Summary of Mexico Barbarian

Summary of México Bárbaro:

CHAPTER I: THE SLAVES OF YUCATÀN

North Americans call Mexico "our sister republic", a republic very similar to them or so they think, but the True Mexico is a country with a Constitution and written laws as just in general and democratic as those of the States. United; but where neither the Constitution nor the laws are fulfilled. It is a country without political freedom, without freedom of speech, without a free press, without free elections, without judicial system, without political parties, without any individual guarantee and without freedom to obtain the happiness. For more than a generation there has been no electoral struggle to occupy the Presidency, the Executive Power governs everything through a permanent army. It is a land where people are poor because they have no rights, where peonage is common for the great masses and where slavery exists, they do not worship their President.
The slavers were dedicated to buying or deceiving visitors, thus their heads were filled with falsehoods and They were led along a route prepared so that they would not know the truth and would see that the slaves were not slaves.

The landowners do not call their workers slaves, they refer to them as "laborers," especially when talking to outsiders. The slavery found in Yucatan is one in which the ownership of a man's body is absolute and can be transferred to another; property that gives the owner the right to take advantage of what he produces, starve him, punish him, murder him, etc. Yucatecan landowners do not call their system slavery, they call it forced debt service. Serfs do not have the opportunity to pay the price of their freedom with their labor.
Merida's moneylenders and slave brokers run their business in silence and take advantage of everyone they can trick into slavery in various ways. Among the slaves of Yucatan there are 10 Mayans for each Yaqui, the first die in their land, but the Yaquis are exiled and separated from their entire family.

CHAPTER II: THE EXTREMINATION OF THE YAQUIS

We are told about the Yaquis of Sonora, who by a radical order from President Porfirio Díaz were deported to Yucatán. Every month hundreds of families were collected to be sent into exile and no one knew what became of them afterwards.
The Yaquis were extremely hard-working and peaceful people and were part of the Mexican nation until they were incited by the government, wanting to take away their lands, to take up arms. This war was long and terrible, dying in it thousands of people; At its end, the Yaquis who had surrendered received territories in the north of the Republic, turning out to be a desert area and one of the most inhospitable places in America, for which they were forced to mix with nearby towns, thus losing part of the Yaqui tribe their identity. It is these peaceful Yaquis who are apprehended and deported to Yucatan, being sold there and the authorities of the government of the state of Sonora appropriating all their assets, resulting in these Yaquis a great investment.

CHAPTER III: ON THE ROUTE OF EXILE

The Yaquis heading to Yucatán, upon reaching the port of Guaymas, board a government warship to the port of San Blas. After four or five days of crossing, they disembark and are led on foot through one of the steepest mountain ranges in Mexico, from San Blas to Tepic and from Tepic to San Marcos, fifteen to twenty days travel.
Along the way, families disintegrate, women are taken away from their husbands and children and given children of strangers and when they begin to love them they are also taken away.
For the general in charge of the exile, they are all Yaquis, he makes no distinction if he has a dark complexion and dresses differently, does not investigate or ask questions..., he detains them all.
Many of the captured Yaquis die en route and at least two-thirds of those who survive die in the first twelve months of work.
The exiled Yaquis are sent to the henequen farms as slaves, they are treated as furniture; they are bought and sold, they do not receive wages, they are fed tortillas, beans and rotten fish; sometimes they are whipped to death, forced to work from dawn until dusk. Men are locked up overnight and women are forced to marry Chinese or Maya. They are hunted when they escape. Disintegrated families are not allowed to reunite.

CHAPTER IV: THE HIRED SLAVES OF VALLE NACIONAL

We are given an idea of ​​the number of people who are transported to Valle Nacional as slaves based on deception and the mistreatment they receive there by their “owners”.
In Valle Nacional all slaves, with the exception of very few, pay tribute to the land in a period of one month to one year, although the largest Mortality occurs between the sixth and eighth month, this as a consequence of the way in which they make them work, the way of whipping and killing them hunger.
The Valle Nacional slaveholder has discovered that it is cheaper to buy a slave, make him die of fatigue and hunger in seven months and buy another, to give the first a better diet, not make him work so much and thus prolong his life and working hours for a longer period long.
Slaves are not called that by the landowners, they are called contract workers; from the moment they enter Valle Nacional, they become the private property of the landowner and there is no law or government to protect them.
There are two ways to bring the worker to Valle Nacional: through a political boss who instead of sending small criminals to serve sentences in jail, he sells them as slaves and keeps the money for himself, thus arresting as many people as he can, or through an “agent of jobs ”.
Valle Nacional is the worst slavery center in all of Mexico and probably the worst in the world.

CHAPTER V: IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH

Valle Nacional is also known as the Valley of Death, all the individuals who are arrested go to Valle Nacional... everyone except the rich. Initially due to its great beauty the Spanish knew it as Valle Real, but after the independence of Mexico, the name was changed to Valle Nacional.
They are sent to their deaths, because they will never come out of that hole alive. Both men and women who are victims of slavery are whipped to death. It is the Spaniards who beat people to death, all the tobacco farms belong to Spaniards, except one or two.
 In Valle Nacional the only thing you can see are gangs of exhausted men and boys cleaning the land with machetes or plows. with yoke of oxen the wide fields and everywhere you see guards armed with long and flexible sticks, sabers and pistols.
All slaves are held until they die, and when they die, the masters do not always bother to bury them: they are thrown into the swamps where the alligators devour them. Slaves who are exhausted and useless, but who have enough strength to scream and defend themselves if they are to be thrown out to "the hungry", they are abandoned on the road penniless and ragged, many of them crawl to town to To die. The Indians give them some food and on the outskirts of town there is an old house where these miserable creatures are allowed to spend their last hours.

CHAPTER VI: THE PEONS OF THE FIELD AND THE POOR OF THE CITY

We are told about the number of slaves that exist in the Mexican Republic and the government's participation in this slavery.
In at least 10 of the 32 states and territories of Mexico, the overwhelming majority of workers are slaves, approximately 80%, while the remaining 20% ​​are integrated by free workers, who live a precarious existence in their effort to avoid the network of the enganchadores and whose life is extremely difficult and almost equal to that of a slave.
The secondary conditions of slavery vary in different places, although the general system is in all parts of the same: service against the will of the worker, absence of wages, scarce food and spanking.
Debt and "contract" slavery is the prevailing labor system throughout southern Mexico. According to this system, the worker is obliged to provide services to the landowner, accept what he wants to pay him and receive the blows that he wants to give him. The real or imaginary debt is the link that binds the pawn with his master. Debts are passed down from parent to child through generations.
Usually they do not receive a single penny in cash, but are paid in credit vouchers against the ranch store, in which they are forced to buy despite the prices exorbitant. Their living conditions are truly deplorable.

CHAPTER VII: THE DIAZ SYSTEM

Slavery and peonage in Mexico, poverty and ignorance and the general prostration of the people are due to the financial and political organization that governs Mexico; in a word, what will be called the "system" of Gral. Porfirio Diaz.
Although the Spanish lords made the Mexican people slaves and peons, they never broke it and they experienced as much as it is broken and destroyed with Diaz.
While he promised to respect the progressive institutions that Juárez and Lerdo had established, he instituted a system of his own, in which his own person is the central and dominant figure; in which his whim is the Constitution and the law; in which deeds and men have to submit to his will. Porfirio Díaz is the State.
 Under his rule, slavery and peonage were reestablished on a more merciless basis than those that existed in Spanish times.
It refers to Diaz's system more than to him personally because no man is alone in his iniquities. Díaz is the mainstay of slavery, but there are others without whom the system could not last long time, there is a set of commercial interests that profit greatly from the Porfirian system of slavery and autocracy. North American interests constitute the determining force for slavery in Mexico.
Against the will of the majority of the people, Gral. Díaz took over the leadership of the Government and remained there for more than 34 years and here is the answer to his being forced to establish that regime, depriving the people of their freedoms. Through military force and the police, he controlled elections, the press, and freedom of speech and made a sham of the popular government.
 Díaz, in order to obtain support for his government, dedicated himself to distributing public positions, contracts and special privileges of various kinds. Gradually the country has fallen into repression, in the hands of Díaz officials, friends and foreigners and for this, the people have paid with their lands, with their flesh and with their blood.

CHAPTER VIII: REPRESSIVE ELEMENTS OF THE DIAZ REGIME

North Americans who do business in Mexico are very well treated. The greatest demands for gratification are more than offset by the special privileges they later enjoy. For them the Diaz regime is the wisest, the most modern and the most beneficial, but for ordinary Mexicans it is a slave trader, a thief, a murderer.
The President, the governor and the political chief are three classes of officials who represent all the power in the country. No one is responsible for his acts before the people. It is the most perfect personalistic dictatorial regime on earth.
The repressive elements of his regime are: the army (murder machine and institution of exile); rural forces (mounted police, use their energies to steal and kill on behalf of the government); police; the agreed (secret organization of assassins); the law fuga (a way of murder widely used); Quintana Roo, the "Mexican Siberia" (soldiers-prisoners); the prisons (great horrors -Belén and San Juan de Ulùa-) and the political bosses.

CHAPTER IX: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OPPOSING PARTIES

We are told about the number of people who suffered daily death, prison or exile for fighting in favor of political rights: the right to freedom of speech and of the press, that of meeting, that of voting to decide who should occupy political positions and govern the nation, that of having security for people and property.
The organs of repression of the government machinery of Porfirio Díaz (army, rural, ordinary, secret and agreed police) are 20% are dedicated to the persecution of common criminals and the remaining 80% to the suppression of democratic movements common.
Secret murders happen constantly. It is claimed that during the Porfirio Díaz government there were more political executions than at any previous time, but that they were practiced with more skill and discretion than before. The apparent tranquility of Mexico is forced by means of the club, the pistol and the dagger.
During the Díaz government, the heads of all political movements opposed to him, no matter how who were their methods or their cause very worthy, were assassinated, imprisoned or expelled from the country.
As a consequence of this, by 1910, there was no longer person who dared to openly support any opposition party, mainly to the Liberal Party, for fear of being imprisoned also under the accusation of being related in one way or another to any of these rebellions.

CHAPTER X: THE EIGHTH ELECTION OF DÍAZ BY “UNANIMITY”

This chapter is dedicated to recounting the presidential campaign that ended on June 26, 1910, with the eighth "unanimous election" of President Díaz. Thanks to censorship there are many events that are not known about this and all other situations.
Through Creelman the President announced to the world that he for no reason would he consent to accept a new period and that he would like to personally transfer governmental power to a democratic organization. Given this, the whole country, outside of official circles, was enthusiastic about the news.
But this statement was false, so it was proposed that at least allow the people to appoint a vice president, but it was not, Díaz dedicated to destroying the Democratic Party and all its followers by imprisoning them, killing them, etc., as well as destroying all the newspapers that went in opposition to Díaz, returning once again to the intimidation of the people, so that on the day of the voting the soldiers watched the polls and anyone If he dared to vote for candidates other than government candidates, he risked imprisonment, confiscation of his property, and even destruction. death. In the end, the government complied with the formality of counting the votes and in due course it was announced to the world that the Mexican people had elected Díaz and Corral "practically unanimously."

CHAPTER XI: FOUR MEXICAN STRIKES

The Río Blanco textile factory was the scene of the bloodiest strike in the history of the Mexican labor movement, because the conditions that operated in them were subhuman. The workers formed the union "Círculo de Obreros" and were suppressed, so factories of the same company in other states decided to break out the strike and in order to To help them, those from Río Blanco waited, but so that they could no longer help them, the company closed the factory and it was then that, without work, they declared a strike and formulated a series of demands. They asked Díaz for help, but he, as expected, gave his ruling in favor of the company and the employees were willing to abide by the ruling, but they needed food to regain their strength and that was why the war broke out, because for not receiving help they set fire to the store of Ray and later the factory and therefore the workers were victims of a great massacre, but at least they managed to get the store to closed.
Another strike was that of the Great League of Railroad Workers, which paralyzed the Mexican National Railroad system for 6 days, but it was later suppressed and the strikers initially returned to their posts, but were later fired one by one. one.
The Tizapàn strike, like the others, was due to the poor working conditions to which the workers were subjected. workers and like all the others this one was lost and the factory reopened, because labor is abundant and it is also cheap.
The last strike was that of Cananea and it was also broken by the government, this one was also bloody and The United States was involved in the capture and death of the employees, thanks to certain falsehoods.

CHAPTER XII: CRITICISMS AND VERIFICATIONS

We are presented with some evidences that for many prove the slavery that existed during the mandate of Porfirio Díaz and that for others are only pure lies and that when trying to verify them they end up accepting one or the other of these lies until they confess that the whole story.
We are presented with a series of newspaper articles by people who defend him, but at the same time recognize something of what Turner wrote in The American Magazine (the first 5 chapters of this book, but in much more reduced).

CHAPTER XIII: DÌAZ'S CONTUBERNITY WITH THE NORTH AMERICAN PRESS

There is talk of the resistance that some powerful journalists in the United States have to publish anything that harms Porfirio Díaz and the desire they have to publish what flatters this dictator, as well as how those who do this, do it in a way that Diaz's agents tell them to do it and therefore without a sample of facts.
Any book that was in opposition to Díaz was censored and denied circulation, not only in Mexico but also in the United States, where already an opposition book which was considered flattering by the majority, circulated and subsequently disappeared until it became impossible to achieve it, as happened with many others.
Given this, it is proven that there is a skillfully applied influence on journalism and book publishing and all for "business reasons."
What is commented in this chapter presents a historical veracity, since during the government of Díaz, all objections to his methods of government were suppressed, avoiding even the slightest criticism of his politics.
The opposition of the printed letter was repressed by means of the purchase or persecution of the publishers of newspapers, books or magazines, until achieving its complete submission, as was the case of many North American publishers who, in order to obtain some property or concession in Mexico, put aside everything that was against Díaz and harmed the deal.
There were those who heroically resisted bribery, jail, and hostility, such as the directors of El Monitor Republicano, La Voz de México, and El Hijo del Ahuizote.
El Tiempo, a Catholic newspaper, ended up accepting a government subsidy, so that its texts were tolerated to give the impression of the existence of a free press.
In the states of the republic, the persecution against the free press was even more atrocious, since the directors of the newspapers were assassinated.
All this censorship resulted in the absolute electoral indifference of the Mexican people.

CHAPTER XIV: THE NORTH AMERICAN PARTNERS OF DÌAZ

The United States is a partner in the slavery that exists in Mexico. They are responsible as a determining force for the continuation of that slavery and they are knowingly so. There are many North Americans willing to prove that slavery in Mexico is profitable, they have contributed their assistance so that that regime is extended, they give their unanimous and total support to Díaz because they consider that it is a necessary factor to perpetuate the slavery. The United States has kept Díaz in power when he should have fallen. Police power has been used to destroy the Mexican movement.
Through business association, journalistic conspiracy, and political and military alliance, the States The United States has virtually turned Díaz into a political vassal, they have transformed Mexico into a slave colony of the United States. United. Díaz is the Golden Calf, the Americans make a profit from Mexican slavery and strive to maintain it.
There is a growing anti-American sentiment in Mexico, since the Mexican people are naturally patriotic.
There are 900 million dollars of North American capital in Mexico, which represents a great threat, since it is a good pretext to intervene in Mexico in order to protect its capital and thus destroy the last hope of Mexicans to obtain their independent national existence, this capital is invested in: the copper consortium, the production of crude oil, beet sugar, rubber and the transportation business for express. 80% of Mexican exports are made to the United States and 66% of imports also come from there.
The complete North Americanization of the railroads of Mexico is one of the threats that remains on the people to prevent them from overthrowing the government that is especially favorable to them.

CHAPTER XV: THE NORTH AMERICAN PERSECUTION OF DÌAZ'S ENEMIES

This chapter recounts how the United States has handed over its military and civilian resources into the hands of the tyrant and with such resources has kept him in power. By the reign of terror thus established by the United States they have suppressed a movement, which otherwise would have developed sufficient strength to overthrow Diaz, abolish Mexican slavery, and restore constitutional government in Mexico.
Some of the procedures used in the deportation campaign carried out by the United States to help Díaz were: initiating extradition proceedings on charges of "murder and robbery"; deport them through the Immigration Department under the charge of “undesirable immigrants” (it was the most effective); brazen kidnappings and criminal renditions across the border.
In this chapter we are also told about several stories about newspaper suppression persecutions, which were very common during the Díaz government, in fact they were the daily bread.

CHAPTER XVI: THE PERSONALITY OF PORFIRIO DÌAZ

In general, Americans have the opinion that Díaz is a "very good person" and that he is the most large western hemisphere, but the facts speak for themselves and qualify him as mysterious.
Diaz has spent millions for printing ink in the United States, where nothing but rave about him is spoken of. Most men are vulnerable to flattery and Diaz knows how to flatter, he is generous in gifting to men whose good opinion influences others.
Díaz has dedicated himself to disturbing the peace through a bloody war against the respectable democratic movements of the people, but this is not seen by those who admire him.
Porfirio has personal faculties, such as a genius for organization, keen judgment of human nature, and industriousness, but these characteristics he uses for evil. He is smart, but his intelligence can be called criminal by devising methods to reinforce his personal power; they have nothing of refinement or culture. He is extremely cruel and vindictive and at the same time cowardly and the people have suffered from these causes.
The General has shown gratitude to some of his friends, but in doing so he has at the same time exhibited his utter disregard for the public welfare.
Another of the main characteristics of him is hypocrisy and lack of patriotism.
The only thing Diaz dedicated himself to was to deliver his people to North American rule and all for personal benefit, he never sought collective benefit.

CHAPTER XVII: THE MEXICAN PEOPLE

The character of Mexicans is discussed and a discussion is presented of the arguments that Americans often use to defend, in Mexico, a system that they would not for a moment some other country.
The substantial point of this defense is that the Mexican "is not fit for democracy" and must be enslaved for the sake of "Progress", since he would do nothing for himself or for humanity if he were not forced to do so by fear of the whip or the hunger; that he must be enslaved because he knows nothing better than slavery; and that, anyway, in slavery he is happy.
Some of the vices attributed to the Mexican people by those same people are: incurable laziness, childish superstition, unpredictability unbridled, inborn stupidity, unchanging conservatism, impenetrable ignorance, indomitable propensity to theft, drunkenness and cowardice.
We are given the reasons for these vices and the results of them, and we are told that the peculiar Mexican character is a combination of Spanish and aboriginal elements.
An analysis is also made of whether or not Mexico is ready for democracy.

OPINION

Reading this book seemed extremely interesting to me, since through it I was able to learn about various situations and events of the government of Porfirio Díaz that perhaps I would not have known otherwise, since commonly in history books we do not find these events narrated in such a deep and concise way or even not even named.

Turner John Kenneth, Barbarian Mexico, Mexico, Ed. Época, 303 p.p.