The core of my presentation is extracted from a manuscript, written by David Nathan Johnson and submitted in 1975 to the graduate school of Trinity University in fulfillment of the requirement for the award of a Master of Arts degree in history.  Three years ago, representatives of Corona Publishing Company, invited me to edit and revise the manuscript, definitely a solid piece of scholarship replete with an abundance of primary sources, many from foreign archives.  The book, Madero in Texas, released to the public a month ago, is the result of a cooperative effort between publisher and editor to rescue from obscurity the manuscript by the David Nathan Johnson, who died in 1986.

Francisco I. Madero, scion of a prominent and wealthy landowning family in Coahuilla, was the most unlikely candidate to launch a major rebellion against an entrenched oligarchy that had ruled Mexico for thirty years.  By virtue of education, family background, civic pride, and personal integrity, Francisco personified economic stability, social tradition, dedication to work, and patronage of charitable initiatives.  Why, then, would an individual ensconced in a position of privilege in northern Mexico want to jeopardize the estates of the Madero family by plunging into the cauldron of national politics?

Part of the answer evolved from a heightened awareness among educated sons and a few daughters of affluent parents that the governmental apparatus constructed by General Porfirio Diaz and his partisan was corrupt, outdated, and in need of reform.  Although don Porfirio had initially endorsed a slogan in 1876 of "Effective Suffrage and No-Reelection,"  after 1884, he discarded the veneer of political democracy and offered himself with monotonous regularity at every quadrennium as a candidate for reelection.

Across the decades, President Diaz forged an intricate network of support and control.  Two examples of this mutual admiration between patron and beneficiary will suffice.  During the height of La Reforma, Benito Juarez, and his followers enacted anti-clerical legislation to curb the influence and affluence of the Catholic Church.  When Diaz became president, he negotiated a Concordia with the hierarchy of the Church in Mexico, by which he relax enforcement of the anti-clerical laws, in exchange for expressions of vocal support of the porfiriato from the pulpit.  Diaz never asked a subservient congress to rescind the anti-clerical legislation, but he kept the laws on the books as a leash to control the clergy.

Another example pertained to the advent of the machine culture in Mexico -- the railroad, telegraph system, baseball, bicycles, factories, gas lights, and beautification projects.  Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterey became metropolitan center, symbols of modernity.  All the same, out in the rural areas gangs of bandits roamed the highways, threatening life and property.  Informed of these depredations by telegraph, the president dispatched the army on trains to the troubled area.  Mounting horses conveyed in livestock cars, the soldiers scoured the hinterland for the bandits, with orders from the president to capture, if possible, the leaders and subordinated.  In Mexico City, the president, through veiled threats and other forms of persuasion, transformed the bandits into salaried, uniformed policemen.  He attired them in fancy charro regalia, topped with ornate, broad-brimmed golden sombreros.  These mounted police became renowned as Los Dorados of the north.  Equipped with the best pistols and carbines available from munitions factories of the machine culture, the former outlaws rode the train to their assignments.  Mounted on horseback they ruthlessly pursued their brother bandits.  Los Dorados were knowledgeable of the terrain, hideouts, and work habits of the bandits.  Don Porfirio boasted to the foreign press that his Dorados had restored law and order tot he countryside of Mexico, making it possible for the trains to operate safely and on time.  The president´s administration perfected its system of pan o palo, which in practice signified bread, work, and reward to loyal supporters or harsh punishment, even death, to critical opponents.  This was the system that Madero´s generation wanted to reform.

After Francisco I. Madero and Sara Perez were married in Mexico City, with no less a cleric officiating than the Lord Archbishop, the couple traveled north to Coahuilla.  Madero directed his attention to the properties the family elders had allotted to the newlyweds at San Pedro de Las Colinas.  Perhaps if President Diaz had initiated political and economic reforms on his own volition at the beginning of the twentieth century, Madero would have stayed out of politics, content to live in obscurity.

An event in the neighboring State of Nuevo Leon shattered the rural tranquility.  General Bernardo Reyes, Governor of Nuevo Leon, and a staunch Diaz supporter, forcefully suppressed a peaceful political demonstration.  After that incident, three factors aroused the wrath of Madero and a small cadre of reform-minded agriculturists and journalists.  First was the close proximity of Monterey, a prosperous business and cultural center in the north, connected by a network of railroad track to important terminals in the United States.  Second was a persistent rumor that Governor Reyes was President Diaz´ possible successor.  Madero and others concluded that Reyes´ accession to the presidency would not improve conditions in Mexico.  Third was a swirl of political manipulation in 1904.  Prior to announcing his bid for reelection, Porfirio Diaz extended the presidential tenure from four to six years and restored the vice presidency, an office he had allowed to lapse.  In the 1904 campaign, Diaz shocked the nation with his choice for vice president.  Ignoring Governor Reyes who waited in the proverbial wings of the theater, don Porfirio selected Ramon Corral, unpopular and notorious governor of Sonora who had recently crushed a Yaqui rebellion.  Journalists and foreign observers initially laughed at the choice of Ramon Corral.  How could wily don Porfirio, who took pride in his political sophistication, select such a despicable running mate?  When the laughter stopped, they realized the artfulness of the President´s clever manipulation.  With Ramon Corral one heartbeat away from the presidency of Mexico, no one, not even don Porfirio´s loudest critics, would want any harm to fall on the seventy-four-year-old leader.

In 1908, President Diaz, secure in the temporal benefits his administration had brought to Mexico, unwittingly granted a harmless interview to an American journalist, James R. Creelman.  The interview, published in the March issue of Pearson´s Magazine, cracked the fragile composure of Mexico.  Addressing his comments to foreign readers, Porifio Diaz seriously miscalculated the impact of rapid translation and dissemination of the Creelman interview.  Commenting about the upcoming election of 1910, don Porfirio expressed his opinion that Mexico was ready for democratic reform and announced that he would not be a candidate for reelection.  With the campaign still two years in the future, the president´s words shocked the nation:  "No matter what my friends and supporters say...I shall not serve again.  I shall be eighty-years-old then."

The anti-reelectionist groups, Madero´s friends included, accepted don Porfirio´s announcement as a sigh of good faith in politics.  Then the reality of the announcement threw critics into a whirl of confusion.  If the president would not be a candidate for re-election in 1910, the ant-reelectionists lost their rationale for activity in the political arena.  other partisan groups, however, welcomed the opportune moment to campaign.  Bernardo Reyes´ supporters, disappointed by the choice of Ramon Corral in 1904, seized the opening to promote their candidate.  The elite cientificos, an assorted cluster of intellectuals, bureaucrats, and science-oriented technocrats, rallied around the unannounced candidacy of Finance Minister Jose Yves Limantour, an urbane friend of the Madero family.  Mexican politics, asleep for thirty years, exploded like a cascade of colorful lights in a darkened canopy.

As the year 1908 progressed through the summer season into autumn, Madero scrutinized the political landscape.  What if don Porfirio´s announcement was a clever ploy to lure opponents of the administration into the open?  Instead of committing himself openly, Francisco I. Madero wrote a provocative treatise entitled, The Presidential Succession in 1910, which he circulated privately among trusted advisers.  On January 15, 1909, La Sucesion Presidencial became public.  Madero described the negative effects of militarism in Latin America and especially in Mexico.  In particular, he identified two major defects in the Mexican system:  Absolutism and Militarism.  To correct these defects, he recommended the re-establishment of the Constitution of 1857 that embodied the ideals of Benito Juarez.  In the Presidential Succession in 1910, Madero clearly rejected revolutionary violence as a solution to Mexico´s problems. Significantly, in this treatise Madero demonstrated a perceptive awareness of the social and economic challenges that confronted Mexico.

The publication and distribution of La Sucesion Presidencial created a sensation.  In less than three months Madero sold 3,000 copies.  Literate buyers read the essay and explained its contents to others unable to read but able to comprehend.  In April 1909, Madero published a revised edition of the edition of the essay.  The same month, in Mexico City, partisans of the administration organized a Re-electionist Club and nominated a Diaz- Corral ticket.  Ignoring the promises made in the Creelman interview, Diaz promptly accepted the nomination; Vice President Corral followed his leader´s example.  As a counter measure, Madero and his supporters founded the Centro Antireeleccionista de Mexico and prepared for a tough partisan struggle.

The circumstances that motivated Francisco I. Madero to seek refuge in San Antonio in 1910 stemmed from the oppression, retaliation, persecution, and incarceration inflicted by don Porfirio´s surrogates upon the maderistas.  At first, the president viewed Madero as a political gadfly who campaigned from the rear platform of a train that traveled from town to town.  Then, as enthusiastic crowds, numbering in the hundreds and thousands gathered at railroad depots to hear Madero, hailed as the Apostle of Democracy, the President realized he had a formidable opponent in the soft-spoken, gentleman reformer from Coahuilla.  Diaz ordered Madero arrested for disturbing the peace by attracting large crowd.  Confined to a jail cell in San Luis Potosi, Madero resolved to change the political culture of Mexico -- if only he could escape from detention.  Through the intervention of powerful friends, closely affiliated with the Diaz administration, Madero posted bail and obtained released.  Warned by friends of imminent danger (the infamous ley fuga -- shot trying to escape),  on October 6, 1910, disguised as a railroad mechanic, he boarded a north-bound train and hid in a baggage compartment.  Twenty-four hours later at Nuevo Laredo, he walked across the international bridge into Texas.  A customs agent asked his name and if he carried any money.  Madero gave his full name, which did not impress the agent, and his full name, which did not impress the agent, and pulled out a roll of Mexican currency, asking if it were enough for a short tour!  The agent waved him through the gate.  In the department stores of Laredo, Texas, Madero purchased quality clothes benefiting a person of his social standing.  Then he boarded a train for San Antonio.  An alert part-time correspondent for the San Antonio Express recognized Madero at a restaurant and sought a brief interview.  In the freedom and security he experienced in Laredo, don Francisco bought a one-way rail ticket to San Antonio on the International and Great Northern (forerunner of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas line).  The local stringer promptly notified the editorial office of the San Antonio Express about Madero´s imminent arrival.

At the San Antonio station, deep in the center of the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, a crowd of exiles and political collaborators greeted Madero.  Laughing, shaking hands, surprised and delighted by the crowd, Madero embraced members of the welcome party.  Ernesto Fernandez Arteaga offered Madero hospitality at his residence.  Before retiring, Madero asked his friends to wait a few days before publicizing his escape from San Luis Potosi.

To Francisco´s chagrin, informed citizens and residents already knew of his expected arrival in Texas.  A special edition of the The San Antonio Daily Record that the Diaz government had released don Francisco from jail.  Annoyed by the report, Madero insisted he had not been released; he had escaped! Madero´s presence in San Antonio rapidly attracted the attention of disparate observers:  Texas Rangers, U.S. government agents, Mexican consular officials, and private detectives.

On October 8, late in the day, Francisco´s wife, Sara Perez de Madero, arrived in San Antonio, accompanied by Madero´s secretary, Elias de los Rios.  The party had reserved private rooms at the Hutchins House, located at the corner of Garden Street (now St. Mary´s) and La Calle Nueva.  A mariachi of twelve musicians, serenaded the group upon its arrival.  If Madero preferred no to call attention to himself, he certainly failed in his objective.  Or perhaps he wanted to demonstrate that he was a good friend and neighbor.

What particular attraction did San Antonio hold for members of the Madero family?  As early as the American Civil War, Evaristo Madero, Francisco´s grandfather, had cultivated business contacts in the city.  When Texas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy, don Evaristo hauled wagon loads of flour for the army which he exchanged for bales of cotton.  The caravan of cotton crossed into Mexico at Laredo, then veered south to Matamoros and the port of Santiago de Baghdad.  Don Evaristo sold the cotton to buyers representing textile mills in England and France who paid for the cargo in gold coins.  On subsequent trips to San Antonio the elder Madero purchased herds of cattle and flocks of sheep which trail drovers guided to Matamoros, Monterey, Saltillo, and Parras.  Cattle and sheep created the foundations of the Madero family dynasty.

Evaristo the patriarch sent young Madero women to study at the Academy run by Ursuline Sisters; frequently he sent generous donations to the school.  Other members of the Madero clan opened accounts with local financiers, Franz Groos and Company and Lockwood National Bank.  The Madero ladies frequented the store operated by the Joske Brothers (now Dillard´s in Alamo Plaza); with regularity they ordered high-fashion dresses from salons in Paris.  Family members consulted two prominent local physicians, Ferdinand Ludwig Herff and Adolph Herff, with whom they established a personal and professional relationship.  Thus, when Francisco I. Madero and his wife Sara moved into the Hutchins House they circulated in a social environment in which they felt comfortable if not always completely sage.  They were aware that shadows lurked in the periphery.

Enrique Ornelas, Mexican Counsul in San Antonio, occupied an office in the Book Building on West Houston Street near the San Antonio River.  Unable to maintain effective surveillance on Madero from a distance of several street blocks, Ornelas rented quarters on Nueva Street, across from the Hutchins House.  From the new location, consular personnel could maintain watchful vigilance on the visitors who called upon Senor Madero, the frequency of their appearances, the duration of their visits, and of the Maderos´ daily tours of the city.  Ornelas and his assistants also watched the pedestrians who entered a boarding house for Mexicans at 810 Main Avenue.  An agile U.S. Secret Service agent, Joseph Priest, likewise scrutinized the entrances and exits of the same address.

Rumors of plots and counter-plots against Madero´s life abounded.  For example, after Madero had moved into the Hutchins House, an unidentified intruder attempt to enter the guest room Francisco had recently vacated at the residence of Fernandez Arteaga.  From St. Louis, Missouri, Luis F. Correa, a vocal critic of the Diaz regime,  F. Correa, a vocal critic of the Diaz regime warned Madero to guard against kidnappers whose goal was to seize him and return him to Mexico.  Grateful for such warnings, Madero freely walked around San Antonio´s west side without body guards.  On one occasion, don Francisco happily greeted a crowd of well-wishers who had assembled to serenade him at the Hutchins.  On another occasion Madero attended a performance of the Barnum and Bailey Circus under tents pitched in a field near the railroad station of the International and Great Northern on West Commerce Street.  Afterwards, Madero told a newspaper reporter that he had immensely enjoyed the entertainment.  All of these public appearances were calculated to deceive the vigilantes in San Antonio.

On Sunday, October 9, Madero convened a meeting at the Hutchins House to plan the overthrow of the Diaz regime.  Shortly after that initial meeting, Madero proclaimed himself president of a revolutionary junta whose objective was to launch an insurrection.  next, Madero published a declaration addressed "To the American People," in which he asked for himself the hospitality that free people extended to friendly visitors who sought freedom.  He neither anticipated nor wanted assistance; he merely wanted that his objective be clearly understood.

Madero appealed to the ranks in the Mexican Army to abandon the Diaz government and to join the revolutionary movement that promised reform.  Madero sincerely believed that if the army deserted don Porfirio the revolution would triumph without bloodshed.  Ironically, the gentleman rebel who abhorred revolution had embarked upon an irreversible course of action that would provoke violence.

By different schedules, members of the Madero clan migrated to Texas.  On October 23, Francisco´s father, also named Francisco, reached San Antonio.  Days later Francisco the elder´s wife, accompanied by daughters Angela and Mercedes, arrived at the Hutchins.  In the final days of October, the sons Julio and Alfonso arrived with their families.  Francisco the rebel invited his brother Rual, a student at Michigan College of Mines and Technology, to join the movement.  The prospects of an army career appealed to the younger brother.  Another brother, Gustavo, raised funds in New York and Europe to support the insurrection.

In the waning days of October, San Antonio became a city of dancing shadows.  Decisions concerning personal safety compelled Madero to shift from one location to another, creating in the process a legacy of  "Madero Slept Here."  Periodically the Bexar County Historical Commission receives suggestions from proprietors that commemorative markers should be installed at varying addresses because Madero had stayed there.  For how long?  They cannot remember.  precisely when?  That. too. cannot be determined, but the property should have a marker anyway.

By mid-October, Madero´s sojourn in Texas evolved into a complex narrative owing to an influx of Mexican exile who congregated in San Antonio, eagerly volunteering for important assignments in the rebellion-in-formation.  The demands upon Madero intensified, creating stresses and tensions within the inner circle of advisers.  One inconspicuous exile is worthy of note.  Paulino Martinez operated Imprenta del Alamo, a small print shop at 122 North Santa Rosa Street, opposite El Parian as the Market Square was known in the first half of the twentieth century.  Martinez edited an anti-Diaz newspaper, Monitor Deomcratico, financed in large measure by Madero.  Persued by partisans of don Porfirio these exiles lived and worked at The Hutchins House, the Plaza Hotel, or in private residences or boarding houses n Madison Street (in the King William Neighborhood dotted with tall trees amid stately mansions near the river that provides a canopy for clandestine appointments), on South Presa Streets, Dwyer Avenue, North Main Avenue, and adjacent streets.

The Hutchins House functioned as headquarters of the rebellion, mainly because Madero resided there most of the time; the secretarial staff resided at 132 Dwyer Avenue.  At two o´clock in the morning on October 27, tow of Madero´s trusted lieutenants (Enrique Bordes Mangel and Juan Sanchez Azcona), deliberately walking a meandering rout to avoid detection, entered Paulino Martinez´ print shop, locked the door, and tediously set type for galley proofs of the celebrated Plan de San Luis Potosi.  After correcting errors in the galleys, they blocked the pages and printed 5,000 copies of the plan on lightweight India paper.  El Plan de San Luis Potosi became Madero´s rallying cry for Mexicans to rise in unison against the tyranny of Porfirio Diaz.  Early in the morning Madero personally signed each copy.  Unlike most such plans San Luis Potosi carried only one signature.

Another pivotal activity of the Texas prelude to the Mexican Revolution was the procurement of arms and munitions.  Using assumed names, the exiles openly purchased arms from various sources in San Antonio.  The Diaz government hired private detectives from the Thomas Furlong Secret Service Company to tract down the buyers of arms and munitions.   Suppliers sent crates from Canada, Japan, and points in Europe.  Texas purveyors stenciled bold labels on the wooden crates such as: "cans of lard and other merchandise," or "photographic equipment," or "farm tools."  In San Antonio arms merchants purchased rifles, handguns, and ammunition at hardware stores, sporting goods companies, and even from children who carried the weapons in little red wagons.

Madero´s attempt to enter Mexico by way of Eagle Pass/Cuidad Porfirio Dias (now Piedras Negras) ended in frustrated failure without a single shot being fired.  Madero projected the date of November 20th as the signal for simultaneous uprisings throughout Mexico.  The date dawned and closed without the desired results.  Te great rebellion commenced shortly afterwards, not in Coahuilla, as Madero had anticipated, but in the northern State of Chihuahua.  In early December, Madero, still in Texas, contemplated alternate routes into Mexico.  By then, the Taft Administration wanted him detained on charges of violating the Neutrality statutes.  Skillfully evading arrest, on February 14, 1911, Madero and his party entered Mexico throughout the portal of Fabens, in the lower valley south of the City of El Paso.   In San Antonio, Francisco I. Madero left behind a Junta that formed the nucleus of a governmental structure when the Revolution triumphed later in the years.

Madero´s legacy in Texas is much more than the folklore of hotels where he lived or residences in which he hid from relentless pursuers, or even in the structure subsequently demolished by urban renewal that once accommodated the printing presses that produced El Plan de San Luis Potosi.  His legacy is deeply rooted in a public awareness that just as in 1811 when vecinos of San Antonio de Bexar offered refuge to insurgents of the Hidalgo revolt, so too, a century later, residents of the city provided hope, friendship, and sustenance of the Apostle of Democracy in his quest for an opportunity to change the course of Mexican history.  Unlike other high profile figures who ride the crest of change in comfort, Francisco I. Madero deflected the thrust of the Mexican revolution,  Ultimately Madero paid a high price for he courage of conveying the mantle of his ideals into the public arena.  Ninety years later, with his niche secure in Mexican history, Francisco I. Madero has won the admiration and respect of a new generation of scholars and aficionados of the Borderlands.  This Presidential Lecture tonight is testimony of that admiration.  Another tribute to that recognition will be celebrated next week in HemisFair Plaza on Friday, November 16th, at ten o´clock in the morning with the dedication of a commemorative statue of Francisco I. Madero, Apostle of Democracy.