Mexico

"Between 1824 and 1867 there were fifty-two presidents in Mexico, few of whom assumed power according to any constitutionally sanctioned procedure. The consequence of this unprecedented political instability for economic institutions and incentives should be obvious. Such instability led to highly insecure property rights. It also led to a severe weakening of the Mexican state, which now had little authority and little ability to raise taxes or provide public services. Indeed, even though Santa Ana was president in Mexico, large parts of the country were not under his control, which enabled the annexation of Texas by the United States. In addition, ... the motivation behind the Mexican declaration of independence was to protect the set of economic institutions developed during the colonial period, which had made Mexico, in the words of the great German explorer and geographer of Latin America Alexander von Humbolt, “the country of inequality.” These institutions, by basing the society on the exploitation of indigenous people and the creation of monopolies, blocked the economic incentives and initiatives of the great mass of the population. As the United States began to experience the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, Mexico got poorer."

"Mexico is not a functioning democracy. The United States is working under the false premise that Mexico is a functioning democracy, one where federal authorities are doing their best to strengthen public institutions and uproot rampant organized crime and corruption. It is thought that crime and corruption stem principally from broken local institutions and social decay. But we need to turn this logic on its head. The real problem is at the top, not the bottom, of the Mexican political system. And the key obstacles reside within the Mexican federal government."

"A fractious country, where corruption, a fledgling rule of law and economic struggles have alienated many from political engagement."

"We wish to foster serious and respectful dialogue to offer enlightenment at a time when society needs to hear voices calling for harmonious co-existence, a culture of legality, civil participation and united efforts to make Mexico a more just and fraternal nation where the rule of law is a guarantee for all citizens to exercise their human rights and fulfil their obligations."

"Hey, you want to talk Mexican? Join another tank, a Mexican tank."

"Whereas, by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, for the purpose of enabling the government of the United States to prosecute said war to a speedy and successful termination, the President be, and he is hereby, authorized to employ the militia, naval, and military forces of the United States, and to call for and accept the services of any number of volunteers, not exceeding fifty thousand, who may offer their services, either as cavalry, artillery, infantry, or riflemen, to serve twelve months after they shall have arrived at the place of rendezvous, or to the end of the war, unless sooner discharged, according to the time for which they shall have been mustered into service; and that the sum of ten millions of dollars, out of any moneys in the treasury, or to come into the treasury, not otherwise appropriated, be, and the same is hereby, appropriated for the purpose of carrying the provisions of this act into effect."

"The Mexican nation is unique and indivisible."

"The nation is multicultural, based originally on its indigenous peoples, described as descendants of those inhabiting the country before colonization and that preserve their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, or some of them."

"When Trump came for the Mexicans, I did not speak out, as I was not a Mexican. When he came for the Muslims, I did not speak out, as I was not a Muslim. Then he came for me."

"La Patria es Primero. / The Homeland is First."

"I did not know that Mexico had abolished slavery and that this was a key reason for the war for Texas independence."

"Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican wall and shot to rags, please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the celler steps. To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!"

"Mexicanos, al grito de guerra El acero aprestad y el bridón, Y retiemble en sus centros la tierra Al sonoro rugir del cañón."

"Mexico is one of the most important economies in Latin America, but is no doubt better known as a cultural country with its plastic arts, monumental painters, writers, cuisine, colonial architecture and archaeological sites. All this is the heritage of humanity. But the violence and drug dealing are usually much more visible."

"Stashed his trash in Ecuador, bought a good suit of clothes. Flew on up to Mexico, standin' by the shore."

"The history of Mexican-American relations has had its troubled moments, but today our peoples enrich each other in trade and culture and family ties... I've often said that family values don't stop at the Rio Grande."

"Mexico's a violent country that has been at peace over forty years. But one is conscious here, as one is in Peru, of a continuing underlying vocation of violence. One feels, indeed, that the Mexicans themselves are aware of it and determined that it shall never break out again as in the bloody time of upheaval that began four years before the First World War and that continues to dominate Mexican public life."

"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!"

"When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the “manifest destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government."

"Patron of Mexico, and God of wars, Son of the sun, and brother of the stars."

"Mexico has always defended the right of its people to freely forge their destiny. It searches incessantly for new social and economic formulas within the frame of its Constitution. We hold that true development derives the impulse toward production from an equitable distribution of wealth and the satisfaction of social demands. We believe that growth without justice ends in the annulment of democracy and that freedom is only possible through equitable progress. We cannot divide the personality of man and think that we can solve his material problems without solving the problems that make up his whole composition. The instruments that man has created within the economic industrial field and his whole contemporary civilization in general in which he lives must be placed in the service of the whole man. That is why dictators attempt to divide man, to try to standardize him, and to try by compulsion to divide his very personality."

"Hitmen working for murderous drug gangs are turning Mexico, a top U.S. oil supplier and trade partner and a prominent emerging market economy that has scored points for political stability, into a conflict zone that is alarming Washington, tourists and foreign investors."

"Mexico has scored dozens of drug-war “wins” over the past several years, with cartel kingpins apprehended anywhere from secret tunnels to bustling restaurants, and paraded in front of news cameras as a sign of progress."

"México no se explica: se cree en México, con furia, con pasión, con desaliento."

"No hay ni un sólo héroe que haya triunfado en México. Para ser héroes, han tenido que perecer: Cuauthémoc, Hidalgo, Madero, Zapata."

"The facade of the Conquest, severe yet jocund, with one foot in the dead Old World and the other in the New."

"[The Mexican revolution] was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo."

"Mexico's most lucrative natural resource are the people who leave home. Remittances help drive Mexico's economy, from paying for new home construction to schools, especially in low-income areas."

"The Mexicans are a good people. They live on little and work hard. They suffer from the influence of the Church, which, while I was in Mexico at least, was as bad as could be. The Mexicans were good soldiers, but badly commanded. The country is rich, and if the people could be assured a good government, they would prosper. See what we have made of Texas and California — empires. There are the same materials for new empires in Mexico. I have always had a deep interest in Mexico and her people, and have always wished them well. I suppose the fact that I served there as a young man, and the impressions the country made upon my young mind, have a good deal to do with this."

"When I was in London, talking with Lord Beaconsfield, he spoke of Mexico. He said he wished to heaven we had taken the country, that England would not like anything better than to see the United States annex it. I suppose that will be the future of the country. Now that slavery is out of the way there could be no better future for Mexico than absorption in the United States. But it would have to come, as San Domingo tried to come, by the free will of the people. I would not fire a gun to annex territory. I consider it too great a privilege to belong to the United States for us to go around gunning for new territories. Then the question of annexation means the question of suffrage, and that becomes more and more serious every day with us. That is one of the grave problems of our future."

"I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day, regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

"The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

"After Mexico I shall always associate balconies and politicians — plump men with blue chins wearing soft hats and guns on their hips. They look down from the official balcony in every city all day long with nothing to do but stare with the expression of men keeping an eye on a good thing."

"No hope anywhere: I have never been in a country where you are more aware all the time of hate. Friendship there is skin deep — a protective gesture. That motion of greeting you see everywhere upon the street, the hands outstretched to press the other's arms, the semi-embrace — what is it but the motion of pinioning to keep the other man from his gun? There has always been hate, I suppose, in Mexico, but now it is the official teaching: it has superseded love in the school curriculum. Cynicism, a distrust of men's motive, is the accepted ideology."

"Violence came nearer — Mexico is a state of mind."

"The biggest mass beheading in recent history caused widespread revulsion in Mexico but little surprise. Decapitations have become as commonplace in the increasingly vicious narco turf battles as stabbings are in London."

"The Spanyards have notice of seven cities which old men of the Indians shew them should lie towards the Northwest from Mexico They have used and use dayly much diligence in seeking of them, but they cannot find any one of them. They say that the witchcraft of the Indians is such, that when they come by these townes they cast a mist upon them, so that they cannot see them."

"I'm going way down south; Way down to Mexico way. Alright, I'm going way down south. Way down, where I can be free."

"Deaths remain at very, very high levels in Mexico. They haven't really dropped. The only thing that has changed is that the press doesn't talk so much about the numbers. But the cartel violence is still there."

"Once a realm of Indian glory, Famed in Aztec song and story, Fabled by Tradition hoary As an earthly Paradise; Now a land of love romances, Serenades, bolero dances, Looks of scorn, adoring glances, Under burning tropic skies."

"In their desire to escape from the horrors of industrial reality, — to escape from, and at the same time to find a remedy for, them some American thinkers have run forward into the revolutionary future; others back into the pre-industrial past. But in Mexico the pre-industrial past still exists, is contemporary with the industrial depression across the border. ... Since the depression, books on Mexico have been almost as numerous, I should guess, as books on Russia. The Marxes flee Northwards, the Morrises towards the South. ... Morris gave his contemporaries News from Nowhere; his successors give us news from Mexico."

"It is a land of violence. Thunder and avalanches in the mountains, huge floods and storms on the plains. Volcanoes exploding. The earth shaking and splitting. The woods full of savage beasts and poisonous insects and deadly snakes. Knives are whipped out at a word. Whole families are murdered without any reason. Riots are sudden and bloody and often meaningless. Cars and trucks are driven into each other or over cliffs with an indifference which is half suicidal. Such an energy in destruction. Such an apathy when something has to be mended or built. So much honour in despair. So much weary fatalism toward poverty and disease. The shrug of the shoulders and the faint smile of cynicism. No good. Too late. It's gone. Finished. Broken. They're all dead. Ignore it. Use the other door. Sleep in another room. Throw it in the gutter. Tie the ends together with string. Put up a memorial cross. What is cooking in there, with such ominous sounds, nobody now alive will ever know. A new race and a new culture, certainly. Perhaps an entirely different kind of language. But whatever it may be, it is cooking. And it will go on doing so, mysteriously, noisily, furiously, through all the bad times that are coming."

"The government of the republic will fulfill its duty to defend its independence, to repel foreign aggression, and accept the struggle to which it has been provoked, counting on the unanimous spirit of the Mexicans and on the fact that sooner or later the cause of rights and justice will triumph."

"Mexicans: let us now pledge all our efforts to obtain and consolidate the benefits of peace. Under its auspices, the protection of the laws and of the authorities will be sufficient for all the inhabitants of the Republic. May the people and the government respect the rights of all. Between individuals, as between nations, peace means respect for the rights of others."

"In 1910 Mexico had been a labyrinth of political chaos and social injustice. Centuries of inept colonial rule followed by corrupt dictatorships and foreign occupations then culminated in thirty years of one-man rule. After years of chaos, the dictator Porfirio Díaz offered stability. But in 1910 he was eighty years old and had arranged for no successor or any institutions to outlast him. There were no political parties, and he represented no ideology. Mexico was divided by different cultures, ethnic groups, and social classes, all with dramatically different needs and demands. When the country erupted into what was called the Mexican revolution that year, it was an endless series of highly destructive civil wars, most of them fought on a regional basis. There were many leaders and many armies. But this was the Mexico Hernan Cortes had found in the early sixteenth century. The Aztecs had ruled by managing a coalition of leaders from different groups. Cortes had defeated the Aztecs by dividing this coalition, gaining the loyalty of some of the leaders. That was how politics was played in Mexico."

"Some can be bought off, and some have to be shot. That became the Mexican way. "No general can withstand a cannonade of a hundred thousand pesos," Obregon once said. By 1924 a fourth of the national budget went to paying off generals. But many other "generals," local chieftains with their bands of armed followers, were shot. Starting with the 1917 constitution, a system of government was established who primary goal was not democracy but stability. In 1928 Mexico almost slid back into revolution. Obregon ran for president without an opponent and was elected. He might have been on his way to dictatorship were it not for the artist who, while sketching him as president, took out a pistol and shot him to death. The assassin was immediately killed. It seemed the changing of presidents was forever threatening the national stability. The Mexican solution was the PNR—the National Revolutionary Party—formed in 1929. Through this institution, a qualified president could be chosen and presented to the public. For six years the president would have almost absolute power. There were only three things he could not do—give territory to a foreign power, confiscate land from indigenous people, and succeed himself as president. During World War II, in an attempt to appear more stable and democratic, the PNR changed its name to that uniquely Mexican paradox, the Institutional Revolutionary Party. This is what Mexico had become, not a democracy but an institutional revolution—the Revolution that feared revolution. The PRI bought out or killed agrarian leaders, all the while paying verbal homage to Zapata and carrying out as little land reform as possible. It bought out the labor unions until they became part of the PRI. It bought out the press, one newspaper at a time, until it completely controlled them. The PRI was not violent. It tried to co-opt. Only in those rare situations where that did not work would it resort to killing."

"Yes, U.S.A., you do put a strain upon the nerves. Mexico puts a strain on the temper. Choose which you prefer. Mine's the latter. I'd rather be in a temper than pulled taut. ...The old people had a marvellous feeling for snakes and fangs down here in Mexico. And after all, Mexico is only the sort of solar plexus of North America. The great paleface overlay hasn't gone into the soil half an inch. ... It's a queer continent. The anthropologists may make what prettiness they like out of the myths. But come here, and you'll see that the gods bit. There is none of the phallic preoccupation of the old Mediterra-nean. Here they hadn't even got as far as hot-blooded sex. Fangs and cold serpent folds, and bird-snakes with fierce cold blood, and claws. .... And this is what seems to me the difference between Mexico and the United States. And this is why, it seems to me Mexico exasperates, whereas the U.S.A. puts an unbearable tension on one. Because here in Mexico the fangs are still obvious. Everybody knows the gods are going to bite within the next five minutes. While in the United States, the gods have had their teeth pulled out, and their claws cut, and their tails docked, till they seem like real mild lambs. Yet all the time, inside it's the same old dragon's blood. The same old American dragon's blood. And that discrepancy of course, is a strain on the human psyche."

"It is a country where men despise sex, and live for it," said Ramon. "Which is suicide."

"Mexico has a faint, physical smell of her own, as each human being has. And this is a curious, inexplicable scent, in which there are resin and perspiration, and sunburned earth, and urine, among other things."

"Mexico continues to be a theater of civil war. While our political relations with that country have undergone no change, we have at the same time strictly maintained neutrality between the belligerents."

"Juarez had lived and died. Yet was it a country with free speech, and the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? A country of brilliantly muralled schools, and where even each little cold mountain village had its stone open-air stage, and the land was owned by its people free to express their native genius? A country of model farms: of hope? It was a country of slavery, where human beings were sold like cattle, and its native peoples, the Yaquis, the Papagos, the Tomasachics, exterminated through deportation, or reduced to worse than peonage, their lands in thrall or the hands of foreigners. ... All this spelt Porfirio Diaz: rurales everywhere, jefes politicos, and murder, the extirpation of liberal political institutions, the army an engine of massacre, and instrument of exile. ... Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle up-ward."

"Sufragio efectivo, no reelección. / Effective suffrage, no re-election."

"I studied art there in the late 1950s for two semesters before I started to write. I was in Mexico City...It was an important experience in my life...For the first time...I saw that art could make strong political and social statements. It didn't have to be only poster art or cheap propaganda; it didn't have to be slogans, it could be very deep, it could be adapted to everyday life, to everything you do in your life."

"We are dependent on the Mexicans trusting us."

"You know how Mexicans are: If they go high, we go underneath, with tunnels."

"The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs."

"I found this joy in Mexico. And it was pagan and human. It was in the sun, in the light, in the colors, in the voices, in their smiles, and in their fiestas. Poverty could not destroy it, invasions, revolutions, tyranny could not destroy it. It is a gift of dark people, those for whom the real life begins at night deep within themselves and where everything flowers."

"The Mexican towns we had visited, were in no manner of life different upon this frontier from those of central Mexico The impression had been of a fixed stagnancy amounting to a slow national decay; the cause, a religious enslavement of the mind, preventing educa-tion, communication, and growth, giving rise to bigotry, hypocrisy, political and social tyranny, bad faith, priestly spoliation, and, worst of all, utter degradation of labor."

"Mexico is a country that has a lot of energy potential. We not only have oil; we also have shale gas. But we cannot expect that a Mexican state company is the only one that can exploit the resources. Resources will continue belonging to Mexicans. They are the patrimony of the nation. But the Mexican state must find more efficient ways to exploit those resources."

"We are a sovereign nation, and we will act as such. The exercise of sovereignty implies that, in the process of negotiation, our only interest is that of Mexico and those of Mexicans."

"This is damn good! Say, this is the best beer I've ever had. Actually, I'm just glad to be alive right now. I was up a few towns away... you know Saragosa? I was visiting a bar there, not unlike this one. They serve beer... not quite as good as this, but close. And I saw something you wouldn't believe. I'm sitting there see, small table all by myself at this bar. It's full of real lowlifes. I mean, not like this place here. No, I mean bad. Like they were up to no good. Anyway, I'm by myself... I like it that way. Meanwhile, things are going on... under the table kinds of things. Not too obvious but, not too secret either. So, I'm sitting there. And in walks the biggest Mexican I have ever seen. Big as shit. Just walks right in like he owns the place. And nobody knew quite what to make of him... or quite what to think. There he was and in he walked. He was dark too. I don't mean dark-skinned. No, this was different. It was if he was always walking in a shadow. I mean every step he took toward the light, just when you thought his face was about to be revealed... it wasn't. It was as if the lights dimmed, just for him."

": And another thing, your beer tastes like piss. : We know. : Because we piss in it! : And that's not all!"

"Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can't?"

": El, you really must try this. It's a puerco pibil. It's a slow roasted pork—nothing fancy, just happens to be my favorite—and I order it, with a tequila and lime, in every dive I go to in this country and honestly, that is the best it's ever been, anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It is so good that when I finish with it, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen, and shoot the cook, because that's what I do: I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help me keep the balance by pulling the trigger. : You want me to shoot the cook? : No, I'll shoot the cook; my car's parked out back anyway. You will kill Marquez. Do you remember General Marquez? He's been paid by the Barillo Cartel to kill the President in an attempted coup d'etat. : Attempted? : No, no, no, the President will be killed, because he's that piece of good pork that needs to get balanced out. I said 'attempted' because we don't want Marquez taking power. I need you, to put the hurting, so to speak, on Marquez after he's killed the President. Savvy?"

"If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war."

"I don't hang out with Mexicans. Mexicans got twenty thousand dollar stereos, lots of guns and every time I go into a liquor store with one, I'm afraid we're going to rob the place. Mexicans are scary motherfuckers."

"I left, out of Tucson, with no destination in mind. I was runnin' from trouble and the jail-term the Judge had in mind. And the border meant freedom, a new life, romance, And that's why I thought I should go, And start my life over on the seashores of old Mexico."

": Where are you taking us? : Mexico. : What's in Mexico? : Mexicans."

"Sweet Rosemary, and 100 proof liquor, and rice and beans."

"Mexico's most powerful drug trafficker, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, had escaped again from one of that country’s maximum-security prisons. No one in this deeply sourced group was surprised. Nor were they particularly interested in the logistical details of the escape, although they clearly didn’t believe the version they’d heard from the Mexican government. They were convinced it was all a deal cut at some link in the system’s chain. Our breakfast minister even thought that Chapo had likely walked out the front door of the jail, and that the whole tunnel-and-motorcycle story had been staged to make the feat sound so ingenious that the government couldn’t have foreseen it, much less stopped it. Such an outlandish notion may not be surprising to anyone who knows anything about Mexico. But as someone who lived there for 10 years, and reported on the country almost twice that long, what surprised me were the men’s theories on why anyone in the Mexican government would have been interested in such a deal. Perhaps, I wondered aloud, Chapo had possessed information that could have incriminated senior Mexican officials in the drug trade and, rather than try him, they had agreed to turn a blind eye to his escape? The heads around the table shook back and forth."

"Sinaloa became the McDonald's of the drug trade. Customers could find its products, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines, everywhere. Operations ran so smoothly that after Chapo's arrest in February 2014, many experts predicted that they’d continue to hum along without him. However, hopes ran high in the United States and Mexico that Chapo's arrest would herald a new era of trust between the two governments. The arrest was seen as a sign that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was serious about ending a long history of government corruption, and that Washington, after some skepticism, could trust him. Chapo's latest spectacular escape seems to have put an end to any such illusions. "I think the relationship has been set back ten years", the American agent observed. He said he had received calls from colleagues across the United States who seemed disgusted with Mexican officials. "If we can't trust them to keep Chapo in jail", he wondered, "then how can we trust them on anything?""

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we're getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They're sending us not the right people."

"Mexico is going to be the new China because what they're doing to us is unbelievable, although they did catch El Chapo. Good? Good? They did catch El Chapo, that's good. I mean I don't know, he better not escape a third time, you know? Those tunnels, bing, boom, right under the toilet, bing boom, right up. It's pretty amazing when you think about it, right? But anyway. I have an idea: Put him on the fourth floor this time, right? No more, no more first floors."

"Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall as been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits."

"There [in the US] they'll deport you. In Mexico they'll probably let you go, but they'll beat you up and steal everything you've got first."

"You boys like Mexico?"

"In a very short time, the monarchy will be so firmly established in Mexico, that one will only be surprised not to have tried it sooner."

"If the Mexicans second the lofty views of their new ruler, soon Mexico will have recovered its former splendor and soon also order will resume its empire where anarchy and evil passions have exercised their disastrous influence."

"Will make good soldiers, very devoted to the government of Emperor Maximilian."

"The enterprise that Archduke Maximilian will attempt remains what it was on the first day, an adventure where, besides a lot of energy, tact and resources, we must add a lot of happiness to succeed."

"Will you believe that I am not convinced that all the Mexican debt holders will be paid, that the Archduke will obtain from the Holy Father a concordat which satisfies the faith of the bishops and the population, that the silver mines will pay floods of this precious metal in the coffers of the emperor, that the Mexicans will become good and placid bourgeois like the Tyroleans of Brixen or Botrena."

"but we must still expect long local resistance on distant points, struggles with bodies of supporters much more numerous and dangerous than the insurrectionary bands whose clerical and legitimist newspapers have made so much noise on the occasion of the difficult establishment of the new Italian monarchy in the kingdom of Naples."

"It remains to be seen how far Mexico spontaneously and voluntarily rallied to the new empire and whether the republic of Juarez was not, despite all its vices, the true national government, the one that had, at the time of its establishment, the sympathies of the majority of the population."

"Congress declares that it cannot recognize the founding of a monarchy on the ruins of a Mexican republic with the help of a European power."

"The day when the conflict of the two belligerent Americans is ended by the defeat of one or the other, or by the reconciliation of both, that day French troops will be needed more than ever to defend the new empire. of an aggressive interpretation of the doctrine of Monroë."

"Certainly, in such conditions there is enough to seduce those of our young officers whom Belgian neutrality condemns to a rest of which they are somewhat impatient. The honor of carrying with dignity abroad the name of the fatherland and that of defending the august daughter of a beloved sovereign will soon, we have no doubt, fill the ranks of the Belgian-Mexican legion."

"Whatever opinion one forms of the enterprise to which Archduke Maximilian has just devoted his life, it is not possible for us Belgians to forget that the princess who shares the destinies of the new emperor is also the beloved daughter of our king, that she grew up among us, that our homeland is her own, and that she has the right to count on the sympathies and the wishes of her compatriots ."

"It is understandable that a colonial establishment organized under such conditions cannot fail to prosper. We are also convinced that the example of the Empress' s guards will be followed by a large number of our compatriots who, trusting with reason in the new situation in Mexico, will take advantage of all this set of circumstances so exceptionally advantageous, to to go bring the contribution of their arms and their intelligence to the beautiful work of civilization undertaken by the emperor Maximilian and the empress Charlotte, his august companion."

"This is no proof that our Belgian people are not as foolish as some think, and that there are few in Belgium who voluntarily play soldier."

"Between the imperial government and the clergy, which is the highest expression of the conservative party in Mexico, there is only one possible occasion for conflict: it is the question of ecclesiastical property."

"The most enthusiastic members of the Liberal Party are seduced, but the clergy and their party have for some time shown a kind of mistrust, which is explained moreover, for the moment is approaching when the question of the property of the clergy will have to be resolved, and the 'we are anxiously awaiting the decision that must be made to settle this big affair."

"It is not likely that such an important and energetic step could be taken without great results for his rule and his popularity. At the moment we are hardly in a position to judge the success and extent of it, but it certainly contains within itself the means to regenerate Mexico. The first problem that the new emperor will now have to solve will be that of satisfying the Liberal Party without alienating the affection of the Church."

"This is how the Mexican Empire will perish, a creation based on the assumption of a southern triumph and which today finds itself singularly compromised by the opposite result. Even with a president less democratic than Mr. Johnson, the United States would never have tolerated the establishment at its gates of an absolute monarchy under the rule of a foreign dynasty. The misfortunes of the civil war did not allow them to oppose it when the facts were unfolding. Perhaps in order to avoid a war with France they will not attack the new order of things directly, but certainly they would do nothing to support it, and the disbandment of their armies will provide them with all the desirable means to overthrow it indirectly."

"The latest news from Mexico presents an encouraging picture of the consolidation of the Mexican Empire. The Emperor and Empress are tireless in their charitable work, and they are supported by the elite of the people."

"Despite internal conflicts, the church grew because it offered something many Mexicans sought. They had welcomed the Mexican Revolution and were critical of the Catholic Church’s involvement with the old, reactionary order. However, they were not atheists and did not support the secularist or Marxist ideas of some revolutionary leaders. They were wary of Protestant churches from abroad, especially the United States. La Luz del Mundo was critical of Catholicism, deeply spiritual, and proudly Mexican."

"The idea, repeated today, that Aarón was guilty of immorality but protected because of his connection with , is absurd. It is doubtful that Calles even knew of La Luz del Mundo during his time in office. Later, some local politicians in Guadalajara did speak favorably of the early church—not to win votes, but because they saw its impact. Members in their Hermosa Provincia settlement avoided alcohol, promoted education, and lifted themselves out of poverty. They were, in short, model citizens. Yet the rumors persisted. As the church grew, so did its internal tensions."