Granting that the population of Mexico, if freed from this foreign
"busy" idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on
them with such severity in the last forty years, would not immediately
adopt improved methods of cultivation, even when they should have free
opportunity to do so, still we have no reason to conclude that they
would not adopt so much of it as would fit _their_ idea of what a man is
alive for; and if that actually proved good, it would introduce still
further development. So that there would be a natural, and therefore
solid, economic growth which would stick; while a forced development of
it through the devastation of the people is no true growth. The only way
to make it go, is to kill out the Indians altogether, and transport the
"busy" crowd there, and then keep on transporting for several
generations, to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an
imported population.
The Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this
murderous manner. I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to
those who materially profited by its extermination; but no one who looks
forward to the final unification and liberation of man, to the
incorporation of the several goodnesses of the various races in the one
universal race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning
shame and fathomless regret.
I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general; of the meaning of
the Mexican revolution--chiefly an agrarian one; of its present
condition. I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the
electoral victory of the now ruling power, it has not put an end even to
the armed rebellion, and cannot, until it proposes some plan of land
restoration; and that it not only has no inward disposition to do, but
probably would not dare to do, in view of the fact that immense capital
financed it into power.
As to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the
election, it is impossible to say. The dailies informed us that in the
Federal District where there are 1,000,000 voters, the actual vote was
less than 450,000.
They offered no explanation. It is impossible to explain it on the
ground that we explain a light vote in our own communities, that the
people are indifferent to public questions; for the people of Mexico are
not now _indifferent_, whatever else they may be. Two explanations are
possible: the first, and most probable, that of _governmental_
intimidation; the second, that the people are convinced of the
uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles. In the less
thickly populated agricultural states, _this is_ very largely the case;
they are relying upon direct revolutionary action. But although there
was guerilla warfare in the Federal District, even before the election,
I find it unlikely that more than half the voting population there
abstained from voting out of conviction, though I should be glad to be
able to believe they did.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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