How to Pick a Vice-President

When Porfirio Diaz seized the presidency of Mexico in 1876, the country had been almost bypassed by the social and industrial revolutions that had changed most of the modern world in the nineteenth century.  Mexico was blessed with abundant natural resources but had, in the three decades prior, suffered through a violent civil war and two foreign invasions that had caused both the loss of half her territory and the destruction of the economy.

Though Diaz ruled as a dictator, who crushed political rivals and allowed editors personal freedoms only when it benefitted himself, he did modernize the country.  Where his predecessor, Benito Juarez, had felt that “there should be a desert between the rich and the poor”, Diaz immediately encouraged trade with the United States, having compared the shape of his country to a cornucopia that poured out her riches into her northern neighbor—who was eager to buy what Mexico could export.

As President, Diaz prospered during the rapid modernization of Mexico.  Within the span of twenty years, Mexico paid off the national debt, balanced its budget, laid thousands of miles of railroad lines, expanded the mining industry, and made the ruling elite truly rich.  

While the favored few became prosperous, the lives of ordinary peasants were little changed and arguably worse off than when Cortez had conquered the Aztecs four centuries earlier.   What Diaz actually did was create two societies within a single country.  If you were rich, you rode electric street cars down well-lighted boulevards to the new opera house.  If you were poor, you lived in squalor and watched your wife die during childbirth in a dirt-floored hovel.  While Mexican government bonds were highly sought after as a safe form of investment in London and New York, agricultural workers in Mexican fields needed the written permission of their hacienda owners to move and seek employment elsewhere.

Diaz learned political survival skills rapidly, eventually holding onto his office so long that the people of Mexico began referring to him as Don Perpetuo—no mean feat in a country previously noted for its frequent revolutions.  (In the previous 55 years following Mexico’s separation from Spain, the Mexican head of state had changed more than eighty times and the list of rulers included two monarchs.  One man, Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana appears on the list seven times.)

Diaz had a talent for co-opting the positions of his political opponents before they could gain sufficient prominence to be serious rivals.  If an opponent complained that Diaz wasn’t doing enough to provide housing for the poor, for example, Diaz would agree, hire the opponent as his new Minister of Housing, provide him with a big salary and an office, and give him just enough authority to keep him busy.  Diaz learned that it was better to keep his enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside it pissing in.

Diaz knew the power of the press, and knew that it was all but impossible to keep Mexican newspapers from printing the obvious truth that he was ruling as a dictator, rigging elections, buying off the opponents who were greedy and utilizing assassins to handle those who weren’t.  So Diaz bought the more prominent newspapers and closed their competition.  Since Diaz was smart enough to know there are always underground newspapers, Diaz secretly owned them, too, firing the good writers and keeping those less skilled and ineffectual.

Truly skilled at political survival, Diaz had the record for being the longest surviving Latin American dictator until the new high-water mark was set by Fidel Castro (who had studied Porfirio Diaz).  Almost the only political flaw in Diaz’s political armor was his age.  Aged 46 when he seized control, by the turn of the century he was…. well, my age.  No longer quite as flexible as in his early years (even his collection of crony ministers was aging), and now,  Diaz faced new pressures.

One frequent request to the Mexican president was that he appoint a Vice-President, something that the wily Diaz had always avoided.  Now in his seventies, Diaz agreed and began searching for a suitable politician to share a small measure of power.  Eventually, he settled on Ramon Corral, the governor of the Mexico City Federal District.  (The Mexican Distrito Federal or D.F. is roughly analogous with our Washington D.C.—the location of the capitol but not part of any state.)

Corral got his start in Sonora, where the post revolution chaos offered plenty of economic opportunities for a politician ruthless enough to seize the property of Yaquis, widows or anyone who had been displaced by the violence of war.  When dealing with the local Indians, Ramon Corral had a reputation for being harsh and unforgiving, allowing him to quickly prosper.   It didn’t take long for the politician to outgrow the opportunities that Sonora had to offer, so he accepted the new job in Mexico City.

Porfirio Diaz, once a general famous for defeating the French Army, was now desperately trying to remake most of upper Mexican society to resemble Paris.  Men dressed in the latest French fashion, spoke French, and drank imported champagne.  Corral was put in charge of an urban renewal project that would transform the capitol into the new French style Diaz craved.  To create the new wide boulevards and parks, the homes of the poor were torn down.  Streets were torn up to install the new electric lines the streetcars required.  And Corral spent a fortune building new sidewalks and installing electric lights in the richest part of town.  For the poorer parts of town, Corral did almost nothing.

Of all the men that Porfirio Diaz could have picked to be his vice-president, Ramon Corral was a baffling choice to many Mexicans.  Not only was Corral universally despised by the people, but Diaz had ignored several other politicians who were far more popular.  General Reyes of the Mexican Army, for example, was widely respected and would have gained popular support from the citizens, whereas Corral had few friends and many enemies.

For those more familiar with President Diaz, however, the choice of a universally despised politician for his second in command made perfect sense.  Insiders joked that with Ramon Corral as vice-president, all of Mexico went to bed every night earnestly praying for the continued good health of President Diaz.