Mexico's Flagrant Follies
McGowan, R. A.
May 5, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 709 MEXICO'S FLAGRANT FOLLIES By R. A. McGOWAN THE Mexican persecution of religion presents an interesting study in stupidity which deserves more than a passing...
...It is a tribute to us that we still are able to distinguish between the Mexican government's persecution of the Church and the Mexican government's fight against American control...
...The land and labor programs of Mexico had sloughed off most of the tags of Socialism that had earlier clung about them...
...One is inhabited by simple, illiterate Indians and by educated whites, mestizos, and Indians whose talents and enthusiasms have not run to the development of the country's wealth or the amassing of personal fortunes...
...Catholics both in Mexico and here held back...
...Mexico's domestic economic policies needed the friendship of the Church and seemed on the point of attaining it when the persecution opened...
...Compensation was becoming regularized...
...Just prior to the persecution, this fact was clearly seen...
...But this Mexican land program had definitely changed a short time before the persecution was launched upon the Church...
...The Mexican Federation of Labor had defeated the red unions and had fallen out with communist Russia...
...Mexican Catholics have all the normal Mexican fear that their country will be gobbled up by the United States...
...The struggle against the landlessness of the people had passed into a phase which deserved the sympathy of Catholics both here and in Mexico...
...Still the Catholic leaders in Mexico, at the very height of the persecution, remain clear-eyed...
...Its leader was preaching an industrial armistice and, as cabinet official, was calling meetings of employers' associations and the union to reach amicable agreements...
...Much as they wanted the Mexican people to come into the possession of land, much as they fought a system of landlordism that had wrecked the country and enslaved the people, they opposed violence and confiscation, and they rejected the theory many Mexican agrarians held: that the farm land of the country should be turned over to the villages...
...Its leader, as cabinet minister, after trying to stop the persecution when it first began, went along with it...
...We in the United States can measure the stupidity of the Mexican government in jeopardizing, at this juncture, the friendship of Catholics here...
...They opposed and fought the persecution, as they still fight it, but they have given no aid or comfort to the enemies of their country...
...Catholics are Americans and, however much our government has walked in the paths of imperialism, it cannot yet be said that the rank and file of the American people are imperialistic...
...If the persecution were to stop, probably coincidently with it would come a union of forces that would guarantee the success of the struggle of the people against landlordism, national subjection, and industrial capitalism...
...But at any rate, the old days when violence, confiscation, and village communism held the centre of the stage had passed, and this much was a real title to the friendship of those who realize the importance of farm ownership and reject a social system based on tenantry and hired hands...
...The Mexican provisions for land distribution are neither adequate nor unmistakably just in all their parts...
...Agrarian uprisings could be dealt with...
...The army was becoming an army and no longer a mob...
...But since then the program has definitely changed, partly in its aims and almost entirely in its methods...
...The Mexican government should have found friends among Catholics in the United States...
...Instead, that government did all it could to sow enmities overnight upon foreign soil...
...Surveying this scene, one hopes that somehow the government will give up its persecution and that the land and labor movements of Mexico and the organizations of the Church there will work hand in hand for the happiness, freedom, and justice of the Mexican people...
...All in all, here was a labor union that, with all its mistakes and the wrongs done by its followers, could not be rejected utterly but, instead, was very worthy of friendship and assistance...
...The other abounds both in keen business men and in money for foreign investment...
...Mexico's greatest foreign problem is that of American ownership of so much of her land and capital and the constant, unending effect of this upon the attitude of the American government and American public opinion...
...Yet consider the stupidity of a government that would subject them to such a strain at a time when they should be free from all distrust...
...It was giving up the violent tactics of its youth...
...The results are as we know them...
...They realize the bad history of the land and labor movements, but they know that there has been a gradual and definite change...
...Its own program, though headed by a class struggle preamble, was not Socialist...
...A wealthy but undeveloped and weak country lies alongside of a strong and aggressive country...
...Not only is a system of farm ownership a part of the social teachings of the Church, but the evils of absentee landlordism still live in the memory of the one people and the experience of the other...
...Catholics, above all, are not imperialists, for the family traditions of most of us give us bitter knowledge of what foreign domination means, and there is something so arrogant and cruel in the imperialistic spirit that the Catholic mind and soul rebel against it...
...It is a tribute to the saneness of Catholic Mexicans that persecution at home did not blind them to the danger of American commercial and political control...
...Mexico's economic program is fundamental to Mexican politics and development- A few years ago, in reaction from the bitter days of Diaz, that program had followed methods which Catholics in Mexico rejected...
...Mexican Catholics and American Catholics are of this number...
...The persecution, because it has sown distrust and suspicion, has endangered it all...
...Yet it threw this friendship away...
...A new agrarian law had been passed to enforce the agrarian articles of the constitution...
...They hoped, therefore, that the Mexican government would succeed in its oil controversies with the United States, and thus not only ward off the danger of present intervention but pave the way for that economic independence which will help Mexico to save herself from political and cultural subjection...
...Hanging over all things Mexican is their fear of American business men and the American government...
...Yet at this moment when the agrarian movement was showing itself worthy of friendship, a persecution of the Church began...
...It had raised wages...
...Some time ago, and even now to a small extent, the Mexican drive against absentee landlords had been inspired by the memory of old village communes, and it had been permeated with violence and confiscation...
...It could rightly appeal for friendship among Catholics in Mexico and friendship among Catholics in the United States...
...Instead, it chose that moment to launch a bitter persecution...
...Its political alias, the Labor Party, was ensuring the representation in the government necessary to protect the labor laws and government conciliation and arbitration...
...The Constitution of Mexico had itself given little aid to the agrarian communists in practice or in theory...
...Subsequently, the annual convention of the organization attacked the Church and backed the persecution...
...The same story is true of the city labor movement...
...Especially in the land and labor movements is there difficulty, since, being internal problems, they are the more influenced by domestic suspicion and distrust...
...Now that these movements have so changed that they deserve the solidly sympathetic, however critical, friendship of Catholics, the persecution has put up a barrier that is enormously difficult to surmount...
...Under these circumstances, the logical step was for the government to make a bid for friendship by repealing the anti-religious provisions of the constitution, or at least by continuing to forget their existence...
...The Church stood in the way of those methods and, however unjust such a persecution would then have been, it would not have been stupid from the point of view of the land and labor revolutionists...
...This was a matter of tremendous importance in a land where the vast majority of the people are Catholics...
...A situation had been reached which called for the early cooperation of the Church with the land and labor aims and organizations of the country...
...Violence and confiscation were giving way to peaceful methods and compensation...
...Among the exports which we try to sell Mexico are certain Protestant creeds, a proselytizing Y. M. C. A., and a pagan influence in literature and customs...
...For sheer ineptness, it is hard to find its parallel...
...To solve its land and labor problems and to wipe out its subjection to foreigners, Mexico needs internal peace, the union of her forces, and plenty of friends abroad...
...It was securing partial enforcement of the able labor code of the Mexican constitution...
...Yet at the moment when the curbing of the power of American business men was at stake and when negotiations were on between the two governments, the Mexican government proceeded to launch an attack upon the Church to which the vast majority of its people belong and the Church of some twenty million Americans...
...The persecution is an insult to Mexican Catholics who, possibly more than any other group of Mexican citizens, fear the encroachment of the United States...
...The government was speeding up land distribution...
...They saw themselves between two fires—the fire of domestic persecution and the fire of American control...
...May 5, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 709 MEXICO'S FLAGRANT FOLLIES By R. A. McGOWAN THE Mexican persecution of religion presents an interesting study in stupidity which deserves more than a passing thought...
...But added to this is their further fear of American Protestant influence, American irreligious influence, and American pagan influence...
...The land communists had been met and defeated in political battle by the Mexican Federation of Labor, which has a large agrarian membership and a program that looks to private ownership of land...
...They are glad of this and they speak a good word of their very persecutors...
...At that very moment, too, the Mexican government was in the act of dealing with a crucially important question which at home demanded a united front and, in the United States, friends, or at least not more enemies...
...Peace had descended upon the country...
Vol. 3 • May 1926 • No. 26
