The Indian, theoretically, now owned Mexico. But he was penniless and ignorant, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Its riches were the sort that required money and engineering brains. Its varied climes would produce any crop grown elsewhere in the world, but in most regions they required extensive irrigation. Its rugged mountains possessed a vast store of mineral wealth—iron, onyx, opals, topazes, emeralds, jade, marble, mercury, lead, zinc, antimony, asphaltum, coal, copper, silver, and gold—but they needed machinery and transportation. Its eastern sands with their fortune in oil had already made this the third petroleum-producing country of the world, when only a tenth of the possible fields had been prospected, but they were of no value to the untrained Mexican peon. He found himself poorer than ever.
When, in 1920, Obregon raised his revolutionary standard, the Indian turned against Carranza. Obregon proved the most capable president since Diaz. He was adept at compromise. He quickly pacified the country, hanging the smaller bandits, and conciliating the larger bandits (like Villa) with the promise of forgiveness. He pleased the Indian with agrarian reforms, splitting up the larger estates into small land-holdings. He brought back the foreign capitalist with new concessions. Mexico did not become the heaven which Obregon’s American propaganda would have had us believe, but it gave much promise.
Its one dark cloud was a rising tide of Bolshevism. Obregon, with all his compromise, still favored the Indian. And the Indian, sensing his new strength, gloried in it. In Vera Cruz, where the new movement was strongest, workmen were striking constantly on trivial excuse or no excuse at all, tenants had formed a habit of hanging out red flags as a sign that they were tired of paying rent, and stevedores were refusing to unload steamers until the principal port of Mexico was so constantly tied up as to depress seriously all Mexican business.
The native landholders and property owners—not to mention many of the foreign promoters—were becoming seriously alarmed at the menace of this Bolshevism. When it became evident that Obregon was favoring as his successor at the 1924 elections a man who favored the Indian even more stoutly than he himself—General Calles—the moneyed interests promptly started a new revolution headed by Adolfo de la Huerta. The significant point about this revolution is that the Indian—or a part of the Indian population—promptly rose to follow the De la Huerta standard, deserting his own shibboleths to die for principles which throughout all earlier Mexican history he had striven to overthrow.
Among the fifteen million people of Mexico, only one million are of pure white ancestry. Six million are full-blooded Indians. Among the other eight million mestizos aboriginal strains predominate. With employment and fair treatment the natives are peaceable. But like their Aztec ancestors they are potential fighters. When discontent awakens the old spirit of rebellion first aroused by the Spaniard, they rise blindly to follow some new leader, believing that at last they have discovered a friend, when they have merely discovered another self-seeking politician bent upon their exploitation. When they do find a friend, they are too ignorant to appreciate the fact. They are the ready dupes of ambitious generals.
V
In Tapachula, the insurrection was marked principally by much blowing of bugles on the part of the Obregon garrison.
The civilian population remained unperturbed.
The soldiery hailed the affair as another good excuse for drinking. Possibly their officers had paid them as a first step toward insuring their loyalty in the campaign to follow. They promptly filled the local bar-rooms, and swaggered about the streets with the air of increased importance which comes to a military man in time of war.
As always in Mexico, the martial spirit brought to the surface the anti-foreign sentiment. The peon, whatever his opinion of gringos, is usually polite, but inspired by thoughts of battle—and a few swigs of rum—he occasionally tells the foreigner what he thinks of him. A fat sergeant, careening wildly by on a little burro, so drunk that he threatened at every lurch to overturn his diminutive mount, reviled my ancestry as he galloped past. A group of soldiers, making merry in a saloon near the plaza, set down their bottle of mescal to damn all Americans. One of them staggered out with the evident intention of picking a quarrel, but his attention was distracted at the sight of a Tehuana girl lingering at the curb. Seizing her arm, he grinned in an effort at blandishment. She broke loose with an angry, “Vaya! Run along! Andale!” and hurried down the street, while a policeman on the corner chuckled and twirled his own moustachios. The soldier turned to me again, muttering something about tearing a gringo’s heart from the breast. He started toward me, wavered unsteadily, collided with a house-wall and collapsed in the gutter.