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Summer of Discontent: Economic Rivalry among Elite Factions during the Late Porfiriato in Yucatán

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Gilbert M. Joseph  and
Allen Wells
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Extract

The past decade has witnessed a rich harvest of regional studies of the Mexican Porfiriato. There are two predominant currents in the recent literature. One group of scholars has focused attention on the political sphere, examining the process whereby the Porfirian central state increased its power at the expense of the regional peripheries. Invariably, the federal cause was advanced by Don Porfirio's ability to manipulate local factional struggles, playing off contending parentescos or élite family networks. Another group of historians has explored the external dimension of the Porfirian regional economy, examining patterns of cooperation and conflict between local élites and foreign investors. The contradictory nature of such transnational alliances and their impact on non-élite groups have now been analyzed for several important Porfirian regions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , November 1986 , pp. 255 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 The relationship between the Porfirian central state and élite family networks in Mexico's regions is best explored in: Benjamin, Thomas and McNellie, William (eds.), Other Mexicos: Essays on Regional Mexican History, 1876–1911 (Albuquerque, 1984)Google Scholar, especially part 1; Voss, Stuart F., On the Periphery of Nineteenth Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810–1877 (Tucson, 1982)Google Scholar; Diana, Balmori Voss and Wormian, Miles (eds.), Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago, 1984)Google Scholar; Wasserman, Mark, Capitalists, Caciques and Revolution: The Native Elite and Foreign Enterprise in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1854–1911 (Chapel Hill, 1984)Google Scholar; Benjamin, , ‘Passages to Leviathan: Chiapas and the Mexican State, 1891–1947’, Ph.D diss. (Michigan State University, 1981)Google Scholar; Jacobs, Ian, Ranchero Revolt: The Mexican Revolution in Guerrero (Austin, 1984)Google Scholar; Camín, Héctor Aguilar, La frontera nómada: Sonoray la Revolución Mexicana (México, 1977)Google Scholar; and Saragoza, Alexander M., ‘The Formation of a Mexican Elite: The Industrialization of Monterrey, Nuevo León’, Ph.D. diss. (University of California, Los Angeles, 1978)Google Scholar. For a sampling of the work on the external dimension of the Porfirian regional economy, see Katz, Friedrich, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago, 1981)Google Scholar; Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques and Revolution; Joseph, Gilbert M. and Wells, Allen, ‘Corporate Control of a Monocrop Economy: International Harvester and Yucatán's Henequen Industry during the Porfiriato’, Latin American Research Review (hereinafter cited as LARR), vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 69–99Google Scholar; Meyers, William K., ‘La Comarca Lagunera: Work, Protest, and Popular Mobilization in North Central Mexico’, in Benjamin, and McNellie, (eds.), Other Mexicos, pp. 243–74Google Scholar; and Benjamin, , ‘International Harvester and the Henequen Marketing System in Yucatán, 1898–1915’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, no. 31 (Winter 1977), 3–19.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Joseph, , ‘From Caste War to Class War: The Historiography of Modern Yucatán’, Hispanic American Historical Review (hereinafter cited as HAHR), vol. 65, no. 1 (02. 1985), pp. 111–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 133–4; and Beezley, William H., ‘Opportunities for Further Regional Study’, in Benjamin, and McNellie, (eds.), Other Mexicos, pp. 275–300.Google Scholar

3 Womack, John, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Buve, Raymond Th., ‘Peasants Movements, Caudillos and Land Reform during the Revolution (1910–1917) in Tlaxcala, Mexico’, Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, no. 18 (06 1975), pp. 112–52Google Scholar; LaFrance, David, ‘Puebla: Breakdown of the Old Order’, in Benjamin, and McNellie, (eds.), Other Mexicos, pp. 77–106Google Scholar; Falcón, Romana, Revolución y caciquismo: San Luis Potosí, 1910–1938 (México, 1984)Google Scholar; and Ankerson, Dudley C., Agrarian Warlord: Saturnino Cedillo and the Mexican Revolution in San Luis Potosí (DeKalb, Illinois, 1985).Google Scholar

4 Some examples of recent scholarship on the outbreak of violence during the Madero era were presented at the VII Reunión de Historiadores Mexicanos y Norteamericanos, Oaxaca, Mexico, 22–26 October 1985. E.g., Mónica Blanco Rosenzweig, ‘Levantamientos populares en Guanajusto, Etapa Maderista, 1908–1912’, and Servando Ortoll and Angélica Peregrina, ‘Nationalism and Mexican Xenophobia. The Guadalajara Riots of 1910’.

5 This essay represents a small portion of an ongoing book-length study of politics and society in Yucatán during the late Porfirian and early revolutionary periods. Tentatively titled Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval: Élite Politics and Rural Rebellion in Yucatán, 1890–1915, our new book will examine the dialectical relationship between changing configurations of Yucatecan elite politics and episodes of rural revolt during the culminating, halcyon years of the oligarchical order prior to the arrival of General Salvador Alvarado's revolutionary army in March 1915.

6 A brief list of the standard narrative accounts of the period includes: Urzáiz, Eduardo, Del imperio a la Revolución, 1865–1910 (Mérida, 1945)Google Scholar; Acereto, Albino, ‘Historia políftica desde el descubrimiento europeo hasta 1920,’ in Enciclopedia Yucatanense, Trujillo, Carlos A. Echánove, (ed.), 8 vols. (México, 1944–1947), iii, 5–388Google Scholar; Bolio, Edmundo, Yucatán en la dictadura y en la Revolución (México, 1967)Google Scholar; and Ricalde., Álvaro GamboaYucatán desde 1910, 3 vols. (Veracruz and México, 1943–1955)Google Scholar. Recent works by Yucatecan scholars have begun to raise provocative questions about the political history of this period. See Villarreal, José Luís Sierra, ‘Prensa y lucha política en Yucatán, 1895–1925’, Unpublished manuscriptGoogle Scholar; Camara, Luis Millet, Villarreal, Sierra, Rodriguez, Blanca González and Padilla, Beatriz González, Hacienda y cambio social en Yucatán (Mérida,1984)Google Scholar; and Martín, Fidelio Quintal, ‘Breve historia de Yucatán durante la última década del Porfiriato (1901–1910)’, Boletín de la Escuela de Ciencias Antropológicas de la Universidad de Yucatán, vol. 2, no. 6; (1984), pp. 43–62.Google Scholar

7 The 1907 financial crisis ruined many businesses and financial institutions throughout the United States, Europe and Mexico. In no small way this economic crisis contributed to the collapse of the Porfirian state. For a specific example which demonstrates the impact of the panic on a region in Mexico, see Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques and Revolution, especially chapters 7–9.

8 This section draws heavily on Joseph, , Revolution from Without: Yucatán, Mexico and the United States, 1880–1924 (Cambridge, U.K., 1982)Google Scholar, chapters 1–3; Wells, , Yucatán's Gilded Age: Haciendas, Henequen and International Harvester, 1860–1915 (Albuquerque, 1985)Google Scholar; and Joseph and Wells, ‘Corporate Control’.

9 Ibid.

10 Benjamin, ‘International Harvester’; Brannon, Jeffery and Baklanoff, Eric, ‘Corporate Control of a Monocrop Economy: A Comment’, LARR, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Fall, 1983), pp. 193–6Google Scholar; and Carstensen, Fred V. and Roazen-Parrillo, Diane, ‘International Harvester, Molina y Compañía, and the Henequen Market: A Comment’, LARR, vol. 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1983), 197–203.Google Scholar

11 Joseph, and Wells, , ‘Corporate Control’, and ‘Collaboration and Informal Empire in Yucatán: The Case for Political Economy’, LARR, vol. 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1983), pp. 204–18.Google Scholar

12 Backed by a continuous supply of foreign capital, Molina and Montes were able to invest even when the economy was depressed and prices were low, precisely when most planters and merchants faced capital shortages. This strategic position enabled them to buy when most investors were compelled to sell out their interests at rock-bottom prices merely to escape financial ruin (e.g., during the panic of 1907–8). Then, when fiber prices rose and local property values increased, the Molinas had the option of selling their newly acquired assets for a whopping profit or adding them to their expanding empire.

13 Between January 1907 and December 1914, 55 articles, either directly or indirectly concerned with the role of International Harvester in the henequen market, were found in one local publication alone – El Agricultor, the propaganda arm of the Cámara Agrícola. Benjamin, , ‘International Harvester’, p. 4Google Scholar, n. 1. A stinging indictment of the trust by the muckraking Yucatecan journalist, Carlos P. Escoffié Zetina, is found in his El Padre Clarencio (hereinafter cited as PC). See especially issue of 27 June, 1909.

14 It should be pointed out that, although it was consistently critical of the ‘trust,’ the Cámara Agrícola was also an umbrella organization of hacendados and merchants, some of whom were members of the Molinista faction. El Economista Mexicano, Vol. 42, No. 22 (1 September, 1906), p. 477.Google Scholar

15 A thorough discussion of the Compañia Cooperativa's attempts to finance its valorization scheme is found in El Agricultor throughout 1907 and 1908. See especially 1 January 1908, no. 13 and 1 February, 1908, no. 14.

16 El Agricultor, 1 December, 1907, no. 12.

17 Cordage Trade Journal (hereinafter cited as CTJ), vol. 36, no. 11 (4 June, 1908).Google Scholar

18 For a detailed discussion of the role of advances in the henequen economy, see Wells, , Yucatán's Gilded Age, pp. 36–7.Google Scholar

19 Wells, , ‘Family Elites in a Boom and Bust Economy: The Molinas and Peóns of Porfirian Yucatán’, HAHR, vol. 62, no. 2 (05, 1982), 224–53.Google Scholar

20 International Harvester Company Archives (hereinafter cited as IHCA), Chicago, Illinois, Document File No. 2395, Letter, H. L. Daniels to Mr. James Deering, 28 August, 1905. ‘Sisal’ was the preferred term for henequen fiber among contemporary North American cordage interests.

21 IHCA, Doc. File No. 2395, Letter, Daniels to Mr. Charles Deering, 15 August, 1905.

22 Víctor Rendón's testimony, U.S. Senate, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp: Hearings Before the Sub-Committee of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1916), 1, 26Google Scholar; and Martín, Quintal, ‘Breve historia’, 56–7.Google Scholar

23 La Revista de Mérida (hereinafter cited as RdM), 29 May, 1908, no. 6462.

24 Martín, Besides Quintal, ‘Breve historia’, 56–57Google Scholar, see Barber, Gerald, ‘Horizon of Thorns: Yucatán at the Turn of the Century’, Master's Thesis (Universidad de las Américas, Cholula, Puebla, 1974)Google Scholar, chapter 2.

25 Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 775.

26 Although many members of the élite held the Molinistas responsible for the failure of the Compañia Cooperativa, evidence linking Molina/Montes to the collapse of the combination is circumstantial.

27 RdM, 4 November 1907, no. 6286.

28 CTJ, vol. 36, no. 11 (4 06, 1908), p. 1.Google Scholar

29 Diario Yucateco (hereinafter cited as DY), 1 June 1907, no. 77. For a perceptive treatment of the role that speculators played in the henequen market, see RdM, 22 October, 1911.

30 RdM, 15 May 1908, no. 6450; Mexican Herald (hereinafter cited as MH), 23 May 1908, no. 84.

31 RdM, 21 May, 1908, no. 6544; and MH, 23 May, 1980, no. 84. On the linkage to political unrest, see PC, 5 September 1909.

32 El Imparcial, 20 June, 1907, no. 3905.

33 Menéndez, Carlos R., Noventa años de historia de Yucatán (1821–1910) (Mérida, 1937), p. 163.Google Scholar

34 testimony, M. J. Smith's, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 1552–3.Google Scholar

35 Ibid; on Harvester's designs on the Ferrocarriles Unidos, see U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Corporations, International Harvester Company (Washington, D.C., 1913), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

36 DY, 12 June 1908, no. 392.

37 Archivo Notarial del Estado de Yucatán (hereinafter cited as ANEY), Tomás Aznar Rivas, 31 March 1908, Oficio no. 6, 809–57.

38 ANEY, Patricio Sabido, 5 October 1908, Oficio no. 17, 2033–120, and Sabido, 5 June 1907, 1465–74.

39 Irigoyen, Renán, ‘Don Us Escalante, precursor de la industria henequenera’, Revista de Estudios Yucatecos, vol. 1 (February, 1949), pp. 17–32.Google Scholar

40 Archivo General de Estado de Yucatán (hereinafter cited as AGEY), Ramo de Justicia, ‘Cuaderno de prueba de confesión ofrecida por el apoderado del síndico del Thebaud Brothers en el juicio ordinario que sigue contra el Banco Peninsular Mexicano y socios,’ Juzgado segundo de lo civil, 1909; and DY, 30 December 1908, no. 563.

41 Menéndez, , Noventa años, pp. 186–7Google Scholar. As if the banks did not have enough problems, local newspapers reported the embezzlement of 740,000 pesos from the Banco Yucateco on 5 January 1908. Although three culprits were arrested and convicted, the untimely robbery undermined the credibility of the already weakened regional banking industry and paved the way for the fusion of the two banks. Menéndez, , Noventa años, pp. 8, 267.Google Scholar

42 AGEY, Ramo de Justicia, ‘Cuaderno de prueba’, 1909; and í Cuál es el valor y cuál es el alcance de la convención que se dice ajustada entre la Sociedad “E. Escalante e Hijo” y sus acreedores? (Mérida, 1911).Google Scholar

43 AGEY, Ramo de Justicia, ‘Cuaderno de prueba’, 1909.Google Scholar

44 RdM, 12 September 1907, no. 6421.

45 For an insightful discussion of the reciprocal role that peripheral areas can play in the world economy, see Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Faletto, Enzo, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley, 1979).Google Scholar

46 El Imparcial, 8 June 1907, no. 3903; and MH, 9 May 1907, no. 70.

47 Thebaud's receivers would later claim in court that it was not only illegal but unethical to place Muñoz Arístegui in the position of the President of the Comisión, since in all likelihood this liquidating commission might find itself taken to court by one of its creditors. ¿Cuál es el valor, p. 41.

48 PC, passim, 1908–9.

49 AGEY, Ramo de Justicia, ‘Cuaderno de prueba’, 1909; and Informes y balances presentados por la Comisión Liquidora a los acreedores de los Señores E. Escalante Peón, Pedro Peón Contreras, E. Escalante e Hijo, E. Escalante Bates y Nicolás Escalante Peón en las asambleas de 27 y 28 de septiembre de 1908 y 12 y 13 de marzo de 1909 (Mérida, 1909)Google Scholar, especially pp. 4–16; and DY, 30 December 1908, no. 563, 16 March, 1909, no. 626, 5 May 1909, no. 669, 14 June 1909, no. 703, 18 June 1909, no. 707, 30 August 1909, no. 769. It is significant that the Diario, which was a Molinista paper, gave so much space to the Escalante failure. La Revista de Mérida, owned and operated by Delio Moreno Cantón, the leader of an opposition party in Yucatán, gave only marginal coverage to the Escalantes’ misfortunes.

50 testimony, Bayley's, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 1013.Google Scholar

51 DY, 14 June, 1909, no. 703.

52 For an alternative case study of how familial elites were able to resurrect themselves from bankruptcy, see Wells, , Yucatán's Gilded Age, pp. 144–50.Google Scholar

53 ¿Cual es el valor, p. 49.

54 The Letters Rogatory cross-examination in New York District Court in the fall of 1909 is found in AGEY, Ramo de Justicia, ‘Cuaderno de prueba’, 1909. For a fascinating discussion of the use of Letters Rogatory in the recent criminal investigation of the 1976 car bombing of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, see Branch, Taylor and Propper, Eugene M., Labyrinth (New York, 1982), pp. 174–5 and 406–11.Google Scholar

55 PC, 6 July, 1909.

56 For instance, the valuable Compañia Agricola del Cuyo y Anexas, a multi-dimensional agricultural property in the eastern portion of the state valued at well over a million pesos prior to the panic, was auctioned for just over 200,000 pesos by the Compañia Comercial. Menéndez, , Noventa años, p. 183.Google Scholar

57 In the District Court of the United States for the District of Minnesota. United States of America vs. International Harvester Co., et al., 14 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1919), iiiGoogle Scholar, Testimony of Witnesses for the Petitioner, p. 414.

58 Ibid., and testimony, Alexander Legge's, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 1162.Google Scholar

59 Since Montes was the source of this information, it makes sense that he would have a special interest in the rise of worker unrest in Yucatán at this time. His own hacienda, Oxcúm, located just outside of Umán, 6 kilometers south of Mérida, had been the site of a workers' uprising in 1907 when 110 peones marched from the hacienda to the palacio municipal of Umán to protest the imprisonment of three co-workers. But, to say that all of Yucatán was on the brink of revolution early in 1909 certainly was an exaggeration. RdM, 5 September 1907.

60 Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, ii, 1605.

61 PC, 28 November 1909.

62 See Joseph, and Wells, , ‘Corporate Control’, 88–9.Google Scholar

63 IHCA, Doc. File No. 2395, Letter, Daniels to Legge, 16 July 1909.

64 testimony, Bayley's, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, ii, 968.Google Scholar

65 IHCA, Doc. File No. 2395, Letter, Daniels to Legge, 16 July 1909. In this letter Daniels also alludes to Montes' financial problems owing to the untimely death of Mr Gustav Amsinck, a New York banker, who had a long-standing working relationship with the Molina and Montes casa. Some scholars have suggested that Amsinck's death was the reason why Montes was forced to ask Harvester for the $600,000. See Carstensen and Roazen-Parrillo, ‘International Harvester, Molina y Compañía’, p. 201. While it may be true that Montes was temporarily inconvenienced by the death of Amsinck, Harvester had tunneled money to Montts and Molina before the 1909 corner and would continue to do so after the unsuccessful combination. See IHCA, Doc. File No. 2395, Letter, Daniels to Mr Cyrus McCormick, Jr, 2 October 1906. In fact, Daniels would later admit under oath in the Harvester anti-trust trial that Montes was IHC's agent in Yucatán, when he responded positively to the following question: ‘Well, he [Montes] was the man who was handling matters for you down there?’ In the District Court, iii, 419.

66 DY, 21 June 1909, no. 709.

67 Ibid

68 This amount covered Montes' profits on the original 220,000 bales. That year Harvester would purchase more than 450,000 bales from Montes S. en C, so Montes' profits were quite a bit more than $103,000. testimony, Smith's, Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 1633.Google Scholar

69 testimony., Bayley'sImportation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, 11, 998.Google Scholar

70 In the District Court, 111, 414, Letter, Daniels to Montes, 30 June 1909.

71 Ibid., iii, 429–31, Petitioner's Exhibit 261–A, Letter, Daniels to Montes, 7 July, 1909.

72 Ibid., iii, 416.

73 Importation of Sisal and Manila Hemp, ii, 1250.

74 Plymouth Cordage Company Records, Cambridge, Massachusetts, File H, Draw 2, Article from Boston Globe, 10 December 1914; Dewing, Arthur S., A History of the National Cordage Company (Cambridge, Mass., 1913)Google Scholar; and CTJ, vol., 6 no. 1 (1 January, 1893), p. 15.Google Scholar

75 Henry W. Peabody and Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (hereinafter cited as Peabody), HL-3, Letter, Bayley to Arturo Pierce, 22 September 1909.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 What Every Farmer Should Know About Binder Twine in 1910, compiled by the Plymouth Cordage Company by G. F. Holmes, 2nd ed. (North Plymouth, Mass., 1910).Google Scholar

79 Peabody, HL-3, Letter, Bayley to Pierce, 22 September 1909.

80 A look at Harvester's twine profits during the first ten years of the decade indicates that although its profits were somewhat reduced in 1909 and 1910 in comparison to other years, Harvester still made a profit despite the failure of the combination. See In the District Court, III, 416.

81 Joseph, Revolution from Without, chapter 3. For a comparative perspective on the role of the middle sectors in the revolutionary process, see Wasserman, Capitalists, Caciques and Revolution; Katz, , ‘Peasants in the Mexican Revolution of 1910’, in Spielburg, Joseph and Whiteford, Scott (eds.), Forging Nations: A Comparative View of Rural Ferment and Revolt (East Lansing, 1976), pp. 89–120Google Scholar; and Carr, Barry, ‘Recent Regional Studies of the Mexican Revolution’, LARR, vol. 15, no. 1 (1980), pp. 3–14.Google Scholar

82 We will analyze this mobilization from the perspective of both élites and popular classes in our new book, Summer of Discontent, Seasons of Upheaval. For a preliminary statement, see Joseph and Wells, ‘The Crisis of an Oligarchical Regime: Elite Politics, Rural Rebellion, and Patterns of Social Control in Yucatán, 1910–1913’, Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association conference, Albuquerque, April 1985.

83 On the Morenista and Pinista platforms, see Blanca González Rodríguez, ‘Cuatro proyectos del cambio en Yucatán’, in Millet, et al. , Hacienda y cambio social, pp. 81–7.Google Scholar

84 The standard work on the Caste War is Reed's, NelsonThe Caste War of Yucatán (Stanford, 1964)Google Scholar, but recent work by Lawrence Remmers has studied élite politics during the era. Remmers, , ‘Henequen, the Caste War and the Economy of Yucatán, 1846–1883: The Roots of Dependence in a Mexican Region’. Ph.D. diss. (University of California, Los Angeles, 1981).Google Scholar

85 Joseph and Wells, ‘The Crisis of an Oligarchical Regime’, and Wells, Yucatán's Gilded Age, chapter 6.

86 The Ortiz Argumedo revolt and the conquest of Yucatán by Constitutionalist general Salvador Alvarado's 8,000-man army in March 1915 are detailed in Joseph, Revolution from Without, Prologue and chapter 4.