Other plans for a canal through Nicaragua came to nothing, and by 1902, the United States wanted to pick up where the French had left off. However, the Colombian Congress was not pleased with the terms of the Hay-Herrán Treaty that U.S. and Colombian ministers had drawn up: $10 million for a ninety-nine-year lease and an annual payment of $250,000. The Colombian politicians knew the canal would be worth more and Colombia’s Congress refused to ratify the treaty. The United States was forced to find another way. It enticed separatists to foment a “revolution” to break away from Colombia, establish a new nation, and permit the construction of the canal. By 1903, with the backing of U.S. gunships, the Republic of Panama was proclaimed, and by 1914 the canal was open.112
The year after the creation of Panama, President Theodore Roosevelt outlined in his annual address to Congress of 1904 what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary. No longer satisfied with the strictures of the Monroe Doctrine of more than eighty years before, Roosevelt’s described this new vision as the United States’ desire “to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship.”113 Yet those who fell out of line might “ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”114 Roosevelt cited as examples the recent events in Cuba and Panama where “we have acted in our own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large.”115
WHILE EVENTS IN Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama had been taking place, in the West the territories of Arizona and New Mexico continued in their dogged pursuit of statehood, now more than fifty years after the Mexican-American War. Although the people who lived there were U.S. citizens, their continued status as residents of territories meant they could not vote for their own governor, nor did they have national representation, and so they could not share in the same rights and privileges as citizens in established states.116 In the years since the end of the conflict in 1848, fifteen new states had joined the union. The only territories in the continental United States that remained at the turn of the century were New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and what was known as Indian territory. The last two would become combined into the state of Oklahoma in 1907.117
New Mexico’s failure to obtain statehood had not been for lack of trying. Numerous attempts had been made over the years, led for the most part by local elites, both Anglo and Nuevomexicano, who stood to profit from the changed status.118 In 1874 the congressional delegate for New Mexico, the businessman and Santa Fe Ring member Stephen Elkins, received a note congratulating him on his attempts to have the territory admitted as a state, saying: “More rapid growth and development will follow the organization of a state government … emigration will increase, old mines will be worked, new ones opened, railroads completed, and a resort for health and pleasure opened to the people of other states.”119 Such optimism was misplaced when Congress rejected the bid for statehood. Elkins and the Santa Fe Ring were in part the reason this process had taken so long, as they tainted the territory by incurring charges of corruption and mismanagement. Elkins later left the territory for West Virginia, where he finished his political career as a senator for that state.
Hopeful New Mexicans continued to push on. An 1881 pamphlet published by the Territorial Bureau of Immigration voiced optimism: “What can be had in new Mexico to-day in the way of mining property for a trifle, will, in a few years, command thousands.”120 Indeed, the territory had been growing throughout this time: the population was about 150,000, with Santa Fe being the largest town at 7,000 inhabitants. Of this population, around 20,000 were Native Americans, and the majority of the remaining people were, as the pamphlet explained, “native whites, often called for convenience ‘Mexicans.’”121 They were also known as nativos, U.S. citizens but of Mexican descent. The press and politicians often described New Mexican nativos as not “ready” for the responsibilities of statehood, prompting supporters to rise to the territory’s defense. The Colorado state senator Casimiro Barela made a speech in 1889 laying out the reasons that his birthplace, New Mexico, should have statehood:
I am aware that the enemies of the admission of New Mexico claim that its native population is not yet qualified to assume the burden, the duties and the obligations of citizenship; they assert that the Mexican population is ignorant and can be easily controlled by talented but desperate American adventurers who have infested the territory, and who aim to use the Mexican population as the implements of their corrupt schemes. I repel the charge with earnest scorn.122
Alongside this was the implication that New Mexicans were unfit for statehood because they were, in the racial terms of the time, mixed. Out of these charges emerged one line of defense espoused by pro-statehood Anglo and Hispanic leaders: that New Mexicans were of “Spanish”—that is, European—blood. This led to a historical pronouncements and a blurred fantasy past—not unlike that of the Californios—bolstered by Anglo defenders, such as LeBaron Bradford Prince, a judge who also served as a territorial governor. Prince claimed that while there were many Pueblo villages in New Mexico, “no marriage or similar connections take place between the races.” Prince, who was born in New York and moved to New Mexico in 1878, was a tireless champion of statehood and later wrote books about New Mexico’s history, but during the statehood debate he helped lay a foundation for a “Spanish American” identity. These New Mexicans were, as he put it, “fit representatives of the land of the Cid, and successors of the historic discoverers and conquerors of the soil.” Given the belief in Washington that a racially “mixed” population was unfit to govern, there was a certain logic in denying that there had ever been mixing between Spaniards and Indians or black people, even if it was at odds with reality. Prince instead argued that Nuevomexicanos were “racially distinct from the mestizos and ‘lower’ classes.”123
This idea backfired somewhat when the Spanish-American-Cuban War of 1898 brought to New Mexico’s door charges that, as Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest, New Mexicans were supporting Spain in secret—a rumor that the territorial governor Miguel Otero, who served from 1897 until 1906, was quick to counter.124 When the conflict started, he recalled in his memoir, “our people were ready to do their share of the fighting, and more—even though many of them were proud of their Spanish blood.”125 After the explosion on the Maine Otero was contacted by the newspaper New York World for comment, and he used the opportunity to remind readers that “a large majority of her [New Mexico’s] soldiers are Spanish-speaking and are as loyal to this country as any New England troops.”126 More than four hundred men joined up and rode into battle with Theodore Roosevelt, making Otero proud that “in proportion to her population, New Mexico had furnished more volunteers for the war, per capita, than any other state or territory.”127
After the contribution of the New Mexicans in that war, some of New Mexico’s politicians once more pressed their case for statehood to President Roosevelt, who had succeded to the presidency after McKinley was assassinated in September 1901.128 Otero had not started out as a supporter of statehood, on the basis that New Mexico did not have the money to pay the expenses of being a state, but the economy had expanded through the 1890s and he changed his mind, making a hopeful prediction in 1902 that he would not be able to finish his second term in office because New Mexico would become a state within those four years.129
Otero and fellow proponents of statehood assumed the attempt in 1902–03 would be successful, as it had plenty of congressional support. A bill put forward by the Massachusetts congressman William Knox to allow New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma to begin the statehood process passed the House—but the bill also had a very committed foe. Senator Albert Beveridge, the Republican who spoke with such determination about the forward march of the U.S. flag, was also the chairm
an of the Senate Committee on Territories, and his own view was that New Mexico had a “savage and an alien population.”130
In the late autumn of 1902, a Senate committee arrived to inspect these territories. According to Otero, they never stood a chance, in part because L. G. Rothschild, known as “the Baron,” was accompanying the senators—Rothschild was from Indianapolis, and Beveridge represented Indiana. During the trip, Rothschild acted as the “outside man,” by undertaking reconnaissance in the worst parts of town. Otero harbored little hope that any positive aspect of New Mexico would be acknowledged. He said Rothschild “visited the saloons and the dance hall district. … He would photograph a lewd, dirty prostitute or a drunken scoundrel stretched out in some alley. … These exhibits were to be used to convince eastern people that such were the general conditions of society in New Mexico.”131 The negative campaign worked. The bill was killed. President Roosevelt later told Otero: “If I were in your place I would remain a territory as long as the United States government will pay your running expenses.”132
Three areas of concern emerged from this second attempt at statehood. The first was that not enough people in the territory spoke English. Otero argued that the committee members had misrepresented this in their report by choosing witnesses who had poor English in order to bolster the idea that too much Spanish was still being used.133 Arizona faced similar criticism, as around a quarter of its 123,000 people did not speak English.134 Yet in the years between the two statehood attempts, efforts to use English had grown. In 1890, for instance, students in 143 of the 342 public schools in New Mexico were taught only in English. There was an increase in English-language newspapers as well, and the territory’s Spanish-speakers were on their way to becoming bilingual, though the same could not be said about the Anglo population.135
The second issue was the long-running idea that nearly two hundred thousand New Mexicans in the territory lacked the education and ability to govern themselves, a discussion that intersected with racial ideas and was furthered and fostered by the campaign against the Knox Bill. The final concern, also of long standing, was related to the political balance of the West. This issue had been brewing since the end of the Civil War, with Democrats and Republicans vying for voters in new states. An earlier chairman of the congressional Committee on Territories, Orville Platt—the same politician who crafted the 1901 amendment relating to Cuba and the United States—had written to Stephen Elkins in 1889 to say that “the only way to make a Republican State of it [New Mexico] is to postpone the question of admission until Republican judges, governor, and other officers, have been in the Territory long enough, so that the Mexican population can realize that it is a Republican administration we are to live under.”136
The Republicans continued to seek political control of New Mexico and Arizona. After killing off the statehood bill, Beveridge changed his approach and proposed instead to admit New Mexico and Arizona as one state. Of interest to Beveridge was the fact that Arizona’s voters opted for Republicans, so merging the two might tip the balance in his party’s favor. In addition, mixing the Anglo minority in New Mexico and the majority in Arizona would consolidate Anglo dominance overall.137 President Roosevelt even mentioned the plan in his annual message to Congress in 1905, recommending that “New Mexico and Arizona be admitted as one state. … Nothing has taken up more time in Congress during the past few years than the question as to Statehood to be granted to the four Territories above mentioned [New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Indian territory].”138
A split vote in Arizona and New Mexico in 1906 quashed that idea, with Arizonans rejecting it 16,265 to 3,141, in part because Anglos were fearful of the influx of a large Spanish-speaking population. By 1900 Arizona had a population of 122,000, but only about 20 percent were of Mexican descent, down from 45 percent in 1870. Mining and railroad jobs had attracted white settlers from across the country, as well as Mexico-born immigrants, who, at 14,172, accounted for more than half the Hispanic population in Arizona. However, these migrants could not vote. That left around 10,000 Hispanic U.S. citizens in Arizona, of whom only a few thousand would be eligible voters. In addition some mestizo voters, despite being U.S. citizens, were denied the opportunity to cast their ballots if they appeared too “Indian.” This left Hispanic citizens in Arizona with little political clout.139
New Mexicans, on the other hand, backed the measure, 26,195 to 14,735. In New Mexico, the nativo population was estimated to be around 90,000 out of a total of 195,000 in the territory, most of whom were born in the United States. Because they had been classified as “white”—as were 180,207 people in New Mexico—most Hispanic men were eligible to vote. The nativos promoted a pluralist idea and vision for the territory; they used the term to continue to emphasize their long lineage in the region and to imply that they shared a European heritage with Anglos due to their “pure” Spanish roots.140 Many nativos were middle-class and bilingual, and worked as doctors, journalists, and lawyers. At the same time, however, Spanish-language newspapers promoted the continued speaking of Spanish in the face of long-running criticism from Washington and elsewhere in the United States. As one newspaper put it in 1911: “We need to learn the language of our country … but we don’t need to, with such motive, deny our origin, our race, our language.”141 Many of these contradictions were encapsulated by the emergence of the identifier hispano-americano, which was understood in the context of the New Mexican fight for statehood to highlight a person’s Spanish origins, while at the same time disavowing a more recent Mexican—and probably indigenous—past.142
When William Howard Taft entered the White House in 1909, political momentum to resolve the statehood issue was renewed. He visited Albuquerque in October of that year as part of a longer trip to El Paso, where he met the Mexican president Porfirio Díaz. While in New Mexico, he told assembled local politicians and leaders, after a spirited discussion: “I am not contending against your coming in. I am only contending that you should come in sane.”143
The way forward was becoming clearer, and the failure of the single-state plan had shown the necessity of allowing two separate states, leading to the 1910 Enabling Act, which empowered Arizona and New Mexico to draft their respective constitutions. New Mexico’s reflected its more pluralistic view, safeguarding political rights for Hispanic people, ensuring equal access to education, and even stipulating that public documents should be in English and Spanish. Arizona’s document took a more exclusionary route, for example limiting certain jobs to U.S. citizens or English-speakers, and not providing for official papers to be translated into English.144 Once the constitutions were hammered out, congressional approval followed.145 On January 6, 1912, more than half a century after the Mexican-American War, New Mexico joined the union, and Arizona followed on February 14 in the same year.146
* Tampa today remains the only place in the United States to have a trilingual newspaper, La Gaceta, published in English, Spanish, and Italian.
Chapter 12
Del Rio, Texas, ca. 1910–40
AT FIRST GLANCE, the sepia-tinted photograph appears to show a normal Sunday outing from around the turn of the century: men in suits and bowler hats, women in long dresses using parasols to shield their skin from the burning rays of the sun. The people are dispersed along the riverbank, most of them looking across, to the south. Yet this is no ordinary scene. It is a picture of “Americans and inssurectos [sic] at Río Grande,” as its handwritten caption indicates. Across the river from the well-dressed Texans, lining the opposite bank are Mexican men, wearing sombreros and ammunition belts, the light casting their reflection in the water, while behind them, beyond a narrow stretch of flat land, are large hills.1 The image, thought to have been taken sometime around 1911 near the El Paso–Juárez border, is not a battle shot. On both sides, people are milling about, watching and waiting. The Anglos were not armed—they were there for amusement. The ongoing unrest in Mexico was common knowledge along the border, and when these Mexicans, of
ten depicted as fearsome bandidos, showed up, people wanted to watch. This could be a dangerous form of entertainment: four spectators were killed by stray bullets during a battle near Juárez in 1911.2 However risky it was, spectators were watching live history, as the Mexican Revolution unfolded in front of their eyes.
The drama at the border and beyond would last for more than a decade and shape the future of Mexico, as well as its relationship with the United States. The Mexican Revolution was the culmination of many different strands of discontent within Mexico, offering competing visions of what the country could be.3 It was a liberating, confusing, violent, and often terrifying time for Mexicans, with fear reaching into the borderlands. The emerging mass media of photography and newsreels meant that events during the revolution were recorded and circulated, taking the conflict well beyond the confines of Mexico.4
The roots of the revolution lay in the regime of Porfirio Díaz, known as the Porfiriato. Díaz had been in power since 1876, except for an interregnum when army general Manuel González, his ally, was president from 1880 to 1884; and the Portiriato period was marked by peace, political stability, and economic growth—but it came with dictatorship as its price. It was a time of men in silk top hats and women in elegant dresses at one end of the social spectrum, and of landless, impoverished peasants at the other. It was Mexico’s version of the Gilded Age, guided by an administration in thrall to French positivist ideas of the importance of quantifiable progress—no matter how pseudoscientific the instruments for measuring it were—giving rise to the nickname Científicos (scientists) for government ministers. Foreign investment was welcomed, railways crossed the land, and mines and factories sprang up, while the poorest—who were often indigenous—were pushed aside and languished in poverty. In the capital and regional cities, urban professional and middle classes wanted to see political reforms, in part to widen their own limited access to governmental roles.5
El Norte Page 36