144. The Magonistas, Pt. 1!

Welcome to Pick Me Up, I'm Scared, the podcast. Welcome to the episode. Yeah, today David's your host. I swear, if you, like, the fact that you have been, like, secretly insisting in your head, not to me.

upon like a hierarchy there's just a hierarchy of who does the research it's not even a real hierarchy but it's just like right like every time i was like co-host it's like well i do go second when i say the words and you're sitting there being like no it's just who does the research so today I am your co-host you are okay okay so Madeline shit's been bad in LA it's pretty wild yeah it's been a fucking weird ass thing we talked about it last week but you want to give a recap

Yeah, so basically ICE has been doing raids around Los Angeles in true Donald Trump fashion. He's boasting all about it. They're very, very flagrant raids. They're very showy. They're very... You said the woman who got her car rammed? That's what I was just thinking. Somebody got their car rammed by ICE agents and then pulled out through a window. I mean, it's been, like, very dramatic. And, like, the fucked part about that was when she was, like, showing it off on social media.

or like showing what happened on social media like where they ran the car was like where her kid's car seat was like it's like this is fucking like right like

I understand like the Democrats do it too, yada, yada, yada. But like the flagrants. Well, this is what I always say. I'm just like the Trump administration. Like the reason I think a lot of liberals in particular don't like Trump is that he's tacky aesthetically. And this is just tacky aesthetics. I mean, it's more than that, obviously, because it materially affects people's lives. But it's like you could see they have that tacky aesthetic behind it. They're like, yeah, we're badass.

action movies guys get these yeah illegals out of here like you could tell this is what these guys think in their heads and it's just like so fucking ridiculous. And it does have, I will say, the material effect of terrorizing those communities. It's terrorizing. It is a uniquely terrorizing methodology. It is psychologically terrorizing. I think that's a fair way to put it.

uh and you know i like we were texting back and forth about the like no no kings bullshit or whatever yeah yeah and it's funny because i like you're like ah it's some democratic bullshit fuck that i mean it's not like

necessarily like fuck that like i'm not gonna go but i do know a lot of communists and socialists who did go and they do view those types of opportunities as an excellent chance to basically recruit to find people who are disillusioned with the current options under our system and maybe be like hey did you know that there's actually

different option, different way of doing things. Yeah, I will say I was actually going to pick up a book at the library. Turns out the library was closed for the protest. Yes. And so I just like I was like, you know what? I'm just going to let the slipstream take me. yeah and you you walked it a little bit i i i walked it i saw it uh it was a party it was one of the gent like you know this is always some of the gentlest most like life-affirming and like a nice way

Yeah. Where it's just like, oh, it's like communities. Everyone's like happy. Like they feel, you know, people bring their dogs. People bring their families. Obviously, LAPD decided to be fucked. fucking assholes about it oh really even at that one yeah like towards the evening they like arrived on horseback and dispersed everyone there is like some funny social media mishigas about the fact that apparently at one point the lapd and the la sheriff's department kept

each other and started firing at each other. Oh, that's awesome. Which is fucking hilarious. That was hilarious. Yeah. So one of the talking points that goes around when we talk about sort of, you know.

Latin American immigrants, Chicano immigrants in the United States is that Los Angeles and the broader Southwest of the United States has been for as long as there has been a Los Angeles for as long as. you know, since colonialism, a transnational place, which is different than like just international. Right. It's a place where people like occupy different.

nationalities and national identities often at the same time and transition between them often several times, often even throughout the year, right? Totally. I can see that, definitely.

And so this is true of really the United States. But as we know, much of the Southwest once belonged to Mexico and through war and conquest became a part of the United States. So when the U.S. invaded Mexico and they actually made it to Mexico City and then like put like an American flag above the National Palace. That is so far. Mexico City is pretty far south. It's pretty fucking far. Yeah.

uh it there was uh like there were like there was like debate among like a lot of americans about just fully fucking subsuming mexico oh uh and john o'sullivan the guy who like coined the term manifest destiny argued against this full-scale annexation and so he wrote that quote the annexation of the country to the united states would be a calamity

Five million ignorant and indolent half-civilized Indians. Oh. With one and a half million free Negroes and mulattos. Oh. Would scarcely be a desirable encumbrance, even with the great natural wealth of Mexico. Wow, this is like one of those he s-

at it like moments for racists like I feel like racists don't go this mask well you know we're 1848 like the racists are are racising right yeah yeah in a different in a different fashion I guess we still have them today obviously but it's a different fashion

Yeah, so Louis Cass, who was a senator from Michigan, in arguing for simply annexing what they did, the southwest portion, or I guess the north portion of Mexico, what we now think of as the southwest United States. Yeah.

uh said we do not want the people of mexico either as citizens or subjects all we want is a portion of territory which they hold generally uninhabited or where inhabited at all sparsely so right okay so we're just like fully just like The way California, the way, I don't know, New Mexico, Arizona, all of that became the United States, we literally were like, we don't want the people because there's not enough white people here.

Bear in mind, there were fucking people in the areas that we did want. We just like we're like, we want the land. Get rid of these people. That's actually really interesting context. I didn't know that about the history of the annexation of that region.

And so just from the jump, they were like, we want to expel these people from this land. We want to do genocide. Yeah. And there's a policy that we'll probably talk about more next week, but we will get into a little bit this week. that some scholars refer to as Juan Crow, which was a sort of explicitly lynch mob mentality around the Mexicans who found themselves on the north side of the Rio Grande.

after annexation okay so basically yeah so this is like an extension of our genocidal policies towards indigenous people we're applying them towards the sometimes indigenous often Mestizo. Due to colonization. Yeah. People who tend to be more brown, though. Yeah. Who formerly had been Mexican citizens. But then when we annexed the territory, woke up one day and just found themselves now suddenly in the United States. Yeah.

And so the fucking thing is the American capitalist class did actually want access to all that natural wealth stored up in Mexico as well as access, honestly, to the large population. right because it was like a cheap labor force got it so from the jump The relationship the United States and in the area we're from in particular has had with Mexico has been get the net or this area that used to be Mexico, et cetera. The idea of Mexico to our south has been get the natural resources.

Use the people there for cheap, exploitable labor, even more exploitable than usual. Yeah. And largely get them to shut the fuck up and don't give them any rights or assistance. Yeah. And like if they like have like. If they happen to be standing in a place that you want to stand, kill them. Kill them. Right. So this is like the context for the contemporary.

American struggle with immigration to our southern border that we're dealing with the manifestations of today, specifically in the areas where we live that used to be Mexico. Yeah. And so I just like.

Off the jump, I want to say, like, most of my research for today came from Kelly Little Hernandez's book, Bad Mexicans. And what are we talking about today? We haven't introduced the subject. Oh, we are talking about the Magonistas. Okay. And today, most of it is going to be about the deal.

regime in mexico which was the thing that the maganistas we'll learn about the maganistas at the end and then next week is going to be the maganistas rebelling from america into mexico okay got it uh But Kelly Little Hernandez referred to... Wow. Okay. Right. So what we did to Mexico, which was... similar to but different than traditional empire and colonial methods, we then exported everywhere. We exported it to the Philippines. We exported it throughout Latin America.

This makes sense. This is the same way that the British tested colonization on the Irish or imperialism on the Irish. The United States did this to Mexico. So as I said, we're going to talk about the Magonistas. And this was a group of journalists and. rebels who promoted revolution against the uh the pofidio odia's regime and who existed for the most part like they came from mexico but they existed in the period of their most intense activity on the u.s side of the border

Mostly in Texas and also in Los Angeles. OK. And then what's up with the Diaz regime? That was in Mexico, I'm guessing. Yeah. We're going to talk all about it. We're going to get into it. All right. So that's just the government in Mexico. Yeah. And they were like, we're a group of people rebelling against them. But. from the American side of the border.

Yeah. And so the Manganistas were instrumental in fomenting the Mexican Revolution, which took place between 1910 and 1917. Wow, that's pretty recent. That's like right before the Russian Revolution, for example. That's like wild. When the new Mexican constitution, not the 1857, like the new one, was ratified in 1917, much of the Magonista platform was adopted in it. Oh, interesting.

And, like, Ricardo Maganista is, like, considered a national hero in Mexico. This is, like, very standard issue. Like, Mexicans know this. Okay. Well, I'm not Mexican, so I'm excited to learn it.

So in order to talk about the Manganistas, we have to talk about what they were rebelling against. And that means talking about Pofidio Diaz, who's fucking weird and fascinating. It's a fucking shit show. Okay. So Diaz was the oldest of seven children born to Maria Diaz in Oaxaca on September 15th, 1830. His father had died in a cholera epidemic in...

1833, and his mother worked sewing shawls. So Pafidio grew up incredibly poor. He learned to cobble shoes, as well as assemble guns from spare parts of guns he found throughout. his small town in order to sell people because like people left it like from like the sort of like war against Spain that had uh taken place in the 1820s

there were just like guns everywhere. Or it was just like pieces of guns everywhere. Wow. At some point also, he got a hold of like an American exercise manual and became like fucking upset. Like he built his own exercise equipment and he became like jacked. Whoa. Okay. So how old was he when this was happening? He was like a kid or like a teenager? He was like a kid teenager. Okay. Right. Like 12, 13. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So after the war against Spanish colonization,

In the wake of that war, Mexico developed basically a class system that kind of closely resembled that of their colonial predecessors. And we know that this is kind of what happens in a lot of instances after the colonizing power leaves. a settler colonial estate which is like the people they leave behind are like fuck yeah like now we get to do this shit right and that's why just having a revolution isn't enough you need

After the revolution, people with a strong ideology, right, to take the reins and guide people towards a more structured kind of way of doing things. Otherwise, people will potentially fall into old patterns. Yeah. The sort of, like, dominant class was the criollos, which were Mexican-born Spanish who exercised power over a class of poor, indigenous, black, and mestizo background, as well as the Catholic Church, who was the single largest landholder in Mexico.

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. So the non-white majority was like just not having this shit. And having witnessed a colonial government's overthrow, they were like...

well, we can fucking do this. Like, this is fucking fine. And so they called themselves liberals. And so Madeline M. Bold, what does it say on the screen? It says, pause to argue about liberalism. Because you're always so fucking annoying about this shit. I will say, in the fucking 1830s, liberalism constituted as a political ideology.

a genuine liberate like liberatory well that's the thing though about being a marxist is that you recognize that there are almost natural eras that society moves through and that's like the same thing like capitalism it's like okay we reject capitalism now because we recognize its contradictions and we think we're nearing the end of its utility

And its current manifestation. But that doesn't mean you don't think that capitalism was like an inevitable and maybe even necessary step to get us where we need to be. And that's the same thing with liberalism. It's like we talk about the bourgeois revolutions. Right. And liberal.

revolutions they are part of that stepping stone through history that inevitably leads us to the future which is hopefully yeah i mean i don't have i don't i don't have fuck i am a marxist without guarantees i'm not like i do not believe that like that's inevitable i think that it's gonna take a little doing uh but i think we can do it but the point being that a system premised on rights of citizenship

and some sort of like universal franchise however that's interpreted and usually there are some like big asterisks on the word universal yes right men who own property yes uh-huh but like You can extend the principle of franchise and be like, well, if you mean universal, you have to mean truly universal. And like a tremendous amount of the progress of liberalism has been people being like.

If you mean universal, you have to mean fucking universal. That's true. So, yeah, pointing out the contradictions of liberalism is the only thing that's probably helped advance it. And it's people with further left wing politics who tend to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And some of them are, quote unquote, but like some of them are like truly liberals. And remember are like Toussaint Louverture. No. From Haiti.

From Haiti. From Haiti. But which person was he in Haiti? He was like the he was the biggie. The biggie. Yeah. Like the guy who who like prosecuted most of the revolution. Oh. Yeah. But he remember that he was like. I am like in favor of the ideals of the fucking French Revolution, like the like urtext of bourgeois liberal revolutions. Right. Let's just do it. He was like, we're going to fucking do it. Yeah. Right. That's right.

And so there is that like at a certain point in history, asserting rights as a model is good. It was progress at the time compared to what was happening before.

Yeah, so at the first constitutional convention in 1824, conservatives representing the position of the Catholic Church, still the, as I said, the largest landholder in Mexico, and the Creoles gained control and named Augustin de... I can't. Iturbide? I think. Yeah, that'd be it. Iturbide. Yeah, there we go. Iturbide. Oh, no, that's Italian. We're not doing Italian anymore.

You can still do it. You know, do everything. So, so a form. I mean, this is like, this is like a European motherfucker. So like. We're mocking the Spanish. It's allowed. There are people. Uh, so he was a former officer of the Spanish Royal Army who, like, sort of conveniently switched sides about halfway through the war with Spain.

Oh, smart. He saw the writing on the wall. He's an opportunist. So they named him Emperor of Mexico, which doesn't sound very lib. So the liberals were having none of this and immediately led an... armed resistance and ousted Iturbide, I think we're just going to call it that, and elected Vicente Guerrero, a former mule driver and general of the genuine resistance.

president. Also, it should be noted that Guadalupe was the first black president in the Americas of mixed indigenous and African ancestry. That's pretty interesting. He was president for 260 days, and then he was assassinated. Aw, man. So from April 1st to December 17th. Dang. From that point on, Mexico exists in basically a perpetual political tumult. Between 1830 and 1870, the presidency changed hands more than 50 times. And it's in 40 years. Yeah.

Okay, okay. Wow, wow, wow. So there's like a lot of assassinations, a lot of people like ducking in and out of office and being like coup d'etats happening all over the fucking place. Everything's a coup. So it was in this climate that Mexico's northern neighbor, who? Us? Us.

decided to annex first Tejas. Yeah, that makes sense. opening up 172 million acres of arable land for white settlers before waging a war in which the US stormed Mexico City and annexed the rest of what we now think of as the contiguous United States. I still can't believe that we made it all the way down to Mexico City. Yeah. Not near the border. So that wasn't the end of Mexico's Trump.

So this was, when did this happen? 1848 was when we made it down to, or the U.S. Army made it down to Mexico City. Got it.

So back in 1823, U.S. President James Monroe had articulated what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine. And basically the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States would intervene to prevent any European power, especially... France or Spain from reasserting control in the Americas. Sounds great, right? I mean, it sounds like the proto Freedom Fries.

Yeah. If you guys aren't old enough to remember here in the United States, after France was like, hey, we know you guys got bombed in 9-11, but it doesn't seem like it makes sense for you to go to war with the entire world over it. We're sitting this one out. The United States was like. fuck you France and then we renamed all of our french fries freedom fries well this is more or less like listen guys so like right like when you read it and you like if you are

dumb or maybe like a little tired while you're reading it. You'll be like, and I'm usually both. One all the time. But like... you'll be like wow america is saying no more colonization in the americas but what they're really saying is like That's our shit. That's our shit. We have out of here. And so basically we have a sphere of influence. We're not going to fuck with European power. They're not going to fuck with the Americas.

It's just kind of like the way that it's the Freedom Fries is it's like you got two big bads arguing with each other over who gets to do the evils in the world. Okay, so in principle, like France and Spain and presumably England, but I don't think they were really interested.

is like they can't fuck with Mexico. Right. However, in 1862, what was going on in America? Oh, shit. What was going on in 1862? Civil War? The Civil War. Yeah, Civil War. What, did it end in 1864? 1865. 1865, okay, okay, yeah, yeah. But so, America, a little bit preoccupied. We were a little busy, yeah.

So they weren't really in a position to defend their quote unquote sphere of influence in the Americas. And meanwhile, in France, this guy named Charles Lewis decided to name himself Napoleon III after his great uncle, declare himself emperor of France, and try to rebuild. the French Empire, which had been lost through the Louisiana Purchase and rebellions in the French Antilles, including, of course, Haiti. Haiti, which we have a great series on. You guys should listen to if you didn't.

So, ooh. Napoleon III declared that the situation in the United States is very favorable for French colonization attempt in Mexico. Because we're all busy. Yeah, we're fucking busy. So he's like, let's just go check out Mexico again, take our ship back, and get the fuck out of there. What's the United States going to do? Nothing. Yeah.

They're killing each other. So the year before, Benito Juarez, former governor of Oaxaca and president after a reform war in which this guy and a couple other generals in Santa Ana attempted a coup. who by the conser and they were from the conservatives had inherited A huge fucking debt from the 30 or so years of constant wars between conservatives and liberal factions, mostly to like European bankers. Oh, OK. And so Juarez decides to assert a three year debt moratorium.

And so he's basically telling the European banks, like, hey, guys, like, we're good for it, but you've got to give us, like, time. And the European banks are like, we're a fucking protection racket. We're coming for your fucking money. Oh, shit. Okay. So the Europeans is actually just acting like a protection racket under Napoleon III, seized on the U.S.'s distraction and debt crisis.

And so here's where we get back to Porfirio Diaz. Diaz's mom had sent him to a Catholic school in Oaxaca where he met Juarez when he was still governor of Oaxaca. Oh. And... Wadas kind of took him under his wing and was like, you seem like a smart jacked guy. You seem super buff. I can work with it. That rocks. You do CrossFit? Sick. No, there's a... We're going to get to that. Oh, okay. All right. We're getting to CrossFit. This episode's got everything. Yeah. So...

Diaz turns out to be incredibly politically astute in a direct and not very subtle way. He's okay, but he just loves fucking working out. During the reform wars between the conservatives and the liberals, that brought Juarez back to the presidency, Diaz had been appointed to raise resistance from the indigenous Zapotec people in Oaxaca, who lived in the surrounding mountains.

While in the mountains training the Zapotec, he built a gym for them and offered them free membership if they pledged to fight the conservatives under Santa Ana. Okay, I'm sorry. I would not go to war for a free gym membership. That's just me, though. But you would get super jacked. I don't know. Even Equinox. I would still be like, I don't think it's worth it. And they've got a sauna in that place. Yeah. I think this is in the Venice Beach style.

like gym bros oh it's like an outdoor kind of gold's gym kind of muscle man okay interesting uh still couldn't be me but wow i respect the commitment to gym life so like i'll go to war and maybe die for this shit so whereas appoints Diaz, head of the infantry and governor of the small Oaxacan province. And I'm going to butcher this. Well, I'm going to butcher all the Spanish names. Forgive me. But, uh, Tehuantepec. What do you got? Right there. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay.

As governor, Diaz was pretty brutal, but in a way that kind of makes sense. He killed anyone known to have collaborated with conservatives, explaining that the human heart is guided more by fear than any other emotion, and so in order to demoralize the enemy, exemplary act-

Actions carried out with energy and rigor were indispensable even if they might... subsequently be regretted oh my god this is a long way of being like shoot first ask questions later if you feel bad yeah but like at least you shot the guys you you're fucking one right you did it means to the end

In 1861, Napoleon III decides to appoint the temporarily embarrassed Austrian Archduke. Actually, Madeline, I'm going to have you read this starting with his first name. Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria von Habsburg Lothringer Lothringren Lothringren sorry the titular emperor of Mexico what a name so

You got to imagine if you are one of the majority of the Mexican population who's like indigenous or black. And then all of a sudden this Austrian archdew named Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria von Habsburg Lothringen shows up.

You're going to be like, who the fuck is this guy? I'm not even going to be able to pronounce his name. What the fuck is this? I can barely pronounce that name and I've got one of the languages I should be able to pronounce it in. So all the conservatives, including Santa Ana, are stoked because they're like, look, man, we tried to do post-colonial racism and...

And it fucking sucked and everyone hated us and all the indigenous and black people kept taking power no matter how many times we call ourselves emperors. So maybe getting Europe back in here is like what's best. They know how to do empire. That's why we're here. So Max and his French army reaches Puebla. They land at Veracruz. But at Puebla, which is sort of right outside of Mexico City.

Diaz and the Zapotecs he had trained during the Reform Army are waiting. The Jimbros. The Jimbros. All his Jimbros. Okay. So the French defeat all of the regular soldiers fighting against them. And then the Jimbros are like holed up in a church. And they bust out and do hand-to-hand combat. What? This is what? It's fucking crazy. Yeah. Like, here's the thing. Diaz does, like, has, like, a heel turn. Uh-huh. Right?

But at this moment, you're like, fuck yeah, this guy rocks. Right now, it's pretty good. It's looking good. Yeah. I'm not committing to any future actions that I don't know about. I'm supporting this moment. So the fighting commences on May 2nd and lasts for three days, Madeline. What's three days after? Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de fucking Mayo. Cinco de Mayo. So Cinco de Mayo celebrates Diaz and the Zapotecs.

defeating Maximilian and his like weird, freaky French army. Okay, that's awesome. I don't know.

So by 1867, Maximilian is defeated and put before a firing squad and his wife finds herself in a quote unquote madhouse. Oh, not great. Not great. Diaz is basically a war hero at this point. He's like a fucking George Washington. ass figure. And so he keeps Kim Il-Sung figure. Kim Il-Sung figure. Yeah. And he's elected to Congress where he doesn't really accomplish much, but he does hone his skills as a public speaker.

uh as well as his own brand of liberalism which he distinguishes from benito juarez's uh what he calls profundismo apparently juarez was like why like red and like adam smith or john stewart mill this thing that seems really cool and like we should try that and everyone's like dude you gotta fucking do shit

You can't just fucking talk about books. You can't talk about books. So Diaz's liberalism means a belief in racial equality, a secularization of the Catholic Church, and a defense of the liberalism enshrined in the 1857 Constitution, the one that Juarez... had been essential in ratifying, especially its ban on presidential reelection. OK, so you get one term and you're out. You're out. OK. Right.

And Juarez is like, nah, but I'm so popular. Like, keep me around. And immediately Diaz and Juarez run into conflict. Juarez runs for a third presidential term. I think it's like a two term limit business. Which is like a clear violation of the Constitution and the Diaz campaign is against him. However, Juarez has like broad popular support and easily defeats Diaz. Wow, so he gets the third turn. You know, I gotta ask you. How do you feel about term limits? I mean, it seems sort of arbitrary.

What is the rationale for people being super obsessed with term limits? To not have like a monarchy? Don't. I mean, I guess. Yeah. I feel like we did it because of like the Roosevelt thing where he like got like old. Okay. All right. But now. Consider this. They're still old. There's just old. They're just old. But I also just like think like the way we do democracy is hella stupid. I mean, it's not democracy. Right. But like the way we vote, the way we have like a like the.

like the electoral college and if you're if you're in california your votes count a quarter as much as somebody from wyoming yeah it's fucking dumb yeah if yeah i always say this but i'm like you guys know they call the elections before our polling places even close like californians are still waiting in

to vote when they call the elections i mean you know like there's no way to do it that is like like if you want to have like a liberal bourgeois i guess a popular vote like a popular vote or some sort of like parliamentary ass thing yeah be like but like i don't know so in 1871 diaz again

runs against Juarez, and when he lost, he moves north to Brownsville, Texas. Tejas. Tejas, where he sought the patronage of wealthy Mexican expats and American industrialists. He sent his younger brother Felix to wage a military campaign against Juarez. However... The Zapotecs, Jimbrose. Jimbrose. Whatever they felt about the older brother, Porfirio Diaz.

They did not like fucking feelings. They hated feelings. They hated feelings. Oh, okay. So basically what had happened is that at some point earlier, in an attempt to clear an indigenous Zapotec village... felix had burned down the entire village and then knocked over a wooden statue of the village's patron saint oh my god felix so he it like

Not only did he do a bad thing that people aren't going to like anyway. Yeah, there's no way to love not the knocking over, the lighting the village on fire. But then he did it in the most disrespectful fucking way he could. Yeah. Like those respectful village ignitions. So when the Zapotec army supporting wars confronted the expat army.

Uh, they singled out Felix, shaved the skin off of the soles of his feet and made him march several miles to his execution. Oh, that's a bad death. That's a bad death. That's a bad death. I mean, you lit a village on fire. You lit a village on fire. What are you really expecting? Their grace? You expect them to be nice and patient with you at that point? Yeah. If I'm lighting a village on fire, I'm expecting way worse than that to come my way. Yeah, I mean, I think like for like...

The American power elite. Yeah. In general, the only way that worse happens to them is that we believe in hell. Right. Yeah. We got, like, the American power, they die Henry Kissinger ass deaths. Yeah, yeah. So, Juarez dies naturally in office to be succeeded by his chosen successor, Laredo de...

a Tejada, and in 1876, Diaz returns to Mexico and leads another coup, this time successful. Oh, all right. Praxis makes perfect. Yeah. So in a bit of classic irony, Diaz took office under a banner reading, no re-election. He would rule Mexico for the next 30 years. Wow. It's almost like the term limits weren't the issue all along. Yeah. So when I was reading on ideas in Little Hernandez's book, I kept thinking for some reason of Duterte. Who's that one?

the philippines guy that he's out of power now but he was like the real like we're gonna kill drug dealers guy yes yes yes right like for some reason diaz kind of reminds me of that like where it's like Everything's been so shitty that you guys are going to love me being the candidate of Law & Order. Got it.

Right. Also, the Philippines drug thing is interesting. I have some friends who've been to the Philippines or even people who've lived in the Philippines. And it is very, very interesting because like everywhere, if you're rich, the rules just don't apply to you. Yeah. No, I mean, I think we all know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the like attacking drug dealers was basically class warfare. Yes. Right. So.

One of his early initiatives was to put down, often brutally, the brisk smuggling trade that had flourished in Mexico. Diaz himself acknowledged that his methods were harsh to the point of cruelty. Wow, he like bragged about it? No, he was like, it's like the like regret it. Oh, like the contrition. Yeah. He was the one that said, like, you do it and maybe it's bad and you feel bad about it later, but you did it.

Yeah. And so he retained sort of broad popular support in spite of or because of his increasingly dictatorial methods. Interesting. One of his supporters declared rights. Society now rejects them. What we want. is tyranny. Or I'm sorry, what we want is a break. We've had... We have enacted innumerable rights which produce only distress and malaise in society. Now let us try a little tyranny, but honorable tyranny, and see what results. Wow. Okay. Honorable tyranny. So people are like...

You're going to make the clocks run or the trains run on time. You're going to do a dictatorship, but it's going to be great because we don't have to think about it. Yeah. If you get a benevolent dictator, I imagine it's a lot like being a pet dog.

Depending on whose house you're in, it might not be bad. Yeah, this is going to become a real dysfunctional house, and eventually Diaz is going to basically sell the entire house to the neighbors. Got it. And then, yeah, the dog's tied up to a tree in the backyard on moving day.

And then occasionally brought north against its will to do some labor before being abused and shot. Oh, God. So it's like not a fucking good life for that fucking dog. Okay, okay, okay. So Diaz's rule basically brings an end to the coup d'etats and invasions.

uh suppressed the black market economy and raised the standard of living he made a show of ruling quote unquote democratically even at one point stepping down in 1880 to hand over power to his puppet uh manuel gonzalez he ran again in 1884 and he was like look it's non-consecutive so it's not like the term limit thing doesn't fucking apply to me got it

And then convinced Congress first to amend the Constitution in order to allow him to seek another term in 1888, at which point Congress just removed the ban on re-election altogether. Wow. OK. So obviously he did some fucking election fraud. Yeah, right, like you do. Yeah. And he pushed Congress to enlarge the definition of libel. This is going to become important later to include criticism of the government. What could go wrong? Wow. Wow.

That's significant. So he enforced or he. amassed a force of rurales an armed force meant to suppress dissent often by shooting opponents in the back under a law called le fuga the law of fight which one historian described as mexico's version of the lynch law Whoa. In addition to the rurales, Diaz ruled through an extensive, essentially patronage network in which Jefe's politicos were...

with personal connections to Diaz oversaw all areas of governance within their jurisdiction. At one point, he basically was like, if anyone is going to have any power in this country, it had better be a friend of mine. Got it. Right. In Chihuahua, for instance, the jefes politicos amassed huge fortunes by fining the campesinos for letting their burros drink from public streams. Wow. Also...

Some of you would do this, I think, out there. Some of you would be like, oh, I've got power. I'm hiring my friends. Yeah, I mean, I think we all would. I mean, I think I've done that. Uh-huh. Not with power, but just with work. That's power. It doesn't necessarily go well. It doesn't go well. It doesn't go well. You can't hire your friends, people. Just hire... Go on Indeed. Just go on Indeed. Get some strangers in there. You know, it's complicated enough. Build those little, like, carpeted...

Wall cubicle things. Keep them away from each other. Keep them away from each other. Have a break room with like a Mr. Coffee in it. Yeah. Go old school with it. Once a week bring in donuts. Yeah. This is it. This is the formula. Don't hire your friends. Like capitalism or late stage American capitalism.

did one thing correctly. Right. I mean, I'm saying give everybody equity still who's working there. Everybody should be the owners. But the aesthetics of it and where you get them. And who the people are. They should be strangers you don't know very well that you're not interested in knowing very well. Yeah.

And they're not interested in knowing each other very well. They don't want to know each other. They don't want to know you. She's a random guy named Craig and Khaki's in there hanging out. And you got like an HR person named like Gail. Yeah, but Gail's not there to protect you. Gail's there to protect the company. Yeah, but then you can just be like, hey, buddy. It kind of benefits everybody maybe in this situation. Hey, Craig, stop sexually harassing Kathy. Right, because you know he would.

yeah the khakis the khakis you always know okay so in sonora meanwhile which 45 miles about south of like arizona yeah people trying to like place where we're at on a map uh the jeffes politico forced girls and women into sexual slavery and this was actually happening basically across mexico yeah uh so right like uh widespread sexual abuse of women is often like a concomitant of dictatorial fucked up regimes. Yes. And this also checks out because I've known people who's like.

Families like grandmothers were basically sold into sexual slavery and had to flee these men who are now their quote unquote husbands. Yeah. And a lot of them, that's how and why they entered the United States also. Yeah. So.

In the meantime, Diaz's first wife and his niece. Oh, great. Perfect. Okay. Delfina Ortega died in 1879, and Diaz married a woman, well... Woman. How old is she? We'll get there. We'll get there. Hi, buddy. Sorry, the dog. Fork. Fork decided to climb on me. Married... Carmen Romero Rubio in 1880. Diaz was at the time 51. Rubio was born in 1864 when they met. You do the math. In 1880, she's 16?

She was 16 when they met. She was 17 when they married. Well, he showed some restraint. And how old was he again? 51. Oh, God. Okay. So she came from a prominent European-descended family, had been educated in the U... and was rich. She's rich and cultured and bourgeois. Child. Child. Okay. So Porfirio and Carmen's honeymoon was kind of a diplomatic event with the United States. Oh.

They went on a tour of the United States visiting New Orleans, D.C., New York, and St. Louis. Diaz's biographer later wrote, The visit of Diaz and his bride to the United States at that time was the occasion of many notable demonstrations of American respect and admiration. for the man who was beginning to be recognized in all civilized countries as the strongest, wisest, and most trustworthy of Mexican leaders.

17-year-old Carmen is said to have smoothed over some of her 51-year-old husband's rough edges and apocryphally encouraged him to put on white foundation onto his face to appear more white. Wow, there's so much to unpack here. It's a fucking shit show. Yeah, this is a shit show. This is our problematic child bride. And I think this is like, this is our fucking heel turn. Okay. Right. Like, I mean, he's been bad.

Right. He's been a little sketchy. He's been a little sketchy, but this is the point at which you're like, eh, there's no fucking coming back from this one. Okay. It's also like, she's like, hey, buddy, don't spit. Uh, and you gotta understand, like, right, uh, Diaz is, like, came from, like, an extraordinarily poor family in Oaxaca, uh, was mestizo, like, was just, like...

from a different like sort of like culture than like where the center of American power was. Right. Right. Uh, He did still have a broad base of support among the emerging bourgeoisie of Mexico, both because it's cracked out on smuggling.

began to bring the Mexican economy under control. And because he was able to buy up devalued Mexican debt from European creditors, obviously the creditors didn't like this. Like he would just literally send agents across Europe and be like, and i think mexico is going to buy like pay off that debt right but i'll like take that okay got it

So he bought back the fucking Mexican debt. The same one that he'd been like, we're not going to pay this right now. Well, that was Juarez. Oh, that was Juarez, yay. But they were still fucking dealing with this debt, which had been fucking up the Mexican economy. Yeah. For a long time. And so, well, he gets Mexico out of debt.

So why do you think the Americans loved Diaz so much that President Taft once remarked that I cannot conceive of a situation in which President Diaz would not act with a strong hand in defense of just American interest? What do you think?

He's got to be giving the United States something. I think he's going to give the United States everything. Well, everything like the land, the territory, the people. So Diaz basically encouraged the wholesale transfer of much of Mexico's resources into American industrialist hands. There it is. That makes sense. He kind of like doing. the same thing the Shah of Iran did. Yeah, it was like a fucking fire sale. Yeah, got it.

As we said before, Mexico became essentially a client state of American capitalists. By the turn of the 20th century, Americans entirely controlled Mexico's rail, oil and mining sector and owned one quarter of all Arab. land in Mexico. Wow. 130 million acres. That's wild. By the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, half of all American overseas investments, more than $500 million. And we're going to get back to that number.

taft being an idiot uh it went to mexico diaz was an ardent protector of those interests So to begin with, in 1869, the US completed the Transcontinental Railroad with public and private investment totaling around $100 million and encompassing a system of around 93,000 miles of rail. Don't you wish we still had that?

i mean we do i mean kind of if it's in bits and pieces here and there yeah i mean i think like right the thing is like the rail did a couple things right it's like put some like it like helped grow like American industry and all of that stuff it also created our tipping culture it all

Yeah. Yeah. Because basically after the Civil War, a lot of freed former enslaved people, the jobs that they were offered in the South was to work on the railroads. And then the railway owners didn't want to pay them. So they.

would basically just be like, well, the people on the trains will pay you. Don't worry about it. The fuck? Really how tipping culture took off. Yeah, we got an episode about tipping culture. It was me and Kenna that did it. So if you're going to listen to our tipping thing, go back and look at some early episodes. It's in there.

So the other thing it did is it like gave like finance capital a fucking place to put their money. Yeah. Right. Like it was like we know this is going to pay off like this is a secure investment. And it's kind of a fucking real estate deal because you're buying the.

land the tracks on right yeah just like how what was it mcdonald's it was like we're not a burger company we're a real estate company yeah something like that might not be mcdonald's some fast food place said that though So, by contrast, Mexico had around 400 miles of rail by 1880.

Ah, in order to bring Mexico onto the global economic stage, Diaz went on a charm offensive, holding a meeting at the Waldorf Astoria, where he met with former President Ulysses Grant, as well as the railroad... old magnet uh collis b huntington collis you don't hear that name anymore that's the fuck it's been a while so i feel like bring back collis

I don't know if I like it or not. It kind of sounds like colic, that disease that makes babies cry a lot. It kind of sounds like Colin to me. It kind of sounds like Colin. It kind of sounds, yeah, I'm not a fan of Collis. I like Colin as a name. I like Colin as a name. You like Colin as a name? It sounds like Colin. I have no- The name is literally ass. I have literally no justification for this. I think it's a nice name. Okay, well if your name's Colin out there, I hate your name. Yeah.

I hate it. David loves me. Well, Madeline says, fuck you, Colin. David's a fan. I'm on your side. You got a David. So, oh. Diaz pitched a plan to extend American railways from the just completed transcontinental railroad into Mexico. He had to wrest control over the Mexican railway system from the Mexican Congress, who feared that the U.S. might one day use the rails to repeat their invasion of 1848. Yeah, that seems pretty plausible to me, actually.

They did something better. I mean, from, like, American capitalist perspectives, they were like, we don't need to do all that. Oh, okay. All right. David loves colonizing Mexico, folks. You're here to hear from me. I do. I mean, I was just like, I understand, and we're going to get some quotes from some of these motherfuckers.

We're going to get some quotes from David about how much he loves colonizing Mexicans. I do. Yes. I'm going to just start one of those like social media accounts where I'm like, what's up, guys? I'm in Cabo. I've been living here as an American expat. And I got to say. Yay.

The real estate is fucking cheap and the girls are hot. Digital. What's a digital nomad. I'm a digital nomad. Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK. Got it. And then like there's just going to be like a random like armed guard from like the hotel I'm at. like kind of out of focus in the back yeah and like three girls in bikinis you had to pay to be there yeah yeah but you're not anybody you had to pay them I love that you have so little faith in me

I don't think you pull the girls in the bikinis. I think you have to pay them to be there. That's fucking rude. Any of these guys making these videos, they're not pulling the women organically. They are all paid to be there. I'm very charming. I mean, you're great. You're more charming than Andrew Tate. I'll give you that. But I'm going to be like an expat digital nomad influencer. Yeah, I could see this for you. I like this for your life. Yeah, perfect.

you know my little contribution to colonization ah great so by 1910 american investors had built almost 15 000 miles of track in mexico The Rockefellers became the head of the Mexican Central Red Road. Yes, they did. These guys are everywhere. And Jay Gould, who we've met before on our 1877 episode. What was in 1877?

The Great Railroad Airstrike. Oh, my God. The one where they were like firing at people from that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Jay Gold at one time, one of the richest men in America. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then the dam broke. Yeah. Yeah. I remember this guy. Wow. So he controlled the Mexican National Airborne. Of course he did. And the Rockefellers. Railway. And I got to say, like, right, like, if you're just like a Mexican. Yeah. And you're like.

Wait, a guy named Jay Gould owns our railway? Yeah, it's not great. The fuck? Yeah. Who the fuck is that guy? Yeah. So he controls the Mexican national. E.H. Harriman. of the south pacific controls the mexican southern line while capitalists like russell sage jp morgan the guggenheims of course guggenheims jesus why is the art world so involved in this and the ross of sellers overlap with the art world too they all fucking do like yeah

I would be deeply unshocked to find out that somehow the Broads were fucking lost by us. I'm sure, yeah. Of L.A. Art World fame. That's art. I mean, that's art adjacent. They own a giant fucking museum. It's right. I mean, they own a giant Instagram background. It kind of is a giant Instagram background. But so.

Ooh, Diaz and the Mexican Congress passed a land reform law entitling foreign investors to one third of any untitled lands they located and surveyed, while the remaining two thirds could be purchased at auction. Wow, by whomst, I wonder? Oh, clearly, like the large indigenous black and mulatto population of Mexico. It's going to be buying up that land. It's going to cause a boom in small houses.

He also lifted caps on how much land a single survey company could hold. Oh, God. What this meant is... in practice to quote little hernandez that millions of mexicans including 98 of mexico's rural families and indigenous communities were left landless while a small core cohort of foreign investors grew wealthy and those foreign investors there's some like the brits gotten there a little bit

But it's mostly Americans. It's American. Okay, got it. So Mexican elites also profited from the wholesale transfer of land from the rural with the Terrazas family. The quote unquote Rockefellers of Mexico acquiring more than 15 million acres, making them the single largest landholder at the time in the fucking world. Wow. So. White Americans therefore regarded Mexico as the treasure house.

of their sphere of influence the la times whose chandler family along with the hearse became the great boosters of capital investment in both mexico and the american west wrote that mexico's hidden riches had been waiting for centuries

for the aggressive force of the Anglo-Saxon. Wow. So you get, it's nice, you get like a little like racist sexual pathology in there. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty wild. It is a racist sexual pathology. Right, like a- Why is it dressed that way if it doesn't want us to come take it? Yeah.

It's just been waiting for us. It's just been waiting for us to... The aggressive force of the Anglo-Saxon. Yeah, this is wild. So, which is like, I do... I think I've said while we've been recording before that... Oh, I wish I could colonize Mexico. Oh, look at all the riches Mexico has. The bikini-clad girls want to be there. Yeah, I've heard you say that a lot. Actually, it's what I'm most known for. No, but I have said I thought I find something sort of like refreshing about the like.

it was the like fucking nixon guy who was like we don't talk about race anymore we talk about like well like welfare queens or like and hippies oh yeah yeah if we want to like if we want to criminalize our enemies who are hippies and black people we just criminalize drug use instead But right where it's like...

Eventually, you're no longer talking about race. You're talking about like tax policy. Right. Right. Or whatever. Right. The same thing like eugenics just got transferred into poor people are too irresponsible to have children. It's a drain on us economically. But like, who are the poor? They're people. Which also. It was kind of a throwback to some Malthusian shit. That was kind of the original. This stuff's all very transparent. I love that. I do like where it's like...

No, you're not going to talk about tax policy. You're literally just going to do racist. Like you're just going to say, you're like, OK, cool. We know you're a racist. Yeah, we know you're a racist and nobody can deny it. It's pretty interesting. So also kind of relevant to the Trump thing.

Like, we know you're a racist. We know you're a racist. The Democrats are like, we aren't racist. We're just doing policies that continue to let our few white rich guy friends get richer high and increase the incarceration rates. I mean, I would argue like that the Democratic Party. because like they I think they genuinely are like the equity not equality thing where they're like we do like we want like fucking like we're okay with like it's like a person of color being like the rich asshole

Like the majority of the underclass is going. And systemically, that's not how it manifests. Yeah, but the Republican Party is just like, fuck it, we're racist. They're like, I genuinely think they're like, we want like a rainbow coalition of oppressors.

That is, I think, ultimately the end goal. But for the average person. It's still like, oh, this is. The expression does manifest along racialized lines. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't think it like stops being racist. Right. It's just like they genuinely. They're like, yeah, yeah, now your oppressor looks like you. Yay. Yeah, that's cool. I get a girl boss oppressor. Yay. What's the fucking Sheryl Sandberg?

The fucking Google lady. You're going to you're going to lean into your oppression. Oh, yeah. So speaking of the Hearsts. George, the father of William Randolph, used Diaz's land reforms to acquire 7.3 million acres of land and mines in Mexico. Also, I want to say, if you're not from California. William Randolph Hearst, he's the mansion guy. He's the mansion guy. So in California, we all grew up going on school field trips to Hearst Mansion. It's on the coast. Which is, it was built by the...

First American woman architect or designed by the... I don't think she built it. Diverse oppressors. Yeah. Who also designed Scripps College and I think Mills. Oh, okay. So it's beautiful. It's a beautiful state. It's open to the public now, but that's this guy's house and it's like this...

massive sprawling it's like a zoo is on there and like a giant mansion i mean one of the fucking prettiest pools i've ever fucking seen and every goddamn time i go i want i think they should let you swim in it i think they should let you swim in the pool too i agree with that If I was governor of California, we'd all get to swim in the Hearst Mansion pool. Yeah. So this is, I think, either father or grandfather of also Patty. Patty Hearst. Yes. Famously, who was taken by this SLA.

Yeah. And then was like, no, I side with them. And then everyone's like, she's been a victim of brainwashing. You know, I, this is kind of a fucked up thing I said to an ex-girlfriend of mine. Oh, great. Who's kind of like a liberal. Okay. I mean, she's cool.

sick sick motherfucker uh but we were talking about something and uh and she was like oh i like my grandmother's much more conservative than you but she'd really love you And I was like, oh, all the liberals want to be like, there's a little part of them wants to be kidnapped by the SLA. definitely yeah just like a little bit they're like that would be so hot i would look so good in the beret yeah yeah with the gun yeah be fucking sick i could see that for sure yeah yeah uh

So that is the fucked up shit I'm saying to my... That's not so bad. You know, you know. I don't think of fucked up shit I've said to people I've dated, but the truth is I'm just a delight to be around 24-7. I can't confirm. He has any complaints. Having known a lot of your ex-partners. They're thrilled for the experience. They're thrilled. They love it.

They're like, thank you, Madeline. They do not leave in a state of perpetual shell shock. Definitely not. That's never happened. Definitely not. No, they're happy we had a good time. But... Where were we? Oh, yeah. So the fucking Hearst. This is how this is how they built their fucking fortune, which means that the media empire, which was all like essentially a boosterism for the American West.

Came out of like extractive wealth from Mexico. That makes sense because the hearse they're known for newspapers. That's their fucking thing. So the Guggenheims, meanwhile, personally were personally greeted by Diaz, who also exempted them from taxes. Wow. Wow.

And developed an extensive smelting and mining interest first in Mexico, which allowed them eventually to take over controlling interest in the American smelting and refining company here. So they also built their fucking fortune in Mexico. Americans are down there just exploiting everything they can in Mexico. Yeah. So Standard Oil, which was Rockefeller's company, as well as Doheny's, if you know the street Doheny, Los Angeles. I do know that street. Yeah. This is that fucking guy.

petroleum and transportation company, eventually that became Pan Am, like the fucking... Pan Am Airlines. Airline. Yeah. Dominated the oil sector, with Doheny alone controlling 85% of the country's oil production. For the whole country? Yes. What? 85% oil production of Mexico. Remember, like, the thing that's also happening around this time is that, like, you know, Henry Ford hasn't invented the Model T yet, but the car's on the fucking road.

Yeah. Right. What year are we talking about here? We're talking like- Is this the 1912 to 1970 period or something? No, no. This is still like 1900 to 1910 period. Got it. Okay. So- This is from Little Hernandez again. In homage to the well of his fortune, Doheny decorated his Los Angeles mansion in Mexican style with art and rugs and plants from south of the border.

You gotta, you gotta do something. No, but I think it's like, cause like. It's like a slap in the face though. The like Spanish revival, like this is like. I actually think it's very pretty. I love Spanish architecture, but this is the source of it, right? Yeah. It's an homage to our colonization effort. It kind of feels like when you're in the United States, this is something that always tripped me out, being like a white person of European descent in the United States.

When you see, like, all of our summer camps and how they all still have indigenous names and all the little white kids go and they teach them, like, bad, fake indigenous cultural practices. No, I went to, I think it was called Camp Awani. Yeah.

Campawani outside of Fresno. Yes, exactly. It's like that. It's like such a parody. It's like, we stole all this from you. Ha ha. And they put like cute little wooden signs and it's adorable. Like, right. Right. And that's like the equivalent of this guy decorating. house like that like it's such a slap in the face and it's I mean like you know it is the sort of mission thing Alright, so by 1905, Mexico was producing about 65,449 metric tons of copper, in addition to more than...

12 million barrels of oil annually in every sense the resources extracted by american capitalists secured by favorable conditions under dia's regime fueled the global economy and 75 percent of mexico's exports went to the u.s additionally americans dominated

cattle ranching and farming in mexico jp morgan owned 3.5 million acres in baja alone and another 17.5 a crop million across mexico wow On the eve of the revolution, 75,000 Americans had some sort of investment in Mexico laying claim to 130 million acres or 27% of the country. William Randolph Hearst is really succinct about this one. And he said, I really don't see what is to prevent us from owning all of Mexico and running it to suit ourselves. I mean, that's what they're already trying to do.

Yeah, and I think it's worth noticing. This is not settler colonialism. I think America doesn't do broadly. Anymore. Often. Most of the time, yeah. In the 20s and 20s? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. settler colonialism or even like colonialism with a colonial model right and like it's being innovated in mexico that they're like figuring they're figuring out how to fucking do it uh

So obviously running it to suit themselves did not mean they were using the 27% of the country they did own to produce food for the people in Mexico. No, of course not. so american capitalism in mexico was principally extractive sort of obviously like you don't own land to be like hey man like Here's a fucking meal. Yeah, here's a meal and here's a house. No, you're like, I'm taking all the resources and I'm sending them to the United States. Between 1876 and 1900.

agricultural exports to the united states grew 200 percent while domestic food production declined year over year causing corn and bean shortages and massive inflation wow uh wages on the american owned farm stagnated behind this with one Mexican teacher reporting that most workers on the haciendas owed between 400 and 500 pesos to the tienda de rea. the company's stores. Oh, right. But earned about two pesos a day. Oh, my God. Okay.

If the largely indigenous population tried to leave the Hacienda system, they were hunted down by rurales. Right. OK, so just to do the math here, let's say you work. 5, 10, 20, we'll say you work 25 days out of the month, you're earning 50 pesos a day, and you basically owe 10 times that on average.

So whatever your monthly income is, multiply that times 10 and imagine that's how much you owe the company store. Yeah. And the company store is usually the only fucking game in town. Right. There's not like another place you can go. Right. So if I, for example, earn $4,000 a month, I'm paying...

I owe 40 grand. And obviously you do also have to eat, which means going into further debt with the Funkin' Company store. Right. Wow. This is wild. So, Madeline, when this happened in the post-Reconstruction American South, what did we call it? What did we call it? Sharecropping. Sharecropping. This is fucking sharecropping. Yes, yes, yes. Right. And I think at this point it's...

Worth pausing to discuss all of this because it's shaping up to be kind of the blueprint for American power abroad. Yes. Right. In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt articulated the quote unquote Roosevelt corollary.

To the Monroe Doctrine. So what's the thing, Roosevelt, like the phrase? What was the Roosevelt phrase? I don't know. You have much better memory than me. You always remember this. Speak softly and carry what? A big stick. That's fucking Teddy Roosevelt. Okay. He's a stick guy. All right. Again, and like thinly veiled sexual metaphors. So the Roosevelt corollary basically stated that the U.S. would intervene in any country within its sphere of influence, the Americas. Yes. Right.

If that country could not or refused to pay their debts or threatened American interests in any way. What does that sound like? It sounds like America World Police Force. It sounds like the last century and a quarter of American power. Yeah, yeah, totally. Right, like it's just like, so. Yeah, it's like we went to war in Vietnam because we thought French should own it. I mean, we went to war in Vietnam because we were like.

Well, France doesn't own it like American capital should. Right. Exactly. But it's yeah, we're kind of world police force. And we and like remember that in Vietnam as fucking everywhere, we weren't like, no, we own it. We were like, we got our guy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. The way that colonization actually has started manifesting from this point forward is less overt, but it's still happening. We got our guy. And if our guy like like.

If our guy is cool, we make all the money. Exactly. Right. It really is a fucking protection racket. Yeah. So during this period, which was known at the time as the Porfiriato, the period of Diaz's rule, the success and growth of American interests in Mexico was so intimately tied to Diaz... That upon meeting the then-aged President Diaz, Taft wrote to his wife that as Americans have about $2 million of capital investment in the country. At that time's money.

We'll get to that. Because I don't think Taft was very smart about money. It is inevitable that in this case, in the case of revolution or internecine strife... we should interfere, and I sincerely hope the old man's official life will extend past mine. are beyond mine for that trouble would present a problem of the utmost difficulty. Wow. So, by the way, Taft's estimates of U.S. investment in Mexico was a wide undercount. Earlier, we talked about 500 million in those dollars.

Another Cambridge analysis found that in 1910 foreign investment, the majority of which was American, had reached over a billion 1910 dollars. In 1910 money? Yeah. Whoa, two million dollars is what Taft said? yeah wow so he's a little off he's a little off uh as little hernandez puts it the expansion of u.s economic and political

Political might was hatched in Mexico and from there projected across the Americas and from there around the world. Wow. Right. This is, again, that thing about like Mexico was the laboratory of U.S. imperialism. Right. Right. Right.

Moreover, poverty in Mexico led millions of Mexicans to migrate north into the United States in search of higher wages. And it's worth noting that U.S. Border Patrol. Yeah. That didn't start till 1924. Right. As kind of a lynch mob, let's be real. That makes sense. But most of like there wasn't a fucking fence. Right. There wasn't like anything like that. And like these are real blurry lines. Mexicans like, you know, like the majority language.

I think still to this day in parts of southern Texas is Spanish. Right. Right. And like whomever was at the border wasn't like they weren't checking fucking papers. It was just sort of like the American capitalists want this labor here because it is cheap. precarious and easy to exploit. Yeah. Right. So...

These people migrate into the United States, largely but not only from Mexico, and build the American West from railways to mines to farms. There's a funny story where, after the Chinese Exclusion Act of, I want to say, 1888... 1884, somewhere in there. Chinese laborers would try to immigrate back into the United States through Mexico by donning, like, serapes and being, like, yo soy mexicano. Okay, gosh. So it's like... Yeah.

Right. Like Mexico became the source of the labor that fueled expansion in the West. Right. So for us to now complain that the Mexicans are coming here and taking the jobs. And remember that the thing that forced all that labor north in the first place was American white money. We stole a quarter of their land and all of their fucking resources. Right. Right.

uh oh also by the way there's some fucking i don't know why i didn't include this in the research but uh one fucking like north dakota ass senator owned like a 750 000 acre cattle ranch in mexico and like given like the millions of acre things we're taught like randolph hearst and all of those had

That's not much. That's like less than a million. But that's just some random guy from North Dakota. That's some random asshole who, like, he probably isn't going down to Mexico very often. He's pretty far. He's far a fucking way. So at this point, a system of racist segregation and immigration laws that Cecilia Marquez has described as Juan Crow. Wow. It gets developed, which is essentially like. lynch mobs terrorizing mexicans some of whom were born in like tejas right right like um

Like lynch mobs. Demonization starts pretty early of the Mexicans coming up to work in what is now the United States. Yeah. And it's instrumental to producing the labor discipline. necessary for capitalist expansion in the American West. So the capitalist owning class likes exploiting the labor for Mexico because it's cheaper and easier for them.

So the lynch mobs are then the American white working class? No, I mean, they're usually it's like sheriffs and people just get up. I guess it's like the working class, but it's like the like. Settler class. Like the people who are like, I'm John Wayne. Are they doing it because they're threatened or because it's racism?

Like a little of like the same as today, a little of both. Right. It's like afraid and they're racist and they're confused. You know, there's one instance in which, like, it's said that a guy like. stole a horse and like they don't know who the guy is and so they're like well he was like a big mexican with a red hat and so they like go looking and they just find a big mexican like not wearing a red hat and they're like well it's that guy and then they just yeah and then they just kill him

Got it. So fear, racism, xenophobia. Same as today. But like what it does is it mean like you can't say this often enough. It maintains labor discipline. Yeah. Right. Because it's like, well, now you're fucking afraid. Right. Right. And you can't like assert like you can't strike for higher wages, which they do. Right. Like they do. But it's like, yes, the cost is really fucking high. I see. So do you think Mexicans really liked.

That 20% of their land was owned by Americans who decorated their houses to look like Mexican haciendas? I mean, it's more than 20%. It's over a quarter of the land. Yeah. Yeah, I'm guessing no. Well, actually, the answer is yes. So that's the end of the episode. We're good.

Yeah, I'm sure they loved it. This is maddening. So in 1901, Camellia... Ariaga, nephew of Ponciano Ariaga, who had been a drafter of the 1857 constitution. uh rented a theater in uh san luis potassi uh this was the quote unquote first liberal con And Arriaga, who came from a wealthy landowning family, had formerly been a part of the Diaz government, and he'd suddenly been dismissed over his protests over the close relationship between Diaz and the Catholic Church. Oh, okay.

So he'd also been educated in France, where he'd begun picking up books by Marx and Bakunin. Oh, interesting. And he was just synthesizing both of these flawlessly. No, he was just like, I kind of like all this. You think I like these two guys yelling racial slurs at each other all the time. He was kind of, he was like maybe more into like the Bakkanen stuff. He's a little more into Bakkanen. Even when I was two in high school. How old is this guy? This guy's very much an adult.

Okay, he's not in high school. Okay, all right. He should have grown out of that by now. Yeah, but... All right, all right, all right, all right. You know, it's funny. I was reading through, like, that list of, like, Nabokov, like, grading everyone. Okay. Or whatever, and, like... First of all, Nabokov is like the, other than Joyce, the greatest stylist of the English language in the 20th century. Is that how his name is pronounced? Yes, that is how his name is pronounced. Nabokov.

That guy, Lolita. Yeah, Nabokov. I was wondering what the fuck I'm talking. But you say Nabokov. Yeah, I remember I took that weird Russian lib program. I bet you did. I don't know, but I bet I did. And that was how my professor said it. Okay, okay, Nabokov. That's how I say it. All right. And he gave Marks, like, a D. Well, he doesn't have enough sassy bitch in him, so... I'm just saying, no, Nabokov has...

more sassy bitch than anyone. Marks is one of the sassiest bitches I've ever read. He makes Marks look like a goddamn dry... wafer wow okay all right all right uh like he i mean he decided to give grades to like every great writer he'd ever read Yeah, that sounds pretty dry. That's sassy. I don't know. Okay, well, whatever. With, like, a lot of, like, bitchy comments on the side. Okay, okay, okay, okay. The sidebar comments about main cat. But, all right. So. My point being. Arriaga.

i understand reading marks and bucket and he's like this he's got this library and he like forms a book club back in mexico and he's like hey guys like we're all gonna read marks and bakken and all these like radical like anarchists and socialist type of guys. Okay, got it. And among those who attended the conference was Libredo Rivera, who was a teacher nicknamed El Fakir for his reserved manor. So he's just like a fucking quiet guy. Okay.

Uh, we're gonna go through some of the others. Uh, there was Juan Sarabia who had left school at 17 to support his family, and he was the editor of the Arriaga-funded newspaper. Madeline, I tried for, like, a fucking...

It's like renaissance. Yeah. It means renaissance. Also there... uh was juana boleyn gutierrez de mendoza i think we should talk about her more because she's rad as she was a radical activist who'd been arrested several times for advocating for the mine workers and kohila uh where her husband was a mine worker she founded a feminist anarchist newspaper called vesper wow and letter later joined uh

Emiliano Zapata's guerrilla army. Wow. Where she actually taught, like she was like the person who was like, hey Zapata. What do you think about this anarchist and anarcho-syndicalism thing? Maybe we should fucking do that. Interesting. So she's fucking rad. Okay. I mean, you don't have to be an anarchist to be like that. That lady rocks. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. Also there was Lazaro Gutierrez de Lara from Monterrey, then known as the Pittsburgh of Mexico, which...

Monterey was known as the Pittsburgh of Mexico? Seems a little insulting to Monterey. No offense, Pittsburgh, but you know. I feel like this is a thing where somehow both Monterey and Pittsburgh would be insulted. I think they both would as well. They would be like... They seem just very different. But it's like the industrial center. It was like a bunch of rubber factories and shit like that. Okay, okay.

So Odilara had come from a prominent family, and he had been appointed as a judge in the Hiakim region, which was home to the indigenous... uh yaqui tribe and hiakem diaz at the behest of u.s investors had waged a war against the Yaqui in order to open up the country to the expansion of U.S. railway interest. I didn't even really think about this, but it's like very obviously for this land to be.

up for the taking by the industrial capitalists of the united states a lot of indigenous people would need to be forcefully removed just like in the united states yes and like the southern like yucatan uh province another indigenous tribe like more or less refused to accept the legitimacy of the diaz government instead uh and specifically the catholic church

role there and instead wanted to worship uh like their own indigenous saint which was like obviously a proxy for like indigenous belief practices yeah right like it was like a creolized sort of religious thing and waged essentially like a war against the diaz government which they lost oh god yeah obviously yeah uh but so the

Yaqui fought incredibly fiercely at one point, retreating for a year into a well-concealed fortification. For just a year? Wow. And like the funny thing is, is like the Dia, like the armies of like the rurales under Diaz. um like couldn't figure out where the fort fortress like began and ended because it was so well uh uh hidden

Okay. And so they kept just being like, well, I don't know if this is forest or fort. Wow, that's pretty cool. That actually also happened with the indigenous people in Yosemite who... like just retreated into the high country and were like these fucking idiots can't follow us here and stayed like yeah retreating into like the where like inhospitable territory maybe a smart move yeah it seems like a good strategic move

In both instances, they were expelled and ethnic cleansing happened. But they fought well. They fought well. Also, there was... Oh, so... It's so sad. It's so fucking depressing. Sorry. Just like, Jesus. Yeah. After the Yuki leader, Kaheme, was killed, resistance was put down, and most of the Yuki... were deported actually south to the Yucatan.

So, uh, just like a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Yeah, wow. Right. Horrible. Uh, Dilara had arrived just in time to witness the mass deportation and ethnic cleansing of the Yakui people and had resigned his position within the government in order to become a...

defense attorney defending the land claims of the okay so he was like nah this is fucking bad he's like this is evil yeah yeah got it uh also there was uh and this one's gonna be this is basically what we're going to be talking about next week Way more. Okay. Ricardo Flores Magon, whose parents had actually served with Diaz's Zapotec forces in the Battle of Puebla. The Jimbros? The Jimbros. Whoa, okay, son of Jimbro. His mother had carried water to the Jimbros to fight the fucking...

Wow. And so imagine the disappointment. Yeah. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. Okay. So Diaz's Zapotec forces at Puebla. McGahn was at the center of a student movement in Mexico City aimed to oust Diaz on the grounds of the no re-election thing, which remember, this is how Diaz had fucked with Juarez. Right, was being like, you can't. get reelected no and then he's like haha JK I lead for 30 years we

So he and his older brother, Jesus, were quickly arrested. McGahn later said that that arrest was the beginning of his real dissidence. He said, quote, the barrels of a couple of cocked revolvers touched my chest. ready to go off at my slightest move thus cutting off my first attempt at public speaking wow and first i don't know okay so here's the thing about mcgon so mcgon by the way this is where we get the

The term Magonista. Right. I would assumed. You know who he kind of reminds me of? Who? Sid Hatfield. Oh. Like the weird sheriff who's like, nah, I don't fuck with that shit. Also from the same episode about the trains. Yeah. No, that was coal mining strike. Coal mining, coal mining strike. The people were on the trains. They were on the trains. Firing it. We did a train episode and a coal episode, both involving trains. Shit. Yeah, we did. Okay.

So apparently Magon's parents, Teodoro and Margarita, had actually been ardent supporters of Diaz and had followed him to the capital where Teodoro had at first tried to get work within the Diaz regime. Yeah. And then Diaz was like, nah. I'm good. And so Teodoro struggled to find work in the Capitol. He reached out to Diaz for help, and he was sent a signed portrait of the president. Oh, sorry about the unemployment.

Yeah. Here's a picture. Ricardo, meanwhile, had a kind of rebellious period and he wandered around the mountains in Oaxaca doing odd jobs, like working like rubber plants and shit like that and hanging out with like gamblers and sex workers and the like. It's very much his like motorcycle diaries moment. it got it uh so at the conference all these figures most of whom had come from like pretty wealthy fucking prominent family is

that had fallen out of favor for one reason or another with the Diaz government gathered along with hundreds of supporters. The conference was called officially to demand separation of church and state. But when Mugan got on the podium to speak, he started with the Diaz administration is a den of thieves. Madeline, recall the thing about libel. Oh, critiquing the government is libel now. You're not allowed to critique the government.

So everyone at the conference is like, bro, what the fuck did you do? You're going to get us arrested. You did an illegal. We were just going to be like, hey, Diaz, like, stay. church separation so they start hissing at him oh because they're like don't arrest us don't arrest us what the fuck what the fuck are you doing and by the way diaz at this point had like essentially recruited a bunch of secret police uh to infiltrate

like various levels of like Mexican civil society in order to ferret out defense. There's a dog moment. Hold on. There's been a dog issue. Oh yeah, we're back. Fork is really, really upset. She's so fucking cute though. She's really cute. I think she's just really mad at the violent colonization of Mexico and it's really disturbing her to hear this story.

Yeah. And she's restless. And she's like, why would they hiss at Magan? He said, they are a den of thieves. Yes. Fork really thinks that they were a den of thieves. And she has a lot of strong feelings with this. So everyone's hissing at him. And then he just keeps repeating it. And he's like.

no man they're a fucking den of thieves and he says it over and over and then people are like I mean not no and then eventually they're like fuck yeah oh okay so they're like fuck it we'll all do libel yeah so and Diaz at the time is like

We'll talk about that in a moment. He's like maybe not in like the best position to like be like arresting everyone all the time. Like medically or like in terms of popularity? Just like he's got a lot of shit going on. Got it. After the conference, McGon and his brother publish a new issue of their newspaper, Regeneration, which was like kind of a sister newspaper to the Renaissance one. Yes. On page one, McGon wrote...

that the mainstream press was a social intoxicant that perverts public opinion, making us think that our absolute monarchy is a democratic republic. Ooh. In the next issue, the brothers reported on an attempted rape committed by a jefe politico in which the victim had been unable to get justice from the corrupt judicial system in Sinaloa. A further series of articles took aim at the whole Jefe Politico system itself.

Diaz responded by labeling the brothers revolutionaries. In the next issue, Magana responded by writing, we are not revolutionaries now, but we will be if Diaz's tyranny does not stop. Wow, that goes pretty hard. They're fucking great. Yeah. So the police raided the Regenacion offices soon after, and the brothers were arrested and taken to a prison in Mexico City where they were held in the cramped basement, which housed Mexico City's large migrant and indigenous population.

the entire indigenous population had been like kicked off their land right right all in a basement of a prison yes oh so they're fucking they're not having a good time oh my god I And remember also that the rurales will do the law of violence thing where they'll shoot you in the back if you violate the Hacienda system. basically mexican sharecropping system right right uh so while there they're visited by their younger brother enrique who had uh

registered his bicycle as Porfirio Diaz in order to quote, ride the dictator over the rough streets. Wow.

Diaz actually so this is apocryphal and little Hernandez is like dude this isn't true this is probably not true but it's such a fucking good story that like because like Enrique in later years after his older brother's death was like a booster for promoting ricardo magon as like a hero of the mexican revolution yeah uh and so he wrote this like biography thing but it's a pretty fucking good story so the story is basically diaz sends emissaries to margarita who's elderly teodoro's dead right

And she's completely fucking implacable, and she sends a message back with the emissaries to Diaz that says, Tell President Diaz that I choose to die without seeing my sons, and tell him this, I'd rather see my sons hang from a tree or a hanging post than see them retract or repent. Wow. So again... Probably not true.

Let's say it's true. I'm going to say it's fucking true. Okay, let's go with it. We did our due diligence. I did my due diligence. You read it in a book. I read it in a book. The person who read it in another book was like, that's probably not true. But you're deciding to go with it could be. I choose to believe Enrique. Yeah. At the same time, other attendees of the conference are staying active. The Renascimento.

kept publishing and formed a partnership with Mexicans living in San Antonio. Mendoza's Vesper grew to a subscription rate of 8,000. And this is at a time when like less than a third of the population can read. Wow. Right. Soon, Arriaga Rivera and Sarabia are all arrested for publishing. So they're all in jail with the Magon brothers. Okay, got it. So when Jesus and Ricardo are released in April of 1902, Jesus sort of retreats from political activism to his law practice.

And Ricardo takes up a post as editor of the El Hijo del Azote. Yeah. Azote. Okay. Azote. Which is like more, it's like a... Like a sort of middle of the road newspaper that does like political cartoons to kind of like poke fun at the Diaz regime without like really like fucking with. But like without poking the hornet's nest.

Magona's like, nah, fuck that. Let's do what we were doing over with the other one. Yeah, yeah. Let's just like, ah, let's fucking go. Well, it's like the hornet's death on fire. So within a year, this time with Enrique, who was writing... Diaz's face over the rough streets. They're back to prison. Got it. Diaz was prevented from fully reckoning with the brothers because of growing discontent. He held a march on April 2nd.

Wow. Wow. The next day at an anti-reelection march in Monterey, General Reyes, then the governor of the province, was challenged on the same anti-reelection grounds and ordered soldiers to open fire on marchers, killing 15 and arrest. So the galvanized public, this galvanized public opinion. I was going to say, I can't imagine that made them super popular with the public. No, I mean, I gotta point this out too.

The LAPD. Yeah. Or any of you motherfuckers. You're just pissing everybody off. You're just pissing everybody off. You're just creating the conditions by which everybody will necessarily revolt. And especially when you see it when it's like...

When they're, like, kind of like a bunch of, like, very peaceful, like, family-oriented, like, not Madeline and David, like, very liberal, normal. People with babies. People with babies. White people with babies. Also, like... like chicago people doing like mariachi dancing and shit it's like it's like you can't fucking if you shoot like tear gas at the everyone's gonna be like they did in fact tear gas babies in strollers yes they did like it's like you like no one's like

Well, I guess we go home now. No, you're just going to upset people even more. Don't. I mean, do whatever you want. Don't do what. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just know how it's going to end. Just know what this is going to do. Yeah. So.

Among those who had been in attendance at the liberal conference debated... uh putting forward one of their own number as an opposition candidate this was widely rejected and mendoza the woman who was hanging with zapata put it the fall of a tyrant is not the end of tyranny

So they're like, no, we're trying to destroy the whole system. Fuck the system. Got it. By April 15th, the Diaz government issued a gag order essentially snuffing out liberal journalists to opposition to his rule. And this climate. With their printing equipment either destroyed or confiscated, Mendoza, Arriaga, Eliza Acuña, Ricardo, and Enrique Magon, as well as Juan Sarabia, booked passage on the Mexican national...

old railroad headed north for the U.S.-Mexico border where they entered at Laredo, Texas, followed but not detained by undercover police agents working for Diaz. What a cliffhanger! So next week we're going to do the fucking What Made It Up in the U.S. Okay. But I think this is where we end because it feels like... We're closing a chapter. It really does. This is very, very interesting stuff. I'm so happy to have learned all this because like you said, that this is pretty like common knowledge.

In Mexico, it doesn't necessarily feel like common knowledge. Yeah. East Americans. And it's I mean, I was thinking about because I was thinking about the fucking Cinco de Mayo thing. And I was like, of course, the one holiday. Like the one sort of like Mexican thing that like Americans are going to be like, you know what? Margaritas, man. Yeah. Is like the Diaz one, which like, A, it's pretty sick that they like beat up Maximilian and like his wife.

If I had to go to like a... A crazy lady camp? I would definitely be in one of those. A rest home. Like a hundred years ago? A sanatorium. I would be in crazy lady camp. Right, like, by like... That's pretty cool. And like the Jimbro zap attacks are pretty fucking sick. But then he lost it. It's like the heel turn. I think it's one of the biggest. He lived long enough to become what he hated. It's the biggest heel turn.

And like history. I don't know if it's the biggest one. Why do you think it's bigger? You know, that's a lot of pressure on the spot right now. Like a real babyface motherfucker who goes down. Like somebody who just, oh, oh, oh, Ronald Reagan. But Ronald Reagan was like, A, he did his heel turn way early. Did he? I don't know. Yeah, because when all the General Electric pros were like, hey man, read this John Birch Society pamphlet. He was like, okay.

Hey, Humphrey Bogart made fun of you at a party. Wait, what about Mussolini? Yeah, but even... Mussolini's a pretty big one. Reagan, Mussolini, just as big as this guy. Even, like, the... Even when Mussolini was like a PSI journalist, remember, he was like, that denuncio guy is pretty sick. Okay, what about LaRouche? Yeah, okay, I feel like... You think LaRouche is comparable to Diaz?

No, because Diaz was like genuinely a hero. Right. That's right. She's always kind of a weirdo. Like, and I feel like Mussolini was just some shit who had some weird opinions. And the PSA was like, God, most people. Like, whatever, like this guy. And then eventually they're like, OK, this guy's getting weird about like trying to invade Croatia. Yeah, right. Let's get him out of here. God, I forgot about the Croatia thing. I like never tire like.

The denuncio invading fume. It's a pretty wild turn in history for sure. It's my favorite like weird like just some random guy who was like a poet. like stole some trucks and invaded croatia you too could invade croatia what's stopping you an ocean i don't know get smarter no i Wait, am I going to become a digital nomad in Croatia? I mean, there you go. Now we're on to something. Colonize Croatia, baby. 2026. Pay three. Dot pay. Charm three hot.

Okay, pay three Croatian checks to come stand behind you in a YouTube video. Charm. Uh-huh. We'll see how far that gets you. Okay, well, I feel like even though it's only an hour and a half, we usually try to do two-hour episodes, Fork is really upset about the story. Yeah. Look at her. She's very disturbed. You can see it on her face, right?

What the fuck? Yeah, she looks very disturbed. So maybe we wrap it for today. OK, and we'll get back to you. I mean, I also it's just such a natural ending point. It really is. And we'll pick up the rest next week. So, yeah, if you want to join us on Patreon, patreon.com slash pick me up. I'm scared for three dollars a month.

You have access to a bunch of bonus episodes over there. We are going to record more. We need to record more. We need to record more. We're going to record more. But in the meantime, we got a lot of episodes up over there already. And by going over on our Patreon, you support the work that we do here. You know, we keep the episodes free. We keep them ad free for you guys. So if you feel like you can afford the extra $3 a month to support our work, that is cool. And we would appreciate it.

We're just happy. I'm just going to say the following also. The fucking Kelly Little Hernandez book. Also, all of her fucking her books are so fucking good. Yeah. She wrote the book about the carceral history of Los Angeles. She wrote. La Migra. Everything is written. Fantastic. Bad Mexicans. Great book. Okay, so that's the book that's our source again for today. And if you're in the L.A. area, you know...

Stay up to date with what's going on with the ICE protests this week. There's a lot of stuff happening. We're still trying to get ICE out of all the hotels around town. We've had definitely one success, reported a second success but not confirmed, and now we have people focusing on a third location.

i have enjoyed like i i can't say how effective it is but all of the tiktok teenagers just being like yeah we're just gonna go yell at them and honk their horn oh wait i think it's been very effective from what i can tell yeah go out make noise start late don't let them get sleep people bang and pop them

My favorites have been people with trumpets and drums outside of these hotels, not letting ice get sleep. It's been pretty, pretty good. A lot of people have been talking about how it's easier to stop like one. thousand person protests than it is to stop like 10 100 person protests. So, you know, go to the small ones. Check them out. See what we can do. I'm ruining the fuck out of them. I'm ruining the fuck out of them. Okay, that's it. That's the episode.