those civil and judicial prerogatives of the
ecclesiastics and the soldiers, the doing away, in
brief, of privileged classes; and the sequestration
or nationalizing of ecclesiastical property and the
breaking up of religious orders — were both, at least
by implication, embodied in the new constitution, (!°3)

104 A New Era in Old Mexico.
adopted February 5, 1857, and promulgated a week
later. Both had, however, taken form earlier and,
with certain other enactments, gone before the coun
try under the general name of Leyes de Reforma, or
reform laws. The assertion of the principles in
volved in them, to wit, that no classes should have
special rights before the law and that overgrown
monopolies should not be allowed to congest in their
coffers money needed for the public welfare, may
be traced respectively to Benito Juarez and to Val
entin Gomez Farias.
Juarez was a jurist by temper and training. Dur
ing a term as governor of his native state of Oaxaca
he had formulated a code of laws for that state — the
first Mexican code, it is believed, ever proclaimed.
A little later, banished by the overweening jealousy
of Santa Anna, then dictator, he was forced to spend
more than a year in the United States. This time he
employed (at New Orleans) in a careful study of
the laws and principles underlying our free institu
tions; so that when he was, after a few years (in
1855), appointed chief justice, under President Al
varez, he promptly formulated a law for the bet
ter '"administration of justice." This law struck a
deathblow at the fueros, under which, ever since the
Middle Ages, ecclesiastics and soldiers had enjoyed
the privilege of trial for crime by special courts of
their own order. How grave and far-reaching an
encroachment on popular liberty such special priv
ileges are can scarcely be conceived by those who

BENITO JUAREZ.

The Fueros. 105
have never known anything but strict equality before
the law. The ecclesiastical courts, especially, were
even more of a farce than the courts-martial, and the
exemption of members of religious orders from any
adequate punishment for crimes, to say nothing of
misdemeanors, was a source of constant and acute
exasperation to the common people. These fueros
were one of the worst of many evil fruits borne by
the Catholic doctrine of the special sacredness of the
priesthood. Priests, friars, and soldiers banded together in a
furious resistance against the attack on their pre
cious prerogatives. But, though the conflict was
long and sanguinary, the law stood. It was not
merely the sturdy "little Indian" who was warring
against these hoar anachronisms. The- tide of en
lightened modern sentiment, the on-coming ava-.
lanche of the Rights of Man, bore down upon these
crumbling monuments of feudal days and crushed
and buried them forever.
The other measure, equally vital to the republic
and equally odious — perhaps even more hateful — to
the Church, the nationalizing of Church property,
was not devised out of hand like the abolition of the
fueros. As far back as 1833, Gomez Farias, one of
the ablest financiers Mexico ever produced, suggest
ed as a possible mode of meeting the financial crisis
to which the defenders of the government had come,
the sequestration of some of the vast holdings of the
Church. The Church, he said, gets the full benefit

io6 A New Era in Old Mexico.
of the government's protection, yet, though she is
rich while all others are poor, she contributes noth
ing to the government's aid. Again in the emer
gency of the war with the United States he made a
like suggestion. The Church authorities, instead of
meeting these intimations with a voluntary offering,
listened to them with cold disdain. After a sharp
debate in congress, however, this second effort of the
great financier took the form, in 1848, of a forced
loan from the Church to help meet the expenses of
the war that had just closed.
By this time Gomez Farias was beginning to feel
the burden of age. In Benito Juarez, Melchor
Ocampo, Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, and other ardent
young patriots, he had found, however, faithful dis
ciples. These took up the conflict where he left off.
The straits of the Church party brought Santa An
na, temporarily disgraced by his failures in the cam
paigns against the Americans, back to power again.
With the singular fatuity which ever afflicted him
when dealing with civil government, he promptly
proclaimed himself not president, but dictator. This
was in 1853. He compromised with the leaders of
the Church party as to this forced loan, and thus so
lidified them in his support. But the very name of
dictator was hateful to the majority of the people,
and in a short time the patriotic element rallied once
more in such force that Santa Anna was driven again
into exile, and Juan Alvarez, an old but patriotic gen
eral, placed in the presidential chair. It was as min-

Nationalizing Church Property. 107
ister of justice under him that Juarez brought out
his reform law for the administration of justice.
Alvarez gave way in the autumn of 1855 to Igna
cio Comonfort, who was at the time supposed to be a
stanch liberal, and as such had been elected presi
dent. He appointed Lerdo de Tejada his secretary
of the treasury, and within a very short time this dis
ciple of Gomez Farias brought to the cabinet his proj
ect for the confiscation and sale of mortmain proper
ties. This law was in imitation of similar enact
ments on the part of nearly all European govern
ments. In Mexico, as elsewhere, it lay almost wholly
against the Catholic Church and its several religious
orders. These were virtually the only holders of
property that could rightly be classified as mortmain.
The law was approved by the cabinet of Comonfort
and passed by the liberal congress. But Comonfort
himself, whether bribed thereto, or because of natural
timidity, began to waver in his assertion of liberal
principles. The Church party, already aroused by
the abolishment of the special ecclesiastical courts un
der the law of Juarez, were driven to even fiercer re
sentment by this attack on their property.
Meanwhile, during the same year, 1856, the con
stituent convention or congress was laboriously ham
mering out a new constitution. Its members freely
admitted that this was to be cast largely upon the
basis of the constitution of the United States of
America. That involved precisely most of the
principles underlying the reform laws that had just

108 A New Era in Old Mexico.
been promulgated, though they had not yet been car
ried into effect. In spite of the half-hearted backing
of the president, the document, when finished, in
1857, was adopted by an almost unanimous vote of
the body that had framed it. The aged Gomez Fa
rias, amid the reverent applause of the whole assem
bly, tottered forward on the arms of his sons to affix
his signature to this instrument, the fruition of his
fondest hopes during a long and strenuous life. The
principle of equal rights before the law was, as a mat
ter of course, included as fundamental in the consti
tution. The loss of the Church's special prerogatives
and of the right of its priesthood to support by tax
ation was also implied in that instrument, which
made no mention of a state Church and declared
that worship should be free (Art. 9). The entering
wedge on the subject of property was in the form of
a brief statement (Art. 27) that no corporation, civil
or ecclesiastical, should hold real estate, except such
as is strictly necessary for its own purposes. The
instrument is altogether an admirable one, a monu
ment to the men who formulated it.
Upon the proclamation of the constitution the
gathering storm of opposition broke. Comonfort
was not a sufficiently resolute man to face the con
flict which all saw was inevitable, and was torn with
conflicting emotions by the distress of his mother, an
ardent Catholic, to whom he was deeply devoted.
The champions of freedom had at last laid hands
upon those time-honored abuses which had hitherto

Benito Juarez President. 109
thwarted all their efforts, and proposed to sweep
them out of existence. The wealth and intelligence
and close organization of the ecclesiastical opposi
tion party, backed by the blind devotion of the great
host of adherents of the Church, made a most formid
able combination. Comonfort, weakly yielding for a
time, enough to throw the control of affairs at the
capital of the republic and most of the machinery of
the federal government into the hands of the conserv
atives, at last found his position between his own
cabinet and the enemies of the constitution so uncom
fortable that he slipped out of the country and was
lost to the struggle. This brought Juarez, president
of the supreme court, into the presidential chair
about the beginning of 1855. Juarez had long held,
with Gomez Farias, ideas concerning the property
and power of the Catholic Church more radical than
any that had, up to that time, been embodied in the
legislation. Seeing that the issue was at last joined
and that nothing but drastic measures could sustain
the liberal cause, one of his first acts was to proclaim
on the authority of himself and his cabinet — congress
not being at the time in session — a law "nationaliz
ing," that is, confiscating to the uses of the govern
ment, all the productive properties of the Catholic
Church. This was in strict conformity with the ar
ticle of the constitution that no corporation should
hold any more property than it needed for its spe
cific purposes. It added to the mortmain holdings
which had been sequestered under the law of Lerdo

no A New Era in Old Mexico.
all the productive real estate and the immense in
come from mortgages on real estate which made the
Catholic Church at that time the possessor, as has
been estimated, of at least one-third the total wealth
of the country. A little later, during the stress of the
war which immediately broke out, these enactments
were enlarged and confirmed. They were gathered
up and incorporated in a constitutional law a good
many years later, known as the Lerdo law of 1874. It
was promulgated during the presidency of Lerdo
de Tejada, — not Don Miguel, the minister of Co
monfort in 1856, but his younger brother, Don Se
bastian, who was president from 1873 to 1876. In
this final form, modified slightly in 1901, the con
stitutional law now stands. It allows no Church to
hold real estate, unless that real estate is directly
and immediately utilized for the purposes of the
Church. The abolition of the religious orders was a measure
closely involved with this same church property ques
tion. It began in 1857, when, shortly after the pro
mulgation of the constitution, while Comonfort still
showed some little energy in its enforcement, a rev
olution broke out against his government under the
lead of the ecclesiastical authorities in Puebla. The
president in person led the army of the federal gov
ernment for the suppression of this revolt. The cam
paign was brief but bloody and decisive, resulting in
a complete victory for the government. Since the
uprising had been excited by the bishop of Puebla

The Franciscans Banished. in
and his associates in the Church, the victorious pres
ident promptly confiscated and sold enough of the
Church property in that state to pay the expense of
the campaign. Returning to Mexico, it was reported
to him that members of the order of Franciscans,
who had a huge and wealthy monastery in the very
heart of the city, had been plotting against the gov
ernment. Suspicious already and not in a mood to
be very tolerant of such things, Comonfort promptly
issued a decree banishing the entire order and confis
cating their property. Through the monastery itself
he opened a wide street, which is still called Inde
pendence Street. The large chapel which belonged
to the establishment remained for a good many years
in the hands of the government, and was then bought
by a representative of the Protestant Episcopal
Church for the use of that Church. It was later,
through some mismanagement, thrown on the mar
ket, and wealthy Catholics not long since bought
back the old church and opened it again for Catho
lic worship.
During the conflict which began in 1858, and did
not really terminate till 1867, Juarez found himself
under the necessity of abolishing all the remaining
religious orders. The Jesuits had already fallen into
ill repute and been banished from a number of Eu
ropean countries. Their organization was so com
pact, and their general officers so ambitious, that
they had been during their century of existence not
unfrequently in collision with the pope and the Ro-

H2 A New Era in Old Mexico.
man Catholic Church itself. The Franciscans and
the Augustinians had been extremely active as mis
sionaries in the early history of Mexico. Their
friars had had much to do with conciliating and
controlling the native population. As an outcome
of their success, and in the same way as has been
exhibited in almost every other country where they
have had a hold, they had accumulated vast wealth.
These accumulations, reacting upon the orders them
selves, had served to corrupt them and cause their
degeneration. When the question finally arose as to
whether they should be allowed to retain this wealth,
they were joined as one man against the liberal gov
ernment. Seeing the power for evil of their close
organization and unanimity, President Juarez,
whose only aim was the establishment of a popular
government, cost what it might, cut this Gordian
knot by prohibiting religious associations altogether.
That is to say, men and women under vows may live
in Mexico, but may not live together in the same
house. This radical attack upon a social and reli
gious system which had existed not merely unchal
lenged, but even approved by government and peo
ple, for more than three hundred years, is an exam
ple of the methods of this Indian patriot. Now that
peace has long reigned and the need of such legisla
tion is not so apparent, the law itself is no longer
strictly enforced. It is an open secret that many of
the "colleges" and "seminaries" scattered through
Mexico to-day are convents of nuns and Jesuits.

CHAPTER XII.
The French Intervention. (I.)
The French intervention, involving the unhappy
reign and death in Mexico of Maximilian of Austria,
was but an incident in the great struggle there be
tween conservatives and liberals. It is true that it
was a dream of the Third Napoleon, who was in fact
much abler as a dreamer than as a ruler. It is also
true that it was the realization of a cherished plan
of his Spanish wife, an ardent Catholic and a devout
believer in the theory that the only right government
for any people is a Catholic monarchy. Louis Na
poleon wished to see Mexico a kingdom subservient
to the world-wide French empire, which he, like his
great predecessor, thought himself raised up to
found. Eugenie, his wife, wished to see Mexico
brought again into the class of devout monarchies
ruled by devout ecclesiastics, subservient to the
Church in Spain and Rome. But neither of these
dreamers would have dared to take open measures to
carry out such plans had not the Church party in
Mexico itself held out treasonable hands to them.
Just as the enthusiasm for a liberal government
under popular and representative forms had persisted
in the minds of the patriotic and liberty-loving ele
ment in Mexico's population during the whole period
since the days of Hidalgo, so during all those fifty
8 (113)

114 A New Era in Old Mexico.
years the Catholic party in that country had with
equal stubbornness held to its original purpose of
making the country a truly faithful kingdom under
a believing and properly approved monarch. There
had scarcely been a day during all those years when
some representative of the highest ecclesiastical au
thorities in Mexico was not diplomatically feeling
about in Europe for a man who might become king
of Mexico. The thing may seem absurd to the read
er of these lines, and, indeed, in view of all the de
velopments on this side of the Atlantic during the
past hundred years, it is absurd ; yet it did not so ap
pear to these conservatives. Their instincts were
wholly aristocratic. They had no faith in the peo
ple, and believed democracy to be essentially hostile
to religion, if not atheistic. The archbishops and
bishops who constantly bestirred themselves concern
ing this matter were but following therein the illus
trious example of their predecessors, who, through
all the history of New Spain as a Spanish province,
had constantly kept its viceroys in hot water by their
interference in civil affairs. The Roman Catholic
Church has never had any mind to accept a separation
between Church and State.
There can be no sort of question that Maximilian
was only persuaded to undertake the precarious ven
ture of establishing an empire in Mexico when con
vinced that the real leaders among the Mexicans
themselves desired it. An ingenuous and open-mind
ed young man, while a narrow Catholic he was in no

Maximilian Persuaded. 115
sense a tyrant in his temper, and had not the slightest
disposition to embark upon the enterprise of govern
ing a people entirely unrelated to himself, unless it
was in answer to a demand of the people themselves.
It will be sufficient to touch briefly here upon the
manner in which Napoleon shrewdly inveigled En
gland and Spain into a seeming support of his en
terprise of interference. While he was secretly per
suading Maximilian to accept the venture, and ar
ranging with the Catholic party in Mexico to present
the invitation to him in such a way as to make the
impression that it was the unanimous wish of the
whole Mexican people, he was arranging with En
gland and Spain to make a demonstration against
Mexico ostensibly for the purpose of securing the
payment of her obligations.
There were some bonded debts held in these sev
eral countries that had been drawing interest for a
good many years. When the collision first began
between Juarez and the Church party in 1858, the
conservatives, by the carelessness or treason of Co
monfort, — historians are not agreed as to which it
was, — held the capital city and controlled the princi
pal resources of the country. Juarez was barely able
to assemble and provision the troops that were need
ed to protect the threatened constitution and the tot
tering republic. In an unguarded moment, and to
meet the emergency of a dark hour, he issued, in
1859, a proclamation suspending temporarily the
payment of interest on these foreign obligations.

n6 A New Era in Old Mexico.
The men who held the bonds in France and England
and Spain raised a great outcry. The English gov
ernment, prompt as it always is to defend the inter
ests of its citizens, began measures for the dispatch
ing of an armed demonstration in order to convince
the government of Mexico that it must pay its debts.
At this juncture Napoleon interposed, suggesting
that France, Spain, and England make common
cause, but concealing from both Spain and England
his real purpose.
The plan was agreed upon. The three govern
ments sent their war vessels to the coast of Mexico,
and France took occasion to dispatch along with
them transports carrying a small army. Representa
tives of the government of Juarez explained the sit
uation to the entire satisfaction of the official sent
along with the English warships, and entered into a
compact with him to resume the payment of interest
and to provide for the refunding of the debt so soon
as it was possible. About the same time the English
government discovered what Napoleon really was
working for — that is, the usurpation of the Mexican
government by means of his tool, Maximilian — and
promptly and rather roughly denounced the treach
ery, declaring that England would be no party to it.
The Spanish government also, having made a satis
factory agreement concerning the money question
with the ministers of Juarez, withdrew from further
cooperation and retired its vessels. Meantime, the

Mexico Prepared. 117
designs of the French emperor became a matter of
common knowledge.
It will be necessary, however, to go back for a mo
ment in order to trace more minutely the events
which in Mexico itself led up to the situation ex
isting in 1864. During 1859, i860, and 1861, the
war between the generals who supported the gov
ernment of Juarez and the constitution of 1857, and
those who were under the direction of the Church
party, continued with great bitterness. After the
flight of Comonfort at the beginning of 1858, the
conservatives established a government in Mexico of
which Zuloaga was for a time the leader. Several
states to the north meantime formed a coalition and
raised an army to support the constitution. This ar
my was defeated at Salamanca, March 8, 1858; and
for the constitutionalists thereafter disaster followed
disaster. Only Vera Cruz, where Juarez had taken
refuge, held out. Generals Miramon and Marquez
became the leading spirits of the conservative party,
Miramon occupying a so-called presidential office
for two or three years. The sympathy of the mass
of the people with republican principles gradually
strengthened the cause of Juarez as the war pro
gressed. Many citizens emerged from the state of
indifference into active partisanship with the pa
triots goaded by the inexcusable cruelties of the
clerical leaders. Marquez, especially, was guilty of
so many and such atrocious murders that his name
is execrated to this day in the country which he lived

Ii8 A New Era in Old Mexico.
but to disgrace, and where he died a few years ago,
old, poor, decrepit, forgiven by a generous govern
ment, but unpardoned by an outraged public.
Again and again Miramon, who was an able mil
itary leader, menaced Vera Cruz, but it remained im
pregnable. During the existence of this short-lived
and futile conservative government, it negotiated a
ruinous loan at the hands of a Swiss banker named
Jecker, an obligation that afterwards figured largely
in the quarrel between France and Mexico as an al
leged casus belli. All that it produced, and all that
the conservatives were able later to wrest from the
people in forced loans and otherwise, was at last ex
hausted, while the ragged patriots, instead of dimin
ishing in numbers, seemed to increase. Under Gen
erals Gonzales Ortega, Degollado, Berriozabal, Za-
ragoza, and others, the constitutionalists kept up the
fight, becoming bolder and bolder and not at all dis
mayed by an occasional defeat. In December of
i860 Miramon staked all in a great battle with Or
tega, and was overwhelmingly defeated. He lost
his artillery, his army was annihilated, and he him
self barely escaped from the field with a few follow
ers. Returning hurriedly to Mexico, he turned over
all authority remaining to him to the Ayuntamiento
and left the country. January 1, 1861, Juarez en
tered his capital in triumph.
During that year the French troops were landed
in Mexico. The government at once entered into an
agreement with the envoys who accompanied them,

Napoleon's Diplomacy. 119
representing France, Spain, and England, that these
troops should only occupy certain specified points,
pending the negotiations concerning the financial
questions which had brought about the invasion.
These negotiations were not very lengthy. A settle
ment satisfactory to Spain and to England was, as
has been stated, soon reached, and their war ves-.
sels were withdrawn, all the sooner, indeed, because
in both these countries the purpose of Napoleon
began to be suspected, and the public and the op
position members in parliament began to ask un
comfortable questions. Napoleon's plans being not
yet mature, he was almost at a loss for an excuse
to keep the soldiers in Mexico till the time should
arrive for his coup d'etat. Some of the pretexts
he made use of were a good deal like those the
wolf urged against the lamb in the fable. As a
witty speaker in the French parliament said in
debate, "First it was declared that we must in
vade Mexico because Mexico is calling for us; now
it is to punish her for not calling for us-f"
The stubbornness with which the French troops
persisted in remaining on Mexican soil after the
others had retired but confirmed Juarez in his already
well-grounded suspicion that Napoleon had designs
on the independence of Mexico. The astute presi
dent could not fail to have information of the man
ner in which the Mexican conservatives were play
ing into the hands of the invader. Profoundly
stirred by the treachery of this attack on his coun-

120 A New Era in Old Mexico.
try's freedom, and foreseeing but too clearly the
bitter conflict which was inevitable unless it should
be soon checked, Juarez issued early in 1862 a proc
lamation warning both Mexicans and foreigners
against taking part in this attempt on the nation's
liberty, and declaring that all who disregarded his
warning placed themselves outside the law. It was
this proclamation which was later held to warrant
the death sentence against Maximilian himself.
In the spring of 1862 Count Lorencez landed in
Vera Cruz with a large addition to the French
troops, and at once advanced into the interior. By
the middle of April hostilities began. The recently
defeated conservatives welcomed the French, and in
Cordova, which the invaders had taken possession
of, "pronounced" against Juarez and set up a rival
government with Almonte at its head. At the be
ginning of May the French advance reached Puebla,
where, on May 5, was fought the most famous bat
tle in Mexico's history. To the surprise of every
body concerned, the ragged peasant army of the pa
triots defeated the French veterans. Zaragoza, the
Mexican general, could not hold his ground, and
later temporarily retired, but the fact remained that
the Mexicans had proved the French not to be in
vincible. The country thrilled with patriotic pride
at the news, and scarce a city in the republic is to
day without its street or plaza called "Cinco de
Mayo" (Fifth of May).
For nearly a year Puebla interposed a barrier to

The French in Mexico City. 121
the French who had been driven back from its gates.
Then, after a long and terrible siege by Marshal Fo-
rey, it was forced to capitulate, the patriots losing
nearly ten thousand men in prisoners, including Gen
erals Ortega, Alatorre, Berriozabal, and others. Or
tega's note of surrender is a proud, dignified, and pa
triotic document, which deeply impressed even his
enemies. Juarez was thereupon driven from his capital,
which became untenable when Puebla fell. The
French troops and the conservatives occupied it, and
the plans for importing an emperor were rapidly
consummated. ' One of Napoleon's pretexts was the
Jecker claim. Now Jecker was not a Frenchman,
but a Swiss, and the money had not been borrowed
by Juarez, but by the conservatives, who were doing
all they could to destroy the government of Juarez.
Nevertheless, the president, rather than submit to in
tervention, had at last agreed to assume this debt.
Jecker was well protected. He held bonds covering
more than twenty-five times the amount of money
he had advanced. The whole thing was absurd.
The truth is, Napoleon hoped to get money out of
Mexico. He expected to help Maximilian's em
pire in such a way as to bring it under lasting obli
gations to himself. Then he counted on colonizing
French settlers in the rich mining regions of the
country he was attempting to exploit. In it all he
seems to have quite left out of his calculations the
wishes of the Mexican people, — unless, indeed, he al-

122 A New Era in Old Mexico.
lowed himself to be persuaded by Eugenie that the
ecclesiastics who were clamoring for a Catholic mon
archy were the true representatives of that people.
The French soldiery and the subservient conserva
tives set up a quasi government in Mexico. Napo
leon's money was paying the wages of foreign troops
who were harassing the scattered liberal armies and
driving Juarez from one city to another, further and
further north. By this time there were nearly fifty
thousand French soldiers in Mexico.
An "assembly of notables" consisting of two hun
dred and thirty-one members, representing ostensi
bly every Mexican state, was called together in Mex
ico City, July, 1863. It adopted an "act" declaring
in favor of the monarchical form of government
and offering the throne to Ferdinand Maximilian,
Archduke of Austria. Several representatives of the
conservative party, then in Europe, were appointed a
committee to make the official tender to Maximilian,
and if he failed to accept, to any other European
Catholic prince whom the emperor of the French
should designate. To the surprise of everybody,
Maximilian replied to the committee that he was un
willing to go to Mexico unless invited by the people
of that country. The matter was therefore referred
back to Marshal Bazaine, then in command of the
French troops in Mexico and the virtual head of the
conservative government, and a vote favorable to
Maximilian of all the prominent cities then "occu
pied by the French bayonets" was promptly secured.

Maximilian and Napoleon. 123
Maximilian, upon news of this, declared himself sat
isfied. He at once signed a compact releasing his
claim to the Austrian throne (he was a brother of
the present Emperor of Austria), and another with
Louis Napoleon, the latter exhibiting but too plainly
the animus of the wily Frenchman. It was a con
tract that from the income of the Mexican empire
should be returned the money advanced to pay Max
imilian's debt on his palace at Miramar and for the
expense of his voyage to Mexico, the outlay for the
French troops in Mexico, the Jecker claim, etc. — in
all amounting to one hundred and seventy-three mil
lions of dollars; a good round public debt to hang
about the neck of an infant empire.
This was in April, 1864. By the 29th of the fol
lowing May the new emperor with his wife Carlota
had arrived at the port of Vera Cruz, and the cur
tain rose upon a great modern tragedy : in the month
of June, 1867, just three years later, it was rung
down. Maximilian was dead and Carlota insane.

CHAPTER XIII.
The French Intervention. (II.)
Having traced with some particularity the events
that led up to the intervention in the affairs of Mex
ico of the French emperor and to the setting up of
the so-called empire of Maximilian, it will not be nec
essary to follow the history of that empire in detail.
From the point of view of Maximilian, the whole
thing proved a ghastly mistake. But Maximilian
was amiable rather than able. He was as deficient
in real acuteness of mind as in firmness of will.
From the beginning he allowed himself to be vic
timized by the designing Napoleon and the reaction
ary party in Mexico, the latter availing themselves
in influencing him of the sanctions of the Church.
Caught in the vortex of a deadly struggle between
warring elements among the Mexican people, his
sympathies were rather with those who opposed than
with those who supported him. He was especially
unhappy in the selfishness, the avarice, the cruelty,
and the retrograde political theories of those who
surrounded his court and became his advisers. It
was also his unenviable lot, a foreigner himself, to
depend for the stability of his government upon hire
ling foreign troops, execrated by the Mexicans and
themselves by no means enamored of the task that
had been set them.
(124)

Maximilian's Mistake. 125
Besides these essential weaknesses of his situation
he was opposed by the bull-dog tenacity of Juarez
and the natural instincts of virtually the whole Mex
ican people. The moral strength of this resistance
was, early in the struggle, vastly increased by an ill-
judged procedure upon Maximilian's part. In the
autumn of 1863 it was reported to him that Juarez
had crossed the border into the United States. This,
according to the constitution, forfeited his right to
the presidency. He had indeed been careful not to
take the step, but Maximilian doubtless believed the
report which came to him. Instigated probably by
Bazaine, he promulgated therefore, October 3, 1863,
a decree to the effect that all persons found in arms
against the empire, now the only existing and right
ful government, should be treated as rebels and, aft
er trial by court-martial, be put to death. Almost
immediately several prominent officers in the insur
gent army, Generals Arteaga and Salazar and Colo
nels Diaz and Villagomez, were captured at Urua-
pam and executed. The French troops were com
manded by their officers no longer to take prisoners,
but to put the vanquished to the sword. These meas
ures naturally produced a tremendous reaction.
The empire had no income worth speaking of, and
from the first began to sink into hopeless bankrupt
cy. When the close of the Civil War in the United
States left the American government free to turn its
attention to the manifest affront to the Monroe doc
trine of which Napoleon had been guilty, and

126 A New Era in Old Mexico.
with a great army of veteran troops at hand to
enforce its demands ; and when the conviction was at
last forced upon Napoleon himself that Mexico was
not the gold mine he had imagined it to be; and
when also the patriot army, rallying from the de
feats that had marked the beginning of this last
struggle, began to press hard upon the heels of the
retiring French troops, it was plain to be seen that
the toy empire was doomed.
The rapidly shifting panorama of Mexico's inte
rior affairs during the dark days when our own coun
try was beginning slowly to recover from her gi
gantic and bloody struggle is one of the romances
of history. The glittering court of Maximilian and
Carlota, who seem now like children playing with
gilded toys upon the edge of an abyss; the cynical
double-dealing of Napoleon, as treacherous with
Maximilian in withdrawing the French troops as he
had been with Mexico in introducing them; the
sturdy constancy of the little Indian president, driv
en from pillar to post, till he was crowded at last
against the very northern boundary of the country
at Paso del Norte (now named Juarez in his hon
or), yet stoutly proclaiming himself through it all
the true and legitimate ruler of Mexico ; the gradual
development into deadly efficiency of the ragged pa
triot forces, — all this is a story well worth the tell
ing, but which I cannot delay here to give at length.
In 1866, hurried thereto by a rough intimation
from W. H. Seward, then the American Secretary

French Troops Withdrawn. 127
of State, and by the presence on the northern border
of Mexico of a body of veteran American troops,
Napoleon advised Maximilian that he was going to
withdraw the French army from Mexico. Foreseeing
the inevitable result of this, Maximilian reluctantly
agreed that his wife should hurry away to the
French court to see if she might prevail upon Na
poleon to alter his decision and to keep the "Treaty
of Miramar," as it was called. That treaty provided
for the gradual withdrawal of the French troops
during a number of years. But Napoleon was feel
ing tpo severely the pinch of the dead expense of
sustaining this army, and rightly dreaded a collision
with the United States. His mind was made up.
Carlota upon her arrival was treated with such
scant politeness, and her pleadings so rudely reject
ed, that she left Paris the victim of a mania of fear
and anxiety which soon destroyed her reason. Her
interview with the pope a little later was the raving
of a hysterical and already half-crazed woman.
Maximilian, upon the news of this, and witnessing
the preparations for the retirement of the French
soldiers, was ready to abdicate and return himself
to Europe. Well for him had he carried out this
thought. Indeed, he did set out for Vera Cruz, hav
ing prepared a proclamation in which he abandoned
the throne, and went as far as Orizaba. But the
Mexican clericals complained, cajoled, and threat
ened. They appealed to his sense of honor and his
supposed obligations to them. The officials of the

128 A New Era in Old Mexico.
Church promised to replenish his depleted treasury
from their strong box. A majority of his Council
of State refused to accept his abdication. So at last,
after several months of vacillation, he returned to
the capital.
Failing the French generals, he now welcomed
back to Mexico the conservative military leaders,
Miramon and Marquez. These men, though at
tached to his cause, he had hitherto kept abroad on
various missions, since their reputation in Mexico
was somewhat unsavory. To them he now intrust
ed the task of reorganizing the imperial army. He
selected a new cabinet and, throwing himself into the
hands of the Mexican conservative party, prepared
to witness the final act in that long and losing strug
gle which it had waged with the forces of freedom.
His wife was already a hopeless lunatic; his broth
er, the Emperor of Austria, had forbidden him to
return to his native land; his mother wrote him in
sisting bitterly that he perish amid the ruins of his
empire rather than longer be a dupe of Napoleon;
his dreams of establishing a popular and successful
government for Mexico was plainly blighted. Un
der the stress of these afflictions he bore himself with
a manly serenity more creditable to him than any
thing else in his career.
The funds that had been promised from the cof
fers of the Church were given but grudgingly. As
rapidly as possible the royalist troops were got into
some sort of organization. The city of Queretaro,

Maximilian at Queretaro. 129
being a stronghold of the Church, which was at that
point very wealthy, seemed to be a favorable place
for their concentration. Maximilian, placing him
self at the head of the army, took up his quarters
there, and the constitutionalists, accepting the chal
lenge, began to concentrate upon this city, famous al
ready as the birthplace of the revolution of 1810. It
lacks much, however, of being an ideal place in the
military sense for defensive operations. The repub
lican troops, having already cleared the northern part
of the republic of their enemies and opened the way
for the return southward of Juarez and his cabinet,
had been gathered into one body under General Es-
cobedo until they outnumbered the royalists, whom
they probably also excelled in military skill and mo
rale. This Maximilian himself, with that frankness
which was one of his most attractive traits, acknowl
edged. Writing a short time before to one of his
ministers concerning the need of reorganizing his
own army, he said of his opponents : "The republi
can forces, wrongly represented as demoralized and
united solely by the hope of pillage, prove by their
conduct that they form a homogeneous army whose
stimulus is the courage arid perseverance of a chief
moved by a great idea, — that of defending the na
tional independence which he believes threatened by
our empire." In such words he confesses that it was
a misconception which gave birth to his ill-advised
and most unfortunate decree of October 3, 1863.
Queretaro, after sharp preliminary fighting, was
9

130 A New Era in Old Mexico.
surrounded by an overwhelming force, and besieged
from the middle of March to the middle of May,
1867. May 15, the besiegers broke into the city. Its
defenders made a sally, and Maximilian with a few
followers attempted to escape. On a neighboring
hill, the "Cerro de las Campanas," he was captured,
brought back to the now surrendered plaza, and with
in a few days put upon trial before a court-martial.
The one blot upon the proceedings of the victori
ous republican government on this occasion was the
constitution of this court. It was made up of a lieu
tenant colonel and six captains, all so youthful as to
excite the suspicion that they had been selected in
accordance with some plan to insure their verdict.
With this exception the proceedings were entirely
regular. The charges were treason, filibustering,
etc., based almost wholly on the presidential decree of
1862. Miramon and Mejia, the two leading Mex
ican conservative generals, were placed on trial at
the same time and under the same charges. All were
allowed able counsel, but all were nevertheless con
victed and condemned to death.
Juarez, now at San Luis Potosi, not far away,
was pressed to modify the sentence of Maximilian.
Telegrams poured in upon him from all over the
world. Influential Mexicans and foreigners went
post-haste to plead with him in person. His feelings
were deeply moved upon, but he remained firm. "The
welfare of the people demands it," he replied to ev
ery plea; "I cannot set myself above the public

The Execution. 131
good." To a protest which reached him from South
America he replied with some warmth that he was
doing as he did not for his own sake, nor even for
that of Mexico alone, but for the sake of every strug
gling American republic. The student of history,
however keen may be his sympathy with the un
fortunate Maximilian, will probably have to agree
that the instincts of Juarez in this matter were sound.
He settled for a long time, if not finally, the ques
tion of whether it is worth while for a scion of Eu
ropean royalty to attempt the transfer of his authori
ty to American soil.
On June 19, 1867, the sentence of the court, passed
five days before, was executed. Maximilian, Mira
mon, and Mejia were taken to the Cerro de las Cam-
panas and shot. They met death like brave men,
Maximilian exclaiming, "May my blood be the last
that is shed in sacrifice for this country !"
The infamous Marquez had been dispatched a
short time before the fall of Queretaro to Mexico for
reinforcements. There he gathered a small force
and, instead of returning to the help of his chief, em
ployed his time in wreaking private and petty grudges
in his usual brutal manner. Meantime Porfirio Diaz
had rallied the scattered patriots in the south and
laid siege to Puebla, the scene of so many conflicts
between royalists and republicans. Before Marquez
oould come to its aid he had forced its surrender,
April 2, 1867 ; after which he immediately proceeded
to invest Marquez in Mexico City. During the in-

132 A New Era in Old Mexico.
terval between the fall of Queretaro and the execu
tion of Maximilian he was slowly pressing in upon
this last stronghold of the imperial troops, unwilling
to storm the city where there were many adherents
of the republic and which he foresaw would soon be
forced to surrender. Marquez was at last put aside
by others, and by skillful hiding escaped when the
city was captured. On June 20, the next day after the
death of Maximilian, the capital of his empire was
unconditionally surrendered to one of the youngest
and one of the strongest of the patriot generals. The
intervention was at an end. July 15, 1867, Pres
ident Juarez, with his cabinet, the "Inmaculados,"
as they came to be called, quietly entered again the
capital of his country.

CHAPTER XIV.
What the Republic Faced.
For the second time in these studies we have thus
come to the final triumph of the independent republic
over its inveterate foes, at home and from abroad.
The cooperation of the Catholic Church with the en
emies of a republican form of government, became at
last so open that it was no longer on either side even
a pretended secret. That the strength of that Church
as an opponent lay more in its immense wealth than
in its hold upon the common people, powerful as this
was, became evident to the leaders of the liberal par
ty. From this it came to be with them a matter of
public policy to cut the sinews of that strength by
annihilating the wealth in which it lay. When to
this consideration was added the stern satisfaction
of despoiling a powerful, implacable, but at last van
quished enemy, to say nothing of the crying demands
of their own impoverished treasury, it may easily be
guessed that the work of spoliation was thorough.
Gomez Farias, Juarez, Lerdo de Tejada, Ocampo,
and the rest, were slow to be convinced that in the
confiscation of the Church's wealth was the only hope
of the republic ; but having at last put their hand to
the plow, they did not look back.
While this is true, it is also to be said, to the credit
of all concerned, that scarcely ever in history has a
(J33)

134 A New Era in Old Mexico.
victorious party converted to the uses of the nation
so large a booty with so little of scandal attaching to
individuals for appropriating to themselves for pri
vate use the fruits of public victory. Many a scarred
veteran of the patriot army became, it is true, the
proprietor of some huge shell of a ravished chapel
or of the rambling and thick-walled cloisters of some
abandoned convent. But this was always by virtue
of a clear title from the federal government, and
meant that a poverty-stricken though victorious re
public had no other means of rewarding the men
whose fidelity and valor had wrested victory from
the grasp of foes so numerous and so powerful. Jua
rez, the great leader, virtually all-powerful after the
triumph of his party in 1867, was singularly indif
ferent to the blandishments of wealth. As he had
proved himself incorruptible and unpurchasable in
the days of his poverty and threatened defeat, so
now he successfully met the still severer test of vic
tory and power, emerging with an untarnished name.
Reconstruction after a period of civil war is at
best a delicate and tedious business. In Mexico,
when victory over the French brought peace at last,
the task of Juarez and his associates was not merely
reconstruction — it was rather construction. There
had never been a civil government of independent
Mexico worthy the name, and indeed, to tell the
whole truth, the vice-regal government under Spain
had been a good deal of a travesty on the name.
While, therefore, at some points in the previous his-

The Republic and Citizenship. 135
tory of Mexico's affairs our rapid review of them has
shown complex and puzzling situations, that period
upon .which we now enter will be found, if possible,
more confusing still. It is simple enough to say
that upon the ruins of the Maximilian empire the in
domitable Juarez raised the fabric of a free republic,
and this the dazzling genius of Porfirio Diaz has,
through more than three decades, confirmed and
beautified. Such a statement is, happily, strictly true.
Yet it by no means tells us all of the recent history
of the Mexican people, nor does it disclose those con
ditions now prevailing in that country, concerning
which the intelligent and sympathetic student will
wish to be informed. Upon the study of those con
ditions this and the succeeding chapters will under
take briefly to enter. They must be, therefore, even
less strictly historical than those which have pre
ceded. No matter how ideally perfect a system of pop
ular government may be, it remains dependent for
its successful exemplification on the character of the
people who adopt it. A single man of genius may
be a successful monarch or military dictator. A
small group of men, trained in the science of gov
ernment, may carry on a centralized oligarchy. But
if a government by the people is to succeed, the gen
eral average in character and intelligence of the peo
ple must be such as to fit them for the duties of sov
ereign citizenship. To be a sovereign citizen is, in
other words, a very different matter from being a

136 A New Era in Old Mexico.
subject citizen. It is at this point of the fitness of the
citizen that popular governments oftenest meet disas
ter. Much study has, at one time and another, been
given to the elaboration of republican constitutions.
But the most beautiful of these instruments will at
times refuse to "march." A good workman can pick
up a defective or broken tool and with it turn off
finished and beautiful products, while in the hands
of one who is unskilled and inefficient the finest in
struments are useless ; the implements themselves are
ruined, and the work remains ill done. It is the as
sumption of sovereign obligations by the citizen
whose training and character have not made him a
sovereign in spirit that has so repeatedly brought
popular government into disrepute.
The best friend of Mexico will not deny that she
has run, and is even yet running, a great risk at this
point. Indeed, what else could have been expected ?
Had the hardy and self-reliant Indians whom Cor
tez found been put at once upon a course of training
for it, it is probable that they might very soon have
been brought to the point of readiness for self-gov
ernment. But this was not done. The Spaniards of
the sixteenth century exhibited in an uncommon de
gree that sense of superiority which too often pos
sesses powerful and highly civilized peoples, render
ing them oblivious to the human rights and claims of
nations less favored. It did not occur to these Span
iards that the natives of Mexico would ever again
wish or need to govern themselves. A distorted re-

PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE.

Spanish Ideals. 137
ligious conception but accentuated the domineering
nationalism which made the conquistadores indiffer
ent to any rights of the Indians. They looked upon
them as subjects of the evil one, to be reduced by
any sort of means, fair or foul, to allegiance to Christ
and his vicegerent on earth. As to their civil rights,
history contains no evidence that their conquerors
ever even thought of their having any. So greedy
were they and the Spanish sovereign whom they rep
resented of the gold of the New World, that the de
spoiling of whole peoples of their sacred liberty in the
effort to seize it seemed to them but an insignificant
incident. Sad as is the spectacle of the religious
fanaticism of these invaders, the auri sacra fames,
which, like the lash of some unresting, unforgiving
Fury, ever drove them on, is sadder still. In a burst
of cynical confidence one of the Spanish leaders on
a certain occasion explained to a dignified Indian
chief the Spanish thirst for gold. "The fact is," he
said, "all our people suffer from a dreadful disease
for which gold is the only known remedy."
In these two elements just indicated — the under
taking to convert, vi et armis, if necessary, all these
slaves of the devil to the service of his holiness the
pope, and the exploitation as enemies of the Spanish
crown of all who set up any barriers, however slight,
to the seizure of their property — began the Spanish
regime in Mexico. Had it been deliberately calcu
lated to unfit the inhabitants of that unhappy country
for exercising at any future period the privileges and

138 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the responsibilities of self-government, it could not
have been gauged with more disastrous accuracy.
For to this suppression of individuality in the reli
gious and civil realm was promptly added the social
obloquy which could not but follow. Thus in all the
three avenues of moral expansion, the development
of the Mexicans was hopelessly crushed and atro
phied. In the social fabric, wealth and intellectual
culture asserted their sway. In civil matters, the
iron rule of the despot was enforced by a soldiery
equipped with arms and an organization incompar
ably superior to any known to the Aztec warriors.
In the realm of spiritual things, the despotism was
even more absolute and irresistible. The Indians
believed in the spirit world with that direct and un
questioning faith common to childlike nations. Of
the terrors of that future state they entertained not
the slightest doubt. Those terrors the priests held
in their right hands. The whole life of the poor In
dian, from his first faint cry to the moment of the
death rattle in his throat, was weighed down by the
sense of this spiritual tyranny. He must be bap
tized in unconscious infancy, confess, pay tithes,
build churches, make pilgrimages, etc., all his life;
and at the end, no matter how diligently he had kept
the Church's rules, be shrived in dying, else all would
be in vain. Indeed, he had to see to it besides that
his body after death rested in consecrated soil; for
all of which he was offered the poor boon of a term
in purgatory !

The Native Population. 139
As an accompaniment of these varied forms of
oppression — virtually unconscious oppression, be it
said, though the merit of the qualification is open to
doubt — the denial of the right of the peons or indi-
genas to intellectual training came as a matter of
course. It was a question, even, subject to grave dis
cussion, whether they had souls. That they had
minds fit to be trained was considered preposterous.
To distinguish them from the natives, Spanish and
Creoles were called gente de razon, "people of rea
son." The implication was that the Mexicans were
incapable of reasoning. How a stupid notion of this
kind could persist in the face of the facts of ordi
nary and constant observation must be accounted
for by the reflection that those were the days of the
deductive philosophy. People explained the world
by means of previously formed conclusions, instead
of formulating the conclusions themselves by observ
ing and classifying the facts of life.
In proof of the intellectual sprightliness of the na
tive Mexicans, facts indeed abounded. Despite the
enormous advantages of the invading Spaniards, the
Mexicans continued to hold their own in population,
as well as in every avenue of competition where the
terms were at all equal. They intermarried with
their conquerors without injury to the stock, and the
Mestizos, or children of mixed marriages, held their
own with the domineering "old Spaniards" quite as
well as did the Creoles, that is, the people of pure
Spanish blood born in Mexico. The careful student

140 A New Era in Old Mexico.
of Mexico's history and of her population, while he
will be forced to allow the disastrous consequences
of the social and political system prevailing there for
the past three centuries, will, nevertheless, discover
to his satisfaction that comparatively few of the ills
from which that country suffers and has suffered
are to be traced to the native defects of the native
races. On the contrary, he is likely to conclude that
few peoples could have submitted for three centuries
to a despotism so complete and so ingeniously detri
mental to national character and have emerged so
creditably as have the Mexicans. The vitality — phys
ically, intellectually, and morally — of a people who
after this long enslavement were able to rise up and
break the bonds that had held them, and who through
a whole century of stubborn fidelity to liberty have
kept on with their disheartening task of shaking off
successive series of shackles, is itself the bow of
promise for the future. Surely what Mexico may yet
have to undergo before attaining to her ideal of a
government by the people is less than what she has
already undergone.

CHAPTER XV.
Legacies of the Spanish Regime.
At the risk of having to set down in plain lan
guage some rather distasteful facts, we must pro
ceed to particularize the general indictment of the
last chapter. It was there said that had the Spanish
regime in Mexico been deliberately calculated to pre
vent the development of a national capacity for self-
government, it could not have been more effective
for the purpose than it was. It was not so calcu
lated, of course. Such a contingency as the prefer
ence by the Mexicans of any sort of government to
the "divine right" monarchy of Spain seems not to
have occurred to the political economists of the time.
Yet latent in many of the political measures for the
government of Spain's provinces was the deep-seated
conviction of the Romish hierarchy that democracies
are atheistical and irreligious. In those palmy days
of the Inquisition, the legislation of the Spanish
kingdom took color from the tenets of the Church,
and many of the repressive enactments, such as the
curbing of free speech, the prohibition of certain in
dustries, and the like, as well as the government's
wholesale disregard of its obligation to provide for
the enlightenment of the governed, are doubtless to
be traced to this age-long hostility of the Catholic
Church toward popular government.
040

142 A New Era in Old Mexico.
That the completeness with which the Mexican
people have been defrauded of that training which
they needed for self-government may properly ap
pear, let us see for a moment what are the elements
in national character essential to the success of pop
ular government. They are few and, like most ele
ments of human character, simple. The nation is
made up of individuals. As an aggregate of these
it can exhibit no traits which they do not possess,
nor any perfection in essential traits which is not
first exemplified in a majority of its constituent
atoms. The prime requisites for the assertion of na
tional liberty are that men shall know their rights and
have the manhood to assert them. This demands
both enlightenment of mind and strength of will.
But when independence is accomplished and the task
of setting up a government under the guardianship
of liberty is undertaken, then an even heavier strain
is put upon mind and will. Henceforward it is not
merely the knowledge of our own rights, but the abil
ity to recognize where they are limited by the rights
of others, that calls for an acute and trained intellect.
And necessity is now upon the will not simply to re
sist the encroachments of some tyrant and assert
against the world the inalienable rights of man. That
is a role which, if not easy, is at least congenial.
But in a republic men need not only to assert them
selves but to restrain themselves. Respect for the
rights of others makes constant demands upon their
power of self-control. Of the three necessary steps in

The Oldest American College. 143
the training of the sovereign citizen, this self-con
trol is the last, the hardest, and the most essential.
The training which the Mexicans under Spanish
rule received instead of helping them in any of these
essential things, hindered them in all. They were
not instructed that they might know what are the
rights of men. They were not allowed to assert
themselves as to anything, temporal or spiritual, that
they might develop will power and self-respect.
And most especially, being kept constantly in a state
of childlike tutelage, they learned little of the mean
ing of self-control.
Concerning the first count in this bill of charges it
is unfortunately possible to speak with but too much
assurance. Rome has never counted it a virtue in
people to know a great deal, and though the Roman
Catholic missions in the Spanish colonies had as one
of the agencies of their propaganda schools of a
certain sort, neither they nor the government of
which they were so nearly a part took these enter
prises seriously. The oldest college on American
soil, the Colegio de San Nicolas, now situated in
Morelia, founded about 1544, was in the beginning
a missionary agency for the preparation of Indian
candidates for the priesthood. That training, in the
conception of its founder, and even more so as car
ried on by those who took up his work, had little
relation to the general subject of the education of the
people. It was confined to a small and privileged
class, and was, moreover, of a highly technical and

144 A New Era in Old Mexico.
special character. This prototype of American col
leges was indeed far too much a type of the sundry
seminaries and monastic schools which were later
scattered through New Spain. They had no appre
ciable effect in lifting up and illuminating the masses
of the native population. As has been already ob
served, the Spaniards, missionaries as well as sol
diers and civil rulers, doubted whether the Indian
had sufficient of either soul or brains to become a
civilized man. He was taught that it was a great
concession when he was admitted to baptism and
declared a "Christian." Otherwise, he would have
remained an "animal."
As the centuries crept by, the zeal and the unself
ish enthusiasm of the early missionary days died
out. The people were virtually all brought into al
legiance to the Church. The schools, as a mission
ary agency, were no longer needed. That they were
desirable for any other purpose seems to have oc
curred to nobody. The people were left in igno
rance, and, since they knew no other possibility, it
was mostly contented ignorance. How sluggishly
this great mass awoke to the stimulation of the ideas
of freedom, of independence from the oppression that
had weighed upon Mexico for so long, will be re
called by those who have followed even in brief out
line the story of Hidalgo's uprising. It is but too
evident, even to the casual student, that had not the
movement for independence from Spain sprang up
in Mexico at a time when the Spanish government

The Church and Freedom of Thought. 145
was helpless, — being during no small part of the
struggle virtually nonexistent, — it could never have
attained to any measure of success. That other and
similar and probably successful movements would
have followed is quite certain. But it was only the
nerveless state of Spain which gave opportunity at
the time Hidalgo began his agitation for that slow
and long-continued propaganda that at last took hold
upon the untrained thought of Mexico's native pop
ulation. It was not merely in the failure to provide schools
and to intervene directly in the mental training of
the Mexican native races that Spain sinned against
their intellectual development. That development
was hindered, was indeed rendered virtually impos
sible, by the whole atmosphere in which these races
had their first contact with European civilization.
They were not allowed to think for themselves in re
gard to any of life's interests. The Church declined
to permit it in religious things, because to think at
all exposed them to the danger of thinking wrongly.
Orthodoxy was held to be more desirable than intel
ligence. As the ecclesiastical system gradually de
parted from that primitive purity of purpose and of
interest in the welfare of the people which had
marked the early missionaries, it grew into an elab
orate scheme of prerogatives and dignities belong
ing to the priests and bishops, concerning which these
dignitaries were excessively jealous and watchful.
The due subjection of the people was a matter of first
10

146 A New Era in Old Mexico.
importance, and the obedience and acquiescence
which were exacted of them left nothing to the
chance of individual initiative.
Scarcely less autocratic were the social and civil
exactions.' On every hand the Indian was made to
feel himself a nobody. He was "commended" to the
care of "Christian" miners and land-owners in great
herds, in order that he might be trained in the Chris
tian faith. His labor, once his own, was now by
some hocus-pocus made to enrich the conquistador.
Innumerable petty social and civil exactions pressed
upon him. He could not ride horseback. He was
not allowed to dress in the same fashion as the Span
iards, nor to carry arms. The estimate put upon
him is well defined by the rule that in a court of law
the word of one Spaniard was of equal weight with
that of six Indians.
The naturally amiable and submissive temper of
the Mexican people was by such treatment gradu
ally degraded to a servile and helpless attitude very
far removed from that independence of spirit and
sprightliness of mind essential to freemen. Indeed,
as a matter of fact, many of the natives were re
duced to slavery, and only the fierce denunciations of
a few warm-hearted priests, with the intervention,
from time to time, of a philanthropic viceroy, kept
the humane provisions of the Council of the Indias
concerning human slavery from being abused even
more than they were. The resistance offered by the
poor Indians themselves was insignificant. The one

Mexico Has Done Well. 147
good thing which their new religion did for them
was to give them a definite doctrine of, and an abid
ing faith in, God. This faith was accompanied, un
fortunately, by a sort of cheerful fatalism altogeth
er congenial to their temper and condition. What
ever ills came to them they were in the habit of ac
cepting with a shrug and a smile, — Es la voluntad de
Dios! "It is the will of God." The phrase was ap
plied many times to situations in which its theolog
ical accuracy is not so evident as its devoutness of
spirit. The student of Mexican national development as
affected by national character will often be at a loss
whether to attribute certain aspects of it to native
and more or less ineradicable traits or to the in
fluence of this long tutelage under Spain. The peo
ple display no great aptitude for self-government.
For this they have been much criticized. A sym
pathetic consideration of the powerful influences
from without that have molded them to a character
as far as possible removed from the ideal of freemen
will serve to change much of that criticism to a kind
lier estimate. When to the duress under which they
received foreign influences is added the repressive
and enervating character of those influences, the
wonder is not that since being thrown upon their
own resources they should have done so ill, but that
they have done so well.
When all has been said that the fairest estimate
of the facts will warrant, it remains true that the

148 A New Era in Old Mexico.
Mexicans, previous to the advent of the Europeans,
had taken only the first step toward the development
of a national civilization. They were essentially a
primitive and savage people. Excepting the arts of
a rude sort of warfare, and some of the rudiments of
civil government, largely still upon the tribal basis,
they had everything to learn. It is only within re
cent times that the duty of nations to each other has
begun to take even a slightly altruistic tinge. Can
ada and Australia have grown into self-govern
ing nations as English colonies, and right-minded
governors of India are striving, — against enormous
odds, no doubt, — to bring that old and strange con
geries of peoples up to the conception of some sort
of autonomy. Cuba has been set up for herself by
the United States; and any real evidence that it
would be worth while would promptly bring a simi
lar provision to one or all of the Philippine Islands.
But three hundred years ago lands of the New World
were not colonized for the good of those lands them
selves, but for the glory and enrichment of the col
onizers. Spain set no standard of possible local au
tonomy before her in dealing with Mexico. The
conception was utterly foreign to the spirit of the
time, and even more to the Spanish temper. The
measures adopted were all primarily concerned with
the mother country and with those who represented
her in this New World. If they were humane and
Christian enactments, that proceeded wholly from
the Royal Council's conception of what was decent

The Inquisition. 149
and becoming to Christian Spain, not from any pur
pose to conciliate or to train the peogle lately brought
into subjection to her arms.
The charge of having emasculated the national
character of the Mexican people does not lie simply
against the temper and mode of procedure of the
Spanish government. In these that government but
reflected the spirit of the time. The real onus of the
indictment is upon those fundamental religious and
social principles upon which the civilization of Spain
itself had been reared, and which, during the cen
turies in which Mexico was losing so much, united
with Mexican gold to disintegrate and wreck the
Spanish civilization also. It was the subserviency
of civil affairs to the dominating spirit of the eccle-
siasticism of southern Europe which prepared the
way for that most disastrous culmination of obscur
antism known to history, the Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition was the apotheosis of autocratic
tyranny. It not only attacked the right of the indi
vidual to civil liberty, to freedom of person in the
material concerns of life, but carried the havoc of an
unfeeling tyranny into the still more sacred realm of
the spirit. It is bad enough to hold that a man can
not do as he would; it is a hundred-fold worse to
deny him the privilege of thinking as he would.
The ravages of the Inquisition among the submis
sive and meek-spirited Mexicans were, if possible,
more terrifying than in Spain itself. That there
were still, after three centuries, those who dared defy

150 A New Era in Old Mexico.
it and think and plan for freedom, is one of those
miracles of history for which the student will find he
must be constantly prepared. To quench the love of
liberty in the human heart is an undertaking so hope
less that one must fain trust that soon it will be for
ever given over. The record of government regard
less of the wishes of the governed has been already
long enough drawn out. It will be well if in the
future the function and powers of government be
otherwise employed.

CHAPTER XVI.
The Republic Triumphant.
We have paused for these general considerations
in order that there might be a more sympathetic un
derstanding upon the part of the reader of the prob
lem Mexico faced when in 1867, the French inter
vention having been brought to its end, she again
undertook the task of self-government. The ob
stacles to a democracy by which she had been dur
ing fifty years repeatedly thwarted were now, in
part, at least, eliminated. The principal of these
were outside interference, a monarchical tendency
at home, ambitious military leaders, and a med
dlesome hierarchy, doubly powerful through its
immense wealth. The first and second of these were
now effectually disposed of. With the blood-stained
body of Maximilian were buried the hopes of the
monarchists at home. His tomb is also a stumbling-
block to European princes which seems likely to
continue to cool any ardor they might otherwise de
velop for attempting to set up an American king
dom. Opposition from the two remaining foes was
checked but not ended. The clergy, stripped of their
wealth and to a very large extent also of their pres
tige, remained nevertheless a potent influence in the
life of the nation. As for ambitious and unscrupu
lous soldiers, men who prefer selfish aggrandize- (i50

152 A New Era in Old Mexico.
ment to the welfare of their country, it was, unfortu
nately, too much to expect that a type which had so
long been conspicuous in Mexico's history would
suddenly and finally disappear.
It was these restive military leaders who filled
the land with turmoil during the four remaining
years of the life of President Juarez. As soon as
possible after gaining control in 1867 of the entire
country, he issued a proclamation calling for a gen
eral election. Instead of limiting this to the ordi
nary choice under the constitution of a president, a
chief justice, and the members of the national con
gress, he thought it an excellent time for the people
to pass also upon certain constitutional changes
which seemed to him desirable, — provision for a sen
ate, the conceding of a veto power to the president,
etc. Since the constitution itself provided the prop
er order for its own amendment, many affected to
see in this proclamation a disposition upon the part
of Juarez to override it. The people, though for the
most part they refused to vote on these new pro
posals, elected a congress favorable to Juarez, by
whom he was in due course declared to be the con
stitutionally elected president. Sebastian Lerdo de
Tejada was made president of the supreme court,
an office carrying with it the succession to the pres
idency in the event of the president's death.
During the intervening months Juarez had taken
occasion to proclaim a general amnesty for all the
partisans of the government of Maximilian, though

Administration of Juarez. 153
without conferring upon them the right to bear arms
or hold office. Even this generous treatment, how
ever, did not satisfy them. Instead of being thank
ful that they had not been executed or banished as
traitors, they at once began an agitation against
Juarez because he was so severe. Lerdo, who saw
how easily he had been advanced to the position
next in prestige to the presidency, gradually drew
away from Juarez, whom he had hitherto supported
with great loyalty, and began to form, especially
among the opposition members in congress, a new
party of "Lerdistas."
But it was, as has already been said, the military
which gave most trouble. Foreseeing this, Juarez
had, among the first of his official acts after obtain
ing control, reorganized and reduced the army. Its
total strength was placed at twenty thousand men
organized into four divisions, commanded respect
ively after the reorganization by Generals Regules,
Porfirio Diaz, Escobedo, and Corona. The discre
tionary powers hitherto committed to generals as to
recruiting and campaigning were now withdrawn,
and all were put under the immediate orders of the
president as commander in chief. This wholesale
reduction of the army of course left many generals
and colonels without a command. Besides, the men
who, scattered through all sections of the country
and largely independent of one another, had with
most admirable harmony presented a united front
to the foreign invader, were unable now to agree

154 A New Era in Old Mexico.
among themselves, the pressure from without hav
ing been withdrawn.
Juarez was not himself a soldier. But he was a
man of the most extraordinary personal valor. Time
and again he saw not merely his government im
periled and all that he held dear in danger of an
nihilation, but his own life even hanging in the bal
ance. It was impossible to break in upon his per
sonal serenity. His calmness and decision in the
most critical and urgent situations bound to him
in an extraordinary way the military leaders upon
whom he was forced to lean for support; and the
common soldiers, and even the civilians, who were
once and again called upon to protect him from per
sonal violence never hesitated to do so, though it
was often at the price of their own lives.
From 1868 to 1872 the uproar was continuous.
Regiments, brigades, isolated squads, as the case
might be, put forward the claims of some favorite
leader who had "proclaimed" against the govern
ment, and had, one after the other, to be met and
defeated. Whole states declared against certain
acts of the federal congress or of the executive, and
had to be coaxed or cudgeled into adhesion. In the
congress itself, the conservatives, shifting to this
new field the opposition which had so long tried
in vain the arbitrament of arms, kept a clamor
ous minority hanging upon the skirts of the presi
dent and clogging as far as it could every advance
step.

Juarez Reelected. 155
But Juarez was used to turmoil. To the noisy
opposition in congress and to every new insurgent
in arms he presented the same calm, imperturbable
front. Alert, ready, puissant, he handled troops, di
rected campaigns, watched the clericals, kept peace
in his cabinet, showing himself by every token the
man of destiny.
The election of 1871 came on. A feeling was
general that Juarez ought to give place to some
other. To this he would not agree. Whether he
was the victim of an old man's jealous ambition, or
honestly thought it was unsafe for the country to
risk a change at that time, will never be known.
His friends took one view, his enemies another.
Even his friends admit that this was the greatest
mistake of his life. Both Lerdo and Diaz received
a heavy vote for the presidency, but Juarez was
elected. Lerdo, still at the head of the supreme
court, took occasion of the general discontent to in
crease his party in congress, even holding out a
friendly hand to the embittered conservatives. Gen
eral Diaz, who some time before had resigned his
place in the army and retired to private life, vexed
at this continuance in power of a chief who seemed
indisposed to give way to other ambitious and able
men, issued his Plan de la Noria. In this he pro
posed to set aside the government and the consti
tution and call a general assembly to reorganize the
whole basis of civil government. The document
does him no great credit, nor did the rather guer-

156 A New Era in Old Mexico.
rilla-like campaign in which he with a few followers
supported it.
The fiercest of all the outbursts, however, and one
that for a moment threatened the most serious con
sequences, took place in Mexico City. October 1,
1871, just a month after the election of the presi
dent for another term, but before his inauguration,
like a bolt from the clear sky broke forth the insur
rection of the garrison at the capital. The regiment
having charge of the police headquarters murdered
their colonel and released all the prisoners. In the
principal barracks near by, the whole force was in
volved. Had a really able leader been found, the re
sult might have been disastrous. But before night
Juarez had the revolutionists besieged in the bar
racks where the disturbance began, which that
night were stormed by his faithful and valiant gen
eral, Rocha, and the movement was crushed. A
number of the leaders, and not a few of the sol
diers, were summarily condemned by court-martial
and shot. This action produced an exciting episode
in congress when Zamacona, the most active of the
supporters of Diaz — who were beginning to call
themselves "Porfiristas" — bitterly criticised the gov
ernment, for which the able patriot-poet, Guillermo
Prieto, had the unenviable task of being spokesman.
With his usual vigor and success Juarez set him
self the winter and spring succeeding to bring order
out of what had threatened to become chaos, and by
the summer of 1872 was again firmly intrenched

Death of Juarez — Character. 157
in his position as constitutional president. His
courage and coolness, as well as his respect for law
and order, may be seen in the fact that he made no
effort to displace Lerdo, though aware that he was
constantly intriguing with the enemies of the gov
ernment. July 18, 1872, Juarez died, somewhat
suddenly and from a disease of the heart. To such
characterization of him as may be gathered from the
preceding pages it will perhaps be well to add here
the brief estimate left by his friend and associate,
Jose Maria Iglesias, himself an able and incor
ruptible patriot : "Although Don Benito Juarez was
a man of exceptional capacity and not wanting in
intellectual training, it may be said that neither his
native intelligence nor his learning was of the first
rank. His real merit — which may justly be de
clared exceptional — is to be traced to his extraor
dinary traits of character. His firmness in matters
of principle was immovable. To his principles he
held at any cost of effort or sacrifice. Adversity
could not vanquish, prosperity could not spoil him.
So extraordinary was his passive personal courage
that to many it seemed mere insensibility. So hon
est did he prove himself to be that every opportunity
of personal enrichment offered by his long career
was carelessly put aside. If it is to be admitted
that he clung a little too persistently to his place of
power, it is also to be added that he was ever gov
erned by patriotic motives."
Lerdo, by virtue of his position as president of

158 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the supreme court and in conformity to the consti
tution, assumed the presidential office. As soon as
congress assembled in the autumn he was confirmed
therein, virtually without opposition. During his
term ad interim he had published a proclamation of
amnesty for the imperialists, removing most of the
disabilities under which Juarez had resolutely kept
them, but not yet granting all that they demanded.
The partisans of Diaz were quiescent for the time
being, since they had been acting with the Lerdistas
against the party of Juarez, and were not ready at
a moment's notice to break the friendly bonds thus
formed. Lerdo, a sprightly, eloquent, handsome, and able
man, had a comparatively quiet term. Only one
serious military episode disturbed the country's
peace. Don Manuel Lozada, an ignorant but able
Indian of the territory of Tepic, who had favored
the intervention and been lauded by Maximilian and
the French emperor, kept still in his mountain fast
ness, a sort of Cave of Adullam, where his renegade
force was constantly recruited. General Ramon
Corona, in command at Guadalajara, had long since
begged to be allowed to crush this nest of traitors,
but the government refused. Early in 1873 they
swept down upon him at a time when his forces
had been greatly depleted, and only by the most
heroic fighting at a disadvantage in numbers of four
to one, did he defeat and scatter these dreaded ban
ditti. He was thereafter rightly looked upon as the

Reform Laws Confirmed. 159
savior of Guadalajara, the devastation of which city
would inevitably have followed his defeat.
In civil matters the most significant event of the
term of Lerdo was the act of September 25, 1874,
finally approved and promulgated in December of
that year, elevating to the rank of organic consti
tutional law the Leyes de Reforma, especially those
proclaiming the separation between Church and
State, the liberty of worship, that matrimony is a
civil contract, that churches cannot hold real estate,
that the religious oath in courts shall be substituted
by a protest or promise to speak the truth, and that
convents and monasteries are illegal. This set the
final seal upon the confiscation of the ecclesiastical
property, a step which even Maximilian, with all
his devotion to the Church, had approved by not ab
rogating the contracts for the sale of this property
made under the original law of Juarez.
One term was not sufficient to satisfy the ambi
tion of Lerdo, and though, when the case of Juarez
was under consideration, he had opposed the practice
of allowing a president to be reelected at the end of
his period in office, he now, as his own quadrennium
drew to a close, began to seek to secure the place for
himself during another. He was ambitious, not
over-scrupulous, and especially averse to taking ad
vice. His election was forced through by the open
use of federal power, and duly proclaimed by con
gress, October 26, 1876. The storm then burst, and
with tremendous violence.

CHAPTER XVII.
Porfirio Diaz and the Arts of Peace.
The events which in 1876 made General Diaz in
stead of Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, who had served
part of the previous term and been reelected, chief
magistrate of Mexico were both dramatic and pain
ful. After the election that autumn the situation
changed with lightning-like rapidity. Judge Jose
Maria Iglesias, an honest and high-minded man,
had been reelected chief justice of the supreme court.
Without having before taken sides openly between
the Lerdistas and the Porfiristas, though supposed
ly favorable to the president, under whom he had
just served three years, Iglesias was so outraged by
the manner in which Lerdo had forced his own
reelection that he declared it fraudulent. Retiring
to Salamanca, in the wealthy state of Guanajuato,
whose governor favored him, he proclaimed himself
to be, under the constitution, the legitimate pres
ident and proceeded to organize his cabinet.
More ominous still was the revolutionary move
ment which had broken out early in the year under
General Hernandez, so soon in fact as Lerdo had
announced his intention of again becoming a can
didate for the presidency. This pronunciamiento
against him is known as the Plan of Tuxtepec.
General Diaz later took it up and with certain mod-
(160)

General Diaz Becomes President. 161
ifications made it his own. He was at the time the
ablest and most popular military leader in the coun
try. The collisions between his forces and those of
the Lerdist party were frequent and bloody. He
was rapidly gaining on the president, who was not
himself a soldier, when the defection of Iglesias
cut the ground completely from under Lerdo.
Vexed at Iglesias, and despairing of holding his
own against Diaz, he quietly slipped out of Mex
ico by night, leaving the capital in possession of the
Porfiristas who had just gained a decisive victory
over the government troops. The exiled president
took refuge in New York, where he remained till
his death, some fourteen years later.
Diaz promptly moved against Iglesias, but the
latter, though stubborn in his opinion that he was
the legally constituted president, had not sufficient
troops to undertake a campaign. He therefore, —
after a personal interview with General Diaz, as
some insist, — quietly withdrew to the Pacific coast
and took ship for San Francisco.
The field was now clear. General Diaz ordered
an election for president, as both president and chief
justice were gone, and was himself elected without
oposition, taking charge of the government May 5,
1877, for the presidential term to end November 30,
1880. Succeeded when that time came by Gen
eral Manuel Gonzales, — the first time, by the way,
that the presidency had ever passed peacefully from
one man to another, — he was again elected in 1884,
11

162 A New Era in Old Mexico,
as he has been at each election since that date. This
brief statement completes the story of Mexico's po
litical changes.
But why is it, the reader will be asking, that
President Diaz has been able to keep the peace when
all others before him had failed? The answer to
that is necessarily manifold, yet the mystery is less
than it seems. The explanation is to be found first
in the man himself, and secondly in the measures
which, being what he is, he has adopted. One or
two fortuitous conditions from without must also be
taken into the account. Of these the most essential
has already been discussed at some length. When
the Church and its orders were deprived of their
wealth, then the most fruitful source of armed re
bellions was dried up. Without the work of Juarez
that of Diaz would have been impossible. The prin
ciples of the constitution, after the way for them
was cleared by the Leyes de Reforma, have proved
a solid foundation for a peaceful administration
which has continued now for nearly thirty years.
To this favoring circumstance are to be added a
few others. One of these is that the people were
exceedingly weary of war. It had devastated the
country, demoralized society, annihilated commerce,
choked agriculture, made uncertain the tenure of
life and property, and sent to a bloody grave the
flower of the nation's youth. The common people,
caring little for the elective franchise, and knowing
nothing of governmental questions, were at last

Outline of Diaz's Life. 163
willing that anybody who wished should be presi
dent so long as they were left in peace.
Again — and this means more than would appear
— the military competitors of Diaz were nearly all
older than he. They rapidly died off. The probabil
ity of a successful revolution against a general of
his experience and tried skill thus soon became in
finitesimal. Not many were foolish enough to try
the experiment.
Finally — though for this the president himself
was largely responsible — the advent of the railways
during the early eighties made it possible for the
government to handle its troops with a speed and
efficiency which, a thing never before possible,
nipped revolutions in the bud.
Turning from external and largely adventitious
conditions to the man, we shall find in President
Diaz himself the best explanation at once of his
success and of the measures by which he has insured
it. First of all, he is a popular hero. A native (born
September 15, 1830) of the patriotic state of Oax-
aca, which has given to the republic both Juarez
and Diaz, the persecution of the jealous and ever-
suspicious Santa Anna turned him from his chosen
pursuit of the law into a soldier's life while he was
yet a young man (1853). From then till the end
of the French intervention, his career was one of ad
venture. Active, athletic, a horseman, a swimmer,
a rifle shot, he is still at seventy-four a vigorous and
handsome man. His numerous thrilling adventures

164 A New Era in Old Mexico.
and his fearless handling of his troops have made
his personal valor a matter of common knowledge,
while his generosity to opponents and his loyalty to
friends, his devotion to good government, and, last
of all, his unbroken success, have made the Mexi
can people look up to him with confidence and admi
ration. He has accomplished that transition which has
been the despair of many of the world's great cap
tains. After success as a soldier he has proved him
self also a great civil ruler. The men who have done
this can almost be counted on the fingers of one
hand. Those who have failed are far more numer
ous. It must be allowed that he has been spared
one crucial test. The scripture which warns the
soldier to do violence to no man, and to be content
with his wages, touches the vices which are surest
to result from the military life — harshness and av
arice. The administration of President Diaz has
been autocratic and stern. It is not worth while to
deny this. Measures have been carried out by him
which, as well as the manner of their administra
tion, would have been deeply resented in some coun
tries. His reply to objections concerning them is
that he knows his own people. Happily this is true.
They have been too long accustomed to autocratic
rule to resent it now. The president has, therefore,
not had to change radically the principles upon
which he exacted discipline while a soldier. He is
still, essentially, a military ruler.

His Conciliatory Policy. 165
In the matter of avarice he is, fortunately, con
stituted much as was Juarez. No doubt he has
laid aside some wealth during these thirty years;
but he has never cared enough for money to cause
serious offense. He is not ostentatious; he is not
greedy. The country was on the verge of anarchy
when the administration of President Gonzales came
to a close in 1884, and friends and enemies alike
were clamoring for "Don Porfirio." The principal
reason was that the bluff old soldier, who had just
taken his turn in the chief magistracy, had devel
oped an enthusiasm in money getting that scandal
ized the whole country while bringing into sharp re
lief the self-restraint of Diaz.
The president of Mexico is also a broad-minded
man. Men who had opposed him in the days of his
disputes with Juarez and with Lerdo, — "Juaristas"
and "Lerdistas," — were nevertheless given places
under his government, some even in the army, com
mensurate with their ability. Their tenure was, of
course, dependent on their loyalty to their new chief.
Others, army officers especially, were retired on full
pay. A few ventured on "pernicious activity"
against "the government, and were promptly exiled
or dealt with even more severely. But many of his
former enemies became his stanch friends and sup
porters. A conspicuous case was that of Sr. Romero
Rubio, who was in 1876 a most active Lerdista.
Ten years later he was a prominent member of the

166 A New Era in Old Mexico.
cabinet of President Diaz, who had meantime mar
ried his daughter !
No little of breadth has been displayed in his deal
ing with the question of foreigners in Mexico. Pop
ular prejudice against them had long been intense.
The country was extremely provincial. The Cath
olic Church created sentiment against the incoming
of influences which might disturb its unquestioned
sway. The war with the United States and the con
sequent loss of territory made suspicion of Ameri
cans easy and natural. Every addition to their num
ber in Mexico was declared to be in furtherance of
the intention of the United States to take possession
of the whole country. Wealthy monopolists also,
dreading the incoming of competition, made com
mon cause with retrograde priests and narrow poli
ticians in decrying the foreigner.
Against all these influences Diaz resolutely set
himself. He took the ground that a sparsely set
tled, poor, and backward country needed foreign set
tlers and capital to develop it, and would be the bet
ter if it would learn from these foreigners some of
their modern and progressive ways. The matter of
railroads became a crucial question. The president
saw distinctly two things. One was that railways
were necessary both to the stability of his govern
ment and the development of the country; and
the other, that Mexicans would not build them.
Only a few of his people had sufficient money, and
they would not invest it in that way. So he frankly

Internal Improvements. 167
encouraged foreign corporations. The roads were
subsidized. Congress granted favorable conditions
as to tariffs during, and for a time after, construc
tion. The president used this as an entering wedge
to encourage other foreign investments, and by giv
ing all foreigners generous treatment and full legal
protection, he won their warm good will. The value
of this to his administration has not been slight.
Probably five hundred millions of foreign money
are now invested in that republic. With the friendly
backing of men controlling all that, the financial
standing of the government is easily assured.
We pass thus from considerations of the personal
traits of Mexico's president to an examination of
the measures by which he has made the last three
decades the most peaceful which that country has
seen for a century. No one of them has been of
such consummate wisdom as to justify the claim
for him of genius. Yet they have been, without ex
ception, marked by a certain practical sagacity and
sense of proportion which for everyday affairs are
quite as valuable as genius. For the country at large
and for his government in relation to it, the chief
problems which President Diaz found were those
of policing, finance, and development. How he met
them is, in detail, a long story. Yet the outline is
simple, as we shall see.
First of all was the protection of the government
and of the people from their enemies. Brigands had
taken possession of the highways and mountain

168 A New Era in Old Mexico.
passes, and crimes against person and property had
long gone unpunished. As for enemies of the gov
ernment, there were left, here and there, a number
of influential generals who could see no impropriety
in their following the custom that had so long ob
tained in Mexico of seeking by force to take pos
session of the supreme power. The Church party
also, who recognized in Diaz a determined and un
compromising liberal, one who had had much to
do with the defeat of their pet scheme of the French
intervention, though beaten and deprived of much
of their resources, were by no means ready to give
up the fight.
To meet this situation Diaz kept the men of real
influence and ability, whom he suspected of revolu
tionary designs, constantly under his surveillance.
They were well provided for and left in apparent
liberty, but they understood what risks a false move
involved. Even the patriotic Escobedo, the hero of
Queretaro, was for good reason exiled from the
country before the end of Diaz's first term. During
the second (in 1886) General Garcia de la Cadena
began laying plans for an uprising in the state of
Zacatecas. In the midst of them he was apprehend
ed by the local authorities and promptly executed,
whether by direction of the president or not is not
known. Some of the leading patriot generals were
made governors of the different states, virtually
subject to appointment by the president, and others
were left in command of various bodies of troops.

The Rurales. 169
The standing army itself was scattered throughout
the country. Even now its separate brigades and
regiments are not often left long at any one place,
especial care being taken to prevent too much of in
timacy between the army and the citizens. From
all of which it will be seen that, availing himself of
the widely extended telegraph system and the rail
ways which now reach almost every section of the
country, the president has been able to keep his hand
on the military situation in a manner which has
virtually made insurrections impossible.
To eliminate brigandage he organized a sort of
federal mounted police. Congress enacted certain
specific laws regulating their duties and function,
but it was from the beginning understood that they
were to be virtually under the personal direction of
the president. They are well mounted, well paid,
and, dressed in the picturesque charro riding habit,
form a body of troops which captivates the imag
ination of adventurous young men. Their efficiency
has from the first been remarkable. When these
rurales go after a bandit they usually get him. This
efficiency was notably increased by a shrewd move
on the president's part. Getting into communication
with some of the leading brigands, he made them the
unique proposition that they should cease to be rob
bers and join his police force. A number of them
accepted. The fate of the rest was then sealed.
The formality of trial and execution for brigandage
in out-of-the-way mountain regions is often dis-

170 A New Era in Old Mexico.
pensed with by means of what is called the Ley de
Fuga, — that is, if a prisoner runs he must be shot.
Many a wretched murderer has been left weltering
by the roadside, the sergeant in charge merely re
porting that he attempted to escape.
Train wrecking was indulged in by the lawless
for a time. Thereupon congress, at the president's
instance, passed a law depriving of the right of trial
by jury, and of other constitutional guarantees, any
man who should be proved to have had anything to
do with derailing or robbing a train. The effect
was instantaneous. Train robbing ceased. Now
Mexico is one of the best policed countries in the
civilized world. The traveler may penetrate its most
remote mountain fastnesses with the assurance that
in some near-by village is a squad of gray-coated
rurales, keeping a sharp watch on the wild trails and
wild people about him.
The financial measures of the Diaz administra
tion, and the steps taken by it for the development
of the country and people, will occupy us in the fol
lowing chapter.

CHAPTER XVIII.
Thirty Years of Progress.
In 1876 the poverty and backwardness of the
Mexican people were such as showed but too clear
ly the disastrous effects of fifty years of almost con
tinuous civil war. Theirs is a country of vast nat
ural wealth and of almost unlimited resources. But
agriculture had languished, and commerce had been
cramped by foolish tariff restrictions between state
and state, by lack of transportation facilities, and
by interminable political disturbances. The govern
ment was without prestige at home or credit abroad.
Treaties made by Juarez at the close of the inter
vention had temporarily quieted the restlessness of
foreign investors, since rather than leave to other
governments any possible pretext for dissatisfaction
he had actually assumed some of the compromises
and obligations of Maximilian. Experiments in va
rious kinds of taxation had been undertaken at dif
ferent times in the country's history, but the chief
dependence of the federal government was always,
as it is yet, upon import duties. The country, not
being given to manufacturing, imports extensively
the finished products which its people require, and
the income from tariffs is steady. Under President
Diaz a stamp tax and various forms of internal rev
enue have been experimented with. The old bonded
070

172 A New Era in Old Mexico.
debt held in England was, in 1886, after one or two
previous efforts had failed, refunded, and the rate
of interest reduced. The movement of commerce
has been greatly stimulated by the advent of rail
ways, and agriculture and mining have flourished
by reason of continued peace.
The president has been especially scrupulous to
maintain, by prompt payment of the interest on all
its obligations, the credit of his government. As
the money of the country is on a silver basis, while
the interest on its bonds is payable in gold, when in
the early nineties the price of silver sank so rapidly,
and when along with that came a drought that in
1893 approached the dimensions of a famine, the
government found itself in sore straits. An ap
peal was made to the federal employees, who there
upon agreed to contribute a percentage of their sal
aries till the national treasury should be able to ad
just itself to these unfriendly conditions. This is
rightly looked upon as a notable instance of the pa
triotism of the Mexican people and of their con
fidence in President Diaz. This period of financial
depression, with the continued reduction in the ex
change value of silver, had one unexpected but hap
py result. The people began to manufacture many
things which they had hitherto imported. The raw
materials and the labor could be had at their old
prices in a silver currency while the higher exchange
operated with the high tariffs to hinder the importa
tion of finished products. The general scarcity of

Important Fiscal Measures. 173
fuel throughout the country will, however, be al
ways a bar to the extensive development of manu
facturing interests in Mexico.
The government, under the able direction of Mr.
Jose Ives Limantour, Secretary of the Treasury,
has in recent years overcome its many financial han
dicaps, and is now in a comfortable way. Its credit
abroad is stable, its current expenses — among which
has not yet been included a navy — are promptly
met, and its resources are constantly increasing.
The fluctuations in the price of silver still, of course,
cause much inconvenience. After many efforts,
the several states have at last been cleared of their
local customhouses, their local coinage, and of vari
ous other relics of their former provincial status, all
of which had long hindered the industrial advance
ment of the people. Thirty years of peace for the
development of agriculture, during which time mon
ey has poured into the country for investment in
mining, railways, and manufacturing, have added
immensely to the people's wealth, while giving op
portunity for the development of popular education,
a free press, municipal improvements, and the va
ried arts of modern civilization.
From the beginning the liberals have advocated
popular education. The ignorance of the people
they rightly held responsible for their slow progress
in civilization, and especially for their inert sub
serviency to a self-seeking hierarchy. It was this
power of the conservative leaders over the masses

174 A New Era in Old Mexico.
that time and again defeated the plans of men who
sought the liberation and enlightenment of the
whole people. As soon as possible after getting con
trol of things, Juarez planned an elaborate public
school system, modeled in a large measure upon that
of the United States, of which he had made a study.
This was set in operation in the federal district and
in as many of the states as could be persuaded to fol
low the example. It has during the administration
of General Diaz been carefully elaborated and devel
oped, becoming more and more efficient as time
demonstrates to a naturally conservative people its
value to their country.
It has had from the beginning to contend with
the implacable hostility of the Church. No longer
able to wield its old influence in the military and
political affairs of the country, the Catholic Church
still reigned well-nigh supreme in the social realm.
All persons who had any pretensions to wealth and
social standing were under strict orders from it. To
show friendship to any of the progressive measures
of the liberals was to invite anathemas and social
ostracism. The public schools especially came under
the ban as atheistical and plebeian. Both teachers
and pupils placed themselves by the very fact of
their connection with the public school among the
excommunicated and religiously outcast.
This produced two effects. First, it greatly
cramped the development of the public school sys
tems. Outside the cities and larger towns, in those

Public Schools and the Church. 175
smaller communities where the word of the priest
is paramount, these schools have made their way
very slowly indeed. Only by the resolution of some
public-spirited citizen will they be found to exist at
all in such communities, and then probably at a poor
dying rate.
The other result of this hostility will seem insig
nificant to some, though really it is a most serious
matter. In the absence until within very recent
years of any other presentation of Christian truth
than that of the Roman Catholic Church, and by
virtue of the exaggerated claims of that Church, it
was taken for granted in the minds of most Mex
icans that any one who broke with the Catholic
Church was, ipso facto, an atheist. The poor but
ambitious young man or woman who saw in the pub
lic schools the only means of securing an education
was convinced beforehand that to be educated meant
to be a skeptic. Even the professors, many of whom
ought to have known better, admitted the implica
tion, and, however ill in some instances it may have
suited their inclinations, allowed themselves to be
classed with the unbelieving.
The public schools became by all this the hope of
the lowest social stratum. People of that class had
not much to lose, and felt that there might be some
thing in the schools to gain. Means of rising from
their poverty and ignorance had never before been
offered them. The Indian had come into his own
at last. How they have profited is a most engaging

176 A New Era in Old Mexico.
story. The girls especially have forged upward
through the various grades of primary, secondary,
and high school work, completing often with nota
ble merit the state normal course, and going out
from homes of poverty and squalor to be the teach
ers of the next generation. The physical and in
tellectual vitality of the lower classes is superior to
that of the wealthy families, many of whom are
showing the deterioration of three hundred years of
pampering. One result of these new opportunities
for the poor must be a leveling of the social distinc
tions that have long cursed Mexico, and thus a dis
tinct impulse to the development of a real and vital
democracy. These recent years have seen the amelioration of
the poor in other respects than in educational priv
ileges. Some old laws concerning the relation be
tween farm laborers and the owner of the land,
which reflected the feudalistic spirit of the vice-regal
administration, and by which the laborer was vir
tually the slave of the land-holder, have at last been
abolished. The substitution of various kinds of
script, redeemable only by those issuing it, for mon
ey in the payment of wages, and the circulation in
several states of a depreciated local currency, gave
the federal government much concern till both were
at last abolished. The states have little by little
come to accept the well-established principle of tax
ing the land, though it had never before been done,
since the owners of the land were precisely the men

Effects ofthe Reform Laws. 177
who made the laws. The abolition of alcabalas, or
duties charged upon goods entering a state, or even
a city, lifted from the back of the poor agricultural
ist one of the heaviest and most unreasonable bur
dens he had been called upon to bear. Most of the
reforms just mentioned have been forced, a little at
a time, upon reluctant states by the persistency of
the federal government.
The beneficent results of some of the Leyes de
Reforma, upon whose enforcement President Diaz
has resolutely insisted, are beginning at last to make
themselves distinctly felt. Among these none have
been more important to public morals than the laws
concerning civil marriage and the secularization of
the cemeteries. One of the standing abuses of the
old ecclesiastical system was in the enormous fees
charged by the priests for marriage. Although
philanthropic popes and bishops issued from time to
time proclamations regulating this fee, they came
to nothing. The practice of the priests was to
charge every cent they thought the bridegroom could
pay, and to refuse to proceed with the ceremony till
the money was in hand. As a result, the poor often
omitted marriage entirely. This brought wide
spread disaster to the morals of the people. The
law of Juarez made marriage purely a civil matter.
It is carefully safeguarded by all due precautions,
but is free, a small fee being allowed for the ex
pense of recording, etc. If the contracting parties
wish a religious ceremony also, they are free to have
12

178 A New Era in Old Mexico.
it, but it has no legal status. The people were slow
to incur the anathemas of the priests by availing
themselves of this law, but they have now begun
almost universally to do so.
The cemeteries were also a means of extortion.
By insisting that all dead should be buried in con
secrated ground and by consecrating only a small
area, the clergy made that area abnormally valuable
and were able to collect immense revenues out of
the lease and sale of plats. Under the present law
the cemeteries must be controlled by the municipal
ities or by some other government entity, and their
regulations, charges, and management generally are
subject to civil enactment and made matters of pub
lic knowledge.
Such are some of the lines upon which is proceed
ing the social and political development of the Mex
ican people as guided by the dominating personal
ity of President Diaz. It should be remembered
that, to a degree which can scarcely be comprehend
ed by one not actually conversant with affairs there,
what the federal government does means what Gen
eral Porfirio Diaz wishes done. It is to his ever
lasting credit that the measures which he has in
stigated have been so nearly always for the good of
the people, and not merely to gratify his own whims
or to advance his personal interests. He has accom
plished much. Much remains to be done. Let us in
the next chapter briefly review some of the problems
and difficulties which still await him.

CHAPTER XIX.
The Situation To-day.
In Mexico as elsewhere the political well-being of
the people is inseparably bound up with their moral
condition. The effect upon public and private
morals of many of those influences with which our
studies have been concerned was necessarily pro
found. So far, however, this has been lightly passed
over. An intimate acquaintance with its people
and some knowledge of those causes which, involun
tarily to themselves, have operated to put them at a
disadvantage morally, will cause the student to hes
itate before bringing a general indictment against
any nation. The careless traveler, writing after su
perficial observation, will lay on his colors thick. He
is sure that the moral shortcomings which are
strange to him, and therefore peculiarly abhorrent,
are worse than those of his own people. But a more
careful balancing of causes and effects and a more
profound study of the essential unity of human na
ture will often serve to show that the differences
seemingly so wide are really in degree rather than
in kind, in manifestation and not in essence. Hu
man nature as found in Mexico, native and import
ed, was from the first the ordinary article. Such
moral warp, therefore, as it seems now to show
079)

180 A New Era in Old Mexico.
must be charged, in so much as it is at all peculiar,
to peculiar influences brought to bear upon it.
Some of the most important of these have been
pointed out. First of all is to be reckoned the priva
tion of enlightenment. It was bad enough that the
Indian was not educated for the duties of citizen
ship and in order that he might rise in the social
scale. But a far deeper and deadlier injury was
done him by denying him moral instruction. Re
ligious liberty on the basis of an open Bible and free
dom of worship is the greatest boon that can be be
stowed on a nation. It bears directly and essen
tially on the development of individual character.
There can be no better training in the self-reliance
and initiative needed for the ordinary affairs of
life than is had by dealing at first hand and from
childhood with the momentous issues of religion.
The Bible is, in other words, the pioneer of lib
erty. It was precisely because of this that those
who did not desire that Mexico should be free kept
the Bible from her people. In so doing they ac
complished their object of perpetuating a submis
sive spirit among them, but at the cost of that moral
degeneration which the lack of such instruction as
is imparted by the Christian Scriptures is sure to
produce. The Mexicans were taught to consider
themselves Christians, yet were denied the Chris
tian literature which alone could give them to under
stand the meaning of the term. The result was a
profound and widespread confusion as to the na-

The Bible and National Life. 181
ture of Christianity, and, as with the passing years
the evil worked itself out, a disastrous divorce be
tween religion and morality. This separation is
one of the things which should never be. Religion
is not religion if it is unmoral, while ethics without
religion is on a basis so unstable that it furnishes no
guarantee for a solid national life.
It is but stating a manifest truth to add that this
confusion as to the moral significance of the Chris
tian religion was not confined to the people, but in
fected also even their religious teachers. The stand
ard, intellectual and moral, of the Mexican priest
hood, became, as time passed, lower and lower.
When, in the earlier years of the present evangel
ical movement, discussions would arise from time
to time between the priests and the advocates of
Protestantism, it was found that only rarely did a
priest possess any sort of a Bible, and still more rare
ly did one show the most rudimentary acquaintance
with the Bible's contents. The Roman Catholic
Church has much to answer for ; but seeing what the
Bible has been worth to the modern world, it would
seem that no graver responsibility can be charged
against her than the withholding of these benefits
from those peoples over whom she has exercised
control. It is almost superfluous to point out further that
the moral tendency of some of the abuses which the
reform laws attempted to correct was not less grave
than their political objectionableness. Indeed, the

182 A New Era in Old Mexico.
two are most intimately connected. The corruption
of the people by reason of the difficulties placed in
the way of marriage, for example, was appalling. It
was all the worse because it received a quasi sanc
tion on the part of the Church. No serious dif
ficulty was made concerning the absolution and final
pardon of a man or woman who had lived in open
disregard of sexual morality. The priests, indeed,
could not afford to be exacting at this point, for
among them the baneful effects of Rome's dogma
of priestly celibacy were everywhere in evidence.
As to this we have the testimony of one who, a
priest himself, can scarcely be suspected of over
stating the facts through hostility or prejudice.
With the French expeditionary forces at the time
of Maximilian's intervention went the Abbe Do-
menech, as chaplain general, becoming later Maxi
milian's "director of the press." Upon his return
to Paris in 1867 he printed a small volume which he
called Le Mexique tel qu'il est — "Mexico as It Is."
With engaging frankness and in that sprightly and
direct style which seems natural to a Frenchman, he
criticises Mexico — politically, socially, religiously.
This semi-humorous paragraph about the priests
will suffice both as a sample of his manner and as
a corroboration of the statements made above : "The
clergy carry their love of family to that of paternity.
In my travels in the interior of Mexico many pastors
have refused me hospitality in order to prevent my
seeing their 'nieces' and 'cousins,' and their chil-

Catholic Testimonies. 183
dren. It is difficult to determine the character of
these connections. Priests who are known and rec
ognized as fathers of families are by no means rare.
The people consider it natural enough, and do not
rail at the conduct of their pastors except when they
are not content with one wife. In many places the
priests indeed marry, and their wives are known as
such." The abbe then tells with evident amusement of
how one of these women defied a merchant who
threatened to have her arrested because she would
not pay for a dress she had bought. "I would have
you understand, sir," she said, "that I belong to the
Sacred Mitre!" That is, she was entitled to the
fuero of being tried only by a Church court !
Of the ignorance as to the real meaning of Chris
tianity and its bearing upon practical morals which
prevailed throughout Mexico, both this abbe and
Madame Calderon de la Barca, another devout
Catholic, who printed a book about that country,
give ample testimony. Madame de la Barca was the
wife of the first Spanish minister sent to Mexico
after the independence of that country was recog
nized by Spain. Passing through the United States
on her way to Mexico in 1839, she left her daughters
at school in Boston. Her weekly letters to them
were so intelligent and so frank and so sprightly that
W. H. Prescott, the historian, who heard them read
from time to time, begged that they might be print
ed. Under the title of "Life in Mexico" the book

184 A New Era in Old Mexico.
was issued in 1843. I* *s a most vivid picture of
social, religious, and political conditions. The
lady's position gave her access to everything that
was of interest to her, and her pen-pictures disclose
conditions that can only be taken as a stern in
dictment of the Church which had already, when
she wrote, had three hundred years in which to
impress its teachings upon a docile and not stu
pid race.
It is unfortunately true, also, that the divorce be
tween morality and religion was made as complete
in the matter of truth-telling and common honesty
as in regard to social purity. The extreme poverty
and the servile status of the lower classes brought
with them naturally the servile vices of lying and
stealing, against which, unhappily, the Church, with
its Jesuitical distinction between venial and mortal
sins and its mechanical definition of piety, set up no
adequate barrier. Instead of providing remedies
for the evil tendencies of a defective social and polit
ical organization, it indeed but emphasized those
evils by identifying itself with the oppressions and
the invidious distinctions by which the ignorant and
poor were held in their unhappy estate. It cannot
be surprising, therefore, that when the patriot lead
ers set out to break the shackles of the people, their
attacks seemed, in more than one particular, to be
launched directly against the Church. And for the
same reason it must be evident that the burden of
national ignorance and moral degradation, which to

CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA (MEXICO CITY)

The Religious Question. 185
this day menaces the onward march of free institu
tions, makes the question of Mexico's future first of
all a religious question.
The reader will now scarcely need be told that, in
my opinion, the one means for assuring the stability
of the Mexican republic, as well as the permanent
well-being of the people who are its citizens, is the
vital improvement of the religious situation. With
out attempting to settle the question as to whether
the Roman Catholic presentation of religious truth
is ever adequate to insure a stable national life, it
needs only to be pointed out that in this instance its
failure, after four centuries of opportunity, is so ab
solute that something more must be done. From
the testimony of devout Catholics it is evident that
Mexico is far below the religious ideal of even that
Church. In other words, the Catholicism of the
country needs itself to be purged and elevated. Un
prejudiced observers will be sure to add also that
it is time that Church should no longer have a mo-
noply. Its unchallenged supremacy during these cen
turies has, more than any other one thing, tended to
its own corruption. For its own sake, therefore, it
needs a competitor. President Juarez, with that
clearness of vision which made him the greatest of
Mexicans, openly expressed this opinion, and showed
that he was serious in it by giving to the first repre
sentatives of the Protestant faith who arrived soon
after the fall of Maximilian a most hearty welcome.
He even went so far as to contribute for their work

186 A New Era in Old Mexico.
a confiscated Catholic church, the chapel of San Jose
de la Gracia in Mexico City.
It is not my purpose to enter here upon a detailed
portraiture of the darker aspects of Mexico's mental
and moral condition. Besides being outside the pur
pose of this volume, this undertaking is the less at
tractive to me because of my firm conviction that
in the worst of these phases of national character
the Mexican people have been more sinned against
than sinning. A further consideration is that con
ditions there, under the influence of Protestant mis
sions, free schools, a free press, a growing postal
system, railways, telegraph and telephone lines, and
the pressure of enlightened public sentiment, are
rapidly improving. A picture true to-day would be
too dark for to-morrow. Let us look to the bright
future rather than to the gloomy past.
But my effort to set forth the meaning of Mexico's
history will have been in vain if it is not clear by this
time that the future of liberty and progress there,
the permanence of republican institutions, at any
rate, is menaced chiefly by ignorant indifference to
the privileges of citizenship, on the one hand, and,
on the other, by widespread moral incompetence for
their exercise. The improvement intellectually and
morally of the mass of the country's citizenship is
the great task of her statesmen. The exigencies of
the problem of administration have, up to the pres
ent, been such that the government, though repub
lican in name, has been forced to preserve in a large

Value of the Gospel. 187
measure the character of a dictatorship. One of the
chief evils of such a condition of things is the dif
ficulty of the transition from the autocratic to the
democratic manner of government. Paternalism does
not prepare the average citizen for the duties of cit
izenship. It is but human nature that he should rath
er lapse into indifference, and say, "If the president
will do everything, he may." It is manifestly unfair
to President Diaz to blame him for being somewhat
autocratic. He governs in this way not merely be
cause he will, but because he must.
There is not an ill of the body politic nor of the
individual citizen for which the gospel is not the
best of remedies. All that has been said of the val
ue of the open Bible as a civilizing agency is doubly
true when to the Bible is added the influence of
the living Church. Mexico needs Protestantism as
a check and a correction for Romanism, it is true;
infinitely more, however, does she need the pure
gospel of Jesus Christ for its own sake. The im
pulse which the Protestant faith gives to intellectual
development is but a part of its value. Even more
essential to national well-being is the elevation of in
dividual character and the inculcation of self-re
straint and love for others which Christianity brings.
Democracies are established on a permanent foun
dation not simply by enlightenment (ilustracion)
sufficient to cognize what are the rights of man, nor
yet by the spirit of revolution which dares assert
those rights in the teeth of tyranny. Freedom is

188 A New Era in Old Mexico.
not license. The individual's rights must be seen as
limited by the rights of others. Clearness of vision
to see this and power of self-control to accept it
are a fruit of the gospel. It is in the altruism which
Christianity inculcates, in the practice, more or less
perfect, of the golden rule of Christ, that the essen
tial institutions of democracy will find their true sta
bility and permanence.
How deep and melancholy is Mexico's need of the
consolations of the gospel as a balm for the indi
vidual sorrows and the unhealed moral sicknesses of
her people, is a theme upon which I will not enter
here. But that the influence upon her citizens of
Protestant schools, of Protestant freedom of thought,
Protestant probity and initiative, is to be an essen
tial factor in solving the national problems of this
near neighbor of ours is a proposition which must
commend itself to every thoughtful observer.

CHAPTER XX.
Modern Religious Movements.
Only this single chapter is devoted to a history
of Protestantism in Mexico, for the double reason
that full accounts are accessible in the records of
the various societies engaged there and because the
work is going forward so rapidly that any record
of it has only a transitory value. The constitution
of 1857 first proclaimed religious liberty, but since
it was a matter of ten years before that instrument
could be enforced, no mission work of consequence
was undertaken till the early seventies. Before the
sixth decade of the nineteenth century was over, a
little work had been done along the northern bor
der of the country, chiefly by way of distributing
Bibles. A few schools had been begun also, mostly
as private enterprises, but which later became mis
sionary agencies. Late in that decade a minister of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, Rev. H. C. Riley,
reached Mexico City and began at once to provide
for the establishment of Protestantism. He was well
introduced and had the confidence and indirect sup
port of President Juarez. So impressed was the
president with the value of this new movement that
he turned over to Mr. Riley one of the confiscated
chapels, as has been already noted, and opened the
(189)

190 A New Era in Old Mexico.
way for his purchase of another and much larger
one. About the same time several spontaneous reli
gious movements arose among the Mexicans them
selves, one of them in particular having crystallized
about a French Bible brought over by one of Na
poleon's soldiers. It fell into the hands of a pa
triot Mexican soldier, at the time a prisoner of the
French, named Sostenes Juarez. So taken was he
with its contents that he said to himself, "This is
a better weapon with which to fight the clero than
is the sword." As soon as possible therefore after
obtaining his release he organized a little society
and began to be a teacher of the Bible. This was in
1865. Later he became a minister of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South. The old French Bible
with the manuscript articles of organization of
that primitive society are now in the archives of
that Church's Mission Board at Nashville, Tenn.
Mr. Riley's work received support for a time from
a sort of interdenominational organization, but later
was taken over by the Board of Missions of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,
and since that time has suffered a good many vicis
situdes. For a time it was decidedly the most vig
orous and promising of the evangelical movements,
and did an especially valuable service in training for
the ministry a number of bright young Mexicans.
Mr. Riley was made a bishop of his Church, but
was later deposed, after which he connected him-

Early Methods and Movements. igi
self for a time with an independent movement. The
mission of the Episcopal Church is now in a fairly
flourishing condition.
In 1873 the two branches of Episcopal Methodism
began work, and in rapid order were followed by
the Presbyterians (North and South and Associated
Reformed), the Baptists, North and South, the Con
gregationalists (American Board), the Friends, the
Christian Church or Disciples, and the Seventh Day
Adventists. There are, besides, one or two individu
al and independent enterprises, of English origin,
and quite recently a so-called "Mexican National
Evangelical Church" has arisen.
All these mission movements have proceeded
along similar lines and in substantial agreement
with each other. In the early days when access to
the people was difficult and rather violent persecu
tion common, recourse was had to the agency of
day schools for children. The public school sys
tem was at the time chaotic, and the offer of instruc
tion in English was found to be a special inducement.
Later the primary day school has been less used,
the public schools having developed a good deal
and the way having opened for the expenditure of
most of the mission funds on more, directly evan
gelistic work. It is no longer difficult to get at
the people. They are quite willing to come to the
preaching places provided these are kept open at no
expense to them and they can hear a pleasant and
interesting speaker.

ic.2 A New Era in Old Mexico.
To rent or build the necessary chapels and to train
and support the ministers to speak in them absorbs
most of the money now employed in the active prop
aganda of Protestantism. School work is kept up
mostly in boarding schools, where the young preach
ers are prepared for their work, and the young wom
en are trained under a protection and with moral in
fluences which they could not elsewhere obtain.
So much of gratuitous work has had some bad
effects on the native churches which have meantime
been organized. Having been brought to a knowl
edge of the gospel by provisions for worship which
cost them nothing, and being able to secure the edu
cation of their choicest boys and girls in schools
where not only tuition but often board and books,
and sometimes even clothes, are free, has catered to
their dependent and indigent spirit. They are there
fore reluctant to take upon themselves even the
slight part of the burden of further propagating the
churches which in their poverty they might be able
to bear. As a result they miss to a degree the stim
ulation which comes of a sense of community of in
terest, of partnership in a great enterprise, and are
consequently often but loosely attached to their new
faith. Sometimes also the young men and women,
carefully educated for careers of service in the
Church, drift away from it when their training has
been finished, into more attractive or lucrative pur
suits. This is but one phase of that gravest of all mis-

Missionaries vs. Natives. 193
sionary problems, to wit, the supply and equipment
of an adequate force of native workers, and through
them the establishment of an independent and self-
propagating native Church. Missionaries from an
other country can serve as pioneers. They can map
out the territory, plant the lines, clear away the pri
mary obstacles. They can serve as managers, teach
ers, and advisers. They can superintend the found
ing of schools, the building of chapels, the inaugu
ration of a literature. But after congregations are
gathered and converts are united into churches,
then only those to the manner born can become .suc
cessful pastors. It is clear therefore that the early
development of the native church will depend upon
the quality of the native ministry. The training of
these ministers is at once the most important and the
most difficult of the missionary's tasks.
To a limited extent advantage has been taken in
Mexico of hospitals and medical work. The recep
tion by the Mexican people of this class of work has
been heartier than one would have expected, and
such work will doubtless be extended in the future.
The Methodists have at present establishments of
this kind at Guanajuato and at Monterey, and the
Adventists at Guadalajara.
The British and Foreign Bible Society, which sent
an agent to Mexico in the .sixties, and the American
Bible Society, to which it later yielded the entire
field, have been powerful agencies in the promotion
of religious truth there. I have already spoken of
J3

194 A New Era in Old Mexico.
the almost magical effect wrought by the reading of
the Bible upon those who, though Christians in be
lief and intention, are nevertheless very much in the
dark as to the true nature of Christianity. So no
table is this that all the evangelical missions openly
and freely acknowledge their dependence on these
societies which disseminate the Christian Scriptures.
For many years the American Bible Society has cov
ered Mexico with a network of agencies. Its col
porteurs are everywhere. They precede the mis
sionary and return again to reenforce him. Loyalty
to the Bible and enthusiasm for its propagation and
acceptance form a common standing-ground for di
verse societies and denominations, and enable them
to present to this extent, at least, a solid front to the
hostility of Romanism.
It is needless to say that the work of the Protestant
missions, up to the present, has been well-nigh ex
clusively among the people of the lowest social stra
tum. This has been the history of religious move
ments in most nations. The poor, those who have
nothing to lose and all to gain ; the humble, who are
thereby also docile ; the ignorant who, being ignorant,
are willing to be instructed, — among such our Lord
himself did his work, and from his day to this mis
sionaries have followed in his footsteps. This fact,
however, leads many observers to underestimate the
Protestant movement in Mexico. More than one
prominent Mexican, of the governing class, have

Significance of Protestantism. 195
within recent years represented Protestantism there
as insignificant.
But it is far from it. In the first place its num
bers make it already significant, as will appear from
the statistics appended to this chapter. Moreover,
for every communicant there will be an average of
two or more friendly "adherents," besides one or
two children. The statistics of communicants may
therefore safely be multiplied by five in order to ex
hibit the real Protestant population. Nor is this all.
For the present only the poor are among the con
verts. The well-to-do have no disposition to mix
with these. They are also bound by many social and
commercial bonds. A change of religion would cost
them too much. And Protestantism seems to them
cheap and lacking in prestige. Nevertheless, it will
prove, when they really come to know about it, far
more congenial to them than is Catholicism. Al
ready many of them are Catholics only in name.
And the day is not far distant when the evangelical
faith will begin to make inroads especially among
the liberal-minded who openly declare their dislike
of the clergy and their ways, and who are therefore
trying, as best they may, to get on without religion.
Besides, those who are accepting the gospel in
poverty and in humility, who have occupied hither
to an insignificant place in national affairs, are now
being elevated by forces which will soon make them
an important element in their country's welfare.
The lower classes will not remain down when they

196 A New Era in Old Mexico.
acquire the virtues and the intelligence which shall
fit them to compete with those who have heretofore
always been their unchallenged superiors. Thus
pressure both from above and from below is coming
to bear on the indurated social stratification of Mex
ico. It will not be many decades till these ancient
barriers to a true democracy are shattered.
The territory of Mexico is pretty well covered by
the several societies engaged in missionary opera
tions. There is no great deal of friction among
them, but rather a decided spirit of good will and co
operation. Nearly all the centers of population have
one or more stations, and the work in isolated towns
and villages is not infrequently more genuine and
progressive than in the cities. There is not a great
deal of strictly rural life among the Mexicans, who
are social in their nature and .spontaneously gather
into villages.
The large and homogeneous groups of Indians in
various mountainous sections of the country have
not yet received the attention from the several boards
and their missionaries which their numbers warrant.
It will be well if in the early future this ground be
carefully canvassed to see if it will not be worth
while to furnish these peoples with missionaries and
a literature in their own dialects. They have but
a slight knowledge of Spanish, and are by every to
ken legitimate objects of missionary endeavor.
Ever since President Diaz got his administration
in hand he has earnestly striven to uphold the con-

Diaz and Protestantism. 197
stitutional provisions on the subject of religious lib
erty. The laws of Mexico afford ample protection
for the celebration of worship according to the dic
tates of every man's conscience. Of course it hap
pened often in the early years of Protestantism that
ignorant and prejudiced priests incited the people to
acts of persecution, and the local representatives of
the civil government refused to punish or repress
these breaches of the peace. But the attitude of the
president has gradually become well known, and no
petty official can now afford to neglect his duty at
this point under penalty of losing his office. The
president is not openly friendly to Protestantism, but
is annoyed and humiliated by any sort of a religious
riot, since he considers it a reflection upon the civili
zation of his country.
13*

STATISTICS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS.

VO 00

Denomination.

Methodist Episcopal Church, South
Methodist Episcopal Church 
Presbyterian Church 
Baptist, North and South 
Congregational 
Friends 
Southern Presbyterian 
Associate Reformed Presbyterian .
Protestant Episcopal 
Cumberland Presbyterian 
Totals 

55282129 16
15 2
11 2
8

187

50
36
49 21 11 78
7
17 1

207

¦o £¦

114 52
45 11
'418
16

276

E

6,3" 5.749*
4>647 2,0221,183 655 54i
33o
871 60

22,369

Q.

$ 359,007 03
876,650 00

280,300 00
100,000 00
42,000 00
1,000 00

10,000 00

$1,668,957 03

18731872 1872
18801882 ftfji
18711874

1888

* Including probationers.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
The scarcity of historical books concerning Mexico has
been noted. Several volumes of H. H. Bancroft's compre
hensive "History of the Pacific Coast" are devoted to Mexico,
and the same writer prepared, or had prepared, a "Popular
History of the Mexican People." The latter is colorless and
unsatisfactory; the former voluminous and inaccessible. The
histories of Noll, Ober, and Mrs. Hale are mere brief compila
tions. Noll's "From Empire to Republic" is a fairly instruct
ive outline of the political history of the country from 1810
to 1870. It is deficient in perspective and in grasp upon the
real meaning of events. The author has inserted in it an
admirable bibliography, to which the reader is referred. Of
serious books not specifically historical the best are Thomp
son's "Recollections of Mexico," Abbott's "Mexico and the
United States," Butler's "Mexico in Transition," and Brown's
"Latin America." Of a more popular type are Madame de la
Barca's "Life in Mexico," Bishop's "Old Mexico and Her
Lost Provinces," Ober's "Travels in Mexico," Gooch's "Face
to Face with the Mexicans," etc. Lummis's "Awakening of
a Nation" is sensational and unreliable. Romero's "Mexico
and the United States" contains much valuable matter. (199)

INDEX.

Acapulco, 76.
Allende, 68, 72, 73.
Altamirano, 61.
Alvarez, 104.
Alvarado, Pedro, 47.
Apodaca, 82.
Azcapotzalco, 29.
Aztecs, 20, 28, 29.
Beans, 10.
Benito Juarez : see Juarez.
Bible, 180, 181, 190.
Bravo, Nicolas, 78, 90.
Calderon de la Barca, 183.
Calleja, 73, 76, 77, 80, 81.
Carlota, 123, 127.
Casas (Padre de las), 56.
Cemeteries, 177, 178.
Chichimecs, 21, 29.
Chihuahua, 74.
Church party, 97, 174.
Cinco de Mayo, 120.
Citizenship, 135.
Civil marriage, 177.
Clergy, 151, 182.
Coffee, 12.
Colegio de San Nicolas, 66,
76, 143-
Comonfort, 108, 109, 115.
Congress of Chilpancingo, 79.
Consejo de las Indias: see
Royal Council.

Constitution, 92, 103, 108.
Cortes (Spanish), 83, 86.
Cortez, 38, 40, 42, 46.
Cotton, 10.
Creoles, 66.
Cuba, 148.
Diaz, Porfirio, 135, 153, 155,
158, 160, 161, 163.
Diego Velasquez, 38.
Dominguez, 67.
Domenech, Abbe, 182.
Farias : see Gomez Farias.
53-
Egypt, 27.
Encomiendas, 57.
Eugenie, 113.
Farias : see Gomez Farias.
Ferdinand VII., 61, 82, 86, 96.
Foreign investments, 167.
Franciscans, 111.
French Intervention, 124, 151.
Fueros, 89, 92, 103, 105.
Gomez Farias, 92, 105, 108,
109, 133.
Gonzales, Gen. Manuel, 165.
Government, 65.
Grito, 69.
Guanajuato, 70.
Guerrero, 83. (201)

202

Index.

Henequen, ii.
Hidalgo, Padre, 66, 67, 70, 72,
Human sacrifices, 31.
73-
Iglesias, Jose Maria, 160.
Indians, 23, 24, 138, 146, 180.
Indian corn, 9.
Indian dialects, 26.
Inquisition : see Spanish In
quisition.
Intervention: see French In
tervention.
Iturbide, 83, 87, 97.
Ixtle, 11.
Japanese, 17.
Jecker, 118, 121.
Jesuits, in, 112.
Juarez, Benito, 104, 106, 107,
109, in, US, 130, 152, 155,
157-
Lerdo de Tejada, Miguel, 92.
Leredo de Tejada, Sebastian,
153, 157, 159, 160.
Leyes de Reforma: see Re
form Laws.
Maguey, ii.
Marina, 40.
Marquez, Lorenzo, 117, 128,
130.
Masonry, 90.
Mayas, 18, 28.
Maximilian, 114, 122, 124,
129, 130, 151.
Mejia, Gen., 130.
Mestizos, 16, 66.

Mezcal, 11.
Mexican coat of arms, 21.
Michoacan, 34.
Mina, Javier, 82.
Mines, 14.
Miramon, 117, 128, 130.
Missionaries, 193.
Mixtecs, 19.
Moctezuma, 30, 46, 48.
Monopolies, 65.
Monroe doctrine, 88, 125.
Moorish influence, 27.
Morelia, 66, 71.
Morelos, 76, 81.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 61.
Napoleon III., 113, 115, 119,
121, 123, 126, 127.
National Museum, 31.
National credit, 172.
New Spain, 51, 54.
Noche Triste, 49.
Ocampo, Melchor, 92, 106,
133-
O'Donoju, 84.
"Plan de la Noria," 155.
Plateau of Mexico, 5.
"Porfiristas," 156, 161.
Prescott, 50, 183.
Prieto, Guillermo, 92, 156.
Protestantism, 189, 195.
Public schools, 101, 174, 175,
191.
Puebla, 120.
Queretaro, 65, 67, 128.

Index.

203

Railroads, 166.
Rainfall, 6.
Reform Laws, 103, 104, 159,
177.
Religious orders, 55, no.
Religious situation, 185.
Revolution, 59, 94.
Royal Council, 51, 148.
Rubber plant, 13.
Rurales, 169.
Santa Anna, 90, 106, 163.
Schools, 145.
Seward, W. H., 126.
Silver, 13, 172.
Spanish Inquisition, 52, 141,
149.
Spanish juntas, 62, 63.
Spanish language, 26.
Sugar cane, 10.
Tarascan Indians, 35.
Tariffs, 171.

Tenochtitlan (Mexico City),
29, 45-
Texas, 91.
"The Fair God," 43.
Tlaxcala, 33, 44.
Toltecs, 18, 20.
Tierra caliente, 2.
Tierra fria, 4.
Tierra templada, 3, 4.
Tzintzuntzan, 35.
Venegas, 63.
Vera Cruz, 41, 117.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 69.
Volcanoes, 7.
War with the United States,
91.
Yellow fever, 3.
Zacatecas, 75.
Zapotecs, 19.
Zaragoza, 120.

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