# The Story of Mexico/Chapter 42

XLII.
PORFIRIO DIAZ.
For three years peace reigned in Mexico, and then began another revolution. Towards the end of 1875, rumors of dissatisfaction were afloat; in spite of the present quiet, which seemed solid and durable, distrust reigned, yet no one voice proclaimed the nature of the malady. Early in the next year, a "Plan" was started, one of those fatal propositions for change which have always spread like wildfire through the Mexican community. By midsummer, the Republic was once more plunged in civil war.
Although he had apparently no hand in the "Plan" of Tuxtepec, General Porfirio Diaz appeared at the head of the army of the revolutionists. He had been living quietly in the neighborhood of Vera Cruz, but now he emerged to take an active part in the general disturbance.
Porfirio Diaz was born in Oaxaca, on the 15th of September, 1830. This state, the farthest of all the states to the south, and except Chiapas, the limit of the Mexican Republic, has many claims to distinction. Its northern part formed the Márquezado, or grant, given in 1529 to Cortés, with the title of Márqués del Valle de Oaxaca.
The scenery of Oaxaca is of the wildest and ​grandest in Mexico. The Pass of Saloméa, leading to the zapotec ornament. city, recalls those of Switzerland. Wild animals, not only deer, but pumas and even the jaguar, roam over its slopes, covered with fan-palms and other tropical growths, while higher up is a forest of palms and oaks growing together. At the summit is a grand view of the valley of Oaxaca.
The city, like Puebla, is of Spanish foundation, but at no very great distance from it are the ancient ruins of Mitla, still a puzzle to archæologists, since nothing certain is known even of the tribes found in that region by the Conquistadores,—the Zapotecas, or the traditions of their origin. Their customs seem to have been like those of the Mexicans, but their language resembled that of the Mayas. They were subject to long struggles with the Aztecs, and at the end of the 15th century their capital city, Mitla, was taken and given over to pillage, and the prisoners taken to Mexico to be offered up on the altars of Huitzilopochtli. ​The ruins stand in the midst of a gloomy, cheerless landscape, of stunted vegetation, sandy soil, from which project dull gray rocks. No singing birds or even insects frequent the place; the turkey buzzard soars over the lonely tract under a gloomy image of a zapotec chief.sky, and dismal silence reigns around the abandoned architecture of a forgotten race. Even the carvings of geometric ornaments, without any human or animal forms, add to the gloom of this solitary spot.
The present generations of Oaxaca have the reputation of being the steady, independent mountaineers of Mexico; like the Swiss, always ready to defend their rights. Among them, Porfirio Diaz has been involved in every contest for his view of the right, since he was old enough to bear arms. He was, like many other of the Mexican generals, intended for the bar, and studied with that object, concluding the usual course in the seminary at Oaxaca; but in 1854 he served a campaign, returning ​again to his studies only for a time. In the so called war of the reform he distinguished himself, and during the intervention was conspicuous as a military leader. In the disaster of Puebla, when, after the brilliant repulse of the Cinco de Mayo, the Mexicans had to give up the city to the French, Diaz escaped being taken prisoner, and hastened to Oaxaca, the city of his birth, which, with forces raised by his own efforts, he succeeded in putting in a state of defence. Bazaine himself marched against the resisting city, and it was obliged to capitulate. Porfirio was carried a prisoner to Puebla, and there held; but he managed to escape after some months by letting himself down from his window with a rope in the middle of the night. This was in September. The next month, returning with a new army, Diaz besieged his own town, now in the hands of those who were lately its besiegers. While his brother Felix held the siege, Porfirio routed a column of French coming to the aid of the troops within the city, and after two weeks he compelled a surrender and entered it in triumph. Porfirio, always successful in his contests with the French, continued so after their support was withdrawn from the imperialists. His military fame reached its height after the taking of Puebla, which was the last act in the French intervention, and the peaceful occupation of the city of Mexico. All these feats of arms gave to the general who accomplished them a military prestige of great importance in a country where military prowess means so much as with the Mexicans. The revolution of ​the summer of 1876 gained importance from the arrival of Diaz at Vera Cruz. It is said that, alone and disguised, he was hastening thither from New Orleans in a steamer which, touching at Tampico, took on board a body of government troops destined for the same port. The favorite chief of the liberals, seeing that he was recognized by one of the Federal officers, and convinced he should be arrested by him, jumped overboard and swam away. He was seen and brought back to the steamer by friends, under cover of the dark, and so well concealed that his hiding-place was not discovered, and the impression was encouraged that he had either reached the shore by swimming, or been drowned. Disguised as a workman, he left the steamer among the boxes and bales of its cargo, and landed at Vera Cruz. Speedily furnished with horses and guards he made his way to Oaxaca, where he took command of the forces of the rebellion, hitherto scattered and insufficient for lack of a head.
During the summer there was fighting and much confusion, in the midst of which the election took place for the choice of President for another term of four years. The result was in favor of Lerdo de Tejada, but he was so unpopular that he was obliged soon after to leave the capital, on the 20th of November, accompanied by his ministers and a few other persons. The other Lerdistas hid themselves. Congress dissolved, and the opposition triumphed.
Thus ended the government of the Lerdistas, but a few days before the expiration of its legal term. On the 24th of November, General Porfirio Diaz ​ president porfirio diaz.
​made his solemn entry into the capital, and was proclaimed Provisional President.
After a good deal of fighting all over the country, Congress declared him, in May 1877, to be Constitutional President for a term to last until November 30, 1880.
It was just after this successful general grasped the prize, that Santa Anna, forgotten, neglected, old, and blind, died close by, in his house in the Calle de Vergaza.
But little more remains to be said of the government of Mexico up to the present time. President Diaz was able to consolidate his power, and to retain his seat without civil war, although this has been imminent at times, especially towards the end of his term. In 1880 General Manuel Gonsalez was elected, and on the 1st of December of that year, for the second time only in the history of the Republic, the retiring President gave over his office to his legally elected successor. That this was possible, is proof of great improvement in stability and the growth of steadiness and good judgment among the Mexicans. The administration of Gonsalez passed through its four years without any important outbreak, in spite of the difficult questions there were to deal with, chief among them the huge debt to England, contracted in the early days of the Republic, and ever increasing by reason of unpaid interest.
At the end of that term, General Diaz was reelected and became President December 1, 1884. The treasury of the country was empty, the ​Republic without credit, yet he has, by heroic measures, succeeded in placing his government upon a tolerably stable financial basis, and done much to restore the foreign credit of the Republic. President Diaz is disposed and able to serve his country by an advanced and liberal policy. The result of his firmness and judgment is already seen in the returning confidence of nations and foreigners alike in Mexican affairs, and with it the rapid development of the resources of the country.
President Diaz, with his handsome wife, the daughter of his Minister of the Interior, Manuel Romero Rubio, has not been able to resist the charm of Chapultepec, in spite of the melancholy associations hanging about the spot Carlotta loved and Maximilian adorned for her enjoyment. The Pompeiian apartments are restored, and the hanging gardens bloom with roses all the year, while fountains sparkle in the sunlight. From the broad terrace gleam in the distance the cold peaks of the volcanoes, while Mexico spreads wide in the valley its rectangular lines, every year stretching out farther in all directions, a practical proof to the wise chief of the administration, as he looks down upon them from the now peaceful height of his terrace, of the success of his schemes of improvement and progress.
Let us hope that the tranquillity is permanent and that a long season of peace and prosperity has come to settle upon the long tormented, much enduring valley of Mexico, and the broad plateau of Anahuac. ​Now, at last, may the Indians, descendants of the Aztec chief, look up and hope for the development of their race. For the first time in history they have a chance to show whether they are capable of taking a leading place among the races of the earth. Poor fugitives, hiding among the rushes of the lake, some centuries ago, their leaders knew how to build up a powerful, warlike nation, but the people were oppressed by the horrors of a bloody religion, degraded and kept down by the practice of human sacrifice. The Spanish conquest brought them other rulers, and priests who gave to them a kindlier faith; but their minds were little cared for, and they were still oppressed, like slaves, by the new race which came to govern them.
Spanish domination civilized the Indians, but scarcely developed the powers which may exist in their natures. That yoke thrown off, they have seen their day of real freedom once and again postponed, through the personal ambition of their own leaders, or the audacious interference of foreign powers, while their own blood has been made to flow freely for causes not really their own. In spite of all this, the native character has asserted itself with vigor wherever it has had a chance. Juarez, the first successful ruler of Mexico of real Mexican blood, by a true Indian trait of tenacity, held the government through the dark period of the intervention. Diaz, also of native descent, has kept the country in a progressive path.
The true native character of Mexico has now a chance to assert itself. The future will look on with ​interest to see whether it has the capacity of self-government which its friends fully ascribe to it. If the Mexicans can profit by the sharp lessons taught them by the events of the present century; if they can root out of their nature the savage instincts which have given the national character its reputation for cruelty—instincts, not only inherited from the bloody practices of the Aztec, but fortified by the dark streak of ferocity which belongs to the Spanish race; if they can prove that the development of intellectual powers is possible to the race as well as to those individuals, then their country has before it the prospect of taking an honorable place among the peoples of the western continent.