SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: MEXICO (1877-1917).
I have examined the years spanning 1877-1917, and will present my findings with regard to how the events of those years formed patterns of behavior and attitudes that persist today, in the relations of the United States and Mexico.
Porfirio Diaz stabilized a country that had been in chaos and civil tumult since 1810. Call it "Diaz-potism,"" call it tyranny, but he did whip law and order into shape in Mexico during his 35-year clutch on power, and banditry was all but wiped out. Commercial, industrial and mineral development saw big success, and property became secure "that is, as long as you were a big landowner or a foreign property-owner. Americans held about a billion dollars' worth of oil, silver, railroads and land. Investment capital was free-flowing, and Mexico's credit rating in the foreign exchanges was truly high. Diaz had the admiration of the international contingent, but what he got from his citizens was a revolution.
How so? His tenure had shown he had built a most authoritarian and centralist police state out of what was essentially a liberal and federalist Constitution. Effective suffrage? Non-existent. His judges, legislators, local officials, and army men were just that - his - or they were replaced by more compliant ones. His Rurales assured the landowners (who held ridiculously large hacienda estates) of docile and indebted peons. The servitude inflicted on these workers guaranteed perpetual misery with no better future in sight. What was the peon's alternative? A beating, going to jail, or death.
In the same way, the government cudgeled would-be strikers into acquiescence. To strike was treason. Treason = death. There was no right of assembly, no freedom of press or speech. Intensifying the indignity was Mexicans not being eligible for any quality jobs, and not being paid as much as foreigners for the jobs they were able to get.
