Country of the Bad Wolfes

EL PRESIDENTE

In that November when John Roger and the Blancos discovered each other in Mexico City, Gloria had been at Patria Chica for eight years and had known Porfirio Díaz for nine years before that—while John Roger had never even seen the man in person. And Díaz, who only two months earlier been elected to his second presidential term, was celebrating the third anniversary of his marriage to Carmen Romero, daughter to Manuel Romero Rubio, a rich and politically influential man who owned the Jockey Club, the most luxurious gambling establishment in the city and the favored gathering place of the capital’s most influential figures. Díaz’s first wife, Delfina, had died in the delivery of a stillborn child, and the following year Don Porfirio married Carmen. On the day of their wedding he was fifty-one years old and she was nineteen.

The most surprising thing about their marriage—even more so than their genuine love of each other—was the change that the young Creole bride was able to effect in her much older mestizo husband. Díaz had always exuded a charismatic authority, but even by the end of his first presidency he remained a provincial in both appearance and manner. His hair was an untamed thatch, his drooping mustache a wild thing, his collars unbuttoned more often than not. His speech was shot with profanity and slang and his grammar was egregious. He was prone to broad gestures and loud laughter, to slumping in his chair with his legs outstretched and boots crossed at the ankles. He walked in a habitual haste and took the stairs three at a time. His way with knife and fork in polite company provoked furtive smirks. There was ever a toothpick in a corner of his mouth. While Carmen’s father had been proud to see her married to such a powerful man, he had nonetheless felt an inward cringe at the mating of his aristocratic daughter with a mestizo roughneck. But Díaz was neither too proud to admit his social shortcomings nor to accept instruction from his wife, and he was a swift study. Under her tutelage he learned to comport himself with the poise of a patrician. Carmen taught him how to dress for every occasion. She directed the styling of his hair and mustache in the close-cropped military fashion of European royals. She taught him dining etiquette, taught him how to sit in a chair in gentleman fashion, even how to walk with a stateliness befitting a national leader. She improved his grammar, bettered his diction, refined his speech and gestures. She elevated his entire social demeanor. She was teaching him to speak English and instructing him in world history. Those who had seen him at the inaugural ball of his first presidency could hardly believe it was the same man at his second.

His transformation was greater than they knew. To many of Díaz’s most powerful political allies, the four-year wait for his return to office had been a frustration they did not wish to go through again. As they saw it, Don Porfirio was Mexico’s best hope for raising the country into the company of the world’s great nations, and such a man should not be hindered by restrictions intended to keep lesser men from perpetuating themselves in the presidency.

Díaz was effusive in thanking his supporters for their faith in him. And although, with all due modesty, he had to agree that he was the man best-suited to lead his country to a brighter future, he reminded his stalwarts that the hallmark of a great nation was its respect for the law, and he, for one, would always respect it. The constitution is the primal law, he said, the very core of civilized progress, and we must never abuse it, never violate it in letter or spirit. He proclaimed reverence for the patriots who wrote that glorious document and for those who recognized that it must never be amended for any reason other than the noble one of doing what is best for Mexico.

His followers understood. Before the next election, the constitution would be amended—by a congress composed largely of Díaz cronies and acting under the sanction of doing what was best for Mexico—to permit a president to succeed himself once. And Díaz would easily win election to his second consecutive term. And before the end of that period, the constitution would again be amended to remove all restrictions on reelection. So would it come to pass that Porfirio Díaz, that vehement opponent of presidential reelection, would be president of Mexico for thirty years, the last twenty-six of them in uninterrupted sequence.

As in the case of all great leaders, there were many dark rumors about Don Porfirio, and early in his second presidency one of the darkest pertained to a secret police force that answered only to him and whose headquarters were said to be in Chapultepec Castle, the official presidential residence.

His supporters didn’t care if there was such a force. After all, a secret police was the most effective means for uncovering plots against the government and defending the president from assassins. Who but a fool or an enemy of Mexico could argue otherwise? Yet rumors persisted that Díaz’s secret agency was more than a means of defense against threats to his person and to the republic. There were whispers that the foremost assassins in the country were carrying federal badges. And that the head of the organization was Díaz’s mysterious Yankee friend, Edward Little.

Government officials neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a secret police force. After all, they said, how secret would it be if they admitted to it? On the other hand, even if it did not exist, to permit the suspicion that it did would help to deter subversives. The president did of course have a small corps of bodyguards. What head of state did not? It was a sad fact of life that national leaders had ever to be on guard against violent personal attack. As for the American, Mr Edward Little, yes, he was in the employ of the president, but solely as his personal translator of English.

On one of Edward Little’s visits to Patria Chica, Louis asked him outright if there really was a federal secret police.

“Secret police?” his father said with a perplexed expression.

And they burst into laughter.