By the end of the Porfiriato, the United States and Mexico were inexorably linked. Henry Lane Wilson, who presented his credentials as ambassador in March 1910, reported that the U. S. embassy in Mexico City generated 33 percent of all State Department correspondence, which was handled by “as many as six clerks.”2
The embassy served the needs of some 70,000 Americans living in Mexico and of U. S. investors who had roughly $800,000,000 invested there. With this large stake in Mexico, it became clear that the United States could never again be truly neutral in matters concerning Mexico. Recognizing Mexican governments put the U. S. stamp of approval on them and discouraged rebels. Nonrecognition encouraged rebels. The U. S. also exerted influence over Mexico by making or withholding investments and loans, by raising or lowering tariffs, and by selling or embargoing arms.3
Throughout the Revolution, the crucial question for U. S. policy makers was not neutrality but whether or not to intervene militarily. During the twenty-five-year period after the Spanish— American War, the United States intervened thirty-five times in Central America and the Caribbean.4
Near the end of the Porfiriato, the United States might have seized on any of a number of reasons to oppose Diaz. These included the possible leasing of Magdalena Bay in Baja California to the Japanese, Diaz’s favoring of British investors, and his support for Nicaraguan President Jose Santos Zelaya (ousted by a U. S.-supported rebellion), In addition, the Mexican government began taxing oil imports, angering Standard Oil Company officials, since one of its subsidiaries was Mexico’s sole oil importer. Finally, U. S. officials became concerned that Diaz would be unable to quell unrest.5
Despite having reasons to do so, President Taft did not attempt to oust Diaz. Taft’s sympathies lay with his dictatorial Mexican counterpart, and he hoped his 1909 meeting with Diaz in Ciudad Juarez would strengthen Diaz’s hold on the presidency. Taft had a well-founded fear that Diaz’s downfall would, as Henry Lane Wilson expressed it, “result in a long period of disorder and anarchy.”6
In 1910, after issuing his Plan of San Luis Potosi, Madero and his associates printed and distributed their literature throughout the U. S. southwest and freely exported arms to Mexico for their insurrection. Even if Taft had attempted it, suppressing arms smuggling into Mexico through isolated border areas would have been difficult, since the population on the border generally sympathized with Madero.7
Taft, the former colonial governor of the Philippines, never ruled out the possibility of intervention. He wrote his wife in October 1909, “. . . it is inevitable that in case of a revolution or internecine strife we should interfere, and I sincerely hope the old man’s official life will extend beyond mine, for that trouble would present a problem of the utmost difficulty.”8
With the exception of Standard Oil Company officials, most American businessmen remained pro-Diaz. U. S. journalist John Kenneth Turner observed that due to the availability of cheap labor in Mexico, “American capitalists support Diaz with a great deal more unanimity than they support Taft.”9
U. S. tolerance of Madero’s insurrectionary activities contributed to his victory. As would be the case throughout the Revolution, the U. S. government did not act with a single mind. Officials on the border tolerated arms smuggling into Mexico, Ambassador Wilson felt keeping Diaz in power was the key to Mexican stability, and Taft professed neutrality. As Diaz was going into exile, President Taft sent him a hand-written letter stating:
I write to express my feeling of warm friendship and admiration for you as a man, a statesman, and as a patriot. After your long and faithful service to Mexico and the Mexican people, it arouses in me the profoundest feeling of sympathy and sorrow to see what you have done temporarily forgotten.10
World History
