RECEPTION BY THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES
Speech of Licentiate Manuel Calero
President of the Chamber
October 3, 1907
Honorable Secretary of State, welcome; the national representation, the chamber that constitutionally symbolizes that people which in this section of the western hemisphere, is ever striving, ever struggling to attain a higher civilization, to win for itself a respected name among nations, feels pleasure in welcoming you to its midst. You are at the present moment the symbolical representation of a great and friendly people and the personification of its brotherly feelings toward us. You, honored sir, are our guest; and were the traditional chivalry of our people not sufficient justification for our cordiality toward you, the high character of your office, the luster encircling your name, and the mission of peace which brings you to this land, would all move us to open our arms to you, to show you what we are and what we would be, so that, on returning to your country, you may tell the millions of your fellow-citizens who will hang upon your words with rapt attention, that Mexico is not that mythical land, which legends shroud in the mists of the adventurous romance of the old Latin countries, restless, mistrustful, dreamy; nay rather, you will tell them, that it is a sturdy young nation, starting out, aye, already started, on the highroad of civilization and industrialism; that it pursues lofty ideals and strives to attain them, that its heart beats at the thought of universal solidarity, that it sees in the foreigner a friend, that it answers your brotherly message with a frank and kindly greeting, free from resentment for the past, and trusting in the omens of the future.
Your name is not unknown to us. We have followed the trail of your labors and triumphs for the last decade. We know, too, the people from whom you have come; and setting aside all false modesty, can truly say we know them better than they know us. The last thirty years of free intercourse between this country and yours have seen an overflow of men and money from north to south; we have dashed the mist from our eyes and have endeavored to wring from you, more fortunate and wiser than ourselves, the secrets of your greatness and the causes of your astounding prosperity.
That you once wronged us, that, when burning political, economic, and humane problems beset you, the course of justice was momentarily hampered, we have not forgotten; we have not. But as the years have rolled on you have won back, inch by inch, your place in our affections; the intercourse every day has become closer and closer between your people and ours, stepping over the bounds set by race and tongue, infusing new life into this feeling of mutual good will and friendship, which tends to establish harmony of ideals and close similarity of destiny.
So it is happening and so should it be. Offsprings of the same continent, your institutions point out the path for the development of ours, your mental and moral advance fires the vigor of our spirit, your tireless activity excites us to action; in a word, your progress uplifts our noblest ambitions. We are both marching on to the victories of civilization, although your lot, in the course of history, shall have been that of forerunners.
One of your scholars has said that the American nation has rendered five eminent services to the world's civilization. True are his words. For the American nation has, in the first place, sustained by word and by deed, the principle that the medium of bringing differences between nations to an end, is arbitration; it has accepted and practised religious toleration as has no other nation; it has known how to raise the dignity of man, by giving to the political vote the development which a true democracy calls for; it has thrown open its doors to all such as seek progress and liberty in your country, and it has taken them in to form part of one and the same great soul; and lastly, it has known, as no other nation has, how to scatter abroad material benefits, the very basis of the moral and mental perfection of the individual. To these factors and to others derived from the conditions of its privileged soil, is due the great importance of the American people as a powerful force in the progress of humanity.
I shall not attempt to analyze in their essence these five glorious victories of civilization. My mind is dazed by the victory of democracy through the true action of the suffrage. This is the germ, the primary origin of your greatness as a people, which makes you the beacon for the eager gaze of all those who, down-trodden by power or by poverty, seek under the shelter of your wise laws, the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to quote the sacred formula of your Declaration of Independence; this it is which explains why neither the difference of race and language, nor the morbid influence produced in the mind by secular despotism, nor the infinite diversity of religion, is an obstacle to the hundreds of thousands of helpless beings whom year by year the Old World is casting on your shores, to be transformed into citizens and become identified with the new fatherland, as if the national spirit had breathed into the souls of these new arrivals love for your glorious traditions and your lofty ideals of liberty, justice, and progress. The American fatherland is not hemmed in by battlements; it is the redeemer of all miseries, it is the refuge of all those who, in their flight from tyranny, like your illustrious Carl Schurz, exclaim: ubi libertas, ibi patria!
We, less blessed by fortune, but no whit less rich in ideals and lofty aspirations, find pleasure in studying your people. We shall endeavor to reap benefits from the lessons of your success, and we shall try to avert the great evils which are born of a prosperity such as yours, and which would undermine the walls of your civilization, did there not arise from out of your midst men of great virtue and indomitable strength of will, armed for the fray against guilt, combating evil, true apostles of right. Theodore Roosevelt is such a man, the most conspicuous of our times, the ardent devotee of justice, who claims for good citizens, for the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, perfect equality and liberty unrestrained, without which lawful energies may not expand; and demands alike for all equal justice, equal treatment, "a square deal"—to use his own concise and vigorous phrase.
This it is which explains the whole-hearted prestige won by your Chief Executive within the limits of your own country, and which has passed the bounds of your territory and been merged in the international prestige accorded to him by all cultured nations. And, in no small measure, did you with your knowledge, your ceaseless labor and your delicate tact contribute to this happy end. Thus the world has seen how the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, outreaching the roar of the cannons of Mukden, put an end to the war which in shame to human culture heralded the dawn of the twentieth century; it has seen how, in deference to his initiative, the cultured nations of the world hastened to meet at The Hague Conference, and how, as a reward for his constant efforts, united with those of the glorious Chief Executive of this republic, who now receives you with every mark of honor, the disorders in the neighboring republics to the south were pacified, and these are now making ready for a work of peace and harmony,—the beginning of that longed-for era of prosperity.
The international importance achieved by your government and your country had its beginning when President Monroe gave to the world his famous doctrine, so debated, so misunderstood, and perhaps so dangerous, if—as has sometimes been thought—it might be used as a means of illegitimate preponderance at the expense of the sovereignty of other nations. The Monroe Doctrine embodies, nevertheless, and we should not hesitate to say so, the first principle of international law of a great part of this continent, if not the whole. This it means for us Mexicans, ever since the President of the Republic announced it to Congress in his memorable message of April, 1896, received with general acclamation by the national representatives, and later by the whole country. The integrity of the nations of this continent is of vital interest to all, collectively, and not alone to the country immediately affected. Any attack on this integrity should constitute an offense in the eyes of the other nations of America. Accordingly, one of our great thinkers and statesmen has wisely said: "America for Americans means each country for its own people, to the exclusion of all foreign interference, whether this comes from other countries of this continent or whether it comes from any other nation whatsoever. And we in our trying struggles of the past have given ample proof to the whole world of our homage to independence and our hatred of all foreign intervention"—to use President Díaz's own words.
From among the various formulas adopted by the interpreters of the Monroe Doctrine, we Latin American nations should gather and keep as a precious pledge, that which Theodore Roosevelt embodied in his famous speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of the Buffalo Exposition. Addressing the republics of the New World, the illustrious statesman, then Vice-President of the United States of America, said:
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine is not to be invoked for the aggrandizement of any one of us here on this continent at the expense of any one else on this continent. It should be regarded simply as a great international Pan American policy, vital to the interests of all of us. The United States has and ought to have, and must ever have, only the desire to see her sister commonwealths in the western hemisphere continue to flourish, and the determination that no Old World power shall acquire new territory here on this western continent. We of the two Americas must be left to work out our own salvation along our own lines; and if we are wise we will make it understood as a cardinal feature of our joint foreign policy that, on the one hand, we will not submit to territorial aggrandizement on this continent by any Old World power, and that, on the other hand, among ourselves each nation must scrupulously regard the rights and interests of the others, so that, instead of any one of us committing the criminal folly of trying to rise at the expense of our neighbors, we shall all strive upward in honest and manly brotherhood, shoulder to shoulder.
And you, honored sir, have not been less explicit. Your words, pronounced on a memorable occasion during your recent visit to South America, before all the free peoples of this continent gathered together at the third Pan American Conference, should be disclosed, should reach the ears of my fellow-citizens, for these very words of yours, as President Roosevelt solemnly declared in his last message to the Congress of the United States, have revealed to all who doubted the spirit of complete equality which inspired the Monroe Doctrine, what is the attitude of the United States towards the other American republics, and what its purposes. You declared then:
We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire; and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every American republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to accomplish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together.
You spoke words of truth, and know, honored sir, that those are also our aspirations, those our aims; and thither we wend our way, with the constant steadiness which the Mexican people showed in its struggles for liberty and the attainment of the great principles already embodied in our constitution and laws. Deign to believe it, and when you return to the fatherland, pray do not ever forget that, if we have showered on you the hospitality such as is only offered to a friend, it is because your ideals are ours, because we citizens of this land, no less than those of yours, accept as the supreme dogma of our political religion the immortal words of President Lincoln, that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Mr. Root's Reply
I am doubly sensible of the high honor which you have conferred upon me by this audience today. I am sensible also of the great mark of friendship to my country involved in the reception of one of her officers in this distinguished manner by the lawmaking—the popular lawmaking—body of this great republic. I sincerely hope, not merely that I personally may never do aught to show myself unworthy of your consideration, but that my country may forever, in its attitude and conduct toward the people of Mexico, justify your kindness.
You will gather from my words, which your president has been good enough to quote in the admirable and graceful address he has just made, that I am one of those who believe that the old days when nations sought to enrich themselves by taking away the wealth of others by force, ought to pass and are passing. I believe, and I am happy to know that the great mass of my countrymen believe, that it is not only more Christian, not only more honorable, but also more useful and beneficial for all nations, and especially all neighboring nations, to unite in helping each other create more wealth, so that all may be rich and prosperous, rather than to seek to take it away from each other.
I find here in this sanctuary of laws, in this body charged with making the laws, the most interesting, the most important, and the most sacred thing in the republic of Mexico. I am not unmindful of the difficulties which confront you, gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, in the task that you perform for your country. The discussion of public questions, the reconciliation of differing opinions, the adjustment of different local interests all over this vast country, the reaching of just conclusions, the compromises necessary so often between different interests, present to the members of a legislative body of a republic difficulties little understood by the people at large and requiring for their solution the highest order of ability, self-denial, and love of country. I beg you to take my testimony, coming from another land long engaged in grappling with the same kind of difficulties; I beg you to take my testimony that the troubles of your body in legislating for your country, and those which you are to encounter in the future, are not peculiar to your country, to your race, to your institutions, to your customs. They inhere in the task before every legislative body representing the vastly differing interests, opinions, sentiments, and desires of a people.
Mr. President and gentlemen of the Chamber of Deputies, it is my sincere desire and the desire of my countrymen, that in the performance of this task for the republic of Mexico you may be guided in wisdom and in peace. May you possess that self-restraint which is so necessary to the preservation and security for property, for enterprise, and for life, guarding you always from unwise extremes, leading you always to test every question of legislation by sound principles taught by history. May you always, and every one of you, be so inspired by love of country, that you may be able to sink all personal ambitions and interests, to do only that which is for the benefit of your country; so that through your actions and inspired by your example the spirit of nationality which I see growing among the people of Mexico, may continue to increase until it is the living and controlling spirit of all the people from the Gulf to the Pacific. May you have in your deliberations and your action something of the self-sacrificing spirit of the humble priest Hidalgo, which, without ambition on his part, with no other motive but the love of his country, has written his name among the great benefactors of humanity. May you have something of the patriotism and genius of Benito Juárez, which enabled him with his strong hand to take Mexico out of the conditions of warring factions when individual ambition rose above the love of country. May you have something of that constancy and high courage which has made for the soldier and the statesman who now sits in the chair of the chief magistrate of Mexico, a place in history above scores and hundreds of emperors and kings with high-sounding title and no record in life but the desire for personal advancement.
And so, members of the Chamber of Deputies—may I say, my friends—brothers in the work of seeking by law to advance the peace and prosperity of mankind—may you be able to bring in the rule of justice, of ordered liberty, of peace, of happy homes, of opportunity for children to rise, of opportunity for old age to pass its days in peace. My brother workers in the cause of popular government, of human rights and human happiness, I thank you for the opportunity to say, "God bless you in your labors", which will always have my sympathy and the sympathy of my people.