Monday April 3, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: David Bruce Reports from Mexico

WALL STREET WANTS INTERVENTION BEFORE THE EUROPEAN WAR IS OVER. If intervention comes now while the hands of France and Britain are tied, the American interests have more chance to get all their feet in the trough.

Mexico is an immensely rich country. It has well been called the treasure house of the world.

It heads the nations in the production of silver.

It is second (next to the U. S.) in the production of copper.

It is third in the production of oil, and its oil wells have only begun to be developed.

It is fourth in the production of gold.

Its agricultural resources can hardly even be estimated. They have not been developed in the past because the owners of the great haciendas would not permit it.

The northern country is the last great cattle range. It soon will be feeding beef to the world.

The west coast is a garden that makes California seem a desert, and along which, I believe, every fruit in the world can be grown.

The people, the plain people, forget these things. But the Interests don't, not for a minute.

There are Americans at work just now buying up every acre of Mexican land they can lay their paws on. Naturally they can buy it cheaply just now; naturally much of the selling is done by owners who have tears in their hearts.

If a real revolution of the people should not come, and intervention should, so these birds of prey would be permitted to go ahead, they'll own the whole blamed country by the time this is over. And they'll have bought it at bargain prices in the time of Mexico's agony, and will be holding on to it by grace of the government of the United States.

Magon said that Mexico never would know herself until the people won back the land. There will be no land left for them to win unless the people rise.

Incidentally, Mexico is NOT a Spanish-American republic. It is a mixture of a lot of weird things, and its population today consists of 6,000,000 odd Indians, 6,000,000 odd half-breeds, and about 2,500,000 whites, or gentlemen claiming to be whites.

Ever since Cortez, Mexico has been an exploited country.

First it was the Spaniards. Then it was the whole boiling of the nations of western Europe. Now it is the Americans chiefly, the British next, and the French a bad third.

Between them, these three countries have seized all the oil wells, all the silver and gold mines, all the copper and zinc mines, all the good lumber in the country, and have secured a controlling grip on the banks and railroads. Therefore, of course, these three nations have been the real rulers of the country.

In the oil fields, what was inevitable in view of the American and British oil monopolies happened. There was war between Standard Oil and the Cowdrays, a war of bribery, of nasty, mean underhandedness.

When the revolution broke out, this war took a new tack. Cowdray would back one faction; 26 Broadway promptly backed the other. Cowdray had the British government protest something; 26 Broadway had the heavy hand of the American government displayed. The Guggenheim interests, the silver and lumber trusts, took a similar course.

The revolution thus was quite pleasing in its initial stages to the Big Interests. Each one had pleasing visions of the side they had backed winning, and of new concessions, new loot. But when they discovered that they could not, with all their money, control the revolution, when money began to drop, when property was destroyed, the Big Interests began to squeal like stuck pigs.

It is they who are squealing now.

And the question I wish to ask even those who bow down before the god of property is this:

Did not the Big Interests lose for themselves and for all their countrymen the right to squeal over the destruction of property the day they first gave money to a revolutionist, the day they first took sides? Wouldn't you feel that way about it if you were a Mexican?

These questions are for property worshippers alone, however. The thing for the American people to remember is that it IS the Big Interests who are doing the squealing. It is they who are digging up stories of outrages, that usually happen in far places. It is they who raise such awful yelps about the death of an American, to whom they would have refused a job or a crust of bread while alive. It is they who—at a very late date, if all they say be true—have discovered that the Mexican people are starving, and it is their newspapers which doubtless have been weeping buckets of tears over that just now. It is they who want "benevolent intervention."

If I saw any hope that "benevolent intervention" would do one iota of good for the Mexican people, I might hold my peace. But I cannot.

What could it do ? Set up a Diaz-like dictatorship, upheld only by American arms. Any improvements accomplished under such conditions would be swallowed with the bitter gall that only the conquered know, with the hate with which German was swallowed in Alsace. And when the American troops were withdrawn, the improvements would be torn down, not because they were improvements, but because they were the handiwork of the conqueror. Retrogression instead of progress!

And would the American troops be with drawn? Or would they find the leaving of Mexico as hard as they now are finding the leaving of the Philippines?

I am very much in earnest about the situation here. I want to do what I can to prevent any chance of intervention, and I know that the pressure of intervention is being increased steadily at Washington, and that if Wilson does not yield it will be made a campaign issue.

In his speech at Indianapolis last January, President Wilson said:

Until the end of the Diaz reign, 80% of the people of Mexico never had a look-in in determining what their government should be.

It is none of my business, and it is none of yours how they go about the business.

The country is theirs. The government is theirs. The liberty, if they can get it—and God speed them in getting it—is theirs. And so far as my influence goes, while I am president, nobody shall interfere with them.

I believe that is a correct quotation, although I would not swear to it, and it seems to me that it puts the truth very clearly in all the words necessary. But since then the situation has been clouded up by the various gentlemen who have interests there, and who seem to have brought Wilson around to thinking that the business of the Mexicans IS his business. I wish Wilson would repeat that message, that promise, to day, and would insert in it this sentence:

"THE FOOD, IF THEY CAN [GET?] IT—AND GOD SPEED THEM IN GET TING—IS THEIRS."

For the food is right here in Mexico. It may be there are some cities, some districts, without it. But there is enough food in Mexico today to feed the entire population.

Of course, it may be that the Big American Interests do fear an immediate rising of the people. And I know that they fear the possibility of that, and long have feared the possibility of that, with a deadly fear. They are not afraid of organized military bands, which can be treated with, and which, as a last resort, can be bought. But they have feared the rising of the whole people with the shuddering fear that shuts its eyes before the coming of the feared. They have admitted its possibility, but never its probability.

Assuredly, if a rising be near, they have cause for fear. For, if the people rise, much blood will be shed and much property destroyed. When a people long oppressed, long held in darkest ignorance, once feel the power of killing those who held them down, it is likely to go to their heads, and they to excess.

The question is: Is it more worth while to permit the sudden shedding of a river of wealthy blood and destruction of property in order to free a whole people, or to prevent this and by so doing perpetuate a system that takes its toll in men, women and children, in art, education and progress, ANNUALLY?

It seems to me there can be only one answer.

So I choose the side of Revolution. Two years ago, if someone had asked me whether I favored peaceful evolution or red revolt, I think I should have answered "peaceful evolution" without a moment's hesitation. Now...

Well, take the Colorado situation: Was violence justified there?

I think it safe to say that the real Mexican revolution started considerably over four years ago with the writings of a group of journalists headed by Magon.

This beginning was intellectual only, and affected only the intellectuals. It never touched the 80%. Perhaps some whisper of it penetrated to mine or hovel. But if so, I am sure the peon who heard the whisper shuddered and shrank away from this attack on established things, which, being established, must assuredly be right, and which unquestionably would punish this sacrilegious writer in a fearsome way.

Then, four years ago, Madero crossed the Rio Grande, and a revolution of action was begun.

(We will leave the state of Chihuahua and parts of states bordering it out of this for the present. I'll deal with them later.)

But Madero's rising was in no sense a rising of the people. Madero was not of the people. He was a rich man, of a powerful family, who, having seen the light (and, perchance, some misty something to his own advantage) promised to give the people freedom. His followers were a small number of intellectuals and men of wealth like himself, and a band of adventurers ready to follow any flag if the rewards promised seemed great enough. But the people did not rise. The people were too awed, too afraid, too crushed, too used to the darkness of the pit of ignorance wherein they had been held, to be able to come at once into the light.

Madero ruled, and was assassinated. But the people did not rise. Came other leaders—Huerto, Gutierrez, Carranza, Villa, Zapata. None of these are leaders of the people. They are leaders of organized bands of armed men. True, many of these men and their followers represent the people, many more than in Madero's day. I grant they may mean to free the people, according to their several lights.

But here I want to ask the question, which is the most vital one to Mexico today, a question that ought to be put to every American who has anything to do with the Mexican question, or who even considers that question:

Can anyone free a people?

I do not believe so; I believe a people must free itself.

Do you remember the French revolution ? Do you remember how, preceding it, Prince and Due, Comte and Vicomte, rose in revolt "to free the people"?

And the French people were not freed?

Were not freed until the day that the wolf, Hunger, took them by the throat and they rose in their might and freed themselves through a river of blood!

Has ever a people been freed by different method ? Has ever a people, long oppressed and kept ignorant, found the courage to free themselves until they knew the wolf?

I think not.

Chihuahua is a state of mountains and plateaus, of canons and vast spaces, reminding one more of Arizona, New Mexico or Colorado than of Mexico. Its geography and climate has had its influence on the people, who always have been freer of spirit than those of the rest of Mexico. Also, outside of the mining districts clustered around the city of Chihuahua, the population is sparse. So it came that here in the north the revolution was a success almost from the beginning. To a great extent the people rose. The government was overthrown, a new government established. The land was seized. The peons were given freedom, and acquired shoes and meat and good clothes. Schools multiplied at an astonishing rate.

The new government was, and is, stable. That is: it is stable to this extent: There is no one within this territory so far as I know who wishes to raise the banner of revolt. Of course, it is open to attack by Carranzistas and the Huertistas and Cientificos, who recently have gathered like buzzards at El Paso. But internally, the state is at peace, and the people, with more money in their pockets than ever they had before, have been going about their business, planting their crops and refusing flatly to work for American mine owners at the wages offered.

Chihuahua knows no starvation today, although the drop in money, due to Villa's defeats, has hit them hard. Still, even with the peso worth only two and nine-tenth cents, the people have more money than they had six years ago.

These facts regarding Chihuahua have helped to strengthen my opposition to intervention.

Granting the influence of geography and climate here, which is lacking in the south, surely what has proved possible for the Mexicans of the north is possible for the Mexicans of the south. But it can become so only thru their own exertions.

There are 150,000 men now under arms in the republic of Mexico.

There are 15 million Mexican people.

Keep these figures in mind and then face the big fact that the Money Power in the United States has a greater grip on the country and on the freedom of the people than has the Money Power in France to day. It is true that because of the traditions of the country, the Money Power in the United States has been afraid to work openly. But it has worked, and during the last fifty years it slowly has tightened its grip, and has stolen right after right of the people, while at the same time it has laid the foundations of imperial power by having more and more "rights of property" written into the statutes.

NO NATION CAN HELP ANOTHER NATION TO DECIDE A MORAL QUESTION BY THE USE OF FORCE, ANY MORE THAN ONE CAN REDEEM A DRUNKARD BY BEATING HELL OUT OF HIM.

Therefore the people of Mexico should be left strictly alone to straighten out their own morals, as President Wilson promised they should be left alone last January.

SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 16
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company,
July 1915-June 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ
ISR, April 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
"Bleeding Mexico" by David Bruce
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

Note:
David Bruce was the pen name of Don MacGregor, formerly of the Denver Express:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/4/29/1295507/-Hellraisers-Journal-Bat...

IMAGES
Bleeding Mexico, David Bruce, ISR, April 1916,
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Mexican Family on March, ISR, April 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Mexican Hat Peddler, ISR, April 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Wealthy Mexican and Family, ISR, April 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

See also:

DK Tag: Don MacGregor
http://www.dailykos.com/news/DonMacGregor

Mexican Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution

Ricardo Flores Magón
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Flores_Mag%C3%B3n

Archivo Digital de Ricardo Flores Magón-Archivo Magón
http://archivomagon.net/

"Ricardo Flores Magón and the Anarchist Movement in Southern California"
-by Yesenia Barragan and Mark Bray
https://www.kcet.org/departures-columns/ricardo-flores-magon-and-the-ana...

Extracts from Wilson's Speech in Indianapolis on Jan 9, 1915
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=76NAAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcove...