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Silvestre Terrazas and the Old Regime in Chihuahua

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Robert Sandels
Robert Sandels*
Affiliation:
Quinnipiac College, Hamden, Connecticut
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Extract

From 1903 to 1911, Chihuahua was dominated by the Terrazas-Creel clan. For the patriarch of the clan, Luis Terrazas, the great latifundist and cattle baron, it was a prosperous time. He occupied the office of governor for the first fifteen months of the period and then retired, turning it over to his son-in law, Enrique C. Creel, who served first as interim and then as constitutional governor until the eve of the Madero revolt in 1910.

The effects of porfirismo filtered down to Chihuahuans through the clan. It dispensed offices, lucrative contracts, and concessions through Creel’s científico connections in Mexico City. It monopolized the state legislative offices—only twenty-seven persons sat in the legislature from 1903 to 1911 with the clan names of Terrazas, Creel, and Cuilty occurring in every session.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , October 1971 , pp. 191 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1971

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References

1 For the career and fortune of Luis Terrazas, see Mares, José Fuentes, Y México se refugió en el desierto. Luis Terrazas: historia y destino (Mexico, 1954)Google Scholar and Sims, Harold D., “Espejo de caciques: los Terrazas de Chihuahua.” Historia Mexicana 18:4 (January-March, 1969), 379–399.Google Scholar

2 Almada, Francisco R., Resumen de historia del estado de Chihuahua (Mexico, 1955), 363.Google Scholar

3 Almada, Francisco R., Juárez y Terrazas: aclaraciones históricas (Mexico, 1958), 336.Google Scholar

4 His apologist, Fuentes Mares, claims Luis Terrazas never took advantage of his political position to enrich himself but rather bought up vast amounts of semi-arid land at a time when Indian raids had lowered their market value. Mares, Fuentes, Y México se refugió en el desierto, 175.Google Scholar

5 Information on Silvestre Terrazas comes from correspondence of his daughter, Margaret Terrazas, with the author and from articles in El Heraldo (Veracruz) September 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 1961 and interview with Silvestre Terrazas in El Heraldo, June 2, 1944, in the Terrazas Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

6 Ortiz was the first bishop of Chihuahua (1893–1901). He founded the mission for the Tarahumara Indians of Chihuahua and was active in the various National Catholic Congresses that worked before the Revolution for social and economic improvements for the Mexican laborer. Callcott, Wilfrid Hardy, Liberalism in Mexico, 1857–1929 (Stanford, 1931), 180 Google Scholar; Diccionario Porrua de historia, biografía, y geografía de México (Mexico, 1964), 438.

7 Nearly complete sets of all the newspapers edited by Terrazas are in the Terrazas collection.

8 For a classic expression of científico rational optimism, see Sierra, Justo, editor, México: su evolución social. 2 vols. (Mexico, 1900–1904).Google Scholar

9 While sympathetic to the magonistas, Silvestre Terrazas did not actively support them or use his influence in the state to publicize their revolutionary activities. When they attempted an uprising in Casas Grandes in 1908, Terrazas urged that revolutionary energy be channelled through popular suffrage. El Correo de Chihuahua, June 27, 1908. Magonismo was conspicuously unsuccessful in Chihuahua.

10 Chihuahua, , Constitución (1887), “Ley reglamentaria para la organización de los distritos del estado,” arts. 8, 9, 11.Google Scholar

11 El Correo de Chihuahua, September 27, 1903.

12 Ibid., May 13, June 7, 1906.

13 Ibid., July 19, 1906.

14 Ibid., October 23, 1905.

15 Ibid., November 18, 1905.

16 Ibid., May 11, 1905.

17 Ibid., September 13, 1905.

18 Ibid., March 14, 1906.

19 Ibid., March 24, 1906.

20 Chihuahua, , Constitución (1887), art. 83.Google Scholar

21 El Correo de Chihuahua. June 9-September 7, 1906.

22 Ibid., August 18, 1904.

23 Following the depression of 1907, for example, he called for an end to American investments, a protective tariff, and the free coinage of silver to relieve the poor with cheap money and jobs in the mines. Ibid., April 4, 1908.

24 Ibid., June 27, 1908.

25 As a follower of Francisco I. Madero, Silvestre Terrazas continued the struggle in the years of Madero’s ascendancy, when the Terrazas-Creel clan maneuvered to retain some of its power.

26 El Correo de Chihuahua, August 19, 1905.

27 Mexico, , Constitución (1857), “Ley de Extranjeros y Naturalización,” art. 1. Google Scholar

28 Chihuahua, , Constitución (1887), art. 81.Google Scholar

29 El Correo de Chihuahua, May 31, 1907.

30 Ibid., May 25, 1907.

31 Ibid., July 20, 1907.

32 Ibid., March 6, 1907.

33 Ibid., April 13, 1907.

34 Ibid., April 18, 1907.

35 Juan Creel to Silvestre Terrazas, April 4, 1907, Terrazas Collection.

36 El Correo de Chihuahua, October 19, 1907.

37 One of the torturers obligingly posed for a photograph with some of the ex-prisoners to show how the tortures were applied. Ibid., July 25, 1911.

38 Frederico Cuilty Jr., a well-born suspect, alleged that Governor Creel was present when this charade was played upon him. “Constancia de Proceso. …” Suit against Antonio Villavicencio et al., December 11, 1911, Terrazas Collection.

39 Leopoldo Villalpando to Díaz, October 2, 1908, in Ibid.

40 Molinar, Navarro, and Mateus to Creel, in El Correo de Chihuahua, February 17, 1909 and August 18, 1909.Google Scholar

41 Creel to Navarro, February 10, 1909, in Ibid., August 18, 1909.

42 Mateus and Navarro to Díaz, December, 1908. Terrazas Collection.

43 Madero to Abraham González, August 15, 1911, in Almada, , Juárez y Terrazas, 465, 466.Google Scholar

44 Almada, , Resumen, 372.Google Scholar

45 Open letter to Creel, , El Correo de Chihuahua, October 19, 1907.Google Scholar

46 See Sims, , “Espejo de caciques: Los Terrazas de Chihuahua,” Historia Mexicana 18:4 (January-March, 1969) 398, 399Google Scholar for a discussion of the effects of the accession to power of the Terrazas-Creel group. Sims suggests that the final goal of the old regime may have been the monopolization of the economy by the científicos allied with American interests of which Creel was the leader. If Sims is correct in asserting that the Porfiriato “… was itself the instrument of its caciques,” then Silvestre Terrazas aimed his barbs in the right place.