The Mexican Revolution.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 126, 12 May 1920, Page 5

The Mexican Revolution.

CARRANZISTS EXECUTED.

OBREGON’S COMPLETE CONTROL

A GENEROUS VICTOR

Mexico City, May 10. El Paso advices state that General Aquilar, son-in-jaw of Carranza, and General Murquia are reported to have been executed in Mexico City. Aquilar was killed by his own troops. Murquia is credited with the wholesale murder of leading revolutionaries last Thursday. The rebels have captured Puebla. —(A. and N.Z.) (Received 12, 9.45 a.in.)

Washington, May 11. A message from El Paso states that Obregon has got every big city of Mexico under control. The revolution was practically bloodless. The rearrangement for a new Government is proceeding quietly.—(A. and N.Z.) (Received 12, 9.55.) Mexico City, May 11. Revolutionists have conquered the whole of Mexico with the exception of outlying districts. Obregon has granted safety to Carranza, although Carranza, before his flight, signed Obregon’s death warrant.—(A. and N.Z.)

ANARCHY IN MEXICO.

BRITISH AND AMERICAN GRIEVANCES.

CARRANZA’S TRICKS AND

SHIFTS

[Yesterday’s cables confirmed the downfall of the Carranza regime in Mexico. The rebellion began in the State of Sonora swiftly spread, culminating in the fall of Mexico City and the capture of Carranza- The new Government has guaranteed to safeguard Carranza’s life and has set out to establish new and stable rule. Villa, the bandit leader, is not to be given any place in the new regime. ]

For eight years past Mexico has continued in a state of anarchy, and the moment is rapidly approaching when the United States will no longer be able to defer a decision regarding a situation which imperils its own political integrity, and affects prejudicially in the highest degree all foreign financial and commercial interests 'in Central America, writes Mr. H. hame Richards in the London “Observer.” The geographical position renders the problem particularly Washington’s own. It prohibits, in fact, the intervention of another Power; otherwise, one presumes, our own Government would long since have adopted measures to protect British investments in Mexico, which are approximately valued at £200,000,000 sterling, and to exact reparation for the murder or mutilation of almost one hundred British subjects. The most significant feature of the present situation is the almost complete unanimity with which the American Press is demanding a settlement, even if force has to be employed, with her discordant neighbour. Hitherto conflicting parties m the States lia.e failed to attain a common agreement as to the expediency of military operations directed against Mexico. Continued outrage has, however, finally exhausted patience, and the passage of time has revealed President Carranza’s policy to be one of appropriation, without due compensation, of ali foreign interests in the country. Those total interests are valued at £700,000,000, of which America and ourselves own the major portion. Thus this question of intervention in Mexican ailairs concerns us almost as intimately as it does the United States. THE POLICY OF DIAZ.

Under the regime of Porfirid Diaz, the Maker of Mexico, the influx of foreign capital into the country was directly encouraged. As a result the country was covered with a network of railways, mainly British-built; its production of silver was increased until it represented one-third of the world’s total output; while American and British capital discovered and exploited those oilfields which run for three hundred miles parallel with the coast down to Guatemala. Briefly, in the thirty years of Diaz’s reign, Mexico was raised from indigence to prosperity, from insignificance to diplomatic importance, under a policy which invited the foreign investor to develop the country’s natural resources- This policy found concrete expression in the Mining Laws of 1884, 1892, and 1909, whereby the absolute right of landowners, no matter of what nationality, to all minerals that might be discovered in the subsoil, was explicitly recognised and conceded. It was the existence of these minerals in the subsoil which alone attracted the foreign investor, for the Mexicans themselves lacked the essential capital even to prospect for them BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.

While Diaz reigned the country knew an ever-increasing prosperity. Mexico City displayed a profusion of wealth and came to be known as the Paris of the Americas. It was the President’s ambition to confer upon his people the advantages of the most advanced and democratic form of civilisation. Unfortunately his views were too enlightened for his day. He granted an ignorant and uneducated people political enfranchisement, and thus prepared that hotbed of Socialism which in 1911 found voice in Francisco Madero. The latter raised the banner of revolt, and, in order to preserve the land from the evils of civil warfare, Porfirio Diaz, now an old and wearied man. resigned the Presidency and retired an exile to Paris, where he died in 1915. With his departure the Mexican Republic vanished and the Mexican anarchv took its place. To-day, ■nt years after the departure of one of the wisest and greatest Presidents the American republics have ever known, some twenty revolutionary leaders are still afoot in Mexico, and in travelling south from Laredo, on the border, to the capital, one encounters for hundreds of miles on end human remains swinging desolately from the telegraph posts or lying amid the whitened bones of horses and the debris of war in the roadside ditches. THE RISE OF CARRANZA.

Madero was destined to reign no longer than fourteen months. F oilowing him came phantasy of “conquerors”—Huerta, Lascurian, Garza, and others- —some of whom emerged from the chaos for a month or so and then disappeared with the contents of the Treasury. Meanwhile foreign interests suffered’ and have continued to suffer to this day, tremendous damage. MineS were pillaged and the labourers murdered or driven away ; banks were robbed, farms laid waste, railway lines destroyed, while American and British subjects were deprived even of their personal possessions and frequently murdered.

In 1915 Venustiano Carranza overthrew his rivals and proclaimed himself de facto head of the Government. At Queretaro, in the same year, he announced an amendment to the Constitution. This amendment in effect completely reversed the Diaz policy and affirmed that “ ... in the (Mexi-

can) nation is vested legal ownership of petroleum and all hydrocarbons, solid, liquid, or gaseous.” In other words, those to whom Diaz had guaranteed subsoil rights were now denied those rights, despite the hundreds of millions of pounds sterling they had sunk in the country. The British Government found it impossible to countenance such a policy of overt robbery, and accordingly abstained from accrediting diplomatic representatives to Carranza even when the latter in 1917 was formally elected President. Before dispatching Ambassador Fletcher to Mexico City. Washington demanded assurances that the rights of foreign investors in Mexico would suffer no prejudice under the amendment to the Constitution

DEVIOUS WAYS. With the country still in the grip of fi dozen factions, diplomatic recognition by the United States was a matter of pre-eminent importance to President Carranza, and he proffered the assurances demanded with suspicious alacrity. Instantly, however, he set about gaining his ends by devious ways. Under the plea ot military necessity he took charge of the railways and appropriated their earnings. His next step was to impose new taxes on petroleum, which were, however, to be regarded not as taxes, but as royalties and rentals. The Powers refused to concur in the tacit acknowledgment of Government ownership. Taxes should be paid as taxes, apd not as royalties and rentals. Whereupon Carranza issued another decree. All properties in the country were to be registered, and the form of registration insisted upon once again recognised the principle of Government ownership. Moreover, refusal to register was to involve forfeiture. Again the Powers,protested, and again Carranza changed his venue. No further boring for oil was to be permitted except under special license. This license, however, would only be granted, to those who acknowledged Government ownership. Failure on the part of those owning oil-bearing lands to bore . for oil flung the lands open to re-entry. Washington plainly pointed out that an attempt to put this decree into execution would compel the United States to take steps to defend the legal rights of American property owners in Mexico. Thus decree follows decree, and the struggle knows no pause. , , . , Other means to further his avowed policy of driving the foreigner from Mexico consist of the vexatious bur dens Carranza has imposed upon pet roleutn. Nominally the tax is one oi 10 per cent., but the tax is ad valorem, and since the Mexican authorities themselves assess the value of the oil it works out at 33 per cent. Bar. stamp, harbour and dredging dues have also been increased, until Mexican petroleum to-day is the most highly taxed oil in the world, returning the Government a revenue many times in excess of the profits commanded by those investors whose capital expenditure gave Mexican petroleum to the world. Manifestly, in this period of reconstruction, burdened as we are with an enormous war debt, we, no more than the United States, can sit placidly by and permit President Carranza to consummate this- policy of open robbery. THE COUNTRY IN CHAOS.

Ollier factories enter into the case, to emphasise the ugliness, of the position. The Central Government is powerless to preserve order in the country. The dynamiting of the railways and the "burning of rolling stock continue almost daily. So too does the murder of foreign subjects.- In the past few years over nine hundred foreigners has been done to death in Mexico. The bandit leader, Villi, still renders life precarious iii the north, and regularly raids American border towns. Zapata, another .aspi rent to the Presidential chair, besieges the capital, making of Carranza a prisoner, who dares not move from the Palacio Nacional to his castle at Chapultapec. The distance is less than that separating the Mansion House from Buckingham Palace! Again, throughout the war Mexicc was the centre of pro-German propaganda in North and South America. According to a statement Senator F alls has just placed belore the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senatt Mexican agents are now working with extremist agitators to stir up Indus trial and political strife in the Unitee States. The same Senator produces proof to show that Mexican’ soldier; on the border are offered rewards fol shooting American citizens. Such a condition of affairs is intolerable, and most surely cannot be permitted to endure. Indeed, a settlement with President Carranza is lonfe overdue, and any steps taken to reduce Mexico to the normal again will necessarily gain our support and welcome, both because of our financial commitments and because Central America represents a vast 1 and expanding market for our industrial productions, which we cannot afford to neglect at this phase of our history.