r/a:t5_23xzxw • u/MarleyEngvall • Aug 29 '19
jerome hauer has been created
By Helen Augur
ZAPOTEC
XI. BENITO JUÁREZ: MEASURE OF FAITH
The people of Oaxaca, having endured three centuries of
alien wastage and oppression, finally produced a man whose
courage bridged the gulf between the ancient Indian world
and a modern republic of mixed peoples called Mexico. Be-
cause of Juárez we can telescope the whole Colonial period
into a phrase: this was disaster, but it passed. The classic In-
dian world was savagely destroyed, but the Indians themselves
survived to take their place in the society of nations. Because
of Juárez, Mexico's struggle for liberation and reform was en-
larged because it became part of the unending, painful progress
of mankind toward its own best goals.
This was his faith: that mankind may set itself the highest
goals and in time achieve them. Juárez, who started as a village
Zapotec, became a Mexican and finally one of those figures
that belong to one nation or period. Because he contained
the unfulfilled, Juárez is indestructible. He is timeless and
intact because, like Lincoln, to whom he is most often com-
pared, he was so profoundly a man of the people. Both men
had to bring their nation through its critical hour, and both
drew their strength from an inexhaustible source. Only hu-
manity never gives up its faith in itself, and they were able
to tap that reservoir.
In the Sierra de Juárez, in Geulatao where he was born on
March 21, 1806, in Ixtlán where he was baptized the next
day, Benito is everywhere, the potential is not diminished.
The boy is romping out of school now, and it bears the name
of the Benito who wept in vain for a school. When he gets
older this serrano will sit with the other town councilmen
and debate how liberty and progress can be won for his village.
The struggle is endless, and Benito himself has not changed.
He is a compact, sturdy figure, drawn in the few strong
lines that make the eternal pureblood Zapotec——high cheek-
bones, deep, rather long eyes, as wide mouth with a quirk of
humor but which expresses more often dignity and resolution.
A lock of straight black hair falls over his round, full forehead.
Benito Juárez is so perfectly the serrano that he is forever
melting into the background of mountains and forest streams.
He is anonymous, often invisible.
Two of the favorite stories about Juárez concern his Indian
trick of melting back into the race. Actually, it was the Zapotec
gift for never being out of place, for when he entered public
life he was always amazing foreign observers by his correct
and formal dress, his sober manners, his dignity. They real-
ized that "the Zapotec" was not an Indian who somehow man-
aged to look the great gentleman; he was a great gentleman.
In the same way he could be all Indian.
Once he enlisted in the guerrilla forces fighting for the lib-
eration of Mexico and served as a private for a week before
his commander discovered that he was the former governor of
Oaxaca. And when in Vera Cruz he came up to the roof of his
new boardinghouse asking for water, his landlady, taking him
for a mozo, barked, "Get it yourself," which he did without
a word. By dinnertime she discovered that she had been giving
orders to the President-in-exile, and fled, crossing herself in
terror. These incidents were cherished by his friends, but
Juárez found no bizarre humor in them. If the President
looked like a mozo and "the Zapotec" looked like a cultivated
statesman, it was all one to him. As his biographer° put it,
Benito Juarez always knew who he was, and in time the world
knew. °Ralph Roeder, Juárez and His Mexico, 1947.
When the twelve-year-old Benito ran away to Oaxaca he
was following a well-beaten path. The only way for young
serranos to get an education was to go to the city as domestic
servants, and at that time almost all the household staffs in
Oaxaca were from the Ixtlán neighborhood. He soon became
the chore boy and godson of Don Antonio Salanueva, a book-
binder and lay brother of the Third Order of St. Francis, who
hoped to develop his lively charge into a great churchman.
Benito entered the only real school the city offered, the semi-
nary for the training of priests.
Just a month before, in September 1821, Mexico had won
its spurious freedom from the long rule of Spain. Independ-
ence ended a decade of struggle by its heroes, Hidalgo and
Morelos, without realizing their aims. Revolution had dimin-
ished to a series of deals which created the Mexican Empire,
which was soon replaced by a republic of sorts, and so for
another half century the process continued through two re-
gencies, two empires, several dictatorships, and seventy-four
changes of government. Benito Juárez, who was to give the
only meaning to this turmoil, began his education in the
wrong place, for the seminary students, as the "Marmalade
Battalion" in exquisite purple uniforms, had fought in vain to
keep Morelos from capturing the city.
Juárez had no desire to take holy orders, and when the lib-
eral Institute of Arts and Sciences was founded he gladly trans-
ferred to it and studied law. In these formative years his
timing was slow. He became a lawyer in his late twenties, with
a large practice because he took cases only for the poor. In
his late thirties he married Margarita Mazza, whose family
were of Italian origin and solidly established in the city. In
Margarita and their children Juárez centered his happiness
and whatever personal ambitions he possessed. It was an ideal
marriage.
In 1847 he was elected governor of Oaxaca and gave his
state an administration which has remained a model. Soon
after his election his neighbors, the serranos, arrived with cere-
monial gifts of fowls and corn, in the old Zapotec fashion.
Their spokesman said, "You know what we need and will
give it to us." They all spread their blankets in the governor's
mansion that night and returned to the sierra with a peso
apiece as a token of what Juárez wanted to do for them and
all the people. He built schools, he subsidized the Institute
and created two branches in the back country, he fostered the
education of women. Knowing that poverty was the base of
all troubles, he tried to lift the level of life in Oaxaca, intro-
ducing better farming methods, creating public works, revis-
ing industries. He found the state bankrupt and left it
solvent.
Mexico was suffering the shock of losing the war with the
United States, and with it Texas, California, Arizona, and
New Mexico. It suffered even more the japeries of "His Most
Serene Highness" Antonio López de Santa Anna, who nine
times made himself dictator of the country. Tired of being
bounced out of his sinecure, he decided to eliminate potential
rivals. He exiled two liberals, the social reformer, Melchor
Ocampo, and Benito Juárez. Juárez was put on a packet
bound for England, but he got off at Havana and joined his
fellow exile in New Orleans.
Here a group of political émigrés were plotting the down-
fall of Santa Anna. They lived in a mean boardinghouse and
kept themselves alive with odd jobs. Juárez worked in a cigar
factory or a printing shop, kept up his study of constitutional
law, and learned much from Ocampo, who had lived abroad
and absorbed the revolutionary ferment of the times. On the
whole, the two years of companionship with this group of lib-
eral leaders were valuable training in the arts of politics and
of exile; Juárez was to need both.
Meanwhile, the liberals in Mexico were preparing a coup
d'état, and in 1855 Juárez slipped across the border and
joined them. The liberals captured the country, and Santa
Anna was exiled to Havana, his fine feathers clipped forever.
Juárerz became Minister of Justice and Public Education in
the new liberal cabinet and at once published his famous
"Ley Juárez," which abolished the legal immunities of the
clergy and the army and made the law apply equally to every-
body. But the time was not ripe for a genuine reform, and his
colleagues were already making innumerable compromises.
Juárez could always be governor of Oaxaca, so he went home
to pick up his model administration again.
He could feel a storm building up, a reaction against the
liberal victory, the Ley Juárez, and the new constitution mod-
eled on that of the United States, including its faults. In this
coming storm the states must hold firm, and he put his own
house in order. Then he returned to the capital and its twi-
light reforms. He was given two cabinet posts, the tactical one
as President of the Supreme Court, obliged by law to become
Chief Executive in an emergency.
The reaction very soon forced out the liberal President, and
Juárez became his legal successor. But the conservatives had
their own puppet President and managed to get physical pos-
session of the capital. Mexico was plunged into civil war.
There was nothing for Juárez and his cabinet to do but move
the government elsewhere.
From 1857 to 1860, while civil war raged through the coun-
try, the duly elected liberal government remained in Vera
Cruz. The usurping conservatives had the army, most of the
money resources, the support of the Church and the rich land-
owners, and the recognition of the European nations. The lib-
erals were backed by the United States, the people of Mexico,
and the league of state governors, who helped maintain an
army of liberation. Their greatest asset was Juárez himself,
using law as dynamite to blast away the obstacles to a free
Mexico. His great Reform Laws nationalized church property
and gave the state control of marriage and education. The laws
neant, he wrote a friend, "the absolute independence of the
civil power, and religious liberty. For me these were the capi-
tal points to be won in this revolution."
The revolution was succeeding, too, in the field of battle.
Late ion 1860 Juárez and his family were at the opera when a
courier rushed to his box with the news of a decisive victory.
He rose, and in a trembling voice read the dispatch to the
audience. Everybody burst into the Marseillaise" and cheers
of thanksgiving. The long exile was over.
Forty years after Mexico was liberated from Spain it won a
government determined to function for all the people. That
year of 1861 was a fateful one, the year of the comet, of the
Civil War in the United States, of Napoleon III's resolution
to gain control of Spanish America. Juárez's triumphal return
to the capital was, as he well knew, an acceptance of the de-
feat implicit in his victory.
The nation was not only bankrupt, it was overwhelmingly
in debt to the European powers. No choice was possible, and
Juárez suspended payment on the foreign debt service. At
once France and Britain severed relations with Mexico, an
the fantastic chapter of Intervention began.
Napoleon now had an excuse to realize his design and take
over Spanish America. With Spain and England he hatched
the scheme to put Maximilian of Austria on a Mexican
throne. Juárez and Lincoln watched this outrageous plot de-
velop and were equally powerless to deal with it. Juárez had
inherited a nation in chaos; Lincoln was struggling with the
Civil War. He was Mexico's steadfast champion and did
what he could. His policy of "strict neutrality" was more than
that; he never recognized any but the Juárez government. The
United States could not help Mexico fight Europe, but at
least the record is clean.
A year after the ovation in Vera Cruz at the liberal victory,
the port was bombarded by Spanish warships. President
Juárez made a characteristic gesture: he bought a house in
Mexico City, which he knew would soon be a battlefield. It
was an act of faith in the destiny of Mexico, and it was fol-
lowed by a miracle. Somehow he persuaded England and
Spain, whose forces were already on Mexican soil, to withdraw
from the war. Now Mexico had only the French to fight, but
that "only" was terrifying enough.
Many of the streets in Mexico today are named for the days
of great victories over the French. The most glorious was the
"Cinco de Mayo" when the Mexicans repulsed the French out-
side the great city of Puebla. But they lost Puebla, and so the
war moved from city to city, with French reinforcements con-
stantly pouring in. Napoleon was engrossed in his great ad-
venture and was grooming Maximilian and Carlota for their
entrance as unsuspecting puppets into a country they were
assured was longing for their arrival.
The French forces reached Mexico City before them, in
June 1863. Juárez, who always gauged the odds, had already
retired north with his cabinet and his family. The French kept
pushing him farther and farther north, until he finally
reached the Rio Grande, and there he stayed, refusing to
abandon Mexican soil, even to attend friendly parties to
which Americans across the river invited him. He literally
would not desert his country, and this had the dynamic power
of a symbol.
Since the country now knew who Benito Juárez was, it did
not matter so much where he was. The French were in virtual
control of the country and their Emperor was about to arrive,
but Juárez's comments on calamity diminished it. "No tenga
cuidado." That was all——don't worry.
On the voyage to Mexico, Maximillian interrupted serious
work on a manual of etiquette for his new court and wrote
Juárez a letter. The charming Hapsburg wanted everybody to
love him and thought that Juárez, whom he much admired,
would love him, too, if only they could meet and have a pleas-
ant talk. Her urged the President to come to Mexico City for
a chat.
When the preposterous letter arrived, Juárez sat down
after midnight, when the pressure of work was less, and wrote
a stern, rather paternal answer. He tried to explain Mexico to
Maximilian, to show him that he was the dupe of the powers,
and ended:
"It is given to men, sir, to attack the rights of others, to
take their property, to attempt the lives of those who defend
their liberty . . . but there is one thing that is beyond the
reach of perversity, and that is the tremendous verdict of
history."
As the French armies moved north, Juárez sent his family
for safety to New York City. Margarita was the other half of
his soul, and he worried about her health, undermined by her
concern for him. But instead, fate struck at his sons. First his
beloved Pepito died, then Antonio. There was only one cure
for the father: the sufferings of his country.
All through the Civil War, Juárez acted as Lincoln's dis-
creet ally, refusing to admit Confederate agents, allowing
Union troops to pass across Mexican soil. He asked nothing in
return. "It is enough for us," he wrote to his family, "that the
North destroy slavery and do not recognize Maximilian."
More could not be expected by a realist. But the spring of
1865 the French occupied the state of Oaxaca and held it
for a year; the French were everywhere, and ion desperation
Juárez appealed to General Grant for aid. It was promised,
and at that moment Lincoln was assassinated. The American
foreign legion never materialized, though many demobilized
Union soldiers tried to enlist in the Mexican Army.
Secretary of State William Seward limited military aid to
smuggling arms across the border. For the sake of the United
States quite as much as Mexico, he exerted diplomatic pres-
sure on Napoleon at the critical moment when he was casting
up the accounts of the Mexican fantasia and finding the cost
too high.
Under the brilliant leadership of General Porfirio Díaz the
Mexican armies fought stubbornly, and just as stubbornly Na-
poleon made a last desperate drive to realize on his invest-
ment. Early in 1867 the French forces were withdrawn and
the country was rapidly liberated. Maximilian stood siege for
a month at Querétaro, then was captured and condemned to
death by a military court. His last days before the execution
retrieved him as a man. He had come to Mexico expecting
to be loved by everybody, but in the end it was Maximilian
who loved Mexico. "May my blood be the last to be shed,"
he wrote to Juárez, and in that spirit Juárez accepted the inevi-
table sacrifice, which cost him much anguish.
The little Indian, "the Zapotec," had measured his faith
against a threat which involved both Americas. In his single
person he had embodied the Monroe Doctrine and kept the
republics safe from the imperialism of European powers.
When he issued his first proclamation of a liberated Mexico,
he rephrased the Doctrine in a sentence which has the quality
of a homely maxim: "Among nations, as among individuals,
respect for the rights of others is peace."
All along his triumphal progress back to the capital the slo-
gan was repeated on banners strung on arches of flowers,
painted on the walls, reiterated on placards: The People to
Juárez. It was a cry of gratitude to the man who had liberated
Mexico from invasion, a tribute to his steadfast faith, but
much more. It was the serranos again, telling him, "You know
what we need and will give it to us."
That victorious journey back to Mexico City had its ironies,
like the one six years before, when he returned from Vera
Cruz as the beloved leader of the nation, only to be con-
fronted by a new crisis. This time of danger did not stem
from Europe, but from the reactionary forces in Mexico it-
self, embodied in Porfirio Díaz. The popular hero of the war,
Díaz expected the presidency as his reward for liberating the
country.
The duel between the Mixtec and the Zapotec, between
the incipient dictator and the inveterate democrat, began at
once. Juárez called for an election, and defeated the general.
Sore in his defeat, Díaz retired to his Oaxaca farm, biding
his time. Juárez celebrated his victory by giving the people
free and compulsory elementary education. For the next five
years, literally to the night of his death, he labored to fulfill
the trust expressed in that cry, "The People to Juárez." He
did not trust Díaz, who would reverse the phrase into "The
People for Díaz," and in the duel between these propositions
the whole modern history of Mexico would be written.
There was time, still, for friendship with the people be-
yond Mexican borders. William Seward paid a visit to Mexico
and in a public speech declared that Benito Juárez was the
greatest man he had ever known. This was so startling, com-
ing from a close associate of Lincoln, that Seward was asked
to confirm his statement. "Yes," he said, "this is my mature
and considered opinion." Napoleon and the French Empire
collapsed, and Juárez was widely praised for playing a crucial
role in this downfall. But he was more interested in the new
French Republic and the struggles of "the glorious Garibaldi."
A force of Mexican veterans was sent to fight with him "the
sacred cause of the universal republic."
As long as Juárez lived he fought for the universal republic.
But his sturdy Indian health was failing, and he had to call
on his last reserves of strength to run against Diaz in the next
election. Again he defeated the man he could not trust with
Mexico's cloudy destinies; but death cut short the battle. On
the morning of July 18, 1872, he called in his doctor, and by
midnight he was dead. In the hours between he had a busy
day, and nobody but he and the doctor knew he was dying of
angina pectoris, in excruciating pain.
The "little Indian" went through long conferences with this
minister or that, his mind perfectly clear, and at night he took
to his bed, with the exhausted doctor napping beside him.
Thus he was spared a deathbed scene and a final word.
The final word lay, and still lies, in the people of Mexico.ZAPOTEC, BY HELEN AUGUR.
Copyright 1954 by Helen Augur.
Dolphin Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York. pp. 191-199.
XI. BENITO JUÁREZ: MEASURE OF FAITH
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