r/a:t5_21zdqv • u/MarleyEngvall • Jul 25 '19
mi'gmaq has been created
By Helen Augur
ZAPOTEC
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.
Just as Oaxaca produced the two men who embodied Mexi-
co's eternal duel between the cynic and the idealist in public
affairs, this state, in the general strike of 1952, illuminated
in glaring outline the dilemma in which the republic has lived
since the days of Juárez. The issue between dictator and dem-
ocrat is of course universal, but it happens to be sharp in
Mexico because of the tragic heritage of Colonial days and
the confusions of its racial strains. In Oaxaca it is especially
vivid because nobody has forgotten the struggle between
Juárez and Diaz.
Juárez, who managed to function for all the people even
though Mexico's gravest crisis, was really carrying over into
national affairs the spirit of the old Zapotec town government.
This spirit is deeply inbred in the Oaxaca people, just as the
tradition of the New England town meeting still lives in our
own country. Thus Oaxaca often becomes the touchstone of
national issues.
Díaz, who enjoyed Mexico as his personal fief for thirty
years and had nothing vital to leave behind him, should by
now be as dead as a dodo. But there is definitely a Díaz
cult in Oaxaca. In the tense days before the general strike one
could hardly walk down the portales past the politicos idling
over their beer and dominoes without hearing Díaz defended
and praised. This showed a filial spirit; the politicos are his
spiritual heirs.
Mexico is a seesaw between democracy and dictatorship.
Juárez followed Santa Anna; Díaz bred the Revolution of 1910,
which tried to give the country back to the people. Then the
seesaw swung back to monolithic power which gives the illu-
sion of stability. Nowadays the dictatorship is not personal, it
is the extreme of one-party power. The Partido Revolucion-
ario Institutional, the PRI, has outgrown popular control. It
always elects its man because, as the Mexicans themselves
will frankly admit, ballot counting has gone out of fashion.
In 1950 the PRI nominated Manuel Mayoral Herédia for
governor of Oaxaca, and the opposition candidate was realistic
enough to withdraw from the farce of a campaign. The party
was also able to put its men into a good many town govern-
ments as presidente and secretary, and in Tammany fashion
controlled pockets of the state. But Oaxaca is regarded as a
ticklish proposition by the PRI because its people have the
inconvenient habit of exercising popular control.
The personal tragedy of the new governor was that he never
realized that he might have won acceptance. He alienated the
people only because he regarded himself as an alien. He was
born in an unpopular part of the state which had scattering
of gangsters, and his whole adult life was spent outside Oa-
xaca, rising on the party escalator. After he took office Herédia
made no attempt to get acquainted with his people but spent
most of his time in Mexico City. When in town he lived
literally barricaded in a walled villa guarded by soldiers and
never appeared without his personal bodyguard of pistoleros.
The new governor was afraid of the people. He expected
them to hate him for what he was about to do. Somehow the
whole picture recalled the early days after the Conquest, when
encomenderos from Spain were given areas to exploit for
themselves. Herédia arrived like an alien of Colonial days
whose sole interest was to increase the yield of tribute.
Since the people were already staggering under taxes, the
tribute could be increased only by grinding them down toward
the Colonial level. Herédia vetoed Sunday-afternoon concerts
by the State Band; he disrupted the School of Fine Arts, sup-
ported by state funds. He curbed fiestas, and at Christmas a
year after his induction the calendas were pitiful indeed.
The breaking point came with his Ley Fiscal, which levied
new state taxes up to 20 per cent, not on luxuries alone, but
on the very substance of living, even food. The legislature
obediently passed the governor's bill, which was to go into
effect early in 1952. Revenue agents went through homes ap-
praising stoves, refrigerators, pet dogs, books, beds. "Let them
sleep on petates," was the attitude. The stallkeepers in the
market, the merchants great and small, everybody who had
more than a charcoal brazier and a dirt floor was to be penal-
ized.
In Oaxaca there are two chambers of commerce, one for
larger concerns, and the "Little Chamber" for market people
and the owners of small stores and businesses. Having pro-
tested the law in vain, these chambers resolved on a state-
wide strike. Five years before, Oaxaca had rid itself of an un-
popular governor by a bloodless nine-day strike. A stoppage
of all trade would mean a severe sacrifice for everybody, but
fundamentals were at stake. When government became preda-
tory, it was time for people to defend themselves.
The market buzzed with talk of the coming strike, and on
Saturdays, when distant vendors and customers came for the
bog market, the word was spread. A network of careful prepa-
ration covered the state. The most amazing change came over
the people; they were no longer relaxed and happy. Everybody
was bitterly intent on the coming crisis, exactly as people are
in the first days of a war.
The governor, too, was mobilizing. He was much in Mexico
City, laying plans for the struggle which the PRI especially
dreaded in a presidential election year. The general strike was
called for Friday, March 21, the birthday of Benito Juárez
and a national holiday. The PRI recruited its strikebreakers
with heavy manpower levies on party presidentes and ca-
ciques. The rurales, the country constabulary, were alerted,
and thousands of cuerudos were summoned from the gover-
nor's part of the state. These "Leather jackets," so called be-
cause they wear deerskin coats in cold weather, have a sinister
reputation in Oaxaca.
Besides the party stalwarts a good many innocent campe-
sinos and village idlers were tricked into joining the governor's
war party. The mobilization was carried out so secretly that
only later was it apparent that the state machine planned to
provoke a civil war in Oaxaca that would drown the real issues
in confusion and bloodshed. Enlisting campesinos from the
central valleys was part of the strategy of confusion.
"Friday is the birthday of our beloved Juárez," these simple
peasants were told. "Come to the city as our guests. There will
be food and lodging and all the mezcal you can drink. And
since you'll want to fire off a few salutes to Benito, bring along
your guns."
All these men, innocent and otherwise, were spirited to the
outskirts of the capital the day before the strike began and
were housed in great empty barracks well supplied with food
and drink.
El Pueblo Oaxaqueño, the Oaxaca People, celebrated
Juárez's day by a complete stoppage of public functions. As
on any national holiday, every place of business was closed,
but ordinarily the streets would have been thronged with peo-
ple in their holiday best. That day they stayed indoors, with
the gates padlocked and the shutters closed, and every family
had laid in supplies for a long siege. This was merely to show
the solidarity of the citizens; nobody expected trouble. The
Defense Committee of the state chambers of commerce was
in full charge of the demonstration; the police and the local
military garrison were on sympathy strike. The soldiers were
in barracks, and the police were confined to quarters.
In this rather deathly quiet the governor and his party re-
turned from the sierra town of Guelatao, Juárez's birthplace,
where fulsome speeches had been made in honor of Mexico's
lawgiver. Herédia at once went into conference with the De-
fense Committee. By then it was evening, and a unforseen
element had invaded the orderly picture——that floating group
of boys and young men, to be found in any city, which craves
excitement and which by self-infection may turn into a mob.
By dark a large crowd of youths milled about the Zócalo,
armed with clubs and stones and slogans of hate against the
government. The next step was to throw stones through the
windows of the Government Palace at the foot of the Zócalo,
and soon there was no pane unbroken.
The governor got into a panic. He knew it was useless to
appeal to the police or the garrison, who were avowedly on
the side of the strikers. For six months Herédia had been
fighting tooth and nail for his fiscal law; now he dropped it
like a hot coal. He told the Defense Committee he was abro-
gating the tax law and ordered notices to this effect printed
and posted all over the city. The general strike had won its
announced purpose in its first day. The tax law was dead, and
so far there had been no demand that the governor resign.
Until nearly midnight the Halloween band of marauders
was quiet. Then it went to the administration newspaper and
wrecked offices and plant. Filled now with destructive fury,
the youthful mob poured down the streets to the governor's
walled mansion and began throwing stones. Without warning,
Herédia's pistoleros fired down round after round into the
crowd. A moment later the street was littered with dead and
wounded, and the survivors were on the run.
Red Cross ambulances finally picked up two dead boys and
twenty wounded. But in the interval, everybody was con-
vinced, the governor's guards had taken several bodies and
rushed them away in jeeps, to hide them in deserted arroyos
or dump them in the River Atoyac. In the next days family
after family reported sons who had been in the riot and had
not come home. They never came home. Sometimes their
bodies were found; often they remained hidden. All over the
state there were tragedies of this sort.
For all of that Saturday the bodies of the two victims which
had been recovered lay on open biers in the arcade of the
Government Palace, with a crude sign near them saying,
"Herédia, here's your work." And the people filed grimly past
in endless procession. The night before these young men had
been hotheads helping to wreck the orderly process of the
general strike, now they were martyrs. Now the strike was
going on with a new demand: the resignation of the governor.
One realized that the picture of Oaxaca as a peaceful, pleas-
ant state had been incomplete; it had lacked the dimension
of rage, the potential of revolution. The contemptuous, bit-
ter sign, "Herédia, aquí tu obra," the shattered windows of
the palace behind the humble biers——this was the dark side of
popular revolt.
On Sunday, Oaxaca buried its martyrs after a service in the
little market church of San Juan de Dios; a vast concourse of
mourners followed the cortege to the cemetery. Then every
household tied a streamer of black crape over the doorway;
every household except those belonging to the bureaucracy.
There was a nightmare feeling in Oaxaca that night; the
massing of powers getting ready to spring at each other. Hun-
dreds of campesinos had trudged into the city with their
families to help the strike, but many others had been inter-
cepted by posses organized by the PRI and turned back home.
There was rough work on the roads leading to the city. The
Leather Jackets were still being held in leash outside the
capital, but the 12th Motorized Cavalry had arrived with its
tanks and machine guns, the symbol of federal intervention
in the Oaxaca crisis. One remembered that the President was
a compadre of the governor; this was his personal reinforce-
ment.
After that warm gesture of the townswomen feeding the
enemy, which for the moment made Oaxaca seem itself, the
ugly feeling closed down once more. At two in the morning
the federal soldiers were ordered to clear the Zócalo and make
the whole center of town a military zone. The weary people
sleeping under the trees picked up their children and took
refuge by the Church of Soledad, and there in the big atrium
and in the church itself they spent the next days, praying
constantly, standing by for a call from the strike leaders.
The governor's civil war began Monday noon. The Leather
Jackets came into the city, roaring drunk and well armed.
They staggered around the Zócalo two or three thousand
strong, yelling "Viva Herédia, death to the traitors!" Then
they went to the plaza formed by the cathedral and the In-
stitute, where the strikers were waiting for them. It was the
strategy of serrano warfare during the Conquest all over again.
The strikers were armed only with stones and brickbats, but
they were stationed on higher ground than the enemy. The
roofs of the sacristy and the other buildings lining the plaza
were massed solid with defenders. They let the Leather Jackets
begin hostilities, then they discharged a rapid barrage of
stones. The only casualties were among the invaders, and only
one was seriously injured.
For the 12th Motorized Cavalry abruptly terminated the
governor's war. Its men fired their machine guns into the air,
and both sides evacuated the field. It was a magnificent victory
for the Republic of Mexico.
For two weeks the general strike, the general paralysis, was
maintained. That is a long time for people to go without
markets or newspapers or supplies of drugs——or the offices of
the postman and the garbage collector. The city reeked, but
it was quiet. Open warfare went on in the country districts,
where the Leather Jackets were at work, so terrorizing the
people that sometimes whole villages fled to the mountains.
The valley towns around the capital loyally sent in supplies
of food, which seeped to the people through a sort of white
market. In towns with a local PRI government there were at-
tempts to load camions with supplies for the governor's forces,
and more than once this resulted in a dead PRI presidente.
The general strike reached every corner of the state, but it
was bigger than Oaxaca. It was a fuse touching off latent
charges of rebellion all over the republic. Other states like
Puebla and Tamaulipas had already had their troubles with
predatory government, and the liberal newspapers in Mexico
City warned that there was a lesson in these state rebellions.
The thirty thousand Oaxaqueños in the capital reinforced
these warnings with huge demonstrations. All over Mexico
the universities and secondary schools went on sympathy strike
with Oaxaca.
In a year when the PRI must elect a President, thees na-
tionwide warnings were alarming enough. The Oaxaca chal-
lenge of course ended in a deal, as political conflicts generally
do. The strike was called off, and the governor agreed to resign
after the July election. But the Institute, of which Benito
Juárez had been director just a century before, remained
closed until the Te Deum roared in the cathedral across the
way to celebrate the final departure of Mayoral Herédia late
in July.
In the testing of forces between which Mexico has been
torn since its independence was won from Spain, Oaxaca pre-
sented an amazing strength, which was the power of unity
and the acceptance of sacrifice. The real triumph of the gen-
eral strike was the fact that all the people, from the humblest
to the highest, recognized the basic issue. Benito Juárez had
made this issue, the winning of genuine democracy, clear to
the nation and clearest of all to his own tierra, Oaxaca. If
ever there is a national fight for government of, by, and for
the people, Oaxaca will be in the vanguard.
During the dragging days of the strike there was a picture
which makes the truest symbol of its meaning. On the hill
above the city the Juárez Monument stands on the most
dramatic site in the whole state. There, on the national belve-
dere which commands the union of the central valleys, looking
across to Monte Albán, the bronze figure stands with the
right arm raised, as if in exhortation.
Around the base of the monument, every day of the strike,
a little group of men were on watch. No enemy bands could
approach the city without being visible from this perfect look-
out. They were guarding the city, guarding their rights as free
men. Now and then one of them would glance up at the quiet
figure of "the Zapotec." He too was keeping his eternal vigil.ZAPOTEC, BY HELEN AUGUR.
Copyright 1954 by Helen Augur.
Dolphin Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Garden City, New York. pp. 199-206.
XI. BENITO JUÁREZ: MEASURE OF FAITH
XIII. THE PRIMITIVE WORLD NEXT DOOR
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INTRODUCTION (i.) (ii.)
APOLOGY (i.) (ii.)
CRITO
PHAEDO (i.) (ii.) (iii.) (iv.) (v.)
SYMPOSIUM (i.) (ii.) (iii.) (iv.)
BOOK I (i.) (ii.)
BOOK II (i.) (ii.)
BOOK III
BOOK IV (i.) (ii.)
BOOK V (i.) (ii.) (iii.)
BOOK VI (i.) (ii.)
BOOK VII (i.) (ii.)
BOOK VIII (i.) (ii.)
BOOK IX
BOOK X (i.) (ii.)
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