Conditions in the Mexican Mission

I sincerely trust, my brethren and sisters, that the few minutes I occupy, I may be inspired of the Lord, that I may be assisted in relating to you conditions as they exist in our Mexican mission, and as they exist in the Mexican nation, among that people. ¶

I would like to call your attention, by way of preface, to the words of the Lord as spoken through the Prophet Lehi in regard to the conditions that should come upon his descendants, should they forsake the Lord. When Lehi was told of this land and told to bring his family and come here, he was also told upon what conditions his people might remain in peaceful possession of the land. He says : ¶

"Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments, they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever. ¶

"But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord; having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the earth; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise; behold, I say, if the day shall come that th«y will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold the judgments ,of hitrn that is just shall rest upon them; ¶

"Yea, he will bring other nations' 'unto them, and he will give unto them power, and he will take away from them, lands of their possessions; and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten." ¶

Without going into detail, brethren and sisters, the Lamanites that inhabit the land have forsaken, in their past history, their true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, and as a result of such, they have brought upon themselves the fulfilment of this promise of condemnation, that the Lord made through their father Lehi. Contrary to general opinions, among a great many people that I come in contact with, I wish to state that the Mexican people are in the great majority the descendants, literal descendants, of Lehi, through his sons Laman and Lemuel, and they are the Lamanites. A very small proportion of the people who inhabit Mexico are of mixed blood; the great majority of them are straight Indian tribes, but they have been conquered at the hands of the other nations whom the Lord had said should come in among them, if they should disobey him and forsake the gospel as he revealed it unto them. The same is true in regard to all of the LatinAmerican countries, south of us here. The Gentile nations, as it is explained in other parts of the Book of Mormon, have come in, and have literally taken away from those people the lands -of their inheritance, insomuch that statistics given out in regard to Mexico, during the last days of the regime of Porfirio Diaz, state that of the fifteen millions of people, that there are in Mexico, there are only two millions of people who are property holders. ¶

My observation has led me to know that those two millions of property holders in Mexico are the descendants of the Spanish conquerors who came in. Hernando Cortez, in the year 1519, took away from the people of that land every part of their possessions, of the lands of their inheritance ; and they did not only take away from them their lands, but they took away from them their personal liberties. They believed that the right of conquest was vested in the Holy See, and it was given to them to conquer this people, and they made them the vassals and the servants and slaves of their king. In recompense for the part that they took, they received enormous grants of land, and grants of the natives of the land, with which to till their immense domains. The whole valley of Oaxaca, a valley almost as large as the Salt Lake valley, was given to one man, and thirty thousand men of the Indian population were given to him with which to till his land. ¶

Now the conditions that were thus started by the conquest of Mexico, by the Spaniards, have been perpetuated right up to this date. In the southern part of the country, these immense plantations are worked by man-labor only. The rich hacienda owners have introduced very little machinery, finding it cheaper and more to their interest to work their immense domains at the expense of the natives of the land, because the labor there has been so accessible to them, and so cheap. Men have been literally worked to death on some of the southern plantations. ¶

Perhaps many people will be startled to know that a system of slavery existed in Mexico, up to the ¶

time that Madero started his revo- . lution, a system of slavery that was in every respect as bad as the slavery that existed in the South. Members of our own Church have fallen into the snare there, the native members of the Church, and have heen sold into slavery. I recall, just now, one young man who was wiled away from his home, near the city of Mexico, and was sold into slavery down in the state of Oaxaca, to labor there. He was abused there for three years, and only when he had become absolutely so emaciated and so weakened by constant labor that he could no longer work, was thrown out in the jungle as dead. After recovery, near a stream, he made his way back up to his family and told the elders and myself many times of his experiences ; and he related those of the several hundred people who were on the plantation at the time he went there. There were only a few of them left alive at the time that he came away. ¶

Now, there has been, in Mexico, revolutions from the time that the Spaniards conquered Mexico, and the conditions I have referred to are the cause of those revolutions. The people have never been conquered in their spirits, although they have been conquered and held down by a force superior to their own. They have been struggling for liberty, and it was this desire to participate in the ownership of the land, and in the government of the country, that made possible the revolution by Madero there, with which we are all conversant. Although! it may appear different to those who are not very conversant with it, it is a fact that the struggle has always been between the two powers that I have mentioned — the ¶

wealthy people who are the descendants of the conquerors of the country ; and the poverty-stricken part of the population comprising the very great majority of those who have nothing but misery, and who do not even own the clothes that they stand up in. And although there have been men raised up in their ranks who have been leaders, but have later led counter-revolutions against the very people that they tried to put in power, it has always been because of the lamentable fact, in human nature and in human kind, that there are very few men who have not a price, and such men as Pasqual Orozco, and others who have led counter-revolutions against the real struggle for liberty have been bought off by the millions of the privileged and wealthy classes of that country. My observations, and letters that I have received from our twelve hundred native Saints, the representatives of them that we have in and around the city of Mexico, teach me that conditions are no better now than they have been for the past four or five years. I have letters under date of only last month stating to me that the revolutionary leader of the south, Zapata, is within twenty miles of the capital of Mexico with his forces; and we learn from newspaper reports that the revolutionary cause is gaining ground in the north. ¶

Now, many people wonder why the man who is recognized as the provisional president of Mexico, cannot bring about the pacification of that country. I would like to give you my opinion in regard to it, brethren and sisters. It is simply this : General Carranza is by birth and by training, and in every other way, an aristocrat — one of the privileged classes of Mexico, and he is a man who cannot inspire in the Mexican people any confidence. The idea that prevails generally, that the Mexican people would rather fight than eat, to me is erroneous. I don't believe it; but the Mexican people never again will lay down their arms until the people of the country have an opportunity to participate in the ownership of the country, and in the government of the country, in the politics of the country, something that they have never had up to this present time, since the country was conquered by the Spaniards. They have never had property, and they have never had political liberty, they have never had religious liberty, in that country" up until this time. Until the time comes that they get those things, the masses of the people, the thirteen millions of the people, will never lay down their arms, according to my belief. ¶

I had the privilege of staying in that country for three years of the present revolution, and I met those soldiers. Up on the cold sides of the Volcan, east of Mexico, I saw soldiers from the tropical parts of the country in rags, and I asked them why they desired to continue the struggle against such odds, and in the face of such great difficulties. They said: "It makes very little difference to us what sufferings we have to go through, but we are determined that our children, if it is possible on our part, shall inherit something besides the misery that we have had to live in, and we never again will lay down our arms until there is established for the humble class of Mexico liberty." ¶

In the city of Mexico today, there is greater suffering, according to the letter I received, than there ever ¶

has been. The money of the country is absolutely depreciated in the country itself, and they are not able to buy the necessary things to subsist upon, and those things are not there, even if they had the money to buy them. I had a letter from a very sober, good branch president that we have there, in whose word I have every confidence, in which he said that many of the people in the streets of Mexico are picking up today fruit peelings or any other thing that they might pick up and devour, to satisfy the pangs of hunger. He says that there are many of our own native Saints, good, true, consistent members of the Church, who have paid their tithing, when they have made money, who have attended to their meetings, and who have acted as teachers, as home missionaries, in the meetings, and as officers in the organizations of the Church, as we have them established in the mission, and that there are among those many who are not eating but one meal in forty-eight hours. ¶

Such are the conditions in that country, at the present time. Brethren and sisters, it pains me to have to speak about these conditions. They are conditions that I keep in my heart, and I constantly pray to the Lord that other conditions might come about, because I keep in mind the word of the Lord as it came to Nephi, the son of this same Lehi, about whom I have read, when the Lord showed to him the same things that he showed to his father. But he showed to him further, and said to him: "The Lord God will not suffer that the Gentiles will utterly destroy the mixture of thy seed, which are among thy brethren, neither will he suffer that the Gentiles shall destroy ¶

the seed of thy brethren." If I had time, brethren and sisters, I could cite you passages wherein the Lord has said that the gospel should be restored even among that same Gentile nation that should come in to smite them, and that it should he restored in this period, and that a book should come forth having the fulness of the everlasting gospel in it, and having a history of this same people in it, and that there should be many among the Gentiles who should believe the words of the book that should be written, and that they would carry it back again to the remnants of the seed of Lehi for their redemption. , I have just as great faith in the fulfilment of that promise, as I have in the fulfilment we have witnessed in their behalf today. ¶

I feel, my brethren and sisters, an honor in being called to carry the gospel to that down-trodden people, and I wish to testify to you that you can feel, when you get under the crust of the curse that rests upon them, by means of the key of the gospel that we carry in our hands, you can feel in them the true blood of Israel. They are a great people, and I have absolute faith in their redemption. I wish to invite the charity of the people of the Church toward them. They may have committed against us depredations, and if it were only a political issue, if it were only a national issue, if we were only Americans, we might have resentment toward them, but we have received the word of the Lord that they are our brethren ; and we cannot scoff at the Jews, because through the Jews we have the Bible, and we need not scoff at the seed of Lehi, because through them, we have the Book of Mormon. We, of all people in the world, should be the most charitable toward them; have the kindest and the greatest desire to lend our efforts for their redemption, and be numbered among those who believe literally in the words of the book, and have a desire to carry the words of the book to them for their conversion to the truth, and for their redemption in the gospel of Jesus Christ. ¶

Our Saints, I wish to say in concluding, are faithful in that land. The twelve hundred that we have there come together Sunday after Sunday, even in their poverty, and partake of the sacrament and teach each other. The Relief Societies maintain their identity, and the Sunday schools, and they are working for the assistance and for the help of each other; and they are praying for the day when the clouds of war will, roll by, and that the servants of the Lord will be permitted to come again and teach and help them, and carry the gospel to their brethren and to their sisters who are yet in darkness. I also pray for these things, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶