The life of Porfirio Diaz is fascinating. It savours of the days of knighthood and romance. We are reminded of those heroes of old around whom time has cast a glamour, for he has had adventures as exciting, escapes as miraculous and a life seemingly as charmed as any hero created by the masters of romance, and his life may well be termed “stranger than fiction.” One is naturally inclined to be rather eulogistic in his treatment of such a character.
The present President of Mexico was born in the city of Oaxaca in an unimposing house on the Street of La Soledad, that is now used as a sugar factory, on the 15th of September, 1830, a day already celebrated in Mexican annals. His father, Captain José Faustini Diaz, was of Spanish descent and followed the occupation of innkeeper, but died when Porfirio was only three years of age. His maternal grandmother was a Mixteca Indian. The church and law were the only two occupations open to an ambitious youth in those days, and this young lad was intended for the former. He chose the law much to the disgust of his relatives but never followed that calling. The fighting blood in him impelled him to the sanguinary conflicts on the field rather than the bloodless battles in the courts between contending counsel.
About this time the war with the United States broke out and the future president, a youth of seventeen, volunteered but saw no fighting, although he thus early in life showed his genius for organization by forming his fellow-students of the academy into a battalion for the defence of his home city. Benito Juarez, afterwards president, was attracted by this youth and invited him to read law in his office, which offer was accepted. Thus was begun an association between two men who were destined in later years to occupy such a prominent place in Mexican history. Through the influence of Juarez, the younger man was made assistant librarian and by the aid of the salary attached to this position, and money earned as tutor, he completed his course, and received his law degree.
Politics and war seem to have divided the attention of Diaz from the very first with a preference for the latter in early life. Diaz was a military genius. I can say this in all seriousness. Although he never commanded a large army yet, under his hands, the rawest recruits soon became valuable troops. He is possessed of a personal magnetism and the quality of simpatica, (which can not be translated into English) that draws people to him and, when once aroused, they become his enthusiastic partisans. In a land of lethargy and procrastination his movements were quick and decisive, and he soon became noted for night marches and early morning attacks. He never was overcome except by superior forces, and then only after his stores and ammunition were exhausted. Even when beaten and his army captured or separated, a few days of freedom would again place him at the head of a respectable force ready to take aggressive stand against the enemy. Had he been in command of a hundred thousand men, he would have met the situation with the same tact and ability.
The first of the many political offices held by Diaz was that of Jefe Politico, or mayor, of the little Indian town of Ixtlan when only twenty-five years of age. Here he devoted his time to organizing the Indians into a company of militia, and this little body of soldiers formed a nucleus that proved a great help to him in the troublous times which followed. Later he was made Jefe of Tehuantepec where he showed great administrative ability. Soon afterward, in 1861, he was elected a deputy to congress from Oaxaca, but at that time would not sacrifice the excitement of war for the more prosaic duties of law-making.
Captain Diaz had seen his first military service in the revolts against the notorious Santa Anna, of Alamo fame. He had the courage to sign a remonstrance against this usurper, and was compelled to fly for his life. Later, in the campaigns against Santa Anna, he was so successful that he had become almost a hero in the eyes of his fellow Oaxacans. At the beginning of the French invasion, the rank of general of a brigade had been conferred upon him at the early age of thirty-two years, and he was assigned to the defense of Puebla under General Zaragoza. It was due to his tactics more than anything else that the way was paved for the great victory of Cinco de Mayo, 1862, when an inferior force of Mexicans defeated a numerically larger army of veteran French troops. It was nearly a year later before the armies of the allied French and Austrians, greatly augmented by new arrivals, were able to capture Puebla after a two months’ siege, the ammunition of the Mexicans had been exhausted. General Diaz refusal to give parol and was made prisoner but escaped after a short confinement.
Because of the approach of the invading armies toward the capital, President Juarez had removed the seat of government to San Luis Potosi. He made General Diaz commander-in-chief of the armies south of the Valley of Mexico. Returning to his favourite haunts in Oaxaca, he soon gathered together an army and some money and marched forth on the offensive. By this time General Diaz had become such a formidable opponent that General Bazaine himself, later of European fame, leader of the French forces, took the field against this young leader with the determination to crush him. He finally shut him up in Oaxaca and captured that city in 1865. The French general had carefully laid his plans for this campaign, having transported a large number of guns, and was at the head of an army, Diaz claims, of sixteen thousand. The fame of this general and his large force created a panic among the troops of Diaz and his little army had dwindled to a few hundred. General Diaz was captured and taken to Puebla by his captors where he was prisoner for more than seven months in a former house of the Jesuits in that city. His escape is celebrated in Mexican annals, and his own account is as follows, although I have greatly abbreviated it:—
“After taps for silence had been sounded for the night, I went to a room which was roofless and which on that account was used as a yard. I had with me three ropes, wrapped up in canvas, and I threw them onto the roof. I also had another rope, and I succeeded in throwing it around a projecting stone spout which seemed to be sufficiently firm. When I had satisfied myself that the support was sufficient, I climbed up by the rope to the roof. My progress along the roof to the corner of San Roque street, where I had made up my mind to descend, was attended with much danger, for on the roof of the church a detachment and sentries were stationed to keep watch. Gliding on all-fours I made towards the point where I was to let myself down. I often had to stop to feel my way, for the roof was strewn with many fragments of glass which sounded when touched. Moreover, there were frequent flashes of lightning, which exposed me to being discovered.
“I finally reached the wall of the church. In order to arrive at the corner of the street of San Roque it was necessary to pass through a portion of the edifice which was occupied by the priest in charge of the church, and I was aware that shortly before he had denounced to the court martial some political prisoners who had bored a hole through their place of confinement into his dwelling, and as a consequence they had been shot the next day.
“I let myself down into an upper yard of the priest’s house at the moment when a young man who also lived there had come in from the street; he had probably been to the theatre, for he was in gay humour and was humming an air from an operetta. He did not see me as he passed, and I remained quiet until he had entered his room. When I considered that sufficient time had elapsed for him to get into bed, and perhaps to fall asleep, I climbed to the roof of the convent on the opposite side to that by which I had descended and pushed forward to the corner of the street of San Roque, and I arrived there at last. There is at the corner, in a niche, a statue of St. Vincent Ferrer which I proposed using to fix the rope by which I was to descend. The saint wobbled when touched, but probably there was inside the statue an iron spike to hold it. In any case, in order to be more sure, I adjusted the rope around the pedestal of the statue which seemed to be quite firm. I resolved to alight in a vacant lot which adjoined and which was only fenced in. I did not know that there was a drove of hogs in this yard. As when I began the descent I turned somewhat with my rope, my back struck against the wall, and the impact caused a poniard which I carried at my waist to fall from its sheath among the hogs, probably wounding one of them, for they set up a grunting which grew louder as they saw me descending among them. I had to wait for some time for them to quiet down. I then climbed to the top of the partition separating the lot from the street, but I had at once to bob down again for just at that moment a gendarme was passing on his round, seeing if the doors were well fastened. When he had retired I sprang into the street.”