BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

REPRESSIVE ELEMENTS OF THE DIAZ MACHINE 143
the country is divided into ten military zones, three
commanderies and fourtecn jcJaturas. One sees soldiers
everywhere. There is not an important city in the country
that has not its army barracks, and the barracks are
situated in the heart of the city, where they are always
ready. The discipline of war is maintained at all times,
the presence of the soldiers and their constant drilling
are a perpetual threat to the people. And they are used
upon the people often enough to keep always fresh in
the memories of the people the fact that the threat is not
an empty one. Such readiness for war as is maintained
on the part of the Mexican troops is not known in this
country. There is no red tape when it comes to fighting
and troops arrive at a scene of trouble in an incredibly
short time. As one example, at the time of the Liberal
rebellion in the fall of 1906 the Liberals attacked the city
of Acavucan, Veracruz. Despite the fact that the city is
situated in a comparatively isolated part of the tropics,
the government concentrated 4,000 soldiers on the town
within twenty-four hours after the first alarm.
As an instrument of repression, the Mexican arm y is
employed effectivel y in two separate and distinct ways.
It is an engine of massacre and it is an exile institution, a
jail-house, a concentration camp for the politically undesirable.
This second function of the army abides in the fact
that more than 95 per cent of the enlisted men are
drafted, and drafted for the particular reason that they
are politically undesirable citizens, or that they are good
subjects for graft on the part of the drafter. The
drafter is usually the jeft politico. A judge—at the
instance of the executive authority—sometimes sentences
a culprit to the army instead of to jail. and a governor—
as at Cananea—sometimes personally superintends the