life, principle and foundation of the existence of civilized nations. It is an image of feudal Europe without the spirit of independence and the energetic force of those times.
During the three hundred years of colonial government, these classes, reduced to subsisting on their daily labor, had no notions whatsoever of a better condition of life, or at least did not even suspect they could be called to enter into the pleasures of any other kind of existence than the sad and mean one in which they remained. Their desires, on the other hand, were proportionate to their ideas, and these, as has been said, occupied a sphere so small that one could say with accuracy that they knew only the physical side of life. Those activities that put them
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in contact with white people, such as attendance at church and few, very rare, gatherings for some public act, were purely mechanical, and it was a phenomenon to hear a reasoned statement from the mouths of those degraded beings. Many travelers have said that the indigenous peoples of America are reserved and silent, mistaking what is only the effect of their ignorance for contemplation or not caring to speak. But if by some unknown caprice of nature a genius stood out, a notable character, at the moment he spoke to his companions with the language of desperation and, exhorting them to throw off their enslavement, he was sacrificed by the oppressors. Tupac-Amaro in Peru and Quisteil in Yucatán can be cited, among others.
“The equality or inequality among the different orders of citizens in a new and semisavage nation,” says a famous writer, “depends essentially on the distribution of territorial property; because a nation that is not civilized does not have commerce, or accumulated capital, or manufacturing and arts; it cannot then possess other riches than those the earth produces. The earth is the only one that feeds men in a land without commerce and without accumulated riches, and men consistently obey the one who can, at his will, give them or take from them the means of living and enjoying. A nation,” continues the same author,
sometimes without revolution and without conquest, acquires an imperfect degree of civilization, where lands are cultivated but commerce and the arts have not yet made any progress at all: then it is probable that the lands belonging to this nation were, at its beginning, divided among the citizens in more or less equal portions, or at least that none of them obtained from their compatriots permission to appropriate an amount of land extremely disproportionate to the abilities of the family to cultivate it. The haciendas can be more or less large, but never were they like provinces, and the inequality that existed in this case among individuals would not be such that it might place some necessarily in dependence on others. Citizens, unequal only in enjoyments, would not forget that they were equal by origin, and all were free. Such is the history of ancient Greece and ancient Italy, and here is where that idea originates that, from the most distant times, free governments are seen only in these regions. In our times, the distribution of fortunes in the colonies of North America retain some analogy with the early establishment of agricultural
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nations. The colonists give, it is true, a greater expanse to their haciendas than we give in Europe, but they are always proportional to the capacities of their families. Consequently, there exists among them a kind of territorial balance, as Harrington called it in his work, Oceana, a balance that contributes to the preservation of liberty in the United States of the North. For the rest, even without this balance, it might be able to have established that liberty; because the Americans have accumulated capital, have vast commerce and arts, the poor and the rich alike finding in their country abundant means to subsist with independence.
These doctrines, whose accuracy one cannot dispute, lend substance to very profound reflections, given the data I have noted in an orderly manner regarding the state of territorial riches in the Mexican Republic. What role will more than three million individuals, summoned suddenly to enjoy the broadest rights of citizenship from the state of the most ignominious enslavement, with no real property, no knowledge of any craft or office, neither commerce nor any industry, come to play in this society in which, appearing suddenly, they can be considered the progeny of Deucalion and Pirra? How are we to judge them, so detached from the desire to improve their fate that, having in their hands the ability to exercise their political rights in the assemblies and elective magistracies, they do not take advantage of their position? More to the point: What should the conquered families do, over whom ill treatment of all kinds has been exercised for three centuries, to become incorporated by the constitutions of the country into the great national family? How have the inexpert directors of those societies been able to forget or close their eyes to what has happened in all nations? Which have been the constant movements of the radicals in England, the liberals in continental Europe, and particularly in France, that laid the foundation for their revolution of ’89 over the distribution of feudal properties? Is it perchance believed that the flight taken recently by the project of the bill of reform in England is in order to have a few more deputies or electors?
Every government has its principle of existence for which, once unsettled or distorted, another, analogous to the changes that have occurred in the country, must be substituted. The colonial system established by the Spanish government was founded: (1) On the terror produced by immediate punishment of the smallest actions that might lead to disobedience;
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that is to say, on the blindest passive obedience, without permitting the examination of what has been ordered nor by whom. (2) On the ignorance in which one must keep those inhabitants who could not learn more than what the government wanted, and only to the degree agreeable to it. (3) On religious education and, most of all, on the most despicable superstition. (4) On a Jewish isolation from all foreigners. (5) On monopoly in commerce, of territorial properties and of positions. (6) On a number of troops ready to carry out in a moment the orders of the mandarins, and who were more like gendarmes of the police than soldiers of the army, to defend the country.
After the Mexicans had secured their independence, the terror inspired by the Spanish authorities, maintained by custom passed down from fathers to sons, disappeared, and the broadest declarations of liberty and equality have been substituted. Ignorance, without having been able to disappear, has given place to a political charlatanism that takes possession of public dealings and leads the state to chaos and confusion. Popular superstition not ceasing, a large number of books have been introduced that corrupt the mores without enlightening the understanding. There is now no monopoly of commerce, positions, or territorial properties, and this item requires a long explanation.
Commerce has been opened to all foreigners, and speculators have taken out great profits, as was to be expected. Articles of merchandise conveyed by second, third, and fourth hand, passing from northern Europe to merchants in Cádiz, and from them to Veracruz in Mexico, had necessarily to arrive much more expensive, especially with no competition among the markets. In this area the fate of the country has improved a great deal, and many fewer destitute people are seen than in other times. But very few are the foreigners who, after having made great earnings, remain in the country and join with Mexican families. It appears that they see themselves in the country as in tents, ready to break camp as soon as they have concluded their business. On this point, one can expect much improvement with time. As for the monopoly of positions, it exists only among the factions that fight among themselves to attain them, but all are Mexicans. The territorial properties are among the great objects that will occupy the attention of those governments. On this, I have already said how it is enough to make known the difficult position of the directors of those towns, and I have not intended to make a treatise on insurrections. I reserve giving greater consideration
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to these ideas in my memoirs that should be published within a short time, and that I have at hand.
One of the greatest woes that will afflict those peoples for some time is that of the permanent troops,
