Francisco Bulnes

Francisco Bulnes (1847 – 1924) was educated as an engineer, but is better known an influential intellectual during the regime of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz. He served as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. As a científico, the prevailing intellectual movement of the period, he believed in the positivist approach to science and to history. Bulnes attacked the reputation of the late president Benito Juárez, describing him "as an insignificant provincial lawyer with no clear ideology until he met Ocampo in New Orleans." Bulnes's attack on Juárez was contested by among others Genero García and Justo Sierra.

Author of El verdadero Díaz y la Revolución, (Editorial Gomez de la Puente, 1920) and The Whole Truth About Mexico: President Wilson's Responsibility. (New York: M. Bulnes Book Co., 1916) and El porvenir de las naciones hispano americanas ante las conquistas recientes de Europa y los Estados Unidos. (México, Impr. de M. Nava, 1899)

In El porvenir de las nations Hispano-Americanas (The Future of the Hispanic-American Nations), published in 1899 in the wake of the Spanish—American War, Bulnes attributed Mexico's backwardness to a combination of Iberian conservatism and Indian debility. He explained the natives' weakness, using the recently developed science of nutrition, by dividing mankind into three races: the people of corn, wheat, and rice. After some dubious calculations of the nutritional value of staple grains, he concluded that “the race of wheat is the only truly progressive one,” and that “maize has been the eternal pacifier of America's indigenous races and the foundation of their refusal to become civilized.”

Manuel Gamio, the archaeologist who excavated the pyramids of Teotihuacán, denounced Bulnes as a racist, while Daniel Cosio Villegas, a leading historian, described him as “one of the most evasive, designing, and deceitful writers that Mexico has ever produced.”

Works

• Sobre el hemisferio norte, once mil leguas. Impresiones de viaje a Cuba, los Estados Unidos, el Japón, China, Cochinchina, Egipto y Europa. México: Imprenta de la Revista Universal (1875).
• El porvenir de las naciones latinoamericanas ante las recientes conquistas de Europa y Norteamérica. Estructura y evolución de un continente. México, (1899).
• El verdadero Juárez y la verdad sobre la intervención y el imperio, (1904).
• Las grandes mentiras de nuestra historia: la Nación y el Ejército en las guerras extranjeras, (1904).
• Juárez y la revoluciones de Ayutla y de Reforma, (1906).
• El verdadero Díaz y la Revolución, (1920).
• Los problemas de México, (1926).

Further reading

• Cockcroft, James. Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press 1968.
• Cosmes, Francisco. El verdadero Bulnes y su falso Juárez. Mexico City: Talleres de Tipografía 1904.
• Gómez Quiñones, Juan. Porfirio Díaz, los intelectuales y la Revolución. Mexico City: El Caballito 1981.
• Lemus, George. Francisco Bulnes, su vida y obras. Mexcio City: Ediciones de Andrea 1965.
• Racine, Karen. "Francisco Bulnes" in Encyclopedia of Mexico, vol. 1, pp. 168-69. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn 1997.
• Romanell, Patrick. The Making of the Mexican Mind. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press 1969.