Explore "The Wind that Swept Mexico" by Anita Brenner on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IN THE YEAR 1910 there was a Strong Man of the Americas advertised in all the world, and his name was Porfirio Díaz of Mexico. Each time he reassumed his dictatorial position the Kaiser, the Mikado, all important potentates flashed messages of joy. Financiers, industrialists, illustrious public men congratulated the Mexican people regularly on his existence. Elihu Root advised them to render Don Porfirio reverence. Writers and speakers multilingually raised him up as the salvation of his country, the stern wise parent of his people. A genius. A colossus. Inscrutable. Incomparable. Irreplaceable.
The aged man had been sitting for thirty-four years-with one brief interim-in the presidential chair. Round him, like cherubim and seraphim in a religious picture, there was a group of courtly elderly men who had long since done away with politics, devoting themselves to nourishing business.