This paper was delivered at the annual meeting of the W.I.L. In Chicago the end of April. One of the main topics discussed was Economic Imperialism, and Miss Addams was asked to tell us about her recent visit to Mexico in the light of imperialism.
I should like very much to open this discussion on economic imperialism with some definite illustrations from Mexico, but unfortunately I did not know until I returned from there a few days ago that I was expected to speak upon this topic.
There are certain impressions of Mexico, however, in regard to the general trend of economic development that I shall be very glad to share with you, as typical of other undeveloped territories.
In the first place Mexico holds that same attitude towards America which is found everywhere to the south of us, there is an undefined fear of the United States simply because it is so big and powerful, its business men so efficient, so eager for raw material and for opportunities for investment.
The smaller countries in the Caribbean, in Central America and in South America look upon an investor from the United States as ruthless in his determination “to have everything coming to him.” This opinion may be unjust to individual undertakings, but it is widespread and doubtless well founded. If the bill (U.S. Concurrent Resolution 22) we have so eagerly sponsored, ever becomes a law, it will do much to allay this fear, but at the present moment, members of the Mexican Government assert that our Secretary of State, when a difficulty arises between an American citizen and the Mexican Government, always assumes that he is an attorney for the American citizen, that it is his business to defend his client, who has merely followed the established business methods. Not only that, but the Mexicans claim that the Secretary insists that the case shall be tried according to the traditions of Anglo Saxon law. For instance, one Secretary after another has refused to [recognize] the Latin tradition, which is followed in Mexico, that the subsoil belongs to the State just as it at one time belonged to the Crown, and that the State therefore has a right to tax the oil or silver which is dug out of the earth.
The present Government, as you know, is a Labor Government -- the Secretary of Industry and Commerce is at the same time President of the National Federation of Labor. It is the point of view which makes all the difference. We heard over and over again not only two sides but many sides of the same question. The American corporations interested in Mexican oil say that they are developing the resources of a country much in need of capital, that they are building decent houses for the workmen, paying good wages, and generally advancing the standard of living, that the export tax which they pay of thirty cents on every barrel is all that the industry will bear.
The Mexican version is to the effect that there is no special advantage to them in having the country’s resources of oil so rapidly drained away, that the process does not give even a great deal of work to Mexico. They claim that it takes only about twenty-five men to sink a well and connect the flow with the [pipeline], that the oil is thereafter rapidly pumped out of the earth, conveyed in pipes to Tampico directly into the ship which takes it out of the country.
We had the pleasure of meeting the President and other members of the present Labor Government. They claim that they must first set the house in order, establish a fiscal system before they can try out various governmental experiments in which they believe. But one reform they are not willing to postpone and that is the carrying out of their land policy through an Agrarian Commission. It is here most of the trouble with Americans arise, and where the differences in theory are sharply drawn.
In order to understand this situation it is necessary to realize that the Mexican population of fifteen million people, consists of three or four million of European descent, three or four million more of European and Indian parentage, and the remaining seven or eight million of pure Indians.
The Mexican Indians have always been and are still agricultural. They do not support themselves by hunting and fishing, but raise their own food by primitive methods. During the Spanish rule of three hundred years each Indian village had its common lands which measured on an average about ten acres to a family. During the Colonial period these communal lands could not be sold. Through the long years of the Diaz regime, however, the Indians were encouraged to sell this land in the hope that they would settle on the remote Government lands, as the pioneers in the United States had done. The result of this policy was that the Indians sold their land but still remained in the old villages and were forced to work for the large landowners. In the industrial form of agriculture fitted to the huge estates in Mexico the Indians became in effect what the present Government calls them, “a landless proletariat.” It is this situation which the present Government is trying to relieve by restoring the old acreage to the Indian village.
The large landowners object to this agrarian policy for various reasons.
First, because the Agrarian Commission selects the land which the Indians are to have contiguous to the village, which is often the land already irrigated and cultivated and in some cases with buildings upon it. The village is not allowed to sell this land nor to ever mortgage a crop growing upon it.
Second, the land is paid for by the Government bonds bearing interest for a number of years. This the landlords claim, in view of the uncertainty of Mexican Governments, resembles expropriation.
Third, and this is perhaps the point most often brought up against the Government, is the method of estimating the value of the land. The Agrarian Commission goes to the tax receipts and takes the valuation which the landlord, himself, accepted when he last paid his taxes, to which they add ten [percent].
A fourth objection which we often heard, was that the Indians would not work for the landowners unless they were pushed by necessity, that the very fact that each family might secure its actual food from the village land might mean an absolute refusal to work for the landlords and result in a serious situation for the large estates where it was already difficult to secure efficient labor.
On this point the Labor Government was adamant. They did not wish the European situation repeated where a landless population is driven by starvation, nor do they wish the colonial policies pursued in Africa and elsewhere, where the natives are forced to labor under the guise of payment of taxes.
In the meantime the visitors in Mexico hear the land situation discussed by all sorts of people, and the labor point of view versus the imperialistic one is sharply drawn. I sat at a dinner one night next to a man who bore a Spanish title and who told me of his mother’s recent experiences in order to prove to us that the Labor Government did not really wish to benefit the Indians, but that their land policy was designed to secure the votes of an agricultural people for labor policies. He said that his mother, wishing to anticipate the action of the Government, presented to each village on her estate the required amount of land, and in order to be certain that all was done properly she requested the Agrarian Commission to survey the land and make out the deeds. A great Fiesta followed and all seemed well, but in about six weeks a member of the Commission came to say to the Indians that it had been very kind of the old Marchesa to make them this present and that they had thanked her properly at the time of the Fiesta, nevertheless, that had nothing to do with the lands which the Government meant to give them and they proceeded to give each village its requisite amount. [page 2]
I repeated this story next day to a humble member of the Agrarian Commission who came to show us an agricultural school. He replied that he had never seen the land on this particular estate, but he was quite willing to assert “sight unseen” that the land given by the Marchesa had been the worst on the estate, too poor to grow a cactus, to use his own phrase, and that the Labor Government had no intention of trying out their experiment on land such as that.
The women of Mexico resemble the women in other Latin countries in that individual women do very astounding things, while thousands of individuals are quite content with things as they are.
The National University numbers a thousand women students, some of them are studying law and twenty-six are in the medical school. They are active in organizing their clubs and are anxious for help from women in America. There is a small but very fine W.I.L. group composed of the leading woman physician who opened the first child welfare center, several women with university degrees from the United States, and two or three leading suffragists. These intelligent women feel strongly that the constant violence attendant on political changes in Mexico must cease if only to save the young men from demoralization and from a totally perverted conception of self government.
This W.I.L. group is anxious to have a series of lectures in the University of Mexico or elsewhere in the City of Mexico on Internationalism given by a Latin woman. Marcelle Capy, whom you all met last year, would do it wonderfully well, wouldn’t she? It would be a great gift if the U.S.A. Section could arrange for such a course in Mexico. Our Sections in Europe send peace missions, as you know, to those boundaries which are most sensitive -- to Silesia, to the Rhur, to the new boundary between Denmark and Germany, in the doubtful space between Greece and Bulgaria, to Latvia and Finland, as you heard in our last Congress.
The strain in those places comes about through old Nationalistic loyalties; the strain between Mexico and the United States rests on the fear of aggression from a stronger nation which may be so easily betrayed into the evils of modern economic imperialism. Miss Helena Landazuri, secretary of the Mexican section of the W.I.L., who was the representative at the National Congress in Vienna, is in the United States for the winter, reading for her M.A. at her Alma Mater, the University of Chicago. She is available for a certain number of lectures, as Amy Woods is ready to lecture on the problems of South America. Shall we not do all we can to inform ourselves on this situation developing in the Western Hemisphere, a situation which may so easily lead to strain and even come to the disaster of war itself.
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