Latin America: Its Rise and Progress

by Francisco García Calderón

The destruction of the revolutionary instinct constituted the negative side of his work; Diaz built upon this foundation an industrial republic, practical and laborious. Weary of barren ideologies, he put the Reformation and its Jacobin doctrines out of his mind, accepted and encouraged the Yankee influence which had made Lerdo de Tejada so uneasy, conquered barbarism and the desert by means of the railway, and raised a number of loans. He was the president of an industrial epoch.

His economic labours were imposing; in twenty-five years Mexico was transformed from a divided republic into a modern State, from a bankrupt nation into a prosperous and highly solvent people. Diaz recalls the gods who built cities and filled the earth with the gold of fruitful grain, and taught the virtues of the metals and of fire. "Modern Mexico," writes the Times in 1909, "is the creation of the genius of General Diaz; he is the greatest statesman the transatlantic Latin communities have produced since their foundation." This organiser of peace astonished the old-established nations, who listened attentively to the fruitful words of light which fell from the lips of the Aztec demigod.

In 1884 Diaz commenced to reorganise the finances of his country. He was seconded in his task by eminent secretaries like Limantour and clever financiers like Romero and Macedo. The gold of the United States invaded the market; it was employed in the construction of railways and in industrial undertakings. In 1905 Limantour established the gold standard as basis of the monetary system. The service of the debt was regularised by agreement with foreign creditors; the budgets ceased to present deficits; in ten years the surplus reached a sum of seven million pesos. By 1894 the exports were in excess of the imports. Thanks to this favourable commercial balance, credit increased, and industries were multiplied; the exuberant national prosperity attracted foreign capital and settled it in the country. Here are some figures touching this progress. In 1876, at the beginning of Diaz's rule, the Mexican imports amounted to 28 millions of pesos (silver) and the exports to 32 millions; in 1901 the amount of the former was 143 millions and of the latter 148 millions. The imports, a proof of the wealth of the country, had increased fivefold; the exports, a sign of agricultural and mineral production, had increased almost in proportion. In twenty years (1880-1900) the yield of the mining industry increased from 24 to 60 millions, and in the same period 20 banks were founded. A loan of 40 million dollars was contracted in 1904, being issued at 94, bearing 4 per cent interest, on the sole security of the national credit; that is, the security usual in such transactions in the case of the great European nations. In ten years the budget has doubled, increasing from 50 to 100 millions. The surplus of the fiscal revenue is devoted to decreasing the burden of taxation, and in providing the country with fine and spacious public edifices. The service of the foreign debt has been secured with a continuity rare in America, more than 30 per cent. of certain budgets having been used for that purpose. The result of the industrial evolution of the country is proving to the detriment of agriculture, as in the Germany of Bismarck and the Russia of Count Witte; looms, paper-mills, hat-factories, &c., have been established. The national requirements being satisfied, the products of agriculture are exported—tobacco, rubber, and sugar. The network of railways is being greatly extended, and irrigation works are being installed. Colonies of Boers have settled in Mexico. The invasion of capital goes on unchecked, as does the development of the economic life of the country, and its political progress, revealed by its external credit.

Thus, the President, by means of sound money, steady finance, and foreign gold, has founded a practical republic. He has overcome the traditional revolts—the ardour of the Jacobins and racial passions—by a utilitarian campaign; he has created a quiet and peaceful State, in which nothing is to be heard but the sound of its factories. A great leveller, he has been, according to the Spanish tradition, a Cæsar at the head of a democracy, the arbiter of national conflicts, the supreme caudillo, obedient to the voices of tradition.

Sierra, the Athenian minister, and Bulnes, the tempestuous historian, exalt him in admirable dithyrambics. Sierra states that Diaz created "the political religion of peace." But in the Aztec nation this cult demands its sacrifices. Bulnes considers that the Dictator procured peace by "the system of Augustus as expounded by Machiavelli"; he gave the caciques "riches and honours," but not the government. And, in fact, Porfirio Diaz has built up the new Mexico by freeing it from the sectarian struggles and the foreign invasion which threatened to destroy it; but his work has been marred by uncertainty, and a heavy shadow has weighed on uneasy spirits.[[4]] The President at last abdicated his powers after a bloody revolution, and it is not easy to say whether or no his removal will not result in anarchy or new Dictators. His minister, Sierra, has written that the political system of the Dictator "is terribly dangerous for the future, for it imposes customs which are contrary to self-government, without which there may be great men, but not a great people"; and Bulnes says: "The personal régime is magnificent as an exception," for "under its empire a people grows accustomed to expect everything as a favour and a grace; to be the slave of the first who strikes it, or the shameless prostitute of the first to caress it."

These criticisms prove that General Diaz has not applied the British methods of preparation for self-government by means of a firm tutelage. Those who condemn his long autocracy say that he enervated men's minds by means of terror, and has accentuated the Aztec gloom by a narrow and monotonous absolutism. Dictatorships are not societies of freemen; they give humanity uniformity and servility. In abandoning the supreme power after establishing order and peace, by presiding as moral authority over the free development of republican institutions, Porfirio Diaz, like Don Pedro in Brazil, might have been the supreme educator of the democracy.

He governed with the aid of the "scientific" party—a group which believes in the virtue and power of science, exiles theology and metaphysics, denies mystery, and confesses utilitarianism as its practice and positivism as its doctrine. The Mexican politicians, in renouncing Catholicism after the Reformation and the passing of the Jacobin laws, have not abandoned dogma and absolutism in doctrine and in life. As in modern Brazil, positivism in becoming the official doctrine. The heirs of Juarez are slowly returning to Catholicism; they aspire to definite certitudes; they have their "Syllabus." In the President political majesty and the religious pontificate were united, as in the Muscovite Czars and the Spanish kings.

In the restoration of the colonial order Juarez and Lerdo de Tejada attracted European capital, for the Yankee supremacy troubled them. Against this policy, which was based on racial interests, General Diaz protected North American capital; bankers and adventurers invaded the country, dominated its industries, and built railways. How check the fatal current which brings the all-conquering gold from the North? The national transformation is the work of the magnates of Wall Street; Mexico is becoming a "zone of influence" for the United States.