Tag Archives: Carranza

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MEXICO: Lincoln Steffens advises revolutionaries, 1916 

I saw Madera and later Carranza whirled about helpless in the Mexican revolution and, conscientious men 
and humble in their troubles, they used to ask me,  anybody what they should do. There was no one to 
tell them; not in the whole world was there anybody who could say what to do at each new turn of the 
terrific storm, and Madera and Carranza were drowned. It was pitiful to see them killed, as they 
were, at the hands of men, but really by the unknown law of revolutionary psychology.  (Lincoln Steffens: Moses in Red
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MEXICO: Jack Reed supports Pancho Villa; Lincoln Steffens doesn’t. 1916

“The Reds in New York who were watching Mexico were on Villa’s side, but the only reason they gave was that he was at  least a bandit, a Barabbas, whereas Carranza was a respectable, landowning bourgeois. Jack Reed talked that way, and he later went in on Villa’s side. I thought of a trick I used to practice in making a quick decision in politics at home. I’d ask Wall Street, which is so steadily wrong on all social questions. If I could find out which side Wall Street was on, I could go to the other with the certainty of being right. So I inquired down there for the big businessmen with Mexican interests called on and invited several of them to luncheon.They came eager to ‘start me off right. And they agreed that Villa was the man. Their reason? ‘Well, you see, we have tried out both of them and Carranza, we can’t do a thing with him. He won’t listen to reason. Obstinate, narrow-minded as hell, he has thrown us out again and again. Whereas Villa . . . You mustn’t get the idea that just because he’s a bandit he’s no good. We have had him seen and-he’s all right, Villa is.’ “

 Lincoln Steffens The Autobiography of LincolnSteffens (NewYork, 1931), 715.