José Angel Hernández

HIST: 6393; "Empire, War and Revolution"

March 29, 2000

Friedrich Katz. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), Pp. 659 + Notes, Notes on Sources, List of Archival Sources & Index.

Prior to the publication of Friedrich Katz's monograph on the Mexican Revolution, historians of Mexico and the Mexican Revolution customarily overlooked the significance, influence, and totality of Europe, the United States, and World War I. Unfortunately, the Mexican Revolution, unlike the Russian, Chinese, French, and American Revolutions, did not enjoy the same academic attention prior to the Cuban and Vietnamese Revolutions, which provided an intellectual impetus for social historians of that era. For the most part, the Mexican Revolution was perceived as an "isolated affair"...one of a nationalist nature lead by and for the Mexican peasant and Indian alike. Of course, the one-party system that eventually monopolized the political structure of Mexico readily utilized and claimed a revolutionary legitimacy that perpetuated the triumph of "the untouchables." As a result, many of the ideas and aspirations of the revolution do not become implemented until the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940)...aspirations that continue to seek redress.

What Friedrich Katz accomplishes in this very important book—among many other things—is to incorporate the importance of Mexico into the diplomatic history of the First World War. More than simply a narrative of the Mexican Revolution, the author traces the roots of European and North American diplomacy in the early twentieth century and unearths the multifarious machinations of both countries, including those of the various sectors of the Mexican bourgeoisie. According to one reviewer, "Katz explains mechanisms of foreign policy and foreign relations convincingly and in concrete terms as processes of interaction among the respective economic, commercial, domestic, and social policies of all the nations involved, relating them as much to their governments as to the interest groups within their societies."

Divided into five parts and researched in ten countries, Katz displaces many of the myths surrounding the historiography of the Mexican Revolution in addition to explaining the importance of the Mexican-U.S. border and its impact for the northern revolutionaries. Utilizing a comparative approach, the author carefully illustrates the differences and advantages of Mexico's Northern states in order to explain its eventual victory of the revolution. In this regard, the Northern frontier plays a crucial role during the Porfiriato and acts as a social laboratory for further U.S. involvement in Latin America and around the world, specifically future U.S. involvement in Third World countries. Mexico, then, becomes "a case study not only of how local rifts can be exploited for global ends, but of how global rifts can be exploited for local ends." This "new strategy of exploiting social conflicts...was not adopted by the European powers until WWI...when each side tried to aid revolutionary movements that were directed at its rivals." Indeed, John M. Hart is correct in saying that U.S. policy throughout the globe is first "tested" and "tried" in Mexico. Thus, the term "secret war" takes on new meanings as it refers to new strategies of "alliances and understandings that the great powers and the business interests linked to them develop early in the twentieth century as a response to the wave of revolutions that swept some of what are now called the developing countries."

In what is perhaps Katz's most interesting theory of the Mexican Revolution, his idea of the "the Transformation of the Northern Frontier into the Border," is for me, the central component that tipped the scales in favor of this area. Aside from illustrating a broad diplomatic history of the Mexican Revolution, Europe, the United States, and WWI, the author also describes in detail the historical background of the northern frontier and its unique economic, social, and political development. In other words, what conditions and historical background provided the fertile ground for revolutionary activity, which eventually lead the North to the seat of power in Mexico City? One key to understanding the various conditions of this area are to be found in the huge influx of U.S. capital pouring over into Mexico's northern frontier. Simultaneously, the Díaz regime begins to break the caudillo strangle hold that developed throughout the peripheries following the Independence Wars by employing his infamous "pan o palo" technique. Katz argues that this early attempt at centralization adds tension to an area experiencing land displacement and political usurpation.

The influx of North American capital during the late nineteenth century engenders a variety of implications, most of which take place following the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848). During this period Latin America was "pulled increasingly into the frenetic development of world capitalism." By 1914, foreign capital totaling some 7,567,000,000 overwhelmed the Latin American economies and provided the economic muscle for Mexico's northern frontier.

Katz states that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Mexico underwent a radical transformation due to the "unprecedented amounts of foreign, especially American, capital into...the country's frontier." Although not mentioned by the author, on the other side of the border, the newly established North American southwest also experiences much of the same inflow of intensive capital development, which in some cases occurs simultaneously on both sides of the Río Bravo/Río Grande. In response to North America's corresponding growth of the capitalist economic system, Porfirio Díaz, attempted to offset U.S. influence by giving concessions to other European powers: Germany, France, and especially Great Britain. Here, the diplomatic puzzle begins to come together with Katz's accessibility to German, British, and Mexican archives.

By favoring European companies at times over U.S. corporations, the Díaz regime laid the foundations for further U.S. antagonism against the Mexican government. North American corporations, upset with the Díaz regime's favorable treatment of European capital, anxiously invited the opportunity to work with a president who was sensitive to their interests. Due to this and other reasons, the exiled presidential candidate, Francisco I. Madero, was able to obtain the assistance of bankers and capitalists in Texas. The Northern Frontier States provided Madero's movement with armed troops and military leadership, due in large part to their historical background as military colonists. Once the revolution took on a life of its own, Díaz left the country prophetically stating: "Madero has unleashed a tiger, lets see now if he can control it."

Once in power, however, Katz argues that Madero alienated various sectors of the Mexican population, his early supporters, the United States, and Germany. Considered by some earlier historians as naïve, Katz believes that naïveté does not take you as far as the presidency; on the contrary, Madero simply miscalculated and underestimated the volatile nature of the revolution. While the U.S. perceived Madero as unreliable and unable to control the frequent revolts erupting throughout the country, Germany concluded that Madero went too far with his minute social reforms. On the other hand, local leaders like Emiliano Zapata and the Flores Magón brothers complained that Madero did not go far enough, particularly on the issue of land reform.

According to one German diplomat, Paul von Hintze, Madero was a too idealistic in his approach and lacked the will power of a Porfirio Díaz: "the cardinal error lies in his...belief that he can rule the Mexican people as one would rule one of the more advanced Germanic nations. This raw people of half-savages without religion, with its small ruling stratum of superficially civilized Mestízos can live with no regime other than enlightened despotism." And although Félix Díaz, nephew of Porfirio Díaz, deserved some consideration, the only individual that could bring back order to Mexico, according to both the Germans and North Americans, was another military dictator: Victoriano Huerta (1913-1914). Once the U.S. gave the green light for the overthrow of Madero via Henry Lane Wilson, the other European powers had to go along with the "victory." Germany "had hoped for a coup d' etat where a strong-man would come to power with domestic policies fundamentally different from Madero's, but whose foreign policy would strengthen Mexico's orientation toward Europe." In the end, Huerta took control, at least for a while.

By WWII, much of the same activity—diplomatic mudslinging—is taking place in Germany, the United States, Great Britain, and Mexico are at center stage, specifically in John Hart's latest effort. Here, Mexico's diplomatic upper hand is demonstrated time and again when the Cárdenas regime nationalizes several private sectors of the economy and brings them under government control. How is Mexico able to do this and then continue on this nationalist path in the face of so much North American protest? The answer lies in WWII and the importance of securing a hemispheric solidarity capable of stability in the face of growing German and Japanese "aggression."

John Hart's latest effort describes growing Mexican nationalism and its effects on American investors and pre-revolutionary landowners. Mexico is able to maintain economic and political control despite North America's "move toward global hegemony that gained momentum after December 1941." Due to US need to maintain the veneer of hemispheric solidarity, the Cárdenas and Avila Camacho regimes are able to maneuver and manipulate political and economic conditions to their own advantage, conditions that years earlier would have been questioned. Central to this nationalization of various areas of the Mexican economy is the Mexican government's continued appropriation of land, especially with the case of the Laguna region and its oil reserves. As Hart states: "The consolidated companies complained once again that the Mexican government wanted the hardwoods and chicle industries for itself without mentioning [the] oil." By 1940, however, the companies "were politically overmatched in their confrontation with the Mexican and Campeche governments. Cárdenas' timing was perfect. The American government was concerned with the war in Europe and the crisis with Japan, not with the protection of chicle and lumber companies in Mexico."

The same sort of dilemma also meets numerous U.S. corporations throughout Latin America in the early twentieth century. Prior to the Great Depression (1929), U.S. companies "launched vast investment projects with little regard for the concerns of the host society or the policies of their own government." The result, as O'Brien points out, is continued resentment in the face of the economic collapse that Latin America undergoes during this period. Latin Americans, able to identify the causes of their misery and economic downfall, developed a stronger nationalism that encompassed aspects of anti-Americanism. The nationalization projects that Cárdenas develops for Mexico during his tenure (1934-1940) are part of not only the mistrust of U.S. corporations in Mexico as a result of the Great Depression, but also his own diplomatic aptitude toward the global situation transpiring with WWII. Mexico's historical relationship with the United States, as Katz, Hart, and O'Brien point out, is nothing less than offensive.

Katz's notion of "the Secret War"—although true to the extent that it was the first time that European powers utilized such an approach with Mexico—is not an idea exclusively monopolized during that period. Indeed, as Hart and O'Brien point out, "secret wars" with Mexico and Latin America take place throughout the twentieth century and continue even as I write this final paragraph. The contradictions that are involved in such a thwarted relationship are beyond the scope of this essay; however, the complicated affair between the U.S. and Latin America is further complicated with Latin American corporations currently vying for U.S. consumers, especially along the Mexico-US Border region. The end result is something reminiscent of Gloria Anzaldúa's idea that the border is an area where the "Third World grates against the First World and bleeds." Contemporary perspectives, though, offer an additional interpretation as the Border area develops into something of a hybrid society where two cultures meet and where current tensions continue to bring both nations to the diplomatic drawing board. The lines become blurred as the elites of both societies in the US and Latin America agrees to continue exploiting the local population vis-à-vis the future welfare of the country. Perhaps Virgil Elizondo was correct when describing the border region he predicted that the Future is Mestízo. I would only add: In more ways than one.