252 CHAPTER 11 THE TRIUMPH OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE, 1870–1900
included national capitalists, like the wealthy ha-
cendado and businessman Francisco Madero, who
resented the competitive advantages enjoyed by
foreign companies in Mexico. They also feared that
the static, reactionary Díaz policies could provoke
the masses to overthrow the capitalist system itself.
Fearing revolution, these upper-class critics urged
Díaz to end his personal rule, shake up the regime,
and institute modest reforms needed to placate
popular protest and preserve the existing economic
and social order. When their appeals fell on deaf
ears, some of these bourgeois reformers reluctantly
prepared to take the road of revolution.
The simultaneous advent of an economic re-
cession and a food crisis sharpened this growing
discontent. The depression of 1906–1907, which
spread from the United States to Mexico, caused
a wave of bankruptcies, layoffs, and wage cuts.
At the same time the crop failures of 1907–1910
provoked a dramatic rise in the price of staples like
maize and beans. By 1910, Mexico’s internal con-
fl icts had reached an explosive stage. The workers’
strikes, the agrarian unrest, the agitation of middle-
class reformers, and the disaffection of some great
landowners and capitalists all refl ected the disinte-
gration of the dictatorship’s social base. Despite its
superfi cial stability and posh splendor, the house of
Díaz was rotten from top to bottom. Only a slight
push was needed to send it toppling to the ground.
Argentine Politics and Economy
Although the principal source of confl ict in Argen-
tina remained rivalry between provincial caudillos
and Buenos Aires, Julio Roca and other oligarchs
sought to unify the nation by forging stronger
economic links between the port city and interior
provinces. In Argentina, like Porfi rian Mexico, the
consolidation of a liberal state was the key to neo-
colonial economic growth.
CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE
Julio Roca institutionalized this new unifi cation by
carrying out a long-standing pledge to federalize
the city of Buenos Aires, which now became the
capital of the nation, while La Plata became the
new capital of Buenos Aires province. The interior
seemed to have triumphed over Buenos Aires, but
that apparent victory was an illusion; the provin-
cial lawyers and politicians who carried the day in
1880 had absorbed the commercial and cultural
values of the great city and wished not to diminish
but to share in its power. Far from losing infl uence,
Buenos Aires steadily gained in wealth and power
until it achieved an overwhelming ascendancy
over the rest of the country.
The federalization of Buenos Aires completed
the consolidation of the Argentine state, the new
leaders of which were closely identifi ed with and
often recruited from the ruling class of great land-
owners and wealthy merchants. The “generation
of 1880,” or the oligarchy, as it was called, shared
a faith in economic development and the value of
the North American and European models, but it
was also deeply tinged with cynicism, egotism, and
a profound distrust for the popular classes. These
autocratic liberals prized order and progress above
freedom. They regarded the gauchos, indigenous
peoples, and the mass of illiterate European immi-
grants fl ooding Argentina as unfi t to exercise civic
functions. Asked to defi ne universal suffrage, a
leading oligarch, Eduardo Wilde, replied, “It is the
triumph of universal ignorance.”
The new rulers identifi ed the national interest
with the interest of the great landowners, wealthy
merchants, and foreign capitalists. Regarding the
apparatus of state as their personal property or as
the property of their class, they used their offi cial
connections to enrich themselves. Although they
maintained the forms of parliamentary govern-
ment, they were determined not to let power slip
from their hands and organized what came to be
called the unicato (one-party rule), exercised by the
National Autonomist Party, which they formed.
Extreme concentration of power in the executive
branch and systematic use of fraud, violence, and
bribery were basic features of the system.ECONOMIC BOOM AND INFLATION
Roca presided over the beginnings of a great boom
that appeared to justify the oligarchy’s optimism.
Earlier, Roca had led a military expedition—the