IX
Christmas—The strangling of a country—de la Barra—The “mañanagame”—Spanish in five phrases—Señora Huerta’s great diamond—The peon’s desperate situation in a land torn by revolutions.
These Christmas hours I have been dwelling on memories of my precious brother on his bed of pain throughout these days last year, hisTod und Verklärung.... But I would call no one back, once through “the door.”
The tree was a great success—though in the morning, when Feliz was hanging the last festoons of green about the room, he crashed down, step-ladder and all, on the side where the toys were piled. There had to be swift runnings down-town to repair the damage. I was so annoyed that I didn’t even ask if he were hurt, and he seemed too aghast at the occurrence to feel any pain. It was very pleasant to have the small remnant of the faithful under one roof. The children played with their toys and we grown-ups exchanged our little offerings and greetings and everything seemed very cozy and safe—just as if we weren’t “riding a revolution.”
Clarence Hay brought N. a bottle of cognac, inscribed: “Nelson from Victoriano,” and a like-sized bottle of grape-juice: “Nelson from W. J. B.” I leave you to guess which we opened.
After the departure of the families, a few of the loneones stayed—Seeger, Clarence H., Ryan—and we talked until a late hour of the strange adventures we are all living through in this land of endless possibilities.
To-day, after Mass, we drove to the beautiful little Automobile Club, where Seeger gave a luncheon for us, the Tozzers, Clarence Hay, and the Evans. The club is built in the new part of the Park, on the edge of one of the little artificial lakes made when Limantour laid out the Park as it now is. We sat on the terrace toward the high hill of the castle, which breaks the round horizon of the magic hills. The air was soft, yet bright, the moss-hung old ahuehuetes, symbols of grief and mourning, had joyous, burnished, filmy outlines, and the volcanoes were flinging white clouds about their lovely heads. It was one of God’s own days—as days here usually are.
I am sending you a fewHeralds, with their Christmas(?) head-lines: “Vera Cruz Rebels Suffer Defeat in Fierce Fight”; “Rebels Ordered to Execute All Prisoners”; “Town of Tapono Burnt to Ground by Federals”; “Only Twelve Killed when Military Train Dynamited”; “Fierce Fighting at Concepcion del Oro.” They make one feel that “watchful waiting” in Washington bids fair to bewoefulwaiting south of the Rio Grande.
Elim was worn out by the Christmas festivities and was dreadfully naughty. The season ofpiñatasis on, and he has a great number of invitations—unfortunately. At thepiñatasa large, grotesque head and figure, dressed in tissue-paper and tinsel, depending from the ceiling, is the center of attention. The dress conceals a huge, but fragile, earthern jar (olla) filled with nuts, fruits, candies, and small toys. Each child is blindfolded and allowed to have a whack at it with a big stick.When it is finally broken the contents spill everywhere and are scrambled for. It seems a messy sort of game, but it is time-hallowed here.
I sent Mr. Lind a telegram yesterday: “Affectionate greetings; best wishes.” He might as well, or better, be in Minneapolis. Nobody ever speaks of him and Vera Cruz is like the grave as far as the government here is concerned. Mexico is going to her downfall, and it seems as if she must be nearly there. It is very sad to us, who are on the ground. I never witnessed, before, the strangling of a country, and it is a horrible sight. The new Chilianchargécame in a day or two ago: he has been in Central America for twenty years, and says this is his thirty-second revolution.
I caught sight of Mr. Creel-Terrazas in his carriage, yesterday. His face was sunk and ashen, and he was huddled up in one corner of the coupé, changed indeed from the hale, rosy, white-haired man of a few weeks ago. He and his family have lost everything at the hands of the rebels. The family owned nearly the whole of Chihuahua, and though stories—probably true—are told of how, generations ago, they came into possession of the vast property, driving the Indians from their holdings into the desert, it does not change the present fact that they are ruined, and the country with them; the “judgment” upon them, if judgment it be, involving countless others.
The whole question up there seems to reduce itself very simply to a matter of grabbing from those in possession by those desirous of possession. We are all waiting for the inevitable falling out of Carranza and Villa. The hero in any Mexican drama is never more than a few months removed from being the villain. The actors alone change; never the horrid plot of blood, treachery, and devastation.
You saw that de la Barra actually reached Tokio. I was sure he would, having a way of finishing what he begins. Five sets of ambassadors have been appointed to set out for Japan to return the nation’s thanks for the special embassy sent to the splendid 1910Centenario—that apogee of Mexico’s national and international life. The last two were the murdered Gustavo Madero, who couldn’t tear himself away because of the golden harvests to be reaped at home; and Felix Diaz, because of his political aspirations.
You remember de la Barra, from Paris, an agreeable, adroit man of the world, who proved himself, during the five months that he was Presidentad interim, a very good tight-rope walker on a decidedly slack rope. The country was still enjoying the Diaz prestige, and he found himself pretty generally acceptable to both the old and the new régime. He has always been very catholic. He became, later, rather a source of anxiety to Madero, who feared his popularity, though his success at the time was largely a matter of allowing all really important questions to stand over for his successor. Looking back on it all now, I see him in a very favorable light: a careful, hard-working, skilful politician, with a taste for peace and order which is not always inherent in the Mexican breast, and a safe man to fall back on to conduct the affairs of his country with dignity. When in doubt, “take” de la Barra.
Themañana(to-morrow) game is the best played down here; it is never actually subversive; and, as exemplified by Huerta’s attitudevis-à-visthe United States, it is very effective against a nation that wants things done, and done at once. I find that the Mexicans are constantly studying us, which is more than we do in regard to them. They look upon us as something immensely powerful, that is able and, perhaps, if displeased,willing, to crush them. They are infinitely more subtle than we, and their efforts tend more to keeping out of our clutches than to imitating us. Our institutions, all our ways of procedure, are endlessly wearisome to them, and correspond to nothing they consider profitable and agreeable.Suum cuique.
I have discovered that there are five Spanish phrases quite sufficient for all uses, in the length and breadth of this fair land: “Mañana” (“to-morrow”). “Quién sabe?” (“who knows?”). “No hay” (“there isn’t any”). “No le hace” (“it doesn’t matter”). “Ya se fué” (“he has gone”). This last I add as, whenever any one tries to get hold of anybody, “Ya se fué” is the answer. I have given this small but complete phrase-book to many, who find it meets almost any situation or exigency.
No news from Mr. Lind for some time. Doubtless Christmas, as spent on the Mexican coast, alternating damp heat and north winds, is a poor affair compared with thetannenbaumsand skating and general cheer ofbothhis Fatherlands. Some Western editor suggests that, on his return, he will be in a position to publish a “comprehensive blank book” on the Mexican situation. I have broken many a lance for him; but when one of the foreign ministers said to me yesterday, “your Scandinavian friend is anti-Latin, anti-British and anti-Catholic,” I could but retire from the field of battle.
Elim is always followed by his two dogs—Micko, the melancholy Irish terrier, and Juanita. The white bull pup becomes more destructive and demonstrative every day. Yesterday when she seemed not quite her awful self one of the servants suggested hanging a string of lemons around her neck. I remember having seen disconsolate dogs wearing necklaces of lemons, but thought children had placed them there. It appears, however,that such a necklace is in high favor among the Indians as a cure for distemper.
I hear that the government intends to lease the Tehuantepec Railroad to Pearson’s Oil Company for twenty-five years, for 25,000,000 pesos. Huerta is depicted in one of the papers as knocking at the European pawnshop with the Isthmus under his arm.
I inclose a delightful letter from Mrs. J. W. Foster, who always keeps so apace with events. Of course the Fosters read the Mexican news with interest and understanding, as they were here during the years Diaz was trying to establish himself in spite of the Mexican people, and not in spite ofusas well, fortunately for Diaz and them....
I send a cartoon fromNovedades, representing Huerta paralyzed. One nurse asks the other how he is, and she answers: “No change. He can’t move yet.”
PARALYZED“HOW IS HE?”“NO CHANGE, HE CAN’T MOVE YET.”
PARALYZED“HOW IS HE?”“NO CHANGE, HE CAN’T MOVE YET.”
PARALYZED
“HOW IS HE?”“NO CHANGE, HE CAN’T MOVE YET.”
Well, some one has got to “move” if this country and all national and foreign interests are to be saved. I cannot see that a new revolutionary party in the north, whose sole virtue, up to now, is that it is “agin” the government, can do it. Besides which it represents only another pack of hungry wolves to be let loose upon the country. I hear that Carranza has a brother, Jesus, who possesses the family vice of greed to a great degree, and is about to “operate” on the Isthmus. There are predictions that it will look as though the locusts had been over it, if he really gets a “chance.”
Four clerks are sleeping in the house, and the work is going on apace. Cambiaggo, the new Italian minister, was received yesterday with all honors emphasized. Oh, thatFata Morganaof recognition! The Belgian minister has got his leave and has just been here to say good-by.He has already the European eye so familiar to those left behind. He has had a very cordial telegram from a big banker in New York, and wondered if the banker expected to put him up. I said, “If you are met by an automobile and servants in New York, you can be pretty sure you are to stay with him; otherwise you’d better rough it at the Ritz.”
Various ideas are advanced by diplomats here as to the possibility of some arrangement being made through a third party, some one of the great Powers; ... someway by which the elections could really be held, and Huerta, if really elected, allowed to remain. N. can’t do it, nor Mr. Lind, nor any American. The national pride on both sides is too compromised to admit of anything but a third power stepping in and “doing the trick.”
There is talk of a big English loan, guaranteed by the customs, at the same time allowing a certain amount of these to be freed—a couple of millions of pesos a month for the expenses of the government. There is a general twitching of international fingers, a longing to remedy our bungling. May, with his face toward Europe, sees everything rose-colored. He predicts that we shall be here until the next elections, the first Sunday in July. There is a great deal of speculation as to Huerta’s personal fortune, but no one knows whether he is rich or poor. His new house in San Cosme is, I hear, a cheap affair. Mme. Huerta wore, when she received, one large, very magnificent diamond depending from her throat. But why shouldn’t she have it?
No political excitements these last days; only a monotonous and horrid record of grab by the temporarily strong from the always weak. A “good deed” in Chihuahua is one that transfers any valuable property to a rebel. Those palatial residences, the homes of prosperity and wealth for generations, have all changed hands during the last three weeks, which, however, does not mean that the much-talked-ofpeonhas benefited in the slightest degree. It simply means that a few men, some of whom can neither read nor write, now hold what used to be in the possession of a few men whocouldread and write. The land in Mexico has always been in the hands of a few thousand individuals, and thepeonis always exploited, no matter what the battle-cry. A kindpaternalism on the part of some of the upper classhacendados, who leave him more or less to the mercies of the Spanishadministrador, has been his best fate.
His unfitness for government has never been questioned. When he is weak, he promises all things; when he is strong, he is destructive. Though there have been sentimental remarks about the peon’s intelligence, and his wrongs, whichareappalling, no government except ours ever dreamed of putting the destinies of the state into his hands—into the hands of these eighty-six per cent. of human beings who can neither read nor write.
Curiously enough, it is the custom to assert that the Church kept the Indians in this state of ignorance; but education, after the Laws of Reform in 1857, was taken out of the hands of the priests and given into those of the lay authorities. That was nearly sixty years ago—three Indian generations. Who runs mayread, literally, in this case.
Eduardo I. told me an amusing and enlightening story yesterday. An Indian went to a priest to ask to be married. The priest, finding his ideas of the Divinity were of the haziest in spite of much instruction, said, “Hijo” (son), “I cannot do it until you have learnedel rezo” (a very elemental catechism), and proceeded to give him further instruction. The Indian returned the next day and said that it was all very difficult and that he still did not understand about God being everywhere. “Is He in the church?” “Yes.” “Is He in themilpa” (cornfield)? “Yes.” “Is He in my hut?” “Yes.” “Is He in thecorral de la casa de mi comadre” (yard of my godmother’s house)? “Of course; He is always there,” said the priest. The Indian’s expression became triumphant. “Padrecito,” he said, “I have caught you. Mycomadre’shouse has no yard!”
Mr. Lind is hurrying aboard the U. S. S.Chesterto meet the President at Pass Christian. Strong Carranzista though Mr. Lind is proving himself, I don’t think the President will be led into the risky policy of recognizing this undeveloped but certainly not very promising quantity. We can put in any sort of government in Mexico—but can wekeepone in? We encouraged the powers of dissolution around Diaz, recognizing and aiding Madero. The world knows the result. History always repeats itself here, and the writing on the wall is always in blood. After Mr. Lind’s months of inaction it must seem good to be plowing the high seasen routeto the weighty conference. He said he would have returned to the States some time ago but for the “very satisfactory” progress of the rebels. He was especially “bucked up” when Villa announced his intention of eating his New-Year’s dinner at the Jockey Club.
Many people are still coming and going in the house, but I am alone, thinking of New-Year’s eves of the past. Now I must let this year, with its griefs, harassments, glories, and interests slip into the next with this last word for you. May we all be folded in the Eternal Love. I think of my precious brother and his rare gifts. I sometimes had the feeling of receiving through his beautiful mind something direct from the universal reservoir of thought.