Soon after the establishment of the Republic the two political parties in the land became defined as Feudalist and Modernist. In Encinitas and in western San Jacinto, the will of the great landowners was still law: in Santa Barbara City, Pituba and in Meruel a new and vigorous race was demanding freedom from the feudal lords and wider teaching than the priests gave. As the feeling between the two parties ran highest upon the point of Church teaching, the Church party, which was that of the great landlords, came to be known as the Surplices or Whites. For a while, as the Reds were without a leader, the governments of the Republic were White.
Mention was made of one Lopez Zubiaga, who seized the coal country of Redemption in 1865. This Lopez, born in 1840, was the first leader of the Red or forward party to count in affairs. At the time of the Redemption raid, he was a tall, strongly built, masterful and very handsome young man, with a contemptuous manner and savage courage. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, which made some think that he was not the son of the landowner, but of an Englishman, named variously Corbet, Corphitt or Cardiff, about whom there had been talk.
After his success in seizing Redemption, Lopez was elected President of the Republic in place of old General Chavez, the White. As President he rallied the Reds, and carried through what was called “the Liberal Struggle,” which made all Meruel and Redemption places of mines and factories, and took the schools from the control of the Church. After four years of his Presidency, the Whites returned to office, under the hidalgo, Miguel de Leyva, of San Jacinto, a man of burning faith, more ardent than wise, who provoked the forward party almost to the point of civil war. At the next election, the Whites were turned out of office and the Reds put in, with such unanimity that Lopez could rule as he chose. After the election of 1878, which repeated his triumph, Lopez declared himself Dictator, “while his country had need of him.”
Miguel de Leyva, disgusted, retired from politics: the Whites had no other leader, save young General Luis Chavez, who was indolent, and Hermengildo Bazan, who was only a speaker.
The Dictatorship of Lopez was marked outwardly by a great increase in the foreign trade of the eastern provinces, the threefold growth of the city of Santa Barbara, and an improvement of all the ports, harbours and coastwise railways. After 1884, those who studied the land’s politics felt that the real Dictator was no longer Lopez, but old Mordred Weycock, the manager of the United Sugar Company, an unscrupulous business man.
It was at this time that the oddness and brusqueness in Lopez’ character changed to a madness not likely to be forgotten.
The madness began to show itself in a passion for building big and costly public works. He rebuilt the cathedral (a Colonial Renaissance building) on the lines of the temple at Hloatl. He built himself a palace of glass, having heard, though wrongly, that the Queen of England lived in one. He then built himself a summerhouse, roofed with silver plates, and added to it an ivory room inlaid with gold. Being a Red, he caused all the bread used in his palace to be coloured red. He frequented shambles in order to see, as he said, “the divine colour.”
He had two favourites. Livio and Zarzas; two negro servants, Green Feather and the Knife; and one son, the child of his youth, Don José, born in 1860, a depraved youth of sickly beauty, who headed a clique of vicious lads at the court.
Late in the year 1886, the Dictator’s madness began to take other forms, of hatred and suspicion of the Whites, fear of assassination, and the belief that he was god. All these obsessions were fostered by Mordred Weycock, who contrived to win, from each of them, advantages for himself or his firm.