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Title: The Mexican Revolution Author: Voltairine de Cleyre Date: 29 October 1911 Language: en Topics: mexico, anarcho-communism, revolution, Zapatistas Source: https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/the-sex-question/voltairine-de-cleyre-the-mexican-revolution-1911/
THAT a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed,
alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so
profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so
to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present
revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting
causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be
so, is inexcusable.
It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you, as
one interested in every move the people make to throw off their chains,
no matter where, no matter how, though naturally my interest is greatest
where the move is such as appears to me to be most in consonance with
the general course of progress, where the tyranny attacked is what
appears to me the most fundamental, where the method followed is to my
thinking most direct and unmistakable. And I add that those of you who
have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of your own being
bound, first, to inform yourselves concerning so great a matter as the
revolt of millions of people what they are struggling for, what they are
struggling against, and how the struggle stands from day to day, if
possible; if not, from week to week, or month to month, as best you can;
and second, to spread this knowledge among others, and endeavor to do
what little you can to awaken the consciousness and sympathy of others.
One of the great reasons why the mass of the American people know
nothing of the Revolution in Mexico, is, that they have altogether a
wrong conception of what “revolution” means. Thus ninety-nine out of a
hundred persons to whom you broach the subject will say, “Why, I thought
that ended long ago. That ended last May”; and this week the press, even
the Daily Socialist, reports, “A new revolution in Mexico.” It isn’t a
new revolution at all; it is the same revolution, which did not begin
with the armed rebellion of last May, which has been going on steadily
ever since then, and before then, and is bound to go on for a long time
to come, if the other nations keep their hands off and the Mexican
people are allowed to work out their own destiny.
What is a revolution? and what is this revolution?
A revolution means some great and subversive change in the social
institutions of a people, whether sexual, religious, political, or
economic. The movement of the Reformation was a great religious
revolution; a profound alteration in human thought a refashioning of the
human mind. The general movement towards political change in Europe and
America about the close of the eighteenth century, was a revolution. The
American and the French revolutions were only prominent individual
incidents in it, culminations of the teachings of the Rights of Man.
The present unrest of the world in its economic relations, as manifested
from day to day in the opposing combinations of men and money, in
strikes and bread-riots, in literature and movements of all kinds
demanding a readjustment of the whole or of parts of our wealth-owning
and wealth-distributing system, this unrest is the revolution of our
time, the economic revolution, which is seeking social change, and will
go on until it is accomplished. We are in it; at any moment of our lives
it may invade our own homes with its stern demand for self-sacrifice and
suffering. Its more violent manifestations are in Liverpool and London
to-day, in Barcelona and Vienna to-morrow, in New York and Chicago the
day after. Humanity is a seething, heaving mass of unease, tumbling like
surge over a slipping, sliding, shifting bottom; and there will never be
any ease until a rock bottom of economic justice is reached.
The Mexican revolution is one of the prominent manifestations of this
world-wide economic revolt. It possibly holds as important a place in
the present disruption and reconstruction of economic institutions, as
the great revolution of France held in the eighteenth century movement.
It did not begin with the odious government of Diaz nor end with his
downfall, any more than the revolution in France began with the
coronation of Louis XVI, or ended with his beheading. It began in the
bitter and outraged hearts of the peasants, who for generations have
suffered under a ready-made system of exploitation, imported and foisted
upon them, by which they have been dispossessed of their homes,
compelled to become slave-tenants of those who robbed them ; and under
Diaz, in case of rebellion to be deported to a distant province, a
killing climate, and hellish labor. It will end only when that
bitterness is assuaged by very great alteration in the land-holding
system, or until the people have been absolutely crushed into subjection
by a strong military power, whether that power be a native or a foreign
one.
Now the political overthrow of last May, which was followed by the
substitution of one political manager for another, did not at all touch
the economic situation. It promised, of course; politicians always
promise. It promised to consider measures for altering conditions; in
the meantime, proprietors are assured that the new government intends to
respect the rights of landlords and capitalists, and exhorts the workers
to be patient and—frugal!
Frugal! Yes, that was the exhortation in Madero’s paper to men who, when
they are able to get work, make twenty-five cents a day. A man owning
5,000,000 acres of land exhorts the disinherited workers of Mexico to be
frugal!
The idea that such a condition can be dealt with by the immemorial
remedy offered by tyrants to slaves, is like the idea of sweeping out
the sea with a broom. And unless that frugality, or in other words,
starvation, is forced upon the people by more bayonets and more strategy
than appear to be at the government’s command, the Mexican revolution
will go on to the solution of Mexico’s land question with a rapidity and
directness of purpose not witnessed in any previous upheaval.
For it must be understood that the main revolt is a revolt against the
system of land tenure. The industrial revolution of the cities, while it
is far from being silent, is not to compare with the agrarian revolt.
Let us understand why. Mexico consists of twenty-seven states, two
territories and a federal district about the capital city. Its
population totals about 15,000,000. Of these, 4,000,000 are of unmixed
Indian descent, people somewhat similar in character to the Pueblos of
our own southwestern states, primitively agricultural for an immemorial
period, communistic in many of their social customs, and like all
Indians, invincible haters of authority. These Indians are scattered
throughout the rural districts of Mexico, one particularly well-known
and much talked of tribe, the Yaquis, having had its fatherland in the
rich northern state of Sonora, a very valuable agricultural country.
The Indian population—especially the Yaquis and the Moquis—have always
disputed the usurpations of the invaders’ government, from the days of
the early conquest until now, and will undoubtedly continue to dispute
them as long as there is an Indian left, or until their right to use the
soil out of which they sprang without paying tribute in any shape is
freely recognized.
The communistic customs of these people are very interesting, and very
instructive too; they have gone on practising them all these hundreds of
years, in spite of the foreign civilization that was being grafted upon
Mexico (grafted in all senses of the word); and it was not until forty
years ago (indeed the worst of it not till twenty-five years ago), that
the increasing power of the government made it possible to destroy this
ancient life of the people.
By them, the woods, the waters, and the lands were held in common. Any
one might cut wood from the forest to build his cabin, make use of the
rivers to irrigate his field or garden patch (and this is a right whose
acknowledgment none but those who know the aridity of the southwest can
fully appreciate the imperative necessity for). Tillable lands were
allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe
after harvesting, for reallotment. Pasturage, the right to collect fuel,
were for all. The habits of mutual aid which always arise among sparsely
settled communities were instinctive with them. Neighbor assisted
neighbor to build his cabin, to plough his ground, to gather and store
this crop.
No legal machinery existed—no tax-gatherer, no justice, no jailer. All
that they had to do with the hated foreign civilization was to pay the
periodical rent-collector, and to get out of the way of the recruiting
officer when he came around. Those two personages they regarded with
spite and dread; but as the major portion of their lives was not in
immediate contact with them, they could still keep on in their old way
of life in the main.
With the development of the Diaz regime, which came into power in 1876
(and when I say the Diaz regime I do not especially mean the man Diaz,
for I think he has been both overcursed and overpraised, but the whole
force which has steadily developed centralized power from then on, and
the whole policy of “civilizing Mexico,” which was the Diaz boast), with
its development, I say, this Indian life has been broken up, violated
with as ruthless a hand as ever tore up a people by the roots and cast
them out as weeds to wither in the sun.
Historians relate with horror the iron deeds of William the Conqueror,
who in the eleventh century created the New Forest by laying waste the
farms of England, de- stroying the homes of the people to make room for
the deer. But his edicts were mercy compared with the action of the
Mexican government toward the Indians. In order to introduce
“progressive civilization” the Diaz regime granted away immense
concessions of land, to native and foreign capitalists—chiefly foreign,
indeed, though there were enough of native sharks as well. Mostly these
concessions were granted to capitalistic combinations, which were to
build railroads (and in some cases did so in a most uncalled for and
uneconomic way), “develop” mineral resources, or establish “modern
industries.”
The government took no note of the ancient tribal rights or customs, and
those who received the concessions proceeded to enforce their property
rights. They introduced the unheard of crime of “trespass.” They forbade
the cutting of a tree, the breaking of a branch, the gathering of the
fallen wood in the forests. They claimed the watercourses, forbidding
their free use to the people; and it was as if one had forbidden to us
the rains of heaven. The unoccupied land was theirs; no hand might drive
a plow into the soil without first obtaining permission from a distant
master—a permission granted on the condition that the product be the
landlord’s, a small, pitifully small, wage, the worker’s.
Nor was this enough: in 1894 was passed “The Law of Unappropriated
Lands.” By that law, not only were the great stretches of vacant, in the
old time common, land appropriated, but the occupied lands themselves to
which the occupants could not show a legal title were to be “denounced”;
that is, the educated and the powerful, who were able to keep up with
the doings of the government, went to the courts and said that there was
no legal title to such and such land, and put in a claim for it. And the
usual hocus-pocus of legality being complied with (the actual occupant
of the land being all the time blissfully unconscious of the law, in the
innocence of his barbarism supposing that the working of the ground by
his generations of forbears was title all-sufficient) one fine day the
sheriff comes upon this hapless dweller on the heath and drives him from
his ancient habitat to wander an outcast.
Such are the blessings of education. Mankind invents a written sign to
aid its intercommunication; and forthwith all manner of miracles are
wrought with the sign. Even such a miracle as that a part of the solid
earth passes under the mastery of an impotent sheet of paper; and a
distant bit of animated flesh which never even saw the ground, acquires
the power to expel hundreds, thousands, of like bits of flesh, though
they grew upon that ground as the trees grow, labored it with their
hands, and fertilized it with their bones for a thousand years.
“This law of unappropriated lands,” says William Archer, “has covered
the country with Naboth’s Vineyards.” I think it would require a
Biblical prophet to describe the “abomination of desolation” it has
made.
It was to become lords of this desolation that the men who play the game
landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates,
enterprising capitalists seeking investments connived at the iniquities
of the Diaz regime; I will go further and say devised them.
The Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles of territory; more
than the entire state of New Jersey. The Terrazas family, in the state
of Chihuahua, owns 25,000 square miles; rather more than the entire
state of West Virginia, nearly one-half the size of Illinois. What was
the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days,
compared with this? And the peon’s share for his toil upon these great
estates is hardly more than was the chattel slave’s wretched housing,
wretched food, and wretched clothing.
It is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be “frugal.”
It is of men who have thus been disinherited that our complacent
fellow-citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin, say: “Mexicans! What do you know
about Mexicans? Their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence
and smoke cigarettes.” And pray, what idea of life should a people have
whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them? Should
they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for some
other man to loll in?
It reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the
works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him
good-humoredly on his easy idleness when the foreman’s back was turned.
“Ah ain’t goin’ to do no white man’s work, fo’ Ah don’ get no white
man’s pay.”
But for the Yaquis, there was worse than this. Not only were their lands
seized, but they were ordered, a few years since, to be deported to
Yucatan. Now Sonora, as I said, is a northern state, and Yucatan one of
the southernmost. Yucatan hemp is famous, and so is Yucatan fever, and
Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations. It was to that fever and that
slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time,
men, women and children droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten
like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should.
Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became
“pacific” in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They
had not left people enough to reap the harvests.
Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the
provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his
people be deported. This statement is made in Madero’s own book.
Now what in all conscience would any one with decent human feeling
expect a Yaqui to do? Fight! As long as there was powder and bullet to
be begged, borrowed, or stolen; as long as there is a garden to plunder,
or a hole in the hills to hide in!
When the revolution burst out, the Yaquis and other Indian peoples, said
to the revolutionists: “Promise us our lands back, and we will fight
with you.” And they are keeping their word, magnificently. All during
the summer they have kept up the warfare. Early in September, the
Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 Yaquis in Sonora about to
attack El Anil; a week later 500 Yaquis had seized the former quarters
of the federal troops at Pitahaya. This week it is reported that federal
troops are dispatched to Ponoitlan, a town in Jalisco, to quell the
Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the
Maderist government was to re- store their land has been dispelled.
‘Like reports from Sinaloa. In the terrible state of Yucatan, the Mayas
are in active rebellion; the reports say that “the authorities and
leading citizens of various towns have been seized by the malcontents
and put in prison.” What is more interesting is, that the peons have
seized not only “the leading citizens,” but still more to the purpose
have seized the plantations, parceled them, and are already gathering
the crops for themselves.
Of course, it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of
Mexico. Rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds;
that is, about 8,000,000, leaving less than 3,000,000 of pure white
stock. The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the
communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from
the Latin side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work
well together with their Indian hatred of authority.
The mestiza, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in
book-knowledge, only about sixteen per cent, of the whole population of
Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of
the “civilizing” regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning
in the people’s hands. But to conclude that people are necessarily
unintelligent because they are illiterate, is in itself a rather
unintelligent proceeding.
Moreover, a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient
agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil
is the source of wealth, and they must “get back to the land,” even if
their intelligence is limited.
Accordingly, they have got back to the land. In the state of Morelos,
which is a small, south-central state, but a very important one being
next to the Federal District, and by consequence to the city of Mexico
there has been a remarkable land revolution. General Zapata, whose name
has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made peace with
Madero, then as breaking faith, next wounded and killed, and again
resurrected and in hiding, then anew on the warpath and proclaimed by
the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender
unconditionally and be tried by court-martial; who has seized the
strategic points on both the railroads running through Morelos, and who
just a few days ago broke into the federal district, sacked a town,
fought successfully at two or three points, with the federals, blew out
two railroad bridges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that
they are clamoring for all kinds of action ; this Zapata, the fires of
whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla
as well, is an Indian with a long score to pay, and all an Indian’s
satisfaction in paying it. He appears to be a fighter of the style of
our revolutionary Marion and Sumter; the country in which he is
operating is mountainous, and guerilla bands are exceedingly difficult
of capture; even when they are defeated, they have usually succeeded in
inflicting more damage than they have received, and they always get
away.
Zapata has divided up the great estates of Morelos from end to end,
telling the peasants to take possession. They have done so. They are in
possession, and have already harvested their crops. Morelos has a
population of some 212,000.
In Puebla reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had
waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the
land by the peasantry. The troops were deserting, taking horses and arms
with them. It is they no doubt who are now fighting with Zapata. In
Chihuahua, one of the largest states, prisons have been thrown open and
the prisoners recruited as rebels; a great hacienda was attacked and the
horses run off, whereupon the peons rose and joined the attacking party.
In Sinaloa, a rich northern state famous in the southwestern United
States some years ago as the field of a great co-operative experiment in
which Mr. C. B. Hoffman, one of the former editors of The Chicago Daily
Socialist, was a leading spirit this week’s paper reports that the
former revolutionary general, Juan Banderas, is heading an insurrection
second in importance only to that led by Zapata.
In the southern border state of Chiapas, the taxes in many places could
not be collected. Last week news items said that the present government
had sent General Paz there, with federal troops, to remedy that state of
affairs. In Tabasco, the peons refused to harvest the crops for their
masters; let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and
gathered them for them- selves.
The Maderists have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be
inaugurated at once; if we are to believe the papers, we are to believe
Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying, “Five days after my
inauguration the rebellion will be crushed.” Just why the crushing has
to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear. I
conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary
deputies if such an announcement was really made; and some astonished
query among his followers.
What are we to conclude from all these reports? That the Mexican people
are satisfied? That it’s all good and settled? What should we think if
we read that the people, not of Lower but of Upper, California had
turned out the ranch owners, had started to gather in the field products
for themselves and that the Secretary of War had sent United States
troops to attack some thousands of armed men (Zapata has had 3,000 under
arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased) who were
defending that expropriation? if we read that in the state of Illinois
the farmers had driven off the tax collector? that the coast states were
talking of secession and forming an independent combination? that in
Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to
overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerilla work
from the mountains? that the prison doors of Maryland, within hailing
distance of Washington City, were being thrown open by armed revoltees?
Should we call it a condition of peace? Regard it a proof that the
people were appeased? We would not: we would say that revolution was in
full swing. And the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico,
from last May till now, is that the Chicago press, like the eastern,
northern, and central press in general, has said nothing about this
steady march of revolt. Even The Socialist has been silent. Now that the
flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment, they call it “a new
revolution.”
That the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting
causes that produce our northern indifference, which I shall presently
try to explain, and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest
in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present
henchmen, the Maderists, a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the
fire. They invested some $10,000,000 in this bunch, in the hope that
they may be able to accomplish the double feat of keeping capitalist
possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with
specious promises. They want to lend them all the countenance they can,
till the experiment is well tried; so they deliberately suppress
revolutionary news.
Among the later items of interest reported by the Los Angeles Times are
those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many-millioned
landlords of Mexico, who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles.
What is the meaning of it? Simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe
and comfortable proposition as it was, and that for the present they
prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves
running the risk of actual residence.
Of course it is understood that some of this notable efflux (the
supporters of Reyes, for example, who have their own little rebellions
in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week) are political reactionists,
scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own
hands. But most are simply those who know that their property right is
safe enough to be respected by the Maderist government, but that the
said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable
manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally
to themselves if they remain there.
Nor is all of this fighting revolutionary; not by any means. Some is
reactionary, some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge, much, no
doubt, the expression of general turbulency of a very unconscious
nature. But granting all that may be thrown in the balance, the main
thing, the mighty thing, the regenerative revolution is the
eeappropriation of the land by the peasants. Thousands upon thousands of
them are doing it.
Ignorant peasants: peasants who know nothing about the jargon of land
reformers or of Socialists. Yes: that’s just the glory of it! Just the
fact that it is done by ignorant people; that is, people ignorant of
book theories; but not ignorant, not so ignorant by half, of life on the
land, as the theory-spinners of the cities. Their minds are simple and
direct; they act accordingly. For them, there is one way to “get back to
the land”; i. e., to ignore the machinery of paper land-holding (in many
instances they have burned the records of the title-deeds) and proceed
to plough the ground, to sow and plant and gather, and keep the product
themselves.
Economists, of course, will say that these ignorant people, with their
primitive institutions and methods, will not develop the agricultural
resources of Mexico, and that they must give way before those who will
so develop its resources; that such is the law of human development.
In the first place, the abominable political combination, which gave
away, as recklessly as a handful of soap-bubbles, the agricultural
resources of Mexico gave them away to the millionaire speculators who
were to develop the country were the educated men of Mexico. And this is
what they saw fit to do with their higher intelligence and education. So
the ignorant may well distrust the good intentions of educated men who
talk about improvements in land development.
In the second place, capitalistic land-ownership, so far from developing
the land in such a manner as to support a denser population, has
depopulated whole districts, immense districts.
In the third place, what the economists do not say is, that the only
justification for intense cultivation of the land is, that the product
of such cultivation may build up the bodies of men (by consequence their
souls) to richer and fuller manhood. It is not merely to pile up figures
of so many million bushels of wheat and corn produced in a season; but
that this wheat and corn shall first go into the stomachs of those who
planted it and in abundance; to build up the brawn and sinew of the arms
that work the ground, not meanly maintaining them in a half-starved
condition. And second, to build up the strength of the rest of the
nation who are willing to give needed labor in exchange. But never to
increase the fortunes of idlers who dissipate it. This is the purpose,
and the only purpose, of tilling soil; and the working of it for any
other purpose is waste, waste both of land and of men.
In the fourth place, no change ever was, or ever can be, worked out in
any society, except by the mass of the people. Theories may be
propounded by educated people, and set down in books, and discussed in
libraries, sitting-rooms and lecture-halls; but they will remain barren,
unless the people in mass work them out. If the change proposed is such
that it is not adaptable to the minds of the people for whose ills it is
supposed to be a remedy, then it will remain what it was, a barren
theory.
Now the conditions in Mexico have been and are so desperate that some
change is imperative. The action of the peasants proves it. Even if a
strong military dictator shall arise, he will have to allow some
provision going towards peasant proprietorship. These unlettered, but
determined, people must be dealt with now; there is no such thing as
“waiting till they are educated up to it.” Therefore the wisdom of the
economists is wisdom out of place rather, relative unwisdom. The people
never can be educated, if their conditions are to remain what they were
under the Diaz regime. Bodies and minds are both too impoverished to be
able to profit by a spread of theoretical education, even if it did not
require unavailable money and indefinite time to prepare such a spread.
Whatever economic change is wrought, then, must be such as the people in
their present state of comprehension can understand and make use of. And
we see by the reports what they understand. They understand they have a
right upon the soil, a right to use it for themselves, a right to drive
off the invader who has robbed them, to destroy landmarks and
title-deeds, to ignore the tax-gatherer and his demands.
And however primitive their agricultural methods may be, one thing is
sure; that they are more economical than any system which heaps up
fortunes by destroying men.
Moreover, who is to say how they may develop their methods once they
have a free opportunity to do so? It is a common belief of the
Anglo-Saxon that the Indian is essentially lazy. The reasons for his
thinking so are two: under the various tyrannies and robberies which
white men in general, and Anglo-Saxons in particular (they have even
gone beyond the Spaniard) have inflicted upon Indians, there is no
possible reason why an Indian should want to work, save the idiotic one
that work in itself is a virtuous and exalted thing, even if by it the
worker increases the power of his tyrant. As William Archer says: “If
there are men, and this is not denied, who work for no wage, and with no
prospect or hope of any reward, it would be curious to know by what
motive other than the lash or the fear of the lash, they are induced to
go forth to their labor in the morning.” The second reason is, that an
Indian really has a different idea of what he is alive for than an
Anglo-Saxon has. And so have the Latin peoples. This different idea is
what I meant when I said that the mestiza have certain tendencies
inherited from the Latin side of their make-up which work well together
with their Indian hatred of authority. The Indian likes to live; to be
his own master; to work when he pleases and stop when he pleases. He
does not crave many things, but he craves the enjoyment of the things
that he has. He feels himself more a part of nature than a white man
does. All his legends are of wanderings with nature, of forests, fields,
streams, plants, animals. He wants to live with the same liberty as the
other children of earth. His philosophy of work is, Work so as to live
care-free. This is not laziness; this is sense to the person who has
that sort of make-up.
Your Latin, on the other hand, also wants to live; and having artistic
impulses in him, his idea of living is very much in gratifying them. He
likes music and song and dance, picture-making, carving, and decorating.
He doesn’t like to be forced to create his fancies in a hurry; he likes
to fashion them, and admire them, and improve and refashion them, and
admire again; and all for the fun of it. If he is ordered to create a
certain design or a number of objects at a fixed price in a given time,
he loses his inspiration ; the play becomes work, and hateful work. So
he, too, does not want to work, except what is requisite to maintain
himself in a position to do those things that he likes better.
Your Anglo-Saxon’s idea of life, however, is to create the useful and
the profitable whether he has any use or profit out of it or not and to
keep busy, busy; to bestir himself “like the Devil in a holy water
font.” Like all other people, he makes a special virtue of his own
natural tendencies, and wants all the world to “get busy”; it doesn’t so
much matter to what end this business is to be conducted, provided the
individual scrabbles. Whenever a true Anglo-Saxon seeks to enjoy
himself, he makes work out of that too, after the manner of a certain
venerable English shopkeeper who in company with his son visited the
Louvre. Being tired out with walking from room to room, consulting his
catalogue, and reading artists’ names, he dropped down to rest; but
after a few moments rose resolutely and faced the next room, saying,
“Well, Alfred, we’d better be getting through our work.”
There is much question as to the origin of the various instincts. Most
people have the impression that the chief source of variation lies in
the difference in the amount of sunlight received in the native
countries inhabited of the various races. Whatever the origin is, these
are the broadly marked tendencies of the people. And “Business” seems
bent not only upon fulfilling its own fore- ordained destiny, but upon
making all the others fulfill it too. Which is both unjust and stupid.
There is room enough in the world for the races to try out their several
tendencies and make their independent contributions to the achievements
of humanity, without imposing them on those who revolt at them.
Granting that the population of Mexico, if freed from this foreign
“busy” idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on
them with such severity in the last forty years, would not immediately
adopt improved methods of cultivation, even when they should have free
opportunity to do so, still we have no reason to conclude that they
would not adopt so much of it as would fit their idea of what a man is
alive for; and if that actually proved good, it would introduce still
further development. So that there would be a natural, and therefore
solid, economic growth which would stick; while a forced development of
it through the devastation of the people is no true growth. The only way
to make it go, is to kill out the Indians altogether, and transport the
“busy” crowd there, and then keep on transporting for several
generations, to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an
imported population.
The Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this
murderous manner. I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to
those who materially profited by its extermination; but no one who looks
forward to the final unification and liberation of man, to the
incorporation of the several goodnesses of the various races in the one
universal race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning
shame and fathomless regret.
I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general; of the meaning of
the Mexican revolution chiefly an agrarian one; of its present
condition. I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the
electoral victory of the now ruling power, it has not put an end even to
the armed rebellion, and cannot, until it proposes some plan of land
restoration; and that it not only has no inward disposition to do, but
probably would not dare to do, in view of the fact that immense capital
financed it into power.
As to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the
election, it is impossible to say. The dailies informed us that in the
Federal District where there are 1,000,000 voters, the actual vote was
less than 450,000. They offered no explanation. It is impossible to
explain it on the ground that we explain a light vote in our own
communities, that the people are indifferent to public questions; for
the people of Mexico are not now indifferent, whatever else they may be.
Two explanations are possible: the first, and most probable, that of
govern- mental intimidation; the second, that the people are convinced
of the uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles. In
the less thickly populated agricultural states, this is very largely the
case; they are relying upon direct revolutionary action. But although
there was guerrilla warfare in the Federal District, even before the
election, I find it unlikely that more than half the voting population
there abstained from voting out of conviction, though I should be glad
to be able to believe they did.
However, Madero and his aids are in, as was expected; the question is,
how will they stay in? As Diaz did, and in no other way if they succeed
in developing Diaz’s sometime ability; which so far they are wide from
having done, though they are resorting to the most vindictive and
spiteful tactics in their persecution of the genuine revolutionists,
wherever such come near their clutch.
To this whole turbulent situation three outcomes are possible:
1. A military dictator must arise, with sense enough to make some
substantial concessions, and ability enough to pursue the crushing
policy ably; or
2. The United States must intervene in the interests of American
capitalists and landholders, in case the peasant revolt is not put down
by the Maderist power. And that will be the worst thing that can
possibly happen, and against which every worker in the United States
should protest with all his might; or
3. The Mexican peasantry will be successful, and freedom in land become
an actual fact. And that means the death-knell of great landholding in
this country also, for what people is going to see its neighbor enjoy so
great a triumph, and sit on tamely itself under landlordism?
Whatever the outcome be, one thing is certain: it is a great movement,
which all the people of the world should be eagerly watching. Yet as I
said at the beginning, the majority of our population know no more about
it than of a revolt on the planet Jupiter. First because they are so,
so, busy; they scarcely have time to look over the baseball score and
the wrestling match; how could they read up on a revolution! Second,
they are supremely egotistic and concerned in their own big country with
its big deeds such as divorce scandals, vice-grafting, and auto races.
Third, they do not read Spanish, and they have an ancient hostility to
all that smells Spanish. Fourth, from our cradles we were told that
whatever happened in Mexico was a joke. Revolutions, or rather
rebellions, came and went, about like April showers, and they never
meant anything serious. And in this indeed there was only too much truth
it was usually an excuse for one place-hunter to get another one’s
scalp. And lastly, as I have said, the majority of our people do not
know that a revolution means a fundamental change in social life, and
not a spectacular display of armies.
It is not much a few can do to remove this mountain of indifference; but
to me it seems that every reformer, of whatever school, should wish to
watch this movement with the most intense interest, as a practical
manifestation of a wakening of the land-workers themselves to the
recognition of what all schools of revolutionary economics admit to be
the primal necessity the social repossession of the land.
And whether they be victorious or defeated, I, for one, bow my head to
those heroic strugglers, no matter how ignorant they are, who have
raised the cry Land and Liberty, and planted the blood-red banner on the
burning soil of Mexico.