Mexican law

“ Until the army and the clergy were shorn of those special privileges which enabled them to bid defiance to constitutional authority the republic would be a failure. What Mexico needed was "a government of the people for the people by the people." This thought was embodied in the famous law for the administration of justice now known by the name of its Indian author—"the law of Juarez." The key-note of progress was struck on the passage of this bill by the Mexican Congress in 1857, and millions of the long-enslaved people of Mexico joined in the shout of joy with which it was received. ”

“ Mexican law is a thing to leave strictly alone if you can. The procedure in some respects follows that of the French courts. The stamp law no one pretends to understand. Our company was fined $600 in the Federal district for something, in regard to stamping contracts, which they had done under the advice of the most noted lawyer in the republic, the late ambassador from Mexico to the United States. Once our night-watchman captured a thief trying to steal some tools and the anvil from our smithy. ”

“ The crimes in the prison-calendar belong as characteristics to the population in general. Highway-robbery, cutting and wounding in drunken brawls, and deliberate assassination, are offences which prevail among the half-white Mexicans; while stealing is common to them and the pure Indian population. We noticed several instances of bigamy, a crime which Mexican law is very severe upon. As far as we could judge by the amount of punishment inflicted, it is a greater crime to marry two women than to kill two men. ”

“ Actively engaged through life as a politician and a soldier, he has found time to readjust the whole complicated system of Mexican laws, and, in a series of volumes of autocratic decrees, he has drawn from that chaotic mass a new system of jurisprudence, that will stand as a monument of his genius as long as the Mexican nation shall continue. ”

“ Mexicans who do not declare themselves citizens of Mexico shall be incorporated in and become citizens of the United States under such regulations as shall be provided by law.
"Art. 10 of the treaty was stricken out.
"Art. 11. The United States undertakes to deliver up, if possible, any Mexicans that may be captured by any of the savage tribes within the ceded territory; and to prevent purchasing any property from any Mexican while in capture by the Indians; nor to purchase any property of any kind stolen within Mexican territory by such Indians. ”

“ The Mexican statute in question makes the claim broadly, and the principle, if conceded, would create a dual responsibility in the citizen and lead to inextricable confusion, destructive of that certainty in the law which is an essential of liberty.
When citizens of the United States voluntarily go into a foreign country, they must abide by the laws there in force, and will not be protected by their own Government from the consequences of an offense against those laws committed in such foreign country ”

“ Whenever these inquiries shall lead to the conclusion that such pretensions are unfounded in law, the right to the subjects to which they relate devolves necessarily upon the United States as succeeding to the sovereignty of the Mexican government; succeeding, also, to the high obligation of so disposing of these subjects as shall render them conducive to the national revenue; shall baffle and defeat the schemes of corrupt and corrupting avarice and monopoly; and shall maintain and secure an equality of privilege and benefit to all the citizens of the nation. ”

“ When a thing is abolished by your constitution it works more smoothly if called by another name, but the fact is, service for debt is just as unconstitutional in Mexico as chattel slavery. The plea of the henequen king of keeping within the law is entirely without foundation. A comparison of the following two clauses from the Mexican constitution will show that the two systems are in the same class.
"Article I, Section 1. In the Republic all are born free. ”

“ Americans are hereby notified that, in conformity with Article I., Chapter V., of the Law on Foreigners, of June, 1886, foreigners who may have acquired real estate, or have had children born to them within the republic, will be considered by the Mexican Government as Mexican citizens, unless they officially declare their intention to retain their own nationality, and to that effect obtain from the Department for Foreign Affairs a certificate of nationality, on or before December 4, 1886. ”

“ The national sovereignty is vested essentially and originally in the people. All public power emanates from the people, and is instituted for their benefit. The people have at all times the inalienable right to alter or modify the form of their government.
Art. 40. It is the will of the Mexican people to constitute themselves into a democratic, federal, representative republic, consisting of States, free and sovereign in all that concerns their internal affairs, but united in a federation according to the principles of this fundamental law. ”

“ To the just demands of the EZLN, the federal government responded with a series of offers that did not touch the essential point of the problem: the lack of justice, liberty and democracy in Mexican territory.
The federal government's limited capacity to follow through on its offers is what characterizes the political system of the party in power. This system is what has made it possible for another power to thrive and override constitutional law in rural Mexico, a power whose roots, in turn, make it possible for the same party to stay in power. ”

“ The fundamental question which confronts the Government of the United States in considering its relations with Mexico is the safeguarding of property rights against confiscation. Mexico is free to adopt any policy which she pleases with respect to her public lands, but she is not free to destroy without compensation valid titles which have been obtained by American citizens under Mexican laws. ”

“ Mexicans not so electing shall be admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States," and meantime shall have the rights "now vested in them according to the Mexican laws." ”

“ To assimilate them by degrees without doing violence or injustice to their habits and possessions, should be the rule of a wise legislation. They are not to be punished for what, in the eyes of American legislators, appears to be defective in the Spanish or Mexican laws; if so, it would be doing violence to justice, to the laws of nations, and to the very late treaty by which the American government bound itself to respect their rights of property precisely as the Mexican government would have done or did do. ”

“ The rights of the pueblo 'were dependent upon Mexican laws, and when Mexico established those laws she was the owner of tidelands as well as uplands, and could have placed the boundaries of her pueblos wherever she thought proper.' It was for the United States to ascertain those boundaries when fixing the limits of the claim of the city as successor to the pueblo. ”

“ Until 1876, when upon his distracted country Porfirio Diaz, innkeeper's son and born ruler, descended as deus ex machina, the state of Mexico may be summed up in the words "rapine, murder, and sudden death." But though Mexico has had—and the bulk of her population has had reason during the past thirty years to thank her lucky stars for him—an "Iron Master," the quietude of the country is only skin-deep. Law and order is represented by a blend of a rough-and-ready justice, a sort of legalised lynch-law, with an official law-administration venal to a high degree. ”

“ We understand that the struggle for the place which we deserve and need in the great Mexican Nation, is only one part of everyone's great struggle for democracy, liberty and justice, but it is a fundamental and necessary part. Time and again, since the beginning of our uprising on January 1, 1994, we have called on all the peoples of Mexico to struggle together, and by all means possible, for the rights which the powerful deny us. Time and again, ever since we first saw and spoke with all of you, we have insisted on dialogue and encounter as the path upon which we should walk. ”

“ The United States expects and demands that American life and property within the Republic of Mexico be justly and adequately protected, and will hold Mexico and the Mexicans responsible for all wanton and illegal acts sacrificing or endangering them.
We further insist that the rules and principles accepted by civilized nations as controlling their actions in time of war shall be observed. Any deviation from such a course, any maltreatment of any American citizen, will be deeply resented by the American government and people, and must be fully answered for by the Mexican people. ”

“ A new era is dawning in Mexico. The advent of railways is opening a wide field; her people are rousing from their slumber. The government is extending her protection over the poor as well as the rich classes, and rapid progress is witnessed on every side. The wealthy and powerful of the Mexican Republic owe it to themselves to let the spirit of freedom and independence find full growth in the bosoms of all, from the toiling peon on the hacienda to the wild, dark Indian in the fastnesses of his mountains. ”

“ The exercise of the "exclusive" right of the executive to expel "without judicial process" any resident foreigner whose presence in the country "he may deem inexpedient" or "undesirable" is one, the exercise of which can not be arbitrary. If it were so, the property and personal rights of those whom Mexico has "virtually invited to spend their wealth and energy within its borders" [14] would practically be beyond the effective protection of the law. No self-respecting country could permit itself to accept such a standard. ”

“ It will only be when Americans have lost their love of freedom and pride of country that they will look with indifference upon such disturbance of our sister republic. This will never be; our wise statesmanship will see to it that the Mexican people be left to perfect their institutions according to those immutable laws that govern from the dawn to the close of a nation's life. ”

“ Before I left the United States I had encountered two classes of citizens, those who had faith in the possibilities for good of the Carranza Government and those who violently opposed this government. In Mexico I found quite the same situation. Not only were the foreigners divided in opinion but the Mexicans themselves, though here those opposing the government were not as pronounced in the expression of their judgment for fear of Article 33 in the Mexican Constitution. This article reads:
"Foreigners are those who do not possess the qualifications prescribed in Article 30. ”

“ The internal dissensions that have heretofore distracted Mexico, and her failure to adopt the standard in progression as fixed by her neighboring republic, are some of the inevitables; and there is no remedy save time and perseverance on the part of reformers who are kindred spirits with the Mexican people. No foreign power need ever expect with ruthless hand to break down Mexican customs, laws, peculiarities and institutions. Such changes as are made must be made slowly. With the American idea of government in Mexico the worst evils would arise. ”

“ Fish by his own countrymen, whose conscience naturally revolted from a system of government which, as its chief claim to the sympathy and fellowship of foreign peoples, set up its power and willingness to banish from its jurisdiction all that was purest and holiest. Yet Mexico is as far from “general freedom and prosperity” as ever, and Messrs. Fish and Foster, the instigators of this last outrage on humanity, continue to be high and trusted officials of our freedom-loving republic.
Still, the faction that controls Mexican politics was not content with constitutional and statutory “reforms.” ”

“ Its sixth article provides that foreigners, introduced and established in the country in conformity to prescribed regulations, shall be protected by the laws, and enjoy the same rights conferred upon Mexicans, with the exception of acquiring landed property, which, by existing law, unnaturalized persons cannot hold. ”

“ The end and aim of the United States in a policy of intervention could only be one of two things: to annex Mexico, or to place once more upon her shoulders the ancient incubus of slavery from which she has struggled so valiantly to free herself. The genius of the Mexican people will suffice to restore the equilibrium of their commonwealth, or rather to endow it with an equilibrium which, under the régime of crafty and self-seeking dictators, it never possessed. Leave Mexico alone! ”

“ The high contracting parties bind themselves not to seek for themselves, in the employment of coercive measures foreseen by the present convention, any acquisition of territory, or any peculiar advantage, and not to exercise in the subsequent affairs of Mexico any influence of a character to impair the right of the Mexican nation to choose and freely to constitute the form of its own government. ”

“ And if the United States had wrongs of their own citizens for which to seek redress and indemnification from the Mexican nation, was that a reason for refusing to do whatever might appropriately be done towards assisting any government which the Mexican people might be disposed to support and acknowledge, to acquire the position and authority of a legitimate representative of the nation? ”

“ No fair-minded person believes that such acts are attributable to the better class of Mexican citizens or that they condone such abuses. They deplore them as much as do any civilized people. But no government can escape the responsibility for allowing conditions to continue indefinitely under which such crimes can occur, and upon the best citizens of Mexico falls the duty to join hands to bring their fatherland again into the control of those who can maintain public order within its territory. Upon their rising to that high opportunity may depend the future of independent Mexico. ”