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So, the third in the instalment about Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a bigoted, hyper-utopian progressive who helped get rid of a dictator, and thereby condemned an entire nation to socialist-progressive-utopianism for almost 80 years. Agrarian reform programs brought Mexico from the list of food exporting nations...number seven in the world in 1910...to a country that had to import corn...the Mexican dietary staple...and pay for it in silver, gold, and oil. Burgeoning industry went all but silent, for forty years, while machinery was back-patched, repaired with reforged parts, and general Rip Van Winkle-ism prevailed until the 1960s.
By that time, Mexico was truly a nation with a 20th Century understanding of reality, but an 18th Century level of development. It was not the poorest of third world countries by any means, but it was in the middle of the pack. The Nation demonstrated the ability to do impossible tasks, such as the Cuernavaca - Mexico City Autobahn, the development of Acapulco as a premier vacation spot in the international scheme of things, the Copper Canyon Rail transit of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the building of the 42 story Torre LatinoAmericano in downtown Mexico City. These and many other jewels were apparent to anyone who was willing to look, but it was rather much like a V-8 engine always seemingly hitting on 5 cylinders. Corruption, sloth, "rounded corners and sharp curves", and a typical, national-socialist, monolithic political structure kept Mexico "under control". In other words, they had painted themselves into the same corner that had provoked the Revolution of 1910 - 1917.
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This is Miquel Aleman
Valdez, who was the first
post-Revolutionary President
of Mexico who had not been
a veteran and General Officer
in that War. He served in
office from 1946 - 1952.
Although he entered politics
as bit of a liberal,he became
known as the first
"conservative" to hold
the office in the opinion
of many political scientists.
The first non-military veteran to be president after the revolution. . It is said that he looked a lot like Walt Disney. And he did a lot of big projects, like Acapulco. |
But, by this point the problem was greater than that some old man who had perpetuated himself in office, and then insulated himself to the point that intellectual wags could say, "Presidente Diaz has turned the Presidential Palace into a mausoleum for living Presidentes." The political party that evolved from the mess of the late nineteen-teens through the 1920s was finally, and ridiculously named the Party of the Institutional Revolution. It was a name that only a Bolshie could love.
Mexico found itself in this foggy situation of anti-Americanism intertwined with a certain mixture of respect, affection, and suspicion directed toward the Gringos....as well as a further pleasant bondage of import/export of meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, seafood and shellfish, industrial raw and finished materials, tourism, and so forth...trade going both ways, with heavy protection by the Mexican government imposing sometimes draconian duties in order to defend Mexican heavy and medium industry. American built autos for instance, required 300 per cent duty, and more if they had electric windows.
What brought all this on? It was the intransigence of the Mexican elites and intellectual leftists who were bound and determined to impose Utopia. They had been selected by Wilson, Lind, Lane, House, and other social engineers and community organisers to bring Mexico quickly to a happy land full of cheerful middle class people, taking piano lessons and buying motorcars. They believed in happiness through nationalism, not patriotism. They believed that gratification should take the form of having things, and taking things from people who had "too much".
The social engineers and politicians were grateful that the Democrat politicians and the liberals from the United States were "reasonable' about making sure that the intellectuals and social engineers should certainly be well-compensated, and kept apart from any of the normal restraints imposed by social democracy. That is why we have Frida and her mommy and daddy as icons…for no really good reason.
This is why we are still just emerging from the 200 million ton gorilla called the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, and the Sindicato Nacional de Petroleros. The former is the confederation of Mexican Workers and formed, litrally one third of the Ruling Structure of the Ruling Party, the afore-named Partido Revolucionario Institucional. It was part of the Ruling Party and everyone in Mexico, by the Constitution of 1917 had to be a member of the Confederacion or one of it octopus-like locals if in fact he was going to work in the skilled trades or service sector of the Economy, public or private.
This was the ideal model thought up by....George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians....and also the Bolshies in a place called Moscow....and also, right around the same time another dumboe by the name of Venustiano Carranza. Obregon believed as did Carranza in the need for a socialist democratic construct to the society. Both were killed, Carranza after his followers tired of his high-handedness and corruption before he had been in office for two years, and Obregon when he determined to see through his "democratic reforms" by running for a second term which was a violation of one of the main battle cries of the Revolucion immediately past. "No Re-eleccion!!!"
The social engineers and politicians were grateful that the Democrat politicians and the liberals from the United States were "reasonable' about making sure that the intellectuals and social engineers should certainly be well-compensated, and kept apart from any of the normal restraints imposed by social democracy. That is why we have Frida and her mommy and daddy as icons…for no really good reason.
This is why we are still just emerging from the 200 million ton gorilla called the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos, and the Sindicato Nacional de Petroleros. The former is the confederation of Mexican Workers and formed, litrally one third of the Ruling Structure of the Ruling Party, the afore-named Partido Revolucionario Institucional. It was part of the Ruling Party and everyone in Mexico, by the Constitution of 1917 had to be a member of the Confederacion or one of it octopus-like locals if in fact he was going to work in the skilled trades or service sector of the Economy, public or private.
This was the ideal model thought up by....George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians....and also the Bolshies in a place called Moscow....and also, right around the same time another dumboe by the name of Venustiano Carranza. Obregon believed as did Carranza in the need for a socialist democratic construct to the society. Both were killed, Carranza after his followers tired of his high-handedness and corruption before he had been in office for two years, and Obregon when he determined to see through his "democratic reforms" by running for a second term which was a violation of one of the main battle cries of the Revolucion immediately past. "No Re-eleccion!!!"
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| Juan de Leon Toral assassin of Pres. Gen. Cd, Alvaro Obregon Salido about five years before he assassinated Alvaro Obrgon, President-elect of Mexico |
Carranza was assassinated because he was an obstreperous ass. But Obregon was different. The leftists moaned about losing him, because he was Big Left, exposed to all the wonders of the social democratic model in Europe well-received by Progressives from the United States. But he was killed by a "religious fanatic". That religious fanatic bore two beefs with Obregon. He was angry because Obregon had committed to the idea that the Catholic Church had to be either eliminated or remanded to essentially parlour practice. The Constitution had already provided for the legal basis for the expropriation of all the Church's property and even their churches and secondary building like rectories, convents, and monasteries. Certain elements the Army had been busy enforcing the most abusive parts of the Carranzista document, by harassing clerics, nuns, and tertiaries, along with parishioners and people who wore religious jewellery. Many clerics and common believers were tortured and murdered by these pseudo-military units. By the time Obregon decided that Mexico needed more Obregon and fewer priests, his assassin had already decided to solve that problem.
That was the second reason for having to murder Obregon. He was displacing his "political godson" President Plutarco Elias Calles an even more horrid anti-Catholic and anti-religionist in general. and had just been re-elected two weeks before, to a leap-frog term split by Plutarco Elias Calles. He was enjoying a banquet in the plush San Angel district of Mexico City, when young Juan de Leon Toral, showed Obregon a caricature, as though he were the restaurant's "official" caricaturista. and received Obregon's pleasant approval of the work....turned away, turned again, and put five bullets into Obregon's back.
That was the second reason for having to murder Obregon. He was displacing his "political godson" President Plutarco Elias Calles an even more horrid anti-Catholic and anti-religionist in general. and had just been re-elected two weeks before, to a leap-frog term split by Plutarco Elias Calles. He was enjoying a banquet in the plush San Angel district of Mexico City, when young Juan de Leon Toral, showed Obregon a caricature, as though he were the restaurant's "official" caricaturista. and received Obregon's pleasant approval of the work....turned away, turned again, and put five bullets into Obregon's back.
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| Plutarco Elias Calles President of Mexico 1924 - 1928 Force behind the throne from 1929 - 1935 |
This resulted in a really weird ascension, little understood by anyone without a serious brain syndrome, but Obregon was elected, but not inaugurated. His predecessor could not serve a president because he had already served his full term. The Constitutional provision required that the Secretary of the Interior had to be installed for a period while new candidates and elections could be put in place. The Interior Secretariat was a fusion of what Americans would think of the Secretary of Internal Domestic Affairs and Governance, the State Department, and the Executive Office of the President. So it fell to Emilio Portes Gil to serve as President of Mexico from 1928 until 1930. Portes Gil was advised of this incident while at the Hacienda de Santa Engracia which is located just a few hundred yards from our little adobe hideaway. He was playing cards with Jose Martinez Gomez, then the very young inheritor and owner of the Hacienda, and three other gentlemen farmers of the citrus area surrounding the Hacienda. Portes Gil, it is said rode by mount to the train station about 4 miles away, with a valet, and took the train to Monterrey, then the overnight to Mexico City, and reported for duty at the Presidential Palace that the OROGs have seen in pictures of the Zocalo in Mexico City.
Plutarco Elisa Calles then ran the government of Mexico from behind the scenes by essentially controlling three almost equally powerful political figures, each of whom served a Congressionally approved two year term.
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As we reviewed this it was moving to realise the truth behind the saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In tearing down a construct of authoritarian institutions, the Progressives in Mexico, egged on by their half-brothers in the United States and Europe, set about to expropriate the Haciendas, and replace them with....essentially nothing.
There was a certain perverse joy in savouring the moments of watching rich people have to carry their suitcases and boxes and whatever they could salvage down a dirt road and board a train in the second class because some pseudo soldier in a lieutenant's uniform, glass-eyed drunk on mescal has taken your last peso, and your wife's and daughter's jewellery, and all because of the fact that you were born. Born to privilege, true, but it was not your call. It was where the stork stopped. No real determination about being a good rich guy or a bad rich guy....just loathed, as did the citizens of the Nouveau Republique Francaise loathe their betters and titled people, until they killed Robespierre and waited to be saved by an imitation Emperor in the form of another madman.
(One remembers Obama telling the crowd, "Get your revenge! ")
But it is true. There was lots of fluff and ruffle, many great speeches. Plans for this and plans for that. There was blame to go around, always it was the Gringos' fault because of this measure or that law....but the richest country on Planet Earth in terms of known geological and other natural stores of wealth per capita was Mexico, and yet, nothing seemed to happen. The Haciendas were frequently expropriated but not repartitioned among the peons. And if the repartition did take place, the peon received a warrant title for so many years...usually until he would be calculated to be too old to farm effectively, and the Reforma Agraria would take back his property and give it to somebody else. No patrimony, no estate, no inheritance; just a rent-a-life. Schools remained a big towns, cities, and Mexico City affair, because all of the three-grade Catholic primaries had been closed, burned out, and the teachers killed, abused, exiled, terrorised, or told to desist breaking the law or ".....come with me to the license plate factory".
This is truly the Progressive way. As with Obama's Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI), it really is necessary to hire 20, 000 or 30,000 more IRS agents, specifically for the purpose of terrorising the populace.
It is like Hillary saying that certain specialty doctors make too much money, so we will solve that problem by prohibiting medical schools from graduating doctors in those specialties. That is the way socialists think. Like when the price of milk was too high during the Depression, Harold Ickes (yes, the father of the son) ordered, without authority the round up of purebred Holstein dairy cattle to be slaughtered and burned. Later when the price of milk was too low, they rounded up calves and slaughtered them, and poured milk out into the gutters around the bottling companies. This is the way of governments in an increasingly totalitarian state.
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| Venustiano Carranza del la Garza President of Mexico 1918 - 1920 |
You, the OROG, piecing together these three penetrations into the period from when Wilson ordered the total destruction of the Port and City of Vera Cruz, simply to disarm a strongman General President named Victoriano Huerta, and then stab friends of the Gringos in the back. That action engendered resentment that still has not really completely subsided. Those friends were Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata.
Then, by essentially appointing the most anti-American, pro-German, pro-marxist individual by almost hand-walking him into the Presidential Palace, the Wilson administration managed to appoint the only truly anti-American among the entire cast of tragi-comedic theatre, Presidente, General, Ciudadano Venustiano Carranza.
Then, by essentially appointing the most anti-American, pro-German, pro-marxist individual by almost hand-walking him into the Presidential Palace, the Wilson administration managed to appoint the only truly anti-American among the entire cast of tragi-comedic theatre, Presidente, General, Ciudadano Venustiano Carranza.
The Utopian Splendours dreamed up by Carranza and piddled and dibbled with by successive decades of politicians caused much of the problem we have in Mexico to this day. The permanent, always dependent, always marginalised underclass that prefers being in that situation because they know they will be the first to receive the handouts of politicians....that is one of the final huge obstacles to Mexico's finishing the construction of a place among the mighty. The Progressives make their messes and then they take their blame list out and begin to recite…"…the Gringos made me do it", "The Rich People are the cause of poverty," etc. Saul Linsky was not the first to figure out the formula.
We might well be making further additions to this posting. Several things are going on at once at this end. Thanks to everyone who has endured this assault upon the Utopian Elitists.
El Gringo Viejo
We might well be making further additions to this posting. Several things are going on at once at this end. Thanks to everyone who has endured this assault upon the Utopian Elitists.
El Gringo Viejo
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