Modern Mexico Lecture, Week 8

The Porfiriato1876-1911, Diaz ruled for 31 of 35 yrsFirst unbroken period of foreign and domestic

peace, political stability and economic growth since 1810

Ideology: Liberalism gave way to Postivism (or “raw pragmatism”, Wasserman, Every Day Life). Pol. elite adopts Auguste Comte’s positivist maxim of “Order and Progress”; Cientificos preach “Less Politics; more Administration” (radical “puro” Liberals into opposition or move to Anarchism)

Regime: Constitutional (1857) Not a dictatorship. No suspension of constitutional guarantees (a la Juarez), elections held at all levels, 1876-1910.

Political success: Three keys-i) Personality: “Diaz was his own chief political asset”

(Wasserman, Everyday Life) : “don de gente”, “este sex-appeal popular” (Daniel Cosío Villegas’s Historia Moderna project), directness, concentration on the immediate (flattered), openness, attention to detail, decisiveness, rewards loyalty (Sierra Ixtlan and Lucas in Sierra de Puebla), ruthlessness.

ii) Expanding economy: renewed elite, new middle class (an foreign partners) kept happy by “jobs, concessions, subsidies, tax exemptions and contracts for those who were reliable” (Wasserman, Everyday Life): a large Taamany Hall, operating at all levels (fed, state, district and municipal)

iii) Coercion and fear : (“pan o palo”): 1877: execution of 9 Lerdista rebels in Veracruz: 1887: assassination of three rivals - state governors - during electoral campaign; 1890s: Press restrictions: journalists imprisoned, exiled and assassinated; Guardias Rurales and Ley Fuga; Jefes Políticos: absolute local control; 1907-8: strikes in Sonora and Veracruz suppressed by force.

Porfirio Diaz (1860s)

Porfirio Diaz (c.1890)

Porfirio Diaz (1910)

The “Porfiriato”, 1876-1911Three Lectures

i) The Peace of Don Porfirio

ii) Porfirian Modernity: City and Countryside

iii) The Cientificos, Catholic and Liberal revival and Revolution

Three SeminarsWeek 9: The Porfiriato I: Commemoration,

Conciliation and Repression

Week 10: The Porfiriato II: Indians and the Countryside

Week 1 (Spring Term): Porfiriato III: the Catholic Revival, the Liberal Revival, the 1910 Election and the Onset of Revolution

Diaz rule: three stagesi) 1877-1884: struggle to find reliable allies (an

detach himself from old allies), to establish relations with major foreign powers, to build favourable environment for foreign investment

ii) 1884-1900: Diaz consolidated rule: bought off or defeated regional opposition, passed laws favourable to foreign investment (Commercial Code and Colonization Laws), restored finances

iii) 1900-1911: Elite consensus begins crack, regional elite and middle class dissatisfaction, popular unrest

Tuxtepec Revolution: November 1876: a popular revolution ?November: Diaz: patriotic war hero with a popular following,

yet with few friends among the liberal elite, tired of rebellions and distrustful of praetorianism (imposed as interim President Gen. Juan N Mendez from Puebla Sierra...Mexico City policed by his Nahua soldiers...shades of Guerrero in 1828 and Alvarez in 1854)

“Tuxtepecano” generals gain governorships: Bonilla in Puebla (“Tres Juanes de la Sierra”: Mendez, Bonilla, Lucas), Ramon Corona in Durango, Trinidad Garcia de la Cadena in Zacatecas, Geronimo Trevino in Nuevo Leon, etc.

“Puros” gain cabinet portfolios: Ignacio Altamirano, Supreme Court; Ignacio Ramirez, Min of Justice, Gen Pedro Ogazón, Minister of War; Justo Benitez (Diaz’s secretary and adviser since 1860s) chief of the Porfirista party in Congress; Matias Romero, Finance (Benitez and Romero are Oaxaqueños).

First administration, 1877-1880Popular demands:

Armed Citizenship and reward for blood sacrifice Workers: mutualism but sought protection in new factoriesSecular schooling to replace the Church (risked further confrontation)Land Reform and community control of land privatisation.Municipalities as “Fourth Power” (threatened authority of state congresses)Elected Jefes Politicos (threatened control through governors)

Conflicted with government priorities:Diplomatic recognition: Diaz an unknown. Foreign powers wanted a stable neo-colony not a Jacobin Republic.Finances: federal control over territory was needed, not 4th PowerEconomy and foreign investment: further liberalisation – not socialism – was needed (Banking Law, Commercial Code, Colonisation Law): potentially unpopularWinning elections (re-election forbidden)

Constitutional fiction...pragmatic reality- Diaz’s solutions:

- i) Populism: patronage of rural Liberal cacicazgos (Thomson & McNamara) and labour unions (David Walker, “Porfirian Labor Politics”)

- ii) Middle class opposition: early repression. In 1877 conspiracy of Liberal supporters of former president Sebastian Lerdo at Tlacotalpan (Diaz telegraphed Veracruz governor Luis Raul Mier y Terán to "¡Mátalos en caliente!" (Kill them on the spot) (revealing true meaning of Diaz’s 1872 Plan de La Noria’s pledge that “this will be the last revolution”)

Constitutional fiction...pragmatic reality iii) Conciliation of the Church: pragmatic and regionally specific non-

application of anti-clerical Reform Laws...(see Karl Schmitt, “The Díaz Conciliation Policy on State and Local Levels 1876-1911”)

New Pope: Leo XIII 1878, Rerum Novarum “Of Capital and Labour” encyclical of 1883. Urged Church to compete with secular movements in Social Action. Church in Mexico regrouped: new diocese (Chilapa, Colima, etc), new religious orders, processions and clerical garb permitted

December 1883: Diaz married 19 yr old Carmen Romero Rubio (daughter of Finance Minister Manuel Romero Rubio) celbrated in Mexico City by A/B Pelagio Labastida, honeymoon in the US…Hamnett comments on the symbolic and practical importance of this act in laying the foundation of the longevity of the regime. Until 1883 Diaz was identified as a Freemason, an anti-clerical, a radical, a mestizo and an anti-American.

This marriage brought Diaz into the Mexico City social and political elite and closer to the Church.

Carmen Romero Rubio

Gabino Barreda and Positivismiv) Positivism : Influence of Gabino Barreda, teacher at National Preparatory School in 1860s, who introduced Auguste Comte’s ideas of “scientific politics” to a new generation (known by 1890s as Los Cientificos) (Charles Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism )

Duty of 19th C statesmen to pursue scientifically informed politics rather than 18th C metaphysical formula such as “Liberty”, “Fraternity” , “Popular Sovereignty”, “Equality”.. Aim of government instead should be “Order and Progress”, pursued an educated elite.

Societies passed through three phases: Religious, Metaphysical and Scientific. In a speech in Guanajuato in 1867 Barreda argued that Liberals had emancipated Mexico from the colonial order and freed Mexico from religion (passing from religious to metaphysical stage). Mexico ready now for Scientific stage. Appealed to younger intellectuals: 1878 founding of La Libertad (Justo and Santiago Sierra, Telesforo Garcia and Francisco Cosmes) argued for a scientific and pragmatic approach to politics...the new era required “a strong president, a centralised state and economic growth rather than individual liberties.”

1880-1884 Manuel Gonzalez inter-regnumElection of 1884: favourite Justo Benitez,

Diaz’s Puro ally from OaxacaChose instead:ce: Manuel Gonzalez:

Tuxtepecano from Nuevo Leon but with no base in Liberal Party (had collaborated with Intervention), dependent on Diaz

kept praetorianism in place necessary for Diaz’s return in 1884, but Lerdista (1874-76) technocrats gained cabinet posts: e.g. Manuel Romero Rubio, Finance Minister

beginnings of a new business elite linked to foreign interests.

1888 re-election - In 1887 Diaz secured a revision of

Constitution to allow one term of re-election.- Juarez Cult : 1887, state preparations for

commemoration of Juarez’s death on 18 July 1868 (see Charles Weeks, The Juárez Myth in Mexico ). Bid for Radical support, anxious over Eucharistic Congress being organised in Durango. Commissioning of paintings, busts and major memorial (completed in 1910)

Juarez Monument (1910), DF

Una Leccion de Dibujo, 1887El Hijo del Ahuizote, 17/7/87

“Una Lección de Pintura”, El Hijo del Ahuizote, 24/7/87

Juarez: Shepherd Monument, Guelatao, Oaxaca

Protesters gathering at Juarez statue, Highway entrance to Oaxaca, September 2007

1888 re-election1886-88 campaign: assass. in 1886 of Trinidad

Garcia de la Cadenas on Celaya railway platform en route to convene a congress of Tuxtepacano generals.Generals Ramon Corona and Ignacio Martinez also assassinated in 1887.

Hamnett “the exceptions, since the normal practice of the regime was seduction and incorporation”

Yet, what a lesson !

Next weekEconomic and Social changes

Pick up political story again in Week 10