Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/343

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DIAZ HIMSELF
307

an amendment to the constitution absolutely forbidding the re-election of either president or governors. This rebellion also met with ignominious defeat on the battlefield at the hands of the government forces, and when Juarez died in July, 1872, Diaz was a fugitive from justice. During one of these little rebellions of the present superman Juarez is said to have captured and brought Diaz before him and told him that he deserved to be shot like a rebel, but that the country would take into consideration his services rendered during the War of Intervention.

After the death of Juarez, Diaz prosecuted a successful revolution, but only after four years more of plotting and rebelling. The people of the country were overwhelmingly against him, but he found one very definite interest upon which to play. That, far from being a peaceful and legitimate interest, was a military interest, the interest of the chiefs of the army and of those who had made their living by killing and plundering. The government of Juarez and the government of Lerdo both carried out, after peace came, a sweeping anti-militarist policy. They announced their intention of reducing the army and proceeded to reduce the army. Thereupon the chiefs thereof, seeing their glory departing from them, became fertile ground for the seeds of rebellion which Diaz was strewing broadcast. Diaz gave these army chiefs to understand that under him they would not be shorn of their military splendor, but, on the other hand, that they would be raised to positions of higher power.

Lerdo issued an amnesty to all revolutionists and Diaz was safe from prosecution as a rebel. But instead of employing the freedom thus given to useful and honor-