Porfirio Díaz: Profiles in Power

Abstract

Paul Garner has written an outstanding political assessment of the regime of Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911 (except for the Manuel González interval, 1880 – 84). This is the first English-language political biography since the 1932 journalistic narrative by Carleton Beals. To appreciate Garner’s accomplishment, readers should know the constraints imposed by the publisher: the book is one of a series entitled “Profiles of Power,” aimed at classroom readers. As a result, Garner had to focus generally on the politics of the individual and to limit his text to 230 pages. Neither of these factors do damage to the persuasive interpretation, but both leave ample room for a full-length biography of Díaz and additional cultural studies (especially of the rituals of Porfirian rule) of his government.Díaz remains an enigmatic ruler. Garner set out to evaluate this leader with two primary goals: to incorporate the historiography of the last half century and to evaluate this perpetual president on his terms, rather than as the cause for the epic 1910 revolution. In both cases, he succeeds. Although Garner does not discard the label of dictator, he demonstrates time and again how Díaz appeared more like a juggler riding a bicycle on a high wire than a dictator. Mexico remained a country with deeply divided regions, often governed by largely independent satraps (caciques), with powerful social groupings hardly constrained by the political regime, decades-long economic difficulties, and a Mexico City elite of contentious, ambitious men jockeying for power. Yet, Díaz made it work, and Garner does a good job of explaining how and why. This requires an examination of powerful institutions and groups, their leaders and goals. Garner accomplishes this with short essays, for example, on the church, the military, and the hacendados during the Porfiriato. These insightful, pithy sections bring together the latest historiography and explain each institution’s importance during the period of the regime. The discussion of the church shows that Díaz reached an accommodation with the clergy deeply influenced by Catholic social action, and the section on the military reveals an institution much less professional and more poorly equipped than usually assumed.Especially thought-provoking is Garner’s discussion of liberalism; he brings together Charles Hale’s outstanding intellectual history of liberalism and the emerging studies of popular liberalism by Guy Thompson and Alan Knight, among others, as it developed from militia service. One irrefutable conclusion on Díaz is the same conclusion for liberalism in Mexico: that neither he nor the political philosophy could resolve the constitutional endorsement of individual freedoms and the need for a powerful regime to protect them. Said slightly differently, Garner shows that Díaz eventually became the proponent of social order over individual freedoms in order to achieve economic growth for this country.In the course of his narrative, Garner identifies, by either reference or allusion, studies that need to be done for a more complete understanding of the regime. These begin with a necessary assessment of the countryside that does not start with Zapata and work backward from the revolution or that begins with assumptions about agricultural underdevelopment. This investigation, of course, will have to evaluate the effects of the Ley Lerdo on land-tenure patterns. Another pertinent and badly needed study should examine foreign relations between Mexico and the outside world, evaluating the foreign relations between governments, the economic issues of debts and investments, and the cultural aspects of the transnational experience. And, as a final example, two critical individuals need to be investigated, both for their relationships with Díaz and for their actions during the regime: Ignacio Mariscal, the minister of foreign relations from 1880 until 1911, and Bernardo Reyes, whom Díaz saw as his most potential rival in the last two decades of the regime.This is an outstanding book, and two criticisms do not diminish its overall value. First, the case is made that this was no dictatorship, but rather an authoritarian regime. Garner hints that this was due, to some extent, to Díaz’s military experience. This is a topic that needs evaluation. Describing the regime of a general officer, ruling over a collection of former subordinates, requires a discussion of the habit of command that goes beyond political deference. Moreover, these veterans, who shared wartime camaraderie from the French intervention and a vision of Mexico, nearly all died in the 1880s, so that there is a major generation change in the 1890s that deserves analysis. Second, there is one issue of language. Garner writes clear, enjoyable prose, with only the occasional lapse into “post” this or that. What does “post” mean, for example, in regard to independence? This should be the first word excised by copy editors. These points not withstanding, this is an excellent book that will shape the historiography for many years.