Nicolás Cámara Vales (1875 — 1956) was a Mexican liberal politician, diplomat and physician who served twice as governor of Yucatán between 1911 and 1913 during the early stages of the Mexican Revolution. He was also the brother-in-law of José María Pino Suárez, who held the position of vice president of Mexico during the same period.
He was born in Mérida, Yucatán, into the Cámara family, which had a prominent social position in Yucatán since colonial times. He was the son of Raymundo Cámara Luján, a wealthy landowner and businessman. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin, graduating in 1896. During his career, he specialized in pediatrics and returned to Mérida, where he opened the first children's clinic on the Yucatán Peninsula. In 1909, together with Gonzalo Cámara Zavala, his cousin, he founded the Social Action League (Liga de Acción Social), a group of progressive landowners committed to improving the conditions of laborers on henequen haciendas in Yucatán and establishing rural schools for the Maya indigenous people. The League, influenced by the liberal and egalitarian principles of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, two Swiss intellectuals, founded the Model School (Escuela Modelo), which operates to this day in Mérida, Chetumal and Valladolid.
Cámara's liberal and democratic ideals aligned him with Francisco I. Madero, and he played a significant role in convincing the Yucatecan oligarchy, known as the divine caste, to support José María Pino Suárez during the 1911 gubernatorial election. Subsequently, when Pino Suárez assumed the vicepresidency of Mexico, Cámara succeeded him as governor of Yucatán before being elected to his own term. During his tenure, he faced challenges such as the Morenista rebellion and the dominance of the henequen industry by American capitalists. Cámara's efforts to regulate the henequen market through the Regulatory Commission were instrumental in protecting Mexican interests against foreign monopolies.
In February 1913, amidst the political turmoil in Mexico, Cámara was caught up in the Ten Tragic Days, a military coup d'état which toppled the Madero administration, the country's first democratically elected government. As the political persecution against the Madero, Pino, and Cámara families worsened under the Huerta military dictatorship, Cámara and his family decided to exile themselves abroad, eventually settling in Europe. Nevertheless, Nicolas continued to finance the armed rebellion against the dictatorship which was led in the Southeast of Mexico by his brother, Alfredo, the former governor of Quintana Roo, along with Manuel Castillo Brito, the former governor of Campeche. In July 1914, the Huerta régime collapsed.
He later also served as a diplomat, representing Mexico as consul-general in Berlin and Vienna during the interwar period. After many years abroad, he returned to Yucatán and played a key role as the chairman of the Henequen Regulatory Commission.
Biography
Family Origins Born in Mérida, Yucatán on 25 April 1875, the eldest son of Raymundo Cámara Luján, a wealthy landowner and businessman who made a fortune during the henequen boom, and María del Carmen Vales Castillo. His maternal uncle was Agustín Vales Castillo, a Yucatecan industrialist and banker who served as the Mayor of Mérida between 1902 and 1907.
A member of the Pino-Cámara family, an old patrician family which could claim descent from several of the military commanders who had participated in Spanish Conquest of Yucatán. He was a direct-line descendant of Juan de la Cámara, the Spanish conquistador and nobleman who had been one of the founders of Mérida in 1542. He was also a descendant of Francisco de Montejo, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Gaspar and Melchor Pachecho, among others.
María Cámara Vales, his elder sister, earned the Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor in 1969. Her husband, José María Pino Suárez served as Vice President of Mexico between 1911 and 1913.
Alfredo Cámara Vales, his younger brother, served as Governor of the Federal Territory of Quintana Roo.
Hortensia Cámara Vales, his younger sister, was a concert pianist. She married Pablo Castellanos León also a noted virtuoso pianist who studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Antoine François Marmontel. Their son, Pablo Castellanos Cámara was also a distinguished virtuoso pianist who studied at the Paris and Berlin Conservatories under Alfred Cortot and Edwin Fischer, respectively. Nicolás was also the uncle of Fernando Cámara Barbachano, the distinguished anthropologist.
Alfredo Pino Cámara, another nephew, was a distinguished jurist, who served as associate justice of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and was the judge responsible for instructing the famous murder case against Tina Modotti, the Italian communist photographer. Similarly, his grandnephew, Ismael Moreno Pino, was a lawyer and senior diplomat who served as Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs and was the Mexican Ambassador to Germany and the Netherlands.
Education The eldest of thirteen siblings, the Cámara Vales brothers were educated in a household which emphasized learning music and foreign languages; he played the violin and piano and spoke fluent English, Spanish, French and German. He earned a Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Berlin in Germany, graduating with the thesis "The Pellagra in Yucatán" (1896).
Marriage and Descendants He married Joaquina Millet Heredia. She was the daughter of José María Millet Hübbe, a prosperous businessman of French, German and Danish origin, and Joaquina Heredia Cacaño. The couple had two sons and a daughter:
Berta Cámara Millet Nicolás Cámara Millet Jorge Carlos Cámara Millet
Public career Having specialized in pediatrics in Berlin, Cámara returned to Mérida and opened the first children's hospital in the Yucatán peninsula.
In 1909, Cámara joined his cousin Gonzalo Cámara to establish the Social Action League (Liga de Acción Social), an organization made up of progressive landowners committed to improving the conditions of laborers on henequen haciendas in Yucatán and establishing rural schools. According to Gonzalo Cámara, the League was founded with the:"imperative, transcendental, and urgent purpose of educating the Maya indigenous people of Yucatán. If education is to be declared not as a matter of utility but as a matter of public necessity, why is the indigenous person who resides on the haciendas excluded from the participation that every Yucatecan is entitled to in the right to education?"The League gained significant influence in Yucatecan society in the early 20th century. By 1910, the League founded the Model School (Escuela Modelo), based on liberal, secular, and egalitarian principles, inspired by the ideas of two Swiss thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. The school continues to operate today in Mérida, Chetumal and Valladolid.
Cámara's liberal ideals identified him with Francisco I. Madero, a close friend of the Cámara family and of his brother-in-law, José María Pino Suárez. A member of the Progressive Constitutionalist Party, Cámara campaigned in his native state for the Maderista cause. During the 1911 gubernatorial election, Cámara was instrumental in convincing much of the Yucatecan oligarchy to transfer their allegiance to José María Pino Suárez, who won the governorship despite a tight race against Delio Moreno. The gubernatorial term of Pino Suárez was cut short, however, when he was elected to the vice-presidency of the Republic as a result of the 1911 presidential elections. After Pino Suárez resigned as governor, the state congress appointed Cámara as interim governor of Yucatán.
Within a month of assuming power, Cámara organized the 1912 local extraordinary elections. Deciding to stand as a candidate, he resigned from the governorship so as not to influence the outcome, being replaced by Agustín Patrón Correa. After winning a popular mandate in the elections, he returned to power.
During his tenure, he faced a rebellion led by Delio Moreno in the town of Opichén. Moreno, the nephew of Francisco Cantón, a former Yucatán governor, had run for the governorship against Pino Suárez in 1911. Despite his close ties to the old regime, Moreno had a strong following among the common people and incited them to rebel against the government. In January 1912, Cámara reported to the state congress that Moreno's followers (Morenistas):"were unscrupulous agitators who, taking advantage of the ignorant credulity of field laborers, made them believe that the success of their cause depended on them becoming absolute owners of all lands and plantations, creating in them an agitation similar to what caused the Caste War in the past century."The Morenista rebellion spread to Conkal, Maxcanú, and Temax but was quelled by the government. After the rebellion was defeated, Moreno went into exile from Yucatán, joining the anti-Maderist forces of Pascual Orozco and eventually supporting the coup d'état of February 1913, known as the Ten Tragic Days.
During Cámara's tenure, the Regulatory Commission for the Henequen Market (Reguladora) was established to organize the henequen industry in Yucatán and break the monopoly held by Olegario Molina and his cronies. Molina was a former governor of Yucatán and cabinet minister who had exploited his political connections to seize control of henequen exports since 1902.
During Yucatán's Gilded Age, which lasted roughly between 1870 and 1920, the henequen industry had transformed Yucatán into Mexico's wealthiest and most industrialized state. Henequen accounted for nearly twenty percent of Mexico's total exports and out of Yucatán's haciendas came 90% of the sacks and rope consumed internationally. Both goods were considered essential in the context of the Second Industrial Revolution and the naval arms races between the Great Powers as the world prepared for World War I. Henequen "crossed all borders. It was sold everywhere: binder twine in the United States; silk in Germany and henequen sacks throughout the Americas. In other words, it almost became an article of first necessity in the entire world." By 1900, Yucatán was exporting 81 million kilograms of henequen to the United States each year, roughly 178.5 million pounds priced at $9.48 USD per pound. Solely from their exports to the United States, henequen exporters were generating annual revenue for Yucatán of roughly $1.7 billion USD. Adjusted for inflation, this 1900 annual revenue would amount to approximately $62 billion USD in 2023.
In early 1902, the renowned American financier John Pierpont Morgan organized the merger of several American agricultural harvesting equipment companies to form the International Harvester Company (IH). After the merger, IH became the largest producer of binder twine, purchasing 80% of Yucatán's henequen. At that point, IH became price makers, not price takers.
By October of the same year, Molina met with Cyrus McCormick, the president of IH, in Havana. There, they concluded a secret pact in which the American conglomerate agreed to exclusively import henequen sold by Molina's company, acting as an intermediary between henequen plantation owners and the American markets. In return, Molina committed to "use all efforts within his power to depress the price of the sisal fiber" (henequen) and have McCormick "pay only those prices dictated from time to time by the I.H. Co." As a result of this secret agreement between McCormick and Molina, the price of henequen went from fluctuating around $9.48 USD per pound in the market to a fixed rate dictated by U.S. capitalists of only 8 cents per pound.