Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946; Mexico -- History -- Revolution, 1910-1920
It has often been said that Villa succeeded because he had educated
advisers. As a matter of fact, he was almost alone. What advisers he
had spent most of their time answering his eager questions and doing
what he told them. I used sometimes to go to the Governor’s palace
early in the morning and wait for him in the Governor’s chamber. About
eight o’clock Sylvestre Terrazzas, the Secretary of State, Sebastian
Vargas, the State Treasurer, and Manuel Chao, then Interventor, would
arrive, very bustling and busy, with huge piles of reports, suggestions
and decrees which they had drawn up. Villa himself came in about
eight-thirty, threw himself into a chair, and made them read out loud to
him. Every minute he would interject a remark, correction or
suggestion. Occasionally he waved his finger back and forward and said:
"_No sirve_." When they were all through he began rapidly and without a
halt to outline the policy of the State of Chihuahua, legislative,
financial, judicial, and even educational. When he came to a place that
bothered him, he said: "How do they do that?" And then, after it was
carefully explained to him: "Why?" Most of the acts and usages of
government seemed to him extraordinarily unnecessary and snarled up.
For example, his advisers proposed to finance the Revolution by issuing
State bonds bearing 30 or 40 per cent. interest. He said, "I can
understand why the State should pay something to people for the rent of
their money, but how is it just to pay the whole sum back to them three
or four times over?" He couldn’t see why rich men should be granted
huge tracts of land and poor men should not. The whole complex
structure of civilization was new to him. You had to be a philosopher
to explain anything to Villa; and his advisers were only practical men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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