BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

304 BARBAROUS MEXICO
upon one fact—upon his having "encourage'!" foreign
capital.
"Diaz, the peace-maker, the greatest peace-maker
alive, greater than Roosevelt! " chanted an American
politician in a banquet at the Mexican capital recently.
And the chant was only an echo of louder voices. I
remember seeing, not long ago, a news item stating
that the American Peace Society had made Porfirio
Diaz an hono-ary vice-president, in consideration of
his having brought peace to Mexico. The theory seems
to be that since the history of Mexico before Diaz was
full of wars and violent changes in the government and
the history of Mexico under Diaz has been without violent
upheavals of far-reaching effect, Diaz must necessarily
be a humane, Christ-like creature who shrinks at
the mention of bloodshed and whose example of lovingkindness
is so compelling that none of his subjects have
the heart to do anything but emulate him.
In answer to which it will only be necessary to refer
the reader to my account of how Diaz began his career
as a sthtesmen by deliberately breaking the peace of
Mexico himself, and how he has been breaking the
peace ever since—by making bloody war upon the selfrespecting,
democratic elements among his people. He
has kept the peace—if it can be called keeping the
peace—by killing off his opponents as fast as their
heads have appeared above the horizon. This sort of
peace is what the Mexican writer DeZayas calls "mechanical
peace." It has no virtue, because the fruits of
legitimate peace fail to ripen under it. It neither brings
happiness to the nation, nor prepares the nation for
happiness. It prepares it only for violent revolution.
For more than twenty years before arriving at the
supreme power in Mexico Diaz had been a professional