Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/286

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254
BARBAROUS MEXICO

the United States because it ceased to be profitable. Without commenting on the truth or fallacy of this assertion, I aver that there are plenty of Americans who are prepared to prove that slavery is profitable in Mexico. Because it is considered profitable, these Americans have, in various ways, had a hand in the extension of the institution. Desiring to perpetuate Mexican slavery and considering General Diaz a necessary factor in that perpetuation, they have given him their undivided support. By their control of the press they have glorified his name, when otherwise his name should be by right a stench in the nostrils of the world. But they have gone much farther than this. By their control of the political machinery of their government, the United States government, they have held him in his place when otherwise he would have fallen. Most effectively has the police power of this country been used to destroy a movement of Mexicans for the abolition of Mexican slavery and to keep the chief slave-driver of Barbarous Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, upon his throne.

Still another step can we go in these generalizations. By making itself an indispensable factor in his continuation in the governmental power, through its business partnership, its press conspiracy and its police and military alliance, the United States has virtually reduced Diaz to a political dependency, and by so doing has virtually transformed Mexico into a slave colony of the United States.

As I have already suggested, these are generalizations, but if I did not believe that the facts set forth in this and the succeeding chapter fully justified each and every one of them, I would not make them.

Pardon me for again referring to the remarkable defense of Mexican slavery and Mexican despotism which