The Dictator Who Gave Us Chewing Gum

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was one hell of a guy, or at least that’s what he always told people, even if they never asked.  Aside from being a military hero with grandiose titles, all of which he gave himself, he also served as President of Mexico eleven non-consecutive times.  Most famous today as that guy who led the Mexican Army at the Alamo, we should perhaps better remember him as the reason we have chewing gum.  

Tony first became a household name during the Mexican Revolution, when he mostly stayed out of the fighting and remained loyal to Spain, switching sides only when it became obvious they were going to lose.  In the following decade of political chaos, he became a man who always knew how to appear at the head of a parade.  Every time a new political movement seized power or a military victory ensured the survival of the new nation, Tony always made sure he was at the forefront.  This eventually led to him getting elected President in 1833, a job he found so boring that he left the running of things largely to his Vice President while he took naps, spent government money as if it was his own, and attended cock fights.  When people had the balls to point out he wasn't a very good president he declared himself dictator for life, a move that resulted in numerous rebellions across the country, including an area we now call Texas.  Tony tried to bring these areas back under his control, resulting in the Battle of the Alamo, but was ultimately unsuccessful, which in turn led to him being deposed as dictator.  Not really being welcome anymore in Mexico, Tony went into exile in the United States.

In 1838, France invaded Mexico in the tastefully named Pastry War.  Apparently not having one single good general, the Mexican government recalled Tony to lead their troops.  Tony not only failed to win the war, he also lost a leg, which he buried with full military honors.  Despite this, Tony still managed to get himself elected president again in 1839, which of course was soon after followed by him declaring himself dictator again.  This time he lasted five years before he was deposed and exiled to Cuba.  In 1846, the United States invaded Mexico.  Apparently having no pattern recognition whatsoever, the Mexican government again invited Tony to return.  Upon his arrival he declared himself dictator again and took control of the country until he was defeated by the U.S. two years later and forced to go into exile yet again.  In 1852, Tony was forgiven and allowed to return home to Mexico.  Within two years he managed to get himself elected president again, declared himself dictator again, and was exiled again.  The man was a bit of a one trick pony. 

Tony spent a large part of his newest exile living in New York City, where he spent thousands of dollars on fighting roosters and coming up with get rich schemes in order to procure funds to raise a personal army to invade Mexico.  One of these ideas was the importation of chicle from Mexico.  Chicle is a sticky sap harvested from the sapodilla tree.  Tony hoped to use chicle as an alternative for rubber, which was expensive as hell at the time.  In 1869, he imported a ton of it using money lent to him by a man named Thomas Adams.  Unfortunately, the idea never really panned out and Tony left the United States soon after, leaving Tom Adams with a ton of worthless chicle.  Not knowing what else to do, Tom decided to try selling the chicle as a chewable product.  Tom had often seen Tony chewing chicle, a common practice in the Yucatan for centuries, which the old general claimed helped calm his nerves.  Amazingly enough, consumers loved chewing on the chicle, especially after Adams started adding flavors, and the chewing gum industry was born.    

Old Tony was finally allowed to return home to Mexico for the final time in 1874.  Being practically blind and decidedly too old to declare himself dictator again, he instead died completely broke in 1876 at the age of 82.  As for Tom Adams, the rapid growth in popularity of his chewing gum made him a very wealthy man, though he never spent a cent on invading Mexico.  Today he is considered the father of a $25.8 billion worldwide industry, though since the 1960's most chewing gum has been made with synthetic rubber rather than chicle.  Either way, not bad for a man cheated by one of the most notorious men in Mexican history.

Image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Antonio_Lopez_de_Santa_Anna_c1870.jpg   

Seditious Aliens

In 1796, the first president of the United States, George Washington, voluntarily chose not to run for a third term as president, creating a precedent and unwritten rule that would last for the next 135 years.  In his exiting address to the nation, Washington warned the country to avoid entangling foreign alliances and the growth of political parties and their partisan nature.  Unfortunately, his speech came a little too late, given that two political parties had already formed.  These were the Federalists, who supported a strong federal government, and the Republicans (different than today's Republican party which was formed in 1854), who supported states’ rights.  Things of course quickly got out of hand.  

The presidential election of 1796 was a decidedly fucked up affair with the two main contenders being Thomas Jefferson for the Republicans, a flamboyant man with Asperger's syndrome, versus John Adams for the Federalists, a pouty self-important potato.  The great question of the day was whether or not to support Britain or France, which had been at war since the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.  The Republicans wanted to help France since they had been best buds during the American Revolution and they hoped to see a republic founded in Europe.  The Federalists wanted to support Britain since it was the U.S.'s largest trading partner and France's revolution mostly involved an overabundance of guillotining.  This rather tense state of affairs wasn’t helped by the fact that Washington’s former right hand man, Alexander Hamilton, was plotting behind Adams’ back to get a Federalist more loyal to him elected.  Despite these shenanigans, in the end Adams was elected president.  Immediately after, France began attacking American shipping, starting an undeclared conflict which became known as the Quasi War.  

It goes without saying that Adams was less than pleased with this turn of events.  Fearing an all out invasion by France, he convinced Congress, which was controlled by his party, to increase the size of the army and navy.  To pay for the larger military, a national property tax was enacted which Jefferson and his Republicans likened to the taxes levied by the British which had started the American Revolution 22 years prior.  Seeing the property tax as a violation of state rights, they began railing against Adams in the press and convinced several states to not enforce the federal tax laws.  For the Federalists, this amounted to fomenting open rebellion and threatening the very existence of the nation.  In response, Adams put Washington back in charge of the army, who in turn, due to his failing health, put Hamilton in charge.  This was probably not the best idea given that a) Hamilton supported the idea of a president-for-life, and b) upon taking command he immediately began pushing for permission to use the army to forcefully bring the resisting states back into line.  The Republicans took this as well as you might imagine.    

Adams was in a less than ideal position, so of course he did nothing and let his party make things worse.  Since the Federalists controlled both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court was at the time just kind of a joke, the party passed several pieces of legislation that became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.  These acts allowed the Federalists to deport any non-citizen they felt was a threat to the nation in anyway, increased the number of years someone had to live in the country to be a citizen from 5 to 14, and made it illegal to say bad things about the government or its officials.  Adams wasn't so sure about the acts, but he allowed his wife and Hamilton to convince him to sign them into law. 

It goes without saying that the Republicans completely lost their shit.  For them the new laws were nothing more than a power grab by the Federalists, which kind of made sense given that most of the era’s immigrants tended to vote Republican, never mind the fact that the laws made it illegal to say shit about the Federalists.  Over the next several years numerous newspaper owners were arrested, and even a U.S. Congressman from Vermont was put in prison.  As a result, Jefferson convinced the states of Virginia and Kentucky to outright declare they wouldn't follow any federal law they didn't like, a move that threatened the very existence of the country since what was the point if the states were just going to do whatever the hell they wanted anyways.  Hamilton responded by making plans to invade any state refusing to carry out federal law, which culminated in the invasion of southwestern Pennsylvania in 1799.

Adams, not wanting to see the entire country dissolve under his watch, went against his party and negotiated a treaty with the French, thus eliminating a major source of the conflict between the parties.  As a result, the Federalists were badly fractured by the next presidential election in 1800, a situation made worse by Hamilton again conspiring against Adams.  When the vote was tallied, Jefferson was president and the Republicans controlled Congress.  The majority of the Alien and Sedition Acts were soon after repealed, except for the one which allowed the government to kick out any non-citizen they didn't like, which remains on the books still today.       

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Property_protected_%C3%A0_la_fran%C3%A7oise.jpg

The Death of Stalin

By 1953, Joseph Stalin had reigned in terror over the Soviet Union for 29 years.  Ruling the so-called communist nation with an iron fist, it's estimated that his policies and purges killed upward of 15 million people, or around 1,400 per day if you're a lover of morbid math.  To be fair to Stalin, nobody really knows how many people actually died, with historians guessing somewhere between 9 to 25 million.  Fuck, never mind.  Either way that's way too many people.  Of these millions, about one million were executed on Stalin's direct orders, or if you're again curious about the grisly math, around 95 people per day.  It was a frightening time to be alive in Russia, especially if you were educated.  People never knew when the secret police might come knocking on their doors.  If they were lucky they just got sent to a Gulag.  If they were unlucky they were tortured and executed.  

As Stalin grew older he only became more crazy and paranoid.  On the one hand he wanted the entire country to love him.  On the other he was convinced that everyone was out to murder him.  Ruling under Stalin was a Central Committee of eight aging sycophants whose main duty was to drink with the aging dictator.  Every evening they were forced to visit Stalin to guzzle vodka late into the night, watch American cowboy movies, and hope to god they didn't say anything that might get them killed.  The eight survived decades of purges by kissing Stalin's ass and going along with whatever crazy thing entered his head.  Many had ordered the deaths of their own friends and family members in order to retain their positions.   

Amongst the eight were only two men of any kind of ambition.  The kind of men who recognized that Stalin couldn't live forever.  Chief amongst these was Laventiy Berea, head of the Soviet secret police.  Berea was a dead eyed sociopath with a well known penchant for child rape.  His favorite things were teenage girls, ordering executions, and personally torturing people.  Each evening he would have his secret police collect a new victim, and each morning he would send the poor girl home with a bouquet of flowers.  Berea was such a monster that even Stalin found him repugnant, though he kept him around because of how effective he was at his job.  Berea's rival was Nikita Khrushchev, a fat little angry man who was head of the Moscow communist party.  Khrushchev first rose to prominence when he helped Stalin with a series of purges in the 1930's, followed by time serving as a political officer in the military, which mostly involved executing people not found to be loyal enough.  Khrushchev was the newest member of the committee, having been brought to Moscow by Stalin to act as a rival to Berea, and also to do vigorous Ukrainian dances on demand.      

In March of 1953, Stalin had a stroke at his home.  He laid in a puddle of his own piss all night, his guards too afraid of being executed to check on him.  When Stalin was finally discovered the next morning, the Central Committee was convened to decide what to do, a process that took close to twelve hours.  On the one hand, the committee members were deathly afraid of what would happen if Stalin discovered any of them giving orders.  On the other, they were all likely hoping Stalin would die.  Even when they finally made a decision, getting a doctor was no simple matter, given that all the best ones had recently been executed after a few got caught plotting against Stalin.  Luckily, a few were still alive and being tortured, so the committee had the torturers switch their line of questioning from plots against Stalin to how best to medically treat him.  Note that this in no way involved stopping the torture.  Stalin died three days later and his body was put on display next to that of Vladimir Lenin.   

With Stalin dead, the Central Committee tried to run the Soviet Union by consensus, with Berea and Khrushchev battling behind the scenes for power.  Berea was pushing for better relations with the United States and to reform the country's economy by making it more capitalist.  Remember, this man was a child diddling psychopath.  Khrushchev wanted to give more power to the communist party, pushing the country closer to the socialist ideal.  Remember, this man assisted in purges that killed millions.  In the end it was Berea who gained the upper hand, mostly because he controlled the secret police and so knew everybody's darkest secrets.  However, this only lasted six months before the other committee members, with the help of the Red Army, had him arrested, secretly tried, and executed.  Khrushchev took power, and within a year and a half had all the other members of the Central Committee removed or demoted, giving him sole control over the Soviet Union.  Stalin remained a powerful influence in the country until 1961, when Khrushchev publicly denounced him and had his body taken from its place of honor by Lenin and secretly buried.  Three years later, Khrushchev was deposed and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. 

Image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-18684-0002,_Dresden,_Tod_Stalin,_Parade_KVP.jpg