March 14th
We learn that the guns and ammunition supposed to be got in quietly, as Embassy stores, bore on the invoice the name of the colonel in charge at the Springfield arsenal. Hence these tears! They are now reposing in a deserted church near the military station, outside the city. There would have been no trouble had they been sent as Nelson requested. Now endless runnings are necessary.
My house is overrun with children. They tell me it looks like an orphanage, at the back. Such nice, little, bright-eyed Aztecs. In this stricken land how can I deny shelter and food to little children who are, so to speak, washed up at my door? The cook has three, the washerwoman two, and the chambermaid is going to present us with another. La recherche de la paternité shows the responsible person to have been our quiet, trusty messenger, Pablo. I will deduct ten pesos a month from his wages for six months—a salutary proclama to everybody else of my sentiments. I will send her to the hospital, and she will soon be back. The washerwoman has just borrowed ten dollars to change her lodgings, as the leva are after her husband. I sometimes feel like one of the early friars. Nothing that is Indian is foreign to me.
Last night Dr. Ryan was telling us, after dinner (Patchin, who is returning to New York, also was here), of the killing of Gustavo Madero, of which he was an eye-witness and concerning whose death so many versions are current. Shortly after one o’clock, on going back to the Ciudadela, where Felix Diaz was quartered, to attend to wounded who had been brought in, Ryan encountered Madero being brought out with a guard of twelve men. Diaz didn’t want him there, saying he was not his prisoner, but Huerta’s. Madero was gesticulating in a hysterical manner and waving his arms in the air. As Ryan afterward learned, he was offering the guards money if they would see him safely out of town. His nerve seemed suddenly to leave him and he began to run, whereupon one of the guards fired, hitting him in the eye as he turned his head to look behind him. The other eye was glass. This gave rise afterward to stories that his eyes had been gouged out. On his continuing to run, the whole guard fired at him, and he fell, riddled with bullets. Ryan afterward examined the body and found ten or twelve wounds. It all took place in the little park before the Ciudadela. This is the authentic account, and at least we know that Huerta was in no way responsible for his death. Doubtless had Gustavo kept his nerve, instead of trying to run, he would be alive to-day. He was an awful bounder, but had qualities of vitality, intellect, and a certain animal magnetism. His is the famous remark that “out of a family of clever men, the only fool was chosen for President.” He wasn’t more than thirty-five or thirty-six, and loved life. He had a power of quick repartee, a glancing eye, and hands seeking treasure. Well, that is all over, but it remains part of the unalterable history of Mexico. Poor, revolution-ridden Mexico! Everybody here has been one kind, generally two kinds, of revolutionist. Huerta served under Diaz, was gotten rid of, and served under Madero, whom he got rid of. Orozco was the friend of Madero against Diaz, then against Madero under Huerta, and so it goes. The history of almost every public man shows like changes of banner, and as for revolution fomenters, the United States have certainly played a consistent and persistent rôle for three years, outdone by no individual or faction here.
I shall never forget my first experience of Latin-American revolutions. It was a beautiful May afternoon, now nearly three years ago, when a howling mob of several thousands went through the streets, shouting “Death to Diaz!” finally collecting in the Zocalo under the windows of the apartment in the Palacio Nacional, where Diaz was lying with a badly ulcerated tooth and jaw. Two days later, in the wee, small hours, the once-feared, adored, all-powerful, great man of Mexico, with the immediate members of his family, was smuggled on board a train secretly provided by Mr. Brown, under the escort of Huerta, and was taken to Vera Cruz. From there he embarked on the Ypiranga, to join other kings in exile, having said good-by, probably forever, to the land of his triumphs and glories. It was touch and go with him during those days, and he had created modern Mexico out of blood and chaos.
When Madero is put out—in the almost automatic fashion by which governments are overthrown in Latin America—we refuse to recognize the man who, by armed force, put him out, as he himself got in. Put a revolution in the slot and out comes a President. We isolate Huerta; we cut him off completely from the help of other nations; we destroy his credit; we tell him he must go, because we tolerate no man coming to power through bloodshed. Huerta, it appears, was amusing but unquotable about the recognition of Peru, saying in part that both he and Benavides were military leaders, and that both executed a coup d’état resulting in the overthrow of the existing government. In Peru the révolution du palais cost the lives of eight functionaries, among them the Ministers of War and Marine, the exile of President Billinghurst, and ended in the setting up of a junta government. As for the Peruvians themselves, they are said to have had the vertigo, they were recognized so suddenly—and so unexpectedly.
You will remember that months ago we gave asylum for a week to Manuel Bonilla, and then conveyed him to Vera Cruz, under dramatic circumstances, on his promise not to join the rebels. Well, he joined the rebels as quickly as time and space would allow, and we read in this morning’s newspaper that he has now been jailed by Carranza for plotting against him. I suppose he got dissatisfied with what he was getting out of the rebels, and tried something subversive that looked promising. If Carranza gets any kind of proof against him—or probably without it—he will execute him some morning, in the dawn. Oh, the thousands of men who have walked out in the chilly, pale, Mexican dawn to render their last accounts!