If you're interested in the deep (financial) history of the US/Mexico, lecture by John Mason Hart =

[Hannah Bell]

very interesting. audio. Historian at the U. of Houston.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/6627

e.g.:

Between 1872 and 1875, after years of negotiations with
Mexican presidents Benito Juarez and Sebastian Lerdo de
Tejada, various contracts were signed ceding railroad
grants and creating the Mexican Telegraph Company. The
new owners included the most powerful figures in
American finance and industry—the leaders of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, the founders of the fledgling
New York Central System (Vanderbilt, Morgan, Stillman,
Taylor, Baker, et.al.), and banking interests that
included the Beekmans and Roosevelts.

Following Lerdo’s election to a second term as
president in 1875, he cancelled all of the contracts
with the admonition “Better a desert between strength
and weakness.” At that point the concessionaires
backed General Porfirio Diaz in a rebellion that
overthrew the democratically elected President. Diaz
was a prototype who set the standard for other American
backed dictators like the Duvaliers, Batistas, Marcos’,
Rhees, Pinochets, and Shahs, that followed.

The New York Bondholders, led by Taylor and Stillman,
sent Diaz to Brownsville on the Mexican border.
Attorney Charles Sterling of the law firm of Spearman
and Sterling accompanied him “in order to represent”
Stillman’s interests. Diaz received 2,000,000
recharging cartridges and other weaponry from Remington
and the Whitney Arms Company shipped to him via Ed
Morgan’s (the son of Charles Morgan) Louisiana
Steamship Line. Diaz forces raided northeastern Mexico
repeatedly in the first half of 1876 while he lived in
Stillman’s home in Brownsville...


http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind0603A&L=portside&P=463.

[Hannah Bell]

1. kick

[fishwax]

2. kick

:kick: