Readings from Modern Mexican Authors

by Unknown

Señor Villaseñor y Villaseñor is an industrious writer. His contributions to El Tiempo alone number more than seven thousand. Of books, he has written Asunto Poirier (The Poirier Incident), La cuestion de Belice (The Belize Question), Guillermo; memorias de un estudiante (William: recollections of a student), Estudios historicos (Historical Studies), Gobernantes de México (Governors of Mexico), Los Condes de Santiago (The Counts of Santiago), Reclamaciones á México por los fondos de California (The California Funds Claims Against Mexico). This last is of high importance, being an exhaustive discussion of this international question—the first to be submitted to The Hague tribunal for settlement. It is particularly in questions of public policy, in history, and in biography, that our author is at his happiest. Our selections are taken from Estudios historicos.

ANTÓN LIZARDO.

We have intentionally been brief in expressing our opinion regarding the attack at Antón Lizardo and have been full in the presentation of documentary evidence; in this manner remembering that these documents proceed from unimpeachable sources, a clear and full realization will result, that what took place at Antón Lizardo was not so simple a matter as the liberal party desires to make it appear.

In instigating foreign warships to seize vessels in Mexican waters, the government of Juarez permitted the national independence, sovereignty, and dignity to be outraged by the soldiers, officers, and warships of the United States; it betrayed its country, permitting an assault against its sovereignty and humiliated the nation by invoking foreign mercenaries to assist it and to treat Mexicans with profound contempt, and to shed Mexican blood, since those wounded on board the Miramon were compatriots; and those same strangers still preserve among their trophies taken from Mexico, the flags of that vessel.

We believe that, after the publication of this study, no one will venture to deny, as recently was done, that the Juarists took part in the Antón Lizardo incident; that Turner’s intervention completely thwarted the plans of Miramon, as a work written by a well-known liberal confesses, and gave great courage to the Juarists; no one will again venture to say that Marin was a pirate and that the commander of the Saratoga did right; this assault was not merely a partisan measure, as those who are ignorant of historical facts or filled with bad faith pretend to believe, seeing in it an insignificant event without serious consequences.

It was not at Silao or Calpulálpam that the conservative party was defeated, but at Antón Lizardo; nor was it the soldiers of Gonzales Ortega and Zaragoza who routed them, but the marines under orders of Turner.

The Juarist party, beaten at all points by Miramon, Castillo, Márquez, Negrete, Robles, Chacon, etc., at the beginning of the year 1860 held no population of importance, and its directory was confined to the plaza of Vera Cruz with the immediately adjacent region, and it was recognized by the United States alone. On account of the MacLane-Ocampo Treaty, which was then awaiting ratification by the United States Senate and with which we shall occupy ourselves in the following pages, public opinion had declared itself, in the most uniform manner throughout the whole country, against the liberal doctrines, which only produced as their bitter fruit the loss of our territory and almost that of our independence.

In order to end at once these parricidal tendencies and to bring to a conclusion the bloody civil war, which was destroying the nation, there was only necessary the effort, which the conservative government was making, to conduct the siege of Vera Cruz by land and sea. Under circumstances so serious for the constitutionalist party, the assault by Turner and the protection given by President Buchanan, gave new life to this party, and a series of disasters like that at Silao or of defections like that of the cavalry at Calpulálpam, opened to it the gates of the capital; but did not give it the final triumph, since the strife still continued.

And, looking a little deeper, it is seen that the events of Antón Lizardo had graver consequences than might be imagined; they brought on the European intervention. They emphasized the ideas expressed by Buchanan in his message to Congress of December 4, 1859, and the unconcealed tendencies of the democrats in the direction of a North American intervention were no longer mere theories, but began to translate themselves into facts. Antón Lizardo and the MacLane Treaty made Europe and the conservative lovers of their country see that Mexican independence was threatened and it was then that it was thought that a radical remedy would save the imperilled nation, and certain combinations, already forgotten, were recalled.

The triumph of the party of demagoguery and the errors which it committed precipitated events and brought on the European intervention, which, when studied with care as to its causes, is clearly demonstrated to be due to the liberal party.