Communications
317 COMMUNICATIONS MEXICO IN FACTS AND FIGURES Roswell, N. M. TO the Editor:—In his discussion of the land problem in Mexico, Carleton Beals (Mexican Military Adventurers in Revolt, Current...
...Occasional revolutionary pamphleteers have complained bitterly at their great number and popularity as against the official schools...
...Eber Cole Byam...
...Meanwhile let us not discredit expert knowledge whether in finance or armament, and especially let us give sincere praise for the good work for peace actually accomplished by experts under the fine leadership of a real expert, Mr...
...In fact, it may be said without exaggeration that Mexico at that time led all the world in this respect...
...Then, as now, greed pillaged and malice destroyed...
...Is the world altogether wrong in its belief that the diplomats have been the real war makers...
...In Mexico City alone there were, at that same time, at least eight, besides those for the insane, for contagious diseases and maternity...
...In the state of Oaxaca there are many of the 2,082 Indian communes (census 1910) in Mexico, all of which possess lands in common...
...These properties had been assessed for purposes of confiscation at $587,419, but Mr...
...Beals seems unacquainted: the Mexican state of Jalisco, with an area of 33,486 square miles, claimed a population of 1,202,802, in 1910...
...EXPERTS AND STAR-GAZERS Allston, Mass...
...It ranks as nearly, if not quite the best thing that has happened since the armistice...
...The one in Guanajuato had a school caring for 600 boys...
...then, as now, the orphaned and the aged were driven forth to seek shelter where they might and beg their sustenance in the streets...
...Will Latins, Slavs or Chinese consider Anglo-American amity consistent with judicial impartiality...
...The great prison of Belem, that houses Mexico City's malefactors (or did for many years) was once a college for women...
...Unlike them this agreement seems to find all of the interested parties in a contented frame of mind, a consummation devoutly to be praised...
...But this did not affect those with small holdings of which there were a great number...
...Hospitals and especially schools were numerous all over Mexico...
...This is not strange when we consider the wide divergence of Mexican official statements...
...Anyone at all familiar with that region and its people and conditions knows that the neighboring states do not differ markedly from Jalisco, so far as landownership is concerned...
...The great University of Mexico—suppressed by Gomez Farias in 1833—was officially opened in 1553...
...When Obregon was president he ordered the confiscation of the funds and properties belonging to such a corporation in the city of Puebla, totaling some twelve million pesos (six million dollars...
...317 COMMUNICATIONS MEXICO IN FACTS AND FIGURES Roswell, N. M. TO the Editor:—In his discussion of the land problem in Mexico, Carleton Beals (Mexican Military Adventurers in Revolt, Current History for May, 1929) tells us, for Fortes Gil, that in the state of Tamaulipas "two-thirds of the peasants now have lands," and that "the same is true of Vera Cruz, of Morelos and some other states...
...The Colegio de Ninas (girls' college) founded by Gante in 1548, became the German Club...
...Like most of the treaties, pacts, etc., which have followed Versailles, it is a departure from, rather than a development of, that none-too-just treaty of peace...
...The unfortunate result of such a misguided policy is well illustrated in Yucatan where an official statement in the official organ revealed the astonishing fact that some of the revolutionary teachers were obliged to request the school inspectors to sign their papers for them...
...The same organization had several other hospitals in several other cities...
...then, as now, empty promises and mendacious propaganda replaced the destroyed schools and hospitals and asylums...
...At the opening of the nineteenth century there were but two general hospitals in the United States...
...In 1917 the total is given as 433...
...It was not so in the United States until the establishment of the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1837...
...The Belemitas hospital had a primary school attached that cared for 800 boys...
...This is raised to 45 percent when the average attendance is considered...
...These buildings had been income-producing properties belonging to a variety of corporations, hospitals, colleges and asylums...
...In 1910 there were reported 677 schools in the federal district (Mexico City and environs) 442 official and 235 private...
...The trustees carried the matter to the supreme court which, evidently at Obregon's dictation, declared the confiscation justified on the remarkable grounds that "the clergy had been responsible for the three years' war," a baseless calumny connected with an event of seventy years ago...
...In 1800 in Mexico City alone there were at least twenty-seven institutions of higher learning, eight of which were for women...
...Limantour (father of the famous finance minister under Diaz) who purchased some fifty houses from the confiscated properties in the City of Mexico...
...For reasons no civilized man can understand these numerous educational and beneficient institutions were closed and their funds and properties confiscated...
...It may have been merely a coincidence that at the time Carranza was making these grants he was confiscating large estates belonging to those who disagreed with him...
...To justify this pillage before that element in the United States most active in their support, the Mexican revolutionaries have labeled all such institutions as "Church property," when in point of fact they were more often independent entities, civil corporations, just as are many such institutions in the United States today, governed by boards of trustees...
...A lawsuit engendered by a quarrel over the spoil is responsible for the revelation...
...The references to great estates and "peasants" seizing lands bolsters this assumption...
...The schools have been closed and confiscated...
...Its farm assessment list for 1912-13 showed 165,618 separate holdings...
...Out of the revolution they and their friends acquired their great land holdings...
...Jose Miguel Bejarano, publicity agent for Mexico, has stated recently that the number of public schools has been increased from 630 to 5,000 by Calles...
...The Hospital de los Terceros became a hotel...
...Even among the Yaquis there were schools, colleges and hospitals, to an extent that sufficient progress had been made by them toward civilization for them to declare: "We are no longer Indians but Spaniards...
...All were more or less well endowed, and care and medical attention were free...
...The great Hospital Real, founded by the king in 1553 for the Indians, regularly cared for three hundred fifty to four hundred patients, and on the occasion of a severe epidemic housed some eight thousand...
...In 1920 the total was 176...
...The Church was far from being the only one interested, financially or otherwise, in the private schools...
...It has been stated officially that 50,000 children in the City of Mexico alone are without schools...
...The Church and wealthy Mexicans contributed toward founding and supporting them, and religious orders and lay men and women directed and taught in them...
...Beals is equally misinformed as to previous details of Mexican history...
...Less happy in its implications is the recent speech of Mr...
...Christopher I. Fitzgerald...
...The presence of primary schools in every village of the Huasteca indicates that if they could be found so numerous so far from the more populous centres the latter did not lack them...
...This did not include 1,000,000 acres along the Rio Grande opposite Del Rio, Texas, then under negotiation to similar interests...
...Both Obregon and Calles began their 1 evolutionary careers as poor men...
...To the number of many thousands they have been compelled to seek other employment or have been driven into exile...
...The Hospital Real was sold and converted into a tenement...
...This accords with numerous statements, official and otherwise—no two of which, however, agree—to the effect that only a few thousand individuals—sometimes alleged to be mostly foreigners— owned all the land in Mexico...
...TO the Editor:—To one who finds sundry reasons for adverse criticism in much of the world peace plans and propaganda, the reparations settlement just concluded offers a welcome opportunity for favorable criticism...
...The destruction of educational and beneficient institutions ordered by Juarez in 1856 differs only in time and extent from that ordered by Calles...
...The larger buildings of the institutions themselves were retained by the government to be converted into jails and barracks, or sold to private parties to be converted into hotels or tenements...
...If he will take the trouble to investigate 318 he will discover some interesting, if not disconcerting, facts...
...It is the ambition of every Mexican to own such a property, and nothing is easier than for those in power to dispossess their opponents...
...The teachers employed in the private schools were properly educated and trained for their work...
...There was also the famous asylum for the poor with its orphanage and industrial school and a refuge for women...
...In the state of Vera Cruz there are (or were) many large properties appearing on the assessment lists as single holdings, but which in reality were occupied by numerous families, descendants of successive owners and occupants—heirs of the original grantee—who had as successively died intestate during nearly four hundred years...
...Renters were few...
...Dawes, our new ambassador to England, and the new Prime Minister, Mr...
...The study of surgery and anatomy was begun, and dissection practised, in 1661, eighty-six years before William Hunter opened the first school for dissection in England...
...A large number of scholarships provided funds for those in need of living expenses...
...And now comes the pronouncements of Mr...
...In 1910 40 percent of the school enrolment in Jalisco was in private schools...
...Discovering, apparently, that this figure was less than the number of schools in 1910 (12,418) he raised it to 18,000...
...Here are some facts and figures with which Mr...
...The study of medicine was begun in 1578, 204 years before a like study appeared at Harvard...
...As indicating the manner in which the booty was distributed we have the case of Mr...
...Limantour secured a reduction to $525,528...
...A tense and difficult problem was met and solved in the spirit of compromise: a desire to whittle claims, deemed to be just, down to a reasonable estimate of the debtor's ability to pay...
...He paid $1,832.40 in cash and the balance in government due-bills that had cost him $40,077.90, thus securing over half a million dollars worth of properties for less than 10 percent of their assessed valuation...
...even the Guild of Silversmiths appearing as owner of some of them...
...and then, as now, the United States government intervened to protect and sustain in power the men engaged in this insensate fury of destruction and pillage...
...Near it is, or was, a great barrack that was once a college for boys...
...The state of Morelos was a prosperous, sugar-producing state which naturally meant large estates...
...According to one authority (Bnnsmade, Mexican Problems) an engineer in the employ of the revolutionary government— and therefore to be trusted not to overstate—the public land held by the government in 1920 amounted to 108,844,000 acres...
...The owner furnishing land, water, house, seed, plow, oxen and paying taxes Jalisco is one of the states of central Mexico where more than two-thirds of the population live on less than one-third of the national territory...
...Charles Evans Hughes upon assuming his seat on the bench of the World Court...
...Religious instruction was a part of the curriculum because the parents and Church demanded it...
...Tenants were found on the large estates, and worked on shares, fiftyfifty...
...That the number of private schools in Mexico previous to 1910 has been understated is evidenced by the caution and reticence observed by their owners due to the hostility of certain enemies...
...Owen D. Young...
...He thus leads his readers to assume that previous to the "revolution" the "peasants" enjoyed no such possession...
...In his message to his Congress in September, 1926, Calles declared that he had closed 129 colleges...
...Education in Mexico was gratuitous from the very beginning over four hundred years ago...
...The Mexican government, in its official publication of March 15, 1919, announced the granting of 3,403,270 acres in several states to several colonizing enterprises...
...Tuition was free...
...the Mexican Minister for Education gives 4,000...
...If any further evidence were needed to show that there was no land monopoly in Mexico but, instead, a large surplus (much of it well watered and exceedingly fertile from the writer's personal knowledge) available for settlement without disturbing private holdings, we have it in the numerous large grants of land made by Carranza to foreign colony promoters...
...Ramsey MacDonald, which contain certain assumptions not to be granted until the advocates diaboli (preferably one of the outcast experts) has had his opportunity to challenge the statesman's canonization...
...Moises Saenz gave the number of schools in Mexico as 12,257...
...Calles has been quoted as saying that for every school he has opened, two others have been closed...
...It would appear from what has transpired during the past fifteen years that large estates are economically unsound when belonging to persons unfriendly to those in power, but are economically sound when belonging to those in power or their friends...
...Those making such statements no doubt have felt secure in the confidence that few, if any, would take the trouble to search Mexican records to determine whether or not they were inspired by fact or fancy...
...While in the United States it was considered actually revolutionary, if not indecent, to educate women, Mexico possessed a large number of colleges for women...
...The present condition of Morelos as compared with its former prosperity points conclusively to a great change for the worse...
...As these are percentages admitted by the government, the real percentages must have been much greater...
...The San Andres hospital had 400 beds...
...Beals seems to be equally misinformed regarding educational matters...
...Most of these were small, but there were some large farms, for much the same reasons that there are large farms in the United States...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 12
