"...historiography portrays the Reyes years as the stable interregnum between the Maderato and war years, and the revolving door of Prime Ministers before the epochal elections of 1928, despite the long-simmering Zapatista insurgency, the crisis of the Imperial Regency, and the economic malaise that plagued the country for most of his time in power and heightened social and class tensions already sharpened by Mexican exhaustion coming out of the Great American War. Reyismo's portrayal by present-day scholarship is in part of a broader, more pernicious trend, which traffics in a stereotype of Mexican voters as apathetic and tacitly open to semi-autocratic political parties such as Reyes' Convergencia or, later, the long-ruling and paternalist POM of Morones or the gruff conservatism of the Partido Popular that ruled the country in the first decade of the 20th century, a stereotype that accuses the excesses of political machines as meeting the approval of Mexican citizens unattached to democracy provided that they are not inconvenienced - the "soft autocracy" of establishment politics.
This insidious scholarly trend both inside of Mexico and outside of it miss the fact that 20th century Mexican politics has been defined by placidity borne of dull establishmentarian consensus, [1] but also miss out on some of the more fascinating stories within such political parties, and at the height of Reyes' political powers he had a remarkably credible rival in Pedro Lascurain - a rivalry that most history of the period has, incredibly, somehow missed. Lascurain had served in the previous cabinets, cabinets Reyes had denounced as having utterly failed Mexico, and in the crucial position of Foreign Minister, where he was, curiously then, retained by Reyes. This was for a number of reasons - Lascurain was a diplomat first and a politician second (part of the reason why he was a disastrous and short-lived Prime Minister after Reyes' death), and he was, quite genuinely, good in that role. He had worked well with his Bloc Sud counterparts during the war, and then managed to single-handedly negotiate the ceasefire and peace agreement with the United States behind the cabinet's back and lead Mexico out of the unpopular conflict, all without damaging his own personal standing.
Reyes did not like Lascurain but also did not consider him a domestic political threat. He mocked him as a "scholar" (in contrast to a number of ex-military men in the Cabinet, whom he approvingly cited as "soldiers"), and openly questioned Lascurain's awareness of economic or social issues in Mexico, implying that his Foreign Minister was elitist and disconnected from the concerns of Convergencia's political base. But Lascurain was enormously valuable on foreign concerns, where Reyes felt uncomfortable, and the 1910s was a time across the world where in Parliamentary systems, Prime Ministers were formally a first among equals, and head diplomats had a wide ability to do as they pleased and in some cases shape foreign policy decisions entirely on their own.
Lascurain was one such man, and his impact was deep and wide; indeed, Mexican foreign policy to this day retains many of his fingerprints. Lascurain was among the first men to admit that the war had been a grievous error (despite supporting it in 1913 and his reputation at that time as a dove) and thus, perhaps as a form of penance for the nearly two hundred thousand dead Mexicans his vote had condemned, threw himself most aggressively into the twin-pronged project of rebuilding Mexico's ties with her Hemispheric neighbors as well as reestablishing strong commitments in Europe.
The autumn of 1917 and early 1918 saw his "grand tour," in which Lascurain departed to Europe, the United States, and Venezuela for six months, hobnobbing with foreign dignitaries and diplomats. Lascurain was, unlike many Mexican nobles of the day, not educated in Europe or elite American universities such as Harvard or Yale, but his English and French were both excellent, and his ultra-aristocratic background and deep Catholic faith impressed many of his counterparts, who had for years privately dismissed Mexico as a browner, poorer version of the reactionary Habsburg Empire in terms of economic and social development. Lascurain maintained a strong understanding of the dynamics of European politics (indeed, he correctly and ominously predicted to German diplomats that the internal tensions erupting in Hungary in 1917 would "within two years have pulled much of Central Europe into general war") and was personally charming; the grand tour's European leg was, undoubtedly, a huge success, particularly as Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria-Hungary spoke fondly late into the night with Lascurain about his many times spent visiting his ailing uncle in Mexico and his sadness that now, as Emperor, it would be profoundly difficult for him to go on such a visit again, unaware that within a few short years he would be living out his days there.
The grand tour in Europe ended with European businesses largely committed to returning to Mexico two years after its withdrawal from the war and as its economic instability started to quiet down, at least a little; Lascurain was quick to allay concerns that any return of revolutionary Maderismo was in the offing, and despite his personal distaste for Reyes, promoted the new man in Mexico City as a talented general and statesman who had agreed to take the reins of state rather than retire on behalf of his people, and not as just some two-bit Latin caudillo, which was most certainly the impression the vast majority of European diplomacy had drawn of him. Much of Mexico's recovery in prestige internationally can be tied to Lascurain's dogged efforts over those six months and the years to come, and by late 1918, a great amount of money, particularly British money, was flowing back in to Mexico to counter American influence in investments, only for that money to be rudely interrupted by the Central European War's outbreak.
Lascurain's stopover in Philadelphia on the way home in early 1918 was much less successful, though it set the stage for a rapprochement once former Secretary of State Lindley Garrison was back as chief diplomat in January 1921. The American President Root - his counterpart at Coronado - was amiable enough and discussed over cigars with Lascurain his deeply-held desire to resurrect the Pan-American Congress, lamenting that the Great American War in part failed due to the failure of that initiative dating back to the 1880s; 1918 was the wrong moment for such a resurrection, however, with feelings still too raw on all sides, and Lascurain pointing out to Root that it had failed because it had been seen by the powers that would become the Bloc Sud as a vehicle for American hegemony, not a forum for equality and cooperation, and that after the slanted treaties of Lima, Coronado, and particularly Mount Vernon, this impression had only been strengthened. [2]
Nonetheless, Lascurain did leave Philadelphia convinced that the United States bore no animus any longer towards Mexico what with its hands full in managing a full-blown insurgency on Confederate soil, and left equally convinced that provided that a reformed Guatemalan state was amicable towards the interests of the Boston Fruit Company, that Root or any successor was open to Mexican domination of Central America north of Nicaragua provided that Philadelphia could "wet her beak." This was a misunderstanding of the American position, to be sure, but one that committed Reyes to pushing even harder after Zapata into the jungles of the Isthmus and seeking to renew the domination of Mexico over land regarded as her proper sphere of influence since early in Maximilian's reign..."
El Jefe de Jefes: Luis Napoleon Morones' Mexico
[1] If all these descriptions of 20th century Mexico are starting to remind you of places like Japan or, to a lesser extent, Malaysia, well, that's by design. More LDP, less PRI/KMT
[2] I may do a separate update on this, because it's important to the long-term trajectory on Western Hemisphere diplomacy
