The New Republic/Volume 1/Number 1/The Land Question at Aguascalientes

The Land Question at Aguascalientes

THE action of the Aguascalientes convention in ordering the confiscation of the great Mexican estates and the redistribution of these lands among the peons seems for the moment to introduce a real issue into the conflict in Mexico and to raise that conflict above the plane of a mere jealous strife between rival leaders. It is at least a recognition of the fact that the Mexican malady is economic even more than political. TO the average peon it matters little whether the ruler in faraway Mexico City is a Villa, a Carranza, or a Zapata; it is of the utmost importance to him, on the other hand, whether he owns a bit of land or is a semi-servile laborer or an immense estate.

These vast estates constitute an economic problem both grave and difficult. It is difficult because agrarian conditions in Mexico vary from state to state and from district to district. They are not the same in the arid lands of the northern plateau and in the tierras calientes; in Chihuahua and in Chiapas; in the stock-raising belt and in the sugar, cacao and indigo districts. In many places there are small agrarian properties. But while the statement so often repeated that less than five hundred persons own all the land in Mexico is grotesquely false, still there exists the crassest inequality in land ownership. There are haciendas the size of grand duchies, and there are hundreds of thousands of men landless and without prospect of acquiring land. If ever there is to be the beginning of a hope of an enlightened, progressive, democratic Mexico, this vast disproportion between hacendados and peons, between land-owners and land-workers, must be destroyed.

Even though it be not destroyed immediately, the mere fact that this disproportion is being discussed by the assembled generals as Aguascalientes is decidedly significant. It suggests that there is a popular factor in the revolution, even though it be latent. It would be easy to exaggerate this factor. The military leaders are in the main not inspiring or disinterested men, however much they declaim of honor or patriotism. For the most part they seem like posturing dwarfs, strutting over the body of a sleeping giant. The masses of the people, on the other hand, are too lethargic to move or be moved. The majority is illiterate, and a minority consists of roving, naked Indians, ignorant even of Spanish. Much of Mexico is what it was in the days of Humboldt, and much is what it was in the days of Montezuma and Guatemotzin. And yet, as these deliberations at Aguascalientes indicate, a certain ferment is present. New wants, new dissatisfactions, new ideas seep in from beyond the Rio Grande, and where wages rise discontent spreads. The peon who earns thirty cents or twenty or nothing a day is wretched and content; the man in the north who earns his sixty or eighty cents in the mines or on the plantations is open to all sorts of revolutionary propaganda.

To this stirring of popular imagination, to this rise of a popular interest, as yet in its beginnings, the revolution itself has perhaps contributed. In the main all this fighting is a regression, a reversion to an earlier routine, a backsliding to Bustamante, Santa Anna, and all the inglorious traditions of the heroic age of Mexican brigandage. None the less, for thousands of obscure men the revolution breaks the chain of an ancient submission. By bringing together men from different villages and different states, it helps to destroy ignorance, lethargy and the narrowest localism. It is a hideous tragedy, but it is a way of "seeing Mexico."

If there were no such popular interest, there would be no such discussions as those at Aguascalientes. We should not have Zapata's "plan of Ayala" or Carranza's "plan of Guadalupe." Even were the deliberations a blind, a mere bid for popularity, covering a secret design to transfer estates from rich Cientificos to rich Villistas and Zapatistas, still the mere bid for popular support would be the sign of at least some faint popular interest. Even those who selfishly exploit a general discontent become the agents and servants of that discontent.

It is well to listen attentively to whatever is proposed towards the solution of Mexico's gravest economic problem. At the same time it would be absurd to hope too much from these deliberations. The problem is not merely one of subtraction and division. It is far more complex. It is rather the problem of completely altering the economic bases of society, a task comparable in intricacy with that which faced our Southern States after the emancipation of the slaves. In time of peace the mere administrative difficulties of any attempted solution might frustrate the best intentions; in war the obstacles are unsurmountable. And for the moment war seems likely if not inevitable. Even while non-combatant generals debate at Aguascalientes, fighting generals are preparing their soldiers for battle. It is Carranza against the field. Until that issue is decided, until this campaign and perhaps many other campaigns are ended, until some one dominating man or some one coherent group comes to power, it is idle to expect much from any plan of economic reorganization, however well-intentioned.