THERE are twenty suburban towns around the capital that can be visited by horse-cars, or as the natives say, “tram-vias.” They are Atzcapotzalco, Tacuba, Tacubaya, Jamaica, Santa Anita, Chapultepec, Molino Del Rey, Churubusco, San Angel, Castaneda, Tlalpam, Cepoyacan, Popotla, San Joaquin, Contreras, Azteca, Nueva Tenochtitlan, Guadalupe, Tlaxpano, Tlalnepantla and Mixcoac. You will notice that most of them bear Aztec and not Spanish names, which means that they are older than the Conquest, and are worth seeing, even though you do not get out of the cars.
The farthest away is old Tlalpam, about 20 kilometers, and most of the journey is made by steam. Seven or eight cars leave the city, drawn by mules to the gate of the city where they are coupled together, and a locomotive pulls the train through the beautiful valley at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. It makes one feel a little bit creepy to know that he is thus hurried along in a train of street cars, but they are made by a reliable New York firm and that gives confidence. We pass through a valley overlain with volcanic tufa, and herein lies thesecret of the wonderful productiveness of this farming land. It is easily pulverized and makes a fertilizer as potent as the commercial ones. Old Tlalpan is on the rim of the valley and the foot hills of the plateau, and is a residence suburb of the wealthy who do business in the city. The walls of the private residences are as forbidding as a penitentiary. Solid masonry from ten to twenty feet high, capped with broken glass fastened in cement.
A Mexican’s home is indeed his castle, to which he enters through stone walls and iron gates. You are not wanted there and are never invited. I knew an American professor who taught five years in Mexico, and had seen the inside of only three homes, and then he went on business, and saw none of the female members. Such is the custom and seclusiveness of the people.
Tlalpan reminds me of a citizen of New York who went into afin du sieclesaloon to get a drink, and when he paid his reckoning it was one dollar. He naturally protested against the exorbitance, and the clerk called his attention to his surroundings. “My dear sir, look about you; this is no dive, these paintings cost a hundred thousand dollars.” The victim paid the dollar, and thought long and deeply. The next day he returned by way of a harness shop, and got a pair of blind bridles that draymen use on their horses, and thus equipped he entered that aristocratic saloon and walked up to the counter. “Gimme a drink straight without any scenery today.” That is old Tlalpam. Every street has its blind bridles up and no scenery, but it is not peculiar to Tlalpam. I have never seen aMexican’s home with a front yard. At the edge of the sidewalk up goes his stone house or his stone wall, pierced with an opening and closed by a heavy iron gate fastened always on the inside. Members of the family have to give the password or its equivalent before it is ever opened, and tramps are unknown. Life would have no pleasures for a tramp who could not open the back-gate and creep up to the kitchen and frighten a woman to death by a flash of his living picture.
In Tlalpam you walk a block between high walls to the cross street, and do the same to the next and the next, and you can imagine how delightful it is, “Straight without scenery.” You must not forget that none of the streets have shade trees. So after I had admired all the beautiful stone walls and stone pavements, a wicket was suddenly opened to pass someone in, and I got a flashing glance of languid señoras and señoritas taking their siesta in hammocks swung between lime trees redolent with fragrance and—some one shut the gate. If that sleepy old town thought that I had come all the way there to look at the stone walls, little did it know me. I pounded on that gate till the startled inhabitants thought I was trying to break into jail, but I got in, and found myself in one of the most beautiful and fascinating places I had yet seen. The spraying fountains and flowers and song birds, and the Moorish setting of the surroundings, took me back to the wonderful stories of the Alhambra. Meanwhile that astonished household was all agape at the unheard of intrusion, but great is the power of flattery. I frankly told them that I had been sent all theway from the United States by a committee of one, to hunt out the most beautiful places in Mexico and secure their photographs at all hazard to display and strike dead with envy the people who live in the stuffy cities of America. That on that very morning I had left the City of Mexico for the express purpose of getting a picture of the finest place and the most beautiful ladies in Tlalpam, and with that end in view I was here.——“Enough Señor, enough! Take us; we are all yours, the house, the fountains, the trees, the girls—they are all yours, take them.”
Here was eloquence and victory combined and I did not know what to do with all the victory. I had solemnly promised not to accept any more costly presents from these good people, but this bunch of girls seemed to be different from hotels and other real estate, so I resolved to make the old gentleman a present of his house and lot, and keep the girls: so I very gladly embraced—er—the opportunity of posing them for their pictures. Why these good people should hide so much loveliness and beauty behind impassable stone walls is beyond my ken.
How old is Tlalpam? I don’t know, but it began at a time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Upon the walls, the crop of glass planted in the cement did not seem to flourish very much. It was a very glassy looking glass and seemed to need irrigating, but time is long with these people, and if it does not pan out a crop in the next fifty years, they will wait patiently formanana, that scape-goat of all incompleted enterprises—to-morrow. I don’t know whatever gave these people an idea that they could grow glass anyway, unless it was theSpanish moss. This moss is a parasite that grows upon all kinds of trees, but in old Tlalpam it grows upon the wires stretched across the street to hold the street lamps, and it is aristocratic moss that grows with its head up instead of trailing, and I call that making headway against adverse conditions. The weeds and cacti upon the wall seemed to make their way better than the broken glass, and when I last saw them, they were green and were getting up in the world.
“But it is a long lane,” etc., as the proverb says, so at last the supply of aristocracy gave out at the rise of the hill, and we reached the realm of the great unwashed, who had neither walls nor rags to hide their nakedness. The happy children were clothed with innocence which needed no other protection than the blue sky and the Republic of Mexico.
Higher and higher we go up the hill. The avenue we started in led into the main street, this street finally led into a path, and the path terminated in a cow trail and this trail merged into a squirrel path which ran up a tree; so, like the King of France, “We marched up the hill, and then marched down again.” But before starting down we stopped to rest at the tree where the squirrel trail disappeared, and looked over the valley, and could realize the emotions of Cortez when he stood at the same place and viewed a similar scene. Across the silver lake lay the City of Mexico, twenty kilometers away, with its thousands of spires and pulse-throbs that supplied the veins and arteries and capillaries to the fortunes and hopes of its tens of thousands of dependencies. No wonder Cortez said it wasthe fairest city man ever looked upon. The one thing a stranger never quite masters here is the rarified atmosphere which destroys all ideas of distance and nullifies all laws of optics. You have traveled the road and know it is twenty kilometers, but the city is brought so like a mirage that you seem almost able to hear the clock strike. We leave our squirrel path and find ourselves in the city of the dead, a beautiful place shaded with eucalyptus trees and furnished with restful seats.
Soon there enters a figure heavily veiled and places a wreath of amaranth upon a new-made grave, marked with a wooden cross, and R. I. P. We leave her to her sorrow and follow a limpid stream from the mountain back to the city below. Beyond is the parched chaparral and the thorny cactus now laden with its harvest of purple tunas, surely the manna of the desert for these discouraged-looking peons. Beside the stream were green trees of limes and oranges and English walnuts and agua caties and an air of restfulness.
We follow the stream into the little plaza with its spraying fountain and fragrantDatura suaveolens, which grows into quite a bush. The pleasant seats invite us to sit and listen to the notes of the noisy purple grackle and the discordant tropical jay as they take their morning bath. Rip Van Winkle is still asleep and Mrs. Xantippe R. V. W. has not yet come from the market, and so for fear of disturbing the serenity of that Elysian Field, we tip-toe back to the station where the car is waiting, and that sleepy old town does not know to this day that a band of camera fiends invaded its sacred precincts,even unto its highest citadel and returned without the loss of a single man. Happy Old Tlalpam. R.I.P.
Back across the ancient bed of the lake we fly, and where once was Montezuma’s fleet are herds of sleek cattle, knee-deep in rich alfalfa, awaiting their turn to contribute to the material welfare of the mammoth city. We reach a junction, Churubusco! Immediately we think of that history class of twenty years ago, when we had to “stay in” after school because those battles would not fight themselves in the right places; when Chancellorsville and Crown Point and Saratoga and Churubusco could not agree as to time, place and manner. Here was a chance to settle one point, even if the teacher had long since died of worry, and we anxiously get out and look.
“WhereisChurubusco?” “This is Churubusco.” “But,” I said, “I don’t see anything but a street-car stable with come mules in it.” “All the same this is Churubusco.” “Well,” I enquired, “where does this mule car go from this junction?” “It goes to San Angel, a summer residence town.” I determined to go out there and come back when my mind was settled to take a look at Churubusco, but when I got back, there it was, just an adobe mule stable. I sat on a bench opposite and tried to think what did General Scott want with the stable, and why they put it in the history. I suppose it was put there to punish unoffending little boys who liked to play base-ball. I took out my camera and prepared to shoot the harmless stable, and changed my mind. I was not on a warlike expedition, but was in pursuit of knowledge, and I did not want to add another blot on the sanguinary page of America’s Dr. Ledger. No, not for a brevet. I put up my magazine.
A general vegetable merchant, who had three cabbages and four turnips on a board, seeing my troubled countenance, very kindly came over and said: “Que pense, Señor?” I said: “I am thinking about General Scott bringing his army up here after that car stable and then did not take it away after you gave it to him. Now don’t you think he was off his base?” He shrugged both shoulders, took his cigarette from his mouth and thought a minute, and then he uttered these words of wisdom: “Quien sabe?”
I said, “Well if you live here and do not know, how am I expected to know, and what are the histories to do about it? And my good fellow, just between you and me and the gatepost, don’t you think if General Scott had come here and taken a good look at that stable first, he would have gone on to town and had a good night’s rest, and saved me all this unrest and pang of conscience about that history lesson, and that poor dead teacher?”
With his eyes full of pity he said: “Señor, are you hungry?” “Yes I am, and I am disgusted with your old street-car stable.” “Señor, here’s your car if you are going to town.” I turned my face to the city and my back on Churubusco.
We soon reached the city gate, where the locomotive was unhitched and the mules were re-hitched, and we were soon on the street, where we met a funeral car with its black canopy flying behind, as the mules, under whip and lash, hurried to the city of the dead, and I went todrown my thoughts in a glass of pina. Others may have this drowning mania sometimes, so I give this recipe free gratis for nothing, as I got it from the señora on the Zocalo. The pine-apple is first pared and sliced as we do apples. Then on her knees the señora takes her stone rolling pin and stone vessel like a wash board and reduces the slices to pulp, which is strained and sweetened and iced, and is sent to you by the señorita, who guarantees to drown all your troubles for just six cents, and she innocently prattles away until the glass is empty, and “of course the caballero will have another.” Under ordinary circumstances you would not, but many a man has taken his second glass there just because he did not know how to say no. The next car is bound for Atzcapotzalco, so we jump aboard and pass out upon that terrible causeway where the Spanish army were almost annihilated on that memorable night ofNoche Triste, July 1, 1520.
At the bridge you pass through the Riverra de San Cosme and are shown El Salto de Alvarado. Alvarado was the most trusted lieutenant of Cortez, and on the retreat that night the Aztecs cut the causeway and the waters rushed in, separating the army of Cortez into two parts. Alvarado was fighting in the rear, and when he attempted to join Cortez he found the dike cut. His men were all killed or taken prisoners, and he gathered all his strength and made the leap from the end of his lance that made him famous. Authorities do not give the distance, but say it was impossible for any other man. Aztecs and Tlaxcalans alike looked on in amazement and cried: “Surely this is Tonatiuh, the child of the Sun!”
Here the Aztecs stopped to gather up the rich booty which Cortez had taken from their treasure-house and was forced to leave behind in the breach, and the circumstance alone enabled the invaders to reach the village of Popotla, a mile further, where Cortez sat down to weep over the destruction of his army. The tree under which he sat is by the side of the street and is known as the tree ofNoche Triste—Melancholy Night. It is a cypress and is called by the Aztecs, Ahuehuete. Some years ago a religious fanatic set fire to it and disfigured it, but it still shows a trunk forty feet high and the same in circumference. The American tourists were about to take it all away as relics, so the city was compelled to enclose it in a lofty iron fence, which is fully able to enforce the ordinance, “Keep off the grass.” The natives very naturally expected me to attempt to scale the fence and get a branch, and to let them know that all Americans could live up to their reputation. I vigorously shook one or two of the iron posts which stubbornly refused to leave the enclosure. All the same I felt proud; I had proved to them that I was an Americano, who would rob the dead, if the dead had any keep-sakes about him that would do to exhibit at home.
Having thus patriotically saved our national reputation, I boarded the car for Atzcapotzalco, which was once an independent kingdom and the capital of the Tepanecs. Atzcapotzalco, only seven miles from Tenochtitlan, held the Aztecs in subjection. Once when the Aztec King sent a present, Maxatla, the tyrant, inderision returned to the king a woman’s dress. Later he allured to his court the wife of the Aztec king and violated her. For this insult, the Aztec king Itzacoatl, “Serpent of stone,” made an alliance with the Acolhuans, and in a two days’ battle the city of Atzcapotzalco was taken, 1448, and reduced to a slave market and never again rose to power. I think they were still talking about that battle when I was there. Old age seemed to have settled down upon everything, and the task to arouse them was so great I refused the contract and left it just as Cortez found it in 1520. The valley surrounding it is very fertile and alfalfa and vegetables were as green as ivy.
Tacubaya is the Monte Carlo of Mexico and the most aristocratic suburb around the city, with fine residences and beautiful gardens and the most handsome villas in the country. From the gate of Chapultepec a causeway leads through a most beautifully shaded avenue to the city, and then I lost interest in it. I was riding a bicycle and when I reached those cobble-stone pavements I gave them my undivided attention. A tall fellow from Texas did the swearing for the crowd, and he was so fluent there was no need for reinforcement, so my whole mind was given to calculations as to whether I could mount that next stone or climb out of the next hole. I saw a policeman and I thought he was coming to read the law, which says no team shall go faster than a walk, so I stopped to give him my impression of the inquisition and the rack, but I was disappointed. He had simply used up all the shade on his corner and was hunting for more. A frog once livedin Kiota, so the Japanese story runs, and he started out to see the world. When he reached the top of a hill he reared on his hind feet to view the world. As everybody knows, a frog’s eyes are on the back of his head, and as he reared up, his eyes pointed right back to Kioto, so he returned and said: “All the world is like Kioto.” So all of Tacubaya is like the main street, just cobble-stones. I am sorry I missed all the beauties they say are there, but all I saw was the front wheel of that bicycle and the cobble-stones. Bicycling is best done in that town on foot.
With Penon it is different. Penon was once an island in Lake Texcoco, but since the draining of the lake it is high and dry and is noted for the hot baths and its beautiful bath house. The whole establishment is paved in glazed tiles laid in mosaics, and the pillars are all painted after the ancient Egyptian style. I never was an Egyptian, but if I was I think I would mistake this excellent imitation for one of the old establishments that Anthony and Cleopatra used to patronize so liberally. The ride to Penon on bicycle across the ancient bed of the lake cannot be excelled.
On the road we passed the new penitentiary and the boys wanted to stop and see it, but I was perfectly satisfied to “pass by on the other side.” Not that I was likely to meet any old acquaintance among its officials, but on general principles I argue that a penitentiary is a good place to stay away from. You might get lost in there and not get out, and besides, we had been interviewed by the greatest newspaper in the city, and as most fellows’ wood-cuts always look like somebody you never heard of, I thought thoseofficials might have seen those pictures and would arrest us—I mean the other fellows—for some jail bird that escaped long ago; but they were bound to go so I told themsomebodyhad to attend to those bicycles, and if they would not I felt it my bounden duty to stay there and guard them. So I went to the pen by proxy. They say it was grand and had cages and other attractive furniture all from the United States. I always mean to go to the penitentiary by proxy.
Across the lake is the city of Texcoco, that was once the Athens of the valley as Tenochtitlan was the Rome. Here are many ancient remains of buildings built when this was the most bitter rival the Aztec capital had. Were it not for the help of the Texcocoans, Cortez never would have conquered the Island City. Beyond here are the Arcos de Zempoala, an aqueduct 37 miles long, supported by arches nearly a hundred feet high. Two leagues from Texcoco is the Malino de Flores, “The Mill of the Flowers,” which is not a mill at all, but the entrancing home and estate of an old Spanish family, Cervantes by name, and one of the oldest and noblest of the Grandees from old Spain.
In this fairy land of a hermitage you marvel as you never did before at the possibilities of beautiful surroundings and Moorish architecture. I wish I might describe this beautiful place, but no one can unless he be artist, florist and architect, and as I am neither I will not mar its beauty by a parody of an attempt. For a description of the towns I did not visit, consult any good cyclopedia.
THE city contains nearly six hundred miles of streets well-paved but not supplied with shade trees. In nomenclature they area puzzle. The principal street is San Francisco; the first block of it is called first San Francisco; the second block, second San Francisco, etc., and often a street changes its name every now and then, and the names include everything: La Nina Perdita, or Lost Child Street, Crown of Thorns Street, Holy Ghost Street, Mother of Sorrows Street, Blood of Christ Street, Jesus of Nazarus Street, The Immaculate Host of Jesus Street.
And the shop signs are a law unto themselves. No sign indicates the kind of business done in the shops. Thus, “El Congresso Americano” may be a blacksmith shop or a milliner’s establishment; “El Sueno de Amor” is the Dream of Love, but is likely over a shoe store; “La Perla Del Orient” was a lottery ticket office; “El Amor Cantivo,” Captive Love, was a dry goods’ store; and so on with “El Mar,” The Sea; “La Coquetta,” “El Triumfo de Diablo” and “The Port of New York.” Sometimes they hit a meaning which was not meant; “The Gate of Heaven” was all right, as it was placed over a drug store.
Other signs ending in “ria” indicate the goods sold. “Sombrereria” is a hat store, “sombrerero” is the hatter and “sombrero,” the hat. “Zapateria,” shoe store; “zapatero,” shoe dealer; “zapato,” a shoe. “Sasastaria,” a tailor shop; “plataria,” silversmith, etc., but these signs are used only where articles are made, all others being fanciful. The stores are nearly all kept by Frenchmen and styles are the same as in Paris. The ladies of the “400” do their shopping in their carriages, and have the goods brought to the carriage for inspection.
The metric system prevails. Railroad tickets are sold by the kilometer, land by the hectare, cloth by the meter and sugar by the kilogram. Silver money is coined in the same denomination as ours, and the coppers are as large as a silver quarter. The law for counting money by dollars and cents was passed in 1890, but the people still count by the old way, though they know both. The old way is a copper tlaco, a cent and a half, a cuartillo, three cents. For silver, medio, 6¼ cents; real, 12½ cents, which is equivalent to our “bit.” A quarter, or “two bits” is two reals, in Spanishdos realesbut always pronounced “do reals.” The real is the unit of calculation, the people rarely using the term pesos, or dollars, in small amount, If you ask the hotelprietorwhat are his terms, instead of saying two dollars, he will say sixteen reals, and will use that term for any amount less than five dollars. An actual real of 6¼ cents is no longer coined, and its value leads to serious complications.
Your street car fare is twelve cents for two tickets. You offer the conductor a quarter and hewill give you twelve cents, and will try to argue that he is right, but when you enter the number of his badge on your note-book he promptly gives up the other cent, but he never fails to try to claim it. I have known fruit vendors to lose a trade in trying to keep the odd cent in a quarter, arguing that a real is 6¼ cents in theory but only 6 in practice. Counterfeiting is the greatest industry in the republic outside of the lottery business. Paper money is rarely seen, and that makes the volume of silver enormous, and requires everybody to carry bags of it. If you paid a man a hundred dollars in quarters, he would test each one separately hunting for counterfeits, before he would accept payment, and the “ring” of money testing in the market is a regular Babel. No man or woman trusts another in making change, and if there is no hard surface near to throw it upon, into the mouth it goes, and if the teeth make the least indenture, back to you it is flung.
The street car system is excellent. All the street cars are horse cars drawn by mules. They are hitched tandem and go always at a gallop. The cars go from one to fifteen miles and have regular schedule time. They all meet and start from the Zocalo on the Plaza Mayor by the Cathedral, where there is a general conductor with a time-card who starts them off. They always go in trains of from three to six or nine cars in first, second and third class, and with short distances the fare is three, six and nine cents. When there are only two classes, the fare of the first is double the second. The first class car is painted yellow, and bears the legend, “For 20 passengers,” and must never carry more.The theory is that if a passenger is willing to pay for comfort he shall have it. Second class cars are painted green, with the legend, “For 35 passengers.” For long distances the fare may reach as high as thirty cents. The conductor sells you a numbered ticket, and the collector takes it up, and in your presence must tear off one corner to prevent the possibility of using it a second time. Gentlemen always offer seats to ladies, and salute the passengers on entering and leaving the car. As the car is reaching a crossing or turning a corner the driver blows a tin horn, the same that makes life a burden for us on Christmas day. If the car is going to a bath-house or other public place where charges are made, the conductor will sell you a coupon ticket with admittance to the place, the price being always printed on it, thus saving you much trouble in a rush.
Courtesy is the price of position here, and no better officials can be found than the street car conductors, and, the least infraction or discourtesy reported to headquarters receives prompt attention. The railroads also run three separate classes of cars with prices accordingly, but not quite in the proportion as street cars. Thus, from Celaya to Guadalajara, the distance is 161 miles, and a return ticket, first class, is $9.86, second $6.56, and third $4.90.
Of carriages there are four classes. Carriages painted yellow and flying a yellow flag are third class and cannot charge more than twenty-five cents for a half hour or less, nor more than fifty cents for a whole hour. Those painted red and carrying a red flag cannot charge more than thirty-seven cents, and for an hour seventy-fivecents. Blue, fifty cents for half hour, $1 for one hour. Green, special rates at option of driver and passenger. When a passenger enters a carriage, the flag must be taken down immediately so that everybody may know it is engaged and will not hail the driver, and he cannot make other engagements until the carriage is empty. All carriages and horses are inspected by a commission who pass upon the respectability of carriage and team and order the proper color painted across the doors, and the printed rates pasted inside so that no intelligent traveler need be imposed upon. And every hotel must post in its rooms the rates “con comida,” or “sin comida”—with or without board. No one need pay in advance; no matter how dilapidated you look or how scant your baggage, you may hire the most costly apartment in the hotel and no questions asked about security.
This is because the law protects the people, and if you defrauded a poor market woman out of a copper the law would follow you to the confines of the republic and imprison you for debt. That settles the bum question. The hotel proprietor assigns you to your room and cares not a straw about you until you are ready to leave. If you pay, very well, come again. If not, by clapping the hands at the door brings a policeman immediately. The policeman hears the landlord’s story, and gives you your option—either pay or go with him, and the prisoner becomes the property of the creditor until he is paid.
The police system is excellent, from the reason I am told that they are not appointed by political favor, but are soldiers from the barracks andcan be always found. Every street-crossing has a policeman all day and another all night, so during the twenty-four hours there is not a moment when he cannot be found. When the night squad comes on at 6 p. m. each man brings a lighted lantern and sets it in the middle of the crossing, and it is possible to stand at a crossing and count forty lanterns down the four intersecting streets. As soon as the houses are closed the policeman tries the doors and windows of each house to see if they are fastened, and returns to his lantern. Every half hour during the night each man must blow his whistle to show that he is awake and on duty. If you are a stranger and ask for direction, thepoliticowill take you to the next crossing and deliver you to another and you may thus be passed to a dozenpoliticos, and they will take every precaution to deliver you safely. If you are a prisoner, the process is the same, and no man knows what you are arrested for but the first. The man who delivers the prisoner simply tells from whom he got him, and so to the next until the first is reached who makes the charge. This makes bribery and escape impossible, for when a prisoner is delivered to the next man, the deliverer must report. It is exactly after the manner of the registry department of our post office. Should the person making the arrest receive a bribe and permit an escape, no one would know, but when once started down the line nopoliticowould take the chances.
Every gambling house or assignation house or cock-pit or any other institution that the government licenses, is also furnished with policemen. All day long he stands guard atyour door, and all night long his lantern sits at your steps, and, like the old man of the sea, he is always there to prevent disturbance. In the gambling house, he sits like a statue till the business is closed and sees all that passes. You give a ball in your private house, thepoliticotakes a chair by the door and sits quietly till your guests have departed. You get up a little picnic or an excursion a few miles from the city, a special coach is fastened to the train carrying a company of infantry to keep you company all day. A foreign consul gives a reception to other consuls, a squad of mounted police sit their horses like statues in front of the consulate until it is all over. The American colony gives a 4th of July celebration, all day long they follow the procession or look at the dancing but never a word say they. They are neither meddlesome nor prying, they are just omnipresent.
Your society gives a parade. Your line of march must be made known to the prefect of police and every rod of that distance will be guarded by cavalry. You enter a theater and every tier of seats has a silent man in uniform. You enter a hotel and any complaint from guest or proprietor is made to thepolitico. You sit at a public table or other place, and the proprietor refuses to serve you on account of color, thepoliticolocks the door and takes the proprietor before the tribunal. He is absolutely everywhere, but he is neither garrulous nor loquacious, and he answers all questions with a courtesy that is refreshing. Beyond the city limits he is no longer apoliticobut a rurale, a horseman dressed in buckskin and “booted and spurredand ready to ride.” He patrols the outlying country as a policeman, judge or soldier. On the western division of the railroad, whenever the train stops, two rurales armed with rifles and sabres inspect the train. When the train leaves the station, a rurale stands on each platform and looks through the glass door at the passengers till the train gets to the next station, where he gets off and another takes his place, and so on to the end of the road. The next train going the next way, each squad is carried back to their homes, only to repeat the program to-morrow. When the train stops for dinner you leave your wraps and luggage in the seat and pass into the dining room, while a rurale locks the car door and stands guard till your return.
Never a word do these silent men say. For hours they stand looking through the car door to see that no harm comes to anything or anybody. No one ever hears of train robbers in Mexico, but there is a reason for all this. A country that has been accustomed to its annual revolution and whose whole list of presidents and emperors nearly have died a violent death, must needs be ruled by an iron hand.
And it has not been more than fifteen years since bandits ruled the country and dictated terms to the government. As late as February 15, 1885, a commission of officers was sent from Zacatecas by the government to make a treaty with the bandit chief, Eraclio Bernal, and they returned unsuccessful. The bandit said he would disband his men under these conditions: “Pardon for himself and band, a bonus of thirty thousand dollars for himself, and to keep an armed escort of twenty-five men, or tobe put in command of the army in the district of Sinaloa.” That is the answer the chief sent to the government; and I have seen an express wagon leave the train with the mail and express, with enough armed men to fill the wagon, to escort it through the streets of a city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants. This condition remained until President Porfirio Diaz hit upon a plan that it took a thief to catch a thief, so he sent word to the bandits that if they would quit robbing and come in, he would make them all officers with a salary, and they could still patrol their old haunts and keep the other fellows down, and they accepted. Now these men are guarding the very trains they used to rob. They are born horsemen and can ride a horse ninety miles a day on the trail. They are the best horsemen in the world, and can throw the lasso and shoot as well as ride. On a wager you can put a rurale in chase after a steer and he will throw the riato over either foot you name, and never check the speed of his horse.
They are a law unto themselves, and independent of municipal authority. The rurales may find a man breaking open a freight car, and they take him behind the depot, try him, dig his grave and shoot him into it, and the case is settled. No court or civil law will ever go behind their acts, and that stroke of President Diaz has given the country its prosperity. The wrong-doers know that the rurales are everywhere, and that their vengeance or justice is swift and sure. There is a tacit understanding that jails and criminals are expensive, and dead prisoners are inexpensive; therefore, if a man’s crime is worthy of death, he is shot immediately,and all convicts are turned into the army to do the dirty work of the camp. Should he try to escape, a hundred men know that they will be commended who shoot him first, so there is no wasted sentimentality with crime, it is simply an option, be good or be dead.
Ten years ago a man dared not travel without an armed escort, and now the same men he feared are his armed escort. When a great celebration is on hand and the military is wanted to parade, nine-tenths of the admiration is bestowed upon the rurales. Centaurs they are, with their caparisoned horses with every piece of metal about saddle and bridle of solid silver. His own dress is characteristic. With his yellow buckskin clothes with silver buttons, silver spur and tall sombrero with silver spangles and monogram, he is an object to win your admiration. Go where you will, in mountain and valley, hillside and plain, you will meet the rurales (they always go in pairs) with their ever ready rifle and lariat, looking for evil doers. Neither money nor time nor patience is wasted on criminals, and you never hear of mistrials, or appeals, or “deferred till next session.” Their court dockets are never crowded. The official shooter with his Winchester goes from court to court and shoots the prisoners as fast as they are condemned.
The republic supports an army of forty-five thousand men, and every town and city is a garrison, and has its military bands. Since the people support the army, they think the army is theirs, and they make claims upon what they claim as theirs. Every town has its military band, and many of them have three or four,and three evenings of each week and all of Sunday afternoon and evening the bands must play for the people. This is a rule without exception, and they are good bands and play fine music. The bands number from forty to eighty performers each, and in large cities there is no evening without music, alternating with different parks, but on Sunday they are all on duty, and with the band comes the social feature of the people. Around the band stand is a circular asphalt walk, possibly an acre in circumference. While the band is playing, the parents and duennas and chaperones are seated.
The young men four or five deep are promenading on the outer circumference of the circle and the young ladies on the inner, but going in the opposite direction. Here are possibly a thousand young people thus enjoying themselves, the young men talking to each other and the young ladies to each other, but never opposite sexes to each other. Their social customs are as unchanging as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and for a young man to speak to a young lady in public would be a breach of etiquette never forgiven, and a young lady would not dare walk two squares on a public street unattended by a duenna, unless she was going to prayers. She would run the risk of her social standing. There is no doubt that they do throw “sheep-eyes” at each other in the promenades, but speak, never. At 10 P.M. the band plays its last number, and the duennas gather up the young ladies and the young men gather up themselves and they all go home and talk about the glorious time they had.
The young and unmarried never mingle.Should a young man have seen his fate among these promenaders he may not say so to her. He finds out where she lives and “plays the bear”—that is he passes along the street on the opposite side and gazes longingly at her balcony. This he does many times and many days. Of course she pretends that she does not see him, but at the same time she is earnestly looking for him every day. If she goes to the window he may stop. Further encouragement is given by her disappearing from the window and returning with a smilea la Juliet, and the young man goes home and pats himself on the back and throws bouquets at himself for his great success. Perhaps he will keep up this bear business for a year, perhaps two, and has never spoken to the little angel. Sometimes he will get under her window with his guitar with twelve strings and burden the night-wind with his made-to-order songs, and if she does not pour a pitcher of water on his head he has made so much headway that he would be justified in thrashing any other fellow who should hang around the premises playing bear, “haciendo del orso.”
He is supposed now to have made enough headway to be allowed to call and get an introduction and he must find a mutual friend who can do it for him. He arranges the matter, and at last is admitted and introduced to the señorita in the presence of the mother and father and duenna, and he never, no never sees her alone. He invites her to the theater, and when the carriage calls the whole family is dressed and ready to go, and he never sees her except in their presence. If there is no objection on the part of the parents, and if Barkis iswilling—and she generally is—the marriage takes place, and “they live together happy ever afterwards” as the story books say. Their courtship seems to be in accumulating all the imaginable difficulties possible, andalwayspresumes that the parents will be unwilling and must be outwitted, and this invents plots and counter plotsad infinitum. Of course the parents know, and the young folks know they know, but it is the custom to invent difficulties and they can not depart from custom. A married woman’s sphere is but little different from the unmarried; she can accompany her husband on the street is one advantage. She is pretty as paint can make her and as ignorant as hermits usually are. A woman’s world here has two hemispheres—the home and the church, and she lives and dies knowing no more.
A woman who makes claims to aristocracy must not under any circumstances earn a penny or she loses caste immediately. If she teaches or embroiders for the church or for charity she is excused, but for herself, never. Sometimes poverty clips the wings of these high-flyers, and it becomes a serious struggle between starving and losing caste. In such cases they will sometimes ostensibly give music lessons for charity, but collect for it on the sly and still preserve their social standing.
With the great middle class, all this is different—they live in another world. They make no pretense to tinsel aristocracy, and have their living to make and they make it with no limitations whatever beyond their capacity, and for intelligence and business, a wife from this class of Mexican women is worth seventy-nineof the bluest blood aristocracy I have seen in Mexico. They have a fair education in Spanish, and both French and English are taught in the schools now, and I have found them able to converse in all three, and could buy and sell with as good a margin for profit as men.
Of course there are three classes here, and the third class will be treated of in a separate chapter. The only bearing they have here is that they are servants to the other two, but their social standing does not count for much, Very few girls in this class are unmarried at thirteen or fourteen years of age, and twelve year old girls as mothers is as common a sight as pig-tracks, Maturity comes early in the tropics, and a woman is a wrinkled back-number at thirty.
The marriage ceremony does not trouble these people much. They have not the money to buy the license, and so they omit the legal ceremony. On a hacienda near San Luis Potosi, a peon lost his wife. He came to the boss and asked for a mule to take the body to the cemetery, and also asked for two dollars. He explained that he might bring back another wife with him, so he wanted to be prepared for emergencies. After three hours he brought back another wife, and his household machinery never missed a cog.
Feast days without number give this happy people the opportunity of enjoying themselves and resting. Not resting because they are weary or overworked, but resting on general principles. The Ethics of Rest is a science they have appropriated unto themselves. They do say that men who love music and flowers will never make cowards or traitors. “La Fiestade las Flores”—the feast of flowers, is held on Friday before Holy Week; “Viernes de Dolores” or Sad Friday. Thisfiestawas once held on La Viga when every boat on the lakes took part in the decoration of everything and everybody, but Fashion has now decreed that it be held in the Alameda. The Alameda is the Charing Cross of Mexico. It is a park of forty acres that was once the site of the Inquisition, where Indians were barbecued because they did not accept the Catholic religion. The Inquisition held its lastauto-da-feand burned its last conspicuous victim, Gen. José Morelos, in the Plaza as late as November, 1815!
The Alameda has been the birthplace of gunpowder plots, and St. Bartholomew’s days and revolutions all and sundry for many, many years, but now it is a peaceful pleasure park, beautiful with fountains, and aviaries of rare birds and redolent with orange blossoms and whatever the ingenuity of man can add in the list of charming flowers and shaded walks and shrubs that never know the sere and yellow leaf, and here onViernes de Dolores, before daybreak the throngs pour in a steady stream of Indians from across the mountains and the dwellers from the plains and the lake dwellers are there and everybody has flowers. The patient burros have come laden with flowers till only their ears are seen. From away down on the coast, Jalapa has sent two carloads offlores, and everybody buys flowers and decorates and makes himself pleasant. No one must fail to do homage to Flora, the goddess offlores, and so garlands and wreaths and merry-makers make possible for the first time the extravagant displays I have so often seen on the drop-curtains of the opera house and thought were so impossible. The fountains were festooned and draped with the rarest of fragrant flowers, and rarer orchids, and every available place on person or thing was adorned, and two bands played alternately, and from early morn till late at night was one vast holiday.
Then there is anotherFiesta de los Flores, afiesta, but not a feast. This is the “Combate de Flores.” This is designed especially for the aristocracy and is held on Paseo de La Reforma. It is a custom borrowed from Cannes or Nice, and is exactly what the name implies, a combat of flowers. The line of battle extends from the statue of Charles IV to the gates of the castle of Chapultepec, over two miles. The carriages are all decorated with flowers, and as they pass and repass each other the occupants pelt each other with flowers. The ladies in the balconies along the Paseo also take part. The hour for assembly is 4 p. m. A double line of cavalry extends clear to Chapultepec. At each glorieta is a military band. The sidewalks are jammed by an admiring multitude who watch the carriages pass with their occupants resting literally on a bed of roses with which to pelt each other, to finally stop at the statue of Cuauhtemoc, where the prizes are to be given to the best decorated carriages. The prizes were escritoires in ebony, bronze vases, statuettes and diplomas of honorable mention. The carriages were transformed into crystallized dreams.
One lady, whose name was Concha, had a carriage body of an immense white shell of eglantines and white and cream roses. Anotherwas a cornucopia of sea-weed and palms interlocked with flowers of every hue. President Diaz and his wife appeared in an undecorated carriage, possibly to save the embarrassment of the jury in distributing prizes. And what more esthetic and harmless recreations could we have than the utter abandon with which these people enjoy the blessings of life and nature? Our lives have little enough of sunshine sifted into them, and we might learn some valuable lessons from these tropic people how to get our quota of real joy out of three hundred and sixty-five days. The fountain of youth which Ponce de Leon sought in vain is here discovered, happiness.
The drainage of the city is not good, and were it not for the altitude, the death rate here would be terrible. Imagine yourself in New Orleans, and find yourself suddenly lifted a mile and a half in mid air, and you are in the City of Mexico. The air is rare and pure. A corpse could be left out of ground any length of time and would not decompose, but would only dry up. Fresh meat never spoils, and vegetables simply grow old and refrigerators are unknown. There is no winter, no summer, but the rainy season from May till September is followed by the dry season. During the rainy season you may expect a shower once a day, lasting perhaps an hour, perhaps ten minutes, and then the sun shines again. The nights are glorious with southern constellations, and Polaris and the Southern Cross are both seen, but the handle of the great dipper is broken off below the horizon.
You wear the same clothes the year round, asthe climate is the same. After four o’clock you must put on wraps, for the nights are always cool enough to require blankets every night in the year. The Mexican made shoe is an instrument of torture which nobody would endure but a Mexican, because he has never seen a better. High heel and tooth-pick toe, throws all the weight in a pointed toe which must hold twice its normal capacity. The unsightly gait the women make with this uncomfortable shoe is distressing, and to add to the torture they do not wear stockings—so I am told. My own shoes wore out and I tried in four cities, without success, to buy a pair of low-cut shoes. We wear them for the comfort they bring in hot weather, but they have none, so they do not make low-quarter shoes. You never see perspiration on a person’s face here, no matter how violent the exercise.
The Mexican chews tobacco—never. He smokes tobacco, always, men, women and children, on the street, in the theater, at the table—everywhere is the deadly cigarette, and they inhale the smoke and emit it from the nostrils. The Pullman car is the only place where it is necessary to display the sign “No se permitir fumar.” The matches are wax tapers and double enders. When a person asks for a match, he lights one end and puts it out, and always returns you the unused end. Such a match will hold a blaze a minute. High caste ladies do not smoke in public. The floors of the cars and other public places are pitted as though they have had the small-pox where smokers have thrown their half-burned matches which burn long enough to scorch the floor.
The theaters are built after our style except that every tier of seats is divided into boxes holding six chairs. Everything goes well until the last act, when a porter calls upon you politely for six cents for the use of the chair, and then you learn that the price of the ticket does not include a seat, and that a seat concession goes with every theater. You may stand if you prefer, but a Spanish play is no shorter than an English one. In the front center of the stage is the prompters stand. Through a trap-door in the stage near the foot-lights his head projects above the floor and is concealed from the audience by a tin cornucopia opening toward the stage, so he can be seen as well as heard by the actors, but he can also be heard by the audience as he prompts their half-learned lines.
Kerosene at fifty cents a gallon is the universal public illuminator, and the empty five-gallon cans with the U. S. brand are met with everywhere.
Sept. 16 is Independence Day in Mexico, and its observance is worthy of note. Its birth was similar to our own, and the child of oppression from the mother country. Spain prohibited the Mexicans any trade whatever with any other country but Spain under penalty of death. No schools whatever were allowed except in charge of the priests, who suppressed every branch of useful knowledge. No manufactures of any kind were allowed if Spain could produce and sell the article, and nothing was allowed to be planted in the rich soil that Spanish farmers in Spain could sell in Mexico. In 1810, a patriotic Catholic priest, Maguel Hidalgo y Castella (Hidalgo his father’s name, Castella his mother’s) with adesire to benefit his starving countrymen, introduced the silkworm and planted vineyards. These industries were promptly destroyed by the Spanish officials, and thus were the seeds of rebellion and liberty planted.
Hidalgo had been among his countrymen and organized a rebellion. On the night of Sept. 15, 1810, it was whispered to Hidalgo that his plans were discovered and the government forces were marching on him. With swift decision he had the church bells of Dolores to sound the danger signal, and when the alarmed population reached the plaza, they found their priest with torch and musket. With burning words he told them of their wrongs and discovered plans, and at that strange hour and in the darkness where one could not distinguish friend or foe he gave the famousgrito, Mexico’s Declaration of Independence: “Long live our Mother, most holy Guadalupe! Long Live America! Death to bad Government!”
Thus, in that modest hamlet, now known as Dolores Hidalgo, was set on foot the revolution which eleven years later gave Mexico her independence, after three hundred years of oppression and cruelty never equalled before in any other country. And now, on the night of Sept. 15, you may witness the most remarkable celebration among liberty-loving people. Before night the tri-color is displayed from every building, and across the streets are hung innumerable Chinese lanterns ready for lighting.
As night advances, the ten acres of the Plaza Mayor becomes a seething mass, just as it was that memorable night of Noche Triste three hundred and seventy-six years ago when theAztecs drove the Conquistadors from this very plaza beyond the city gates. As the hands of the great clock in the cathedral slowly move, those ten acres of faces are turned upon its illuminated dial and all voices are hushed. As the hands come together, a magic wand is touched somewhere, and ten thousand lights flash on the scene from a thousand beacons. The string of Chinese lanterns sway across the streets. Immediately that sea of faces is turned to the opposite end of the Plaza facing the national palace. Like a scene from “Dore’s Last Judgment,” those silent faces, in the lights and shadows of the illumination, point southward, waiting Hidalgo’s hour. Exactly at eleven o’clock, appears the soldier-president, Porfirio Diaz, bearing above his head the banner of red, white and green, and from under its folds launches forth again thegritothat for eighty-seven years has been their war-cry: “Mexicanos! Viva Independencia! Viva La Republica!” Instanter the trumpets blare, the cannons boom, martial music is set free, the bells from the towers give tone and the heavens are lit with the glare of fireworks that rival the halcyon days of Popocatapetl. Ten thousand resound the glorious call. “Viva Mexico! Viva Independencia!” until the very soul of every freeman instinctively cries in its own language, “Viva Independencia!”
The next day the grand review of the army takes place, and promptly at ten o’clock the regulars of the infantry and cavalry pass by in new uniform, but their glory is eclipsed when two thousand rurales, the finest horsemen in the world, flash by in their buckskin uniforms, the silver sheen of their trappings glinting inthe sunlight on horses that know every water hole and aroya from the Rio Grande to Tehuantepec. For a whole week these light-hearted people celebrate with balls and banquets and fireworks andfiestasand the poor are remembered with gifts from the president’s wife.
Hidalgo was a martyr to his cause, and within eight months his head hung from the castle walls of Chihauhua, but now rests in the Cathedral under The Altar of Kings. Iturbide took up his fallen sword and in 1821 entered the capital at the head of his victorious troops and was hailed as “El Libertador,” and was crowned as the first Emperor of Mexico. Santa Anna headed the revolution that banished him, and on his return in 1824 was shot as is the custom with Mexico’s rulers.
But there is another day as dear to Mexico as September 16, and that is July 18, the day when Juarez died. Benito Pablo Juarez (Whareth) was a full blood Indian, born in Ixtlan in the state of Oajaca, in 1806. From 1847 to 1852 he was governor of Oajaca and was banished by Santa Anna. He returned in 1855 and joined the revolution of Alvarez which deposed Santa Anna, and after continual fighting, was declared president in 1861. Immediately he issued a decree suspending for two years all payments on the public debt. Forthwith England, Spain and France sent a combined army to seek redress. England and Spain soon withdrew, but Louis Napoleon, taking advantage of the civil war in the United States, and presuming that the disrupted union could never enforce the Monroe Doctrine, declared war against Mexico and offered the throne to Archduke Maximilian, of Austria, as Emperor. For seven years were the contending armies in the field, but in 1867 Maximilian was taken prisoner and shot at Quétaro, and Juarez ruled supreme. And then that Aztec Indian by one fell stroke lifted the pall from his much warred people and did an act which astonished the world. For three hundred and fifty years had the Catholic Church misruled and despoiled Mexico. The people were taxed to the starving point to enrich the priests. It was the Catholic Church of France that had placed Maximilian on the throne, and the Catholic Church of Mexico that kept him there and fought his battles against the liberty-loving Indians.
Three-fourths of all the lands and property of Mexico were deeded to the church free of taxation, and when the “Procession of the Host” passed along the streets, every foreigner or skeptic who did not at once kneel was in danger of the Inquisition. This was the state of affairs in 1867, but Juarez faltered not. All the vindictiveness of his race was kindled when he thought of the tale of bricks that had been required of them under Spanish rule and in that supreme moment he divorced church and state, and confiscated all the church property to the state. No thunderbolt could have been more swift or more obedient than his decree. Every convent, monastic or religious institution was closed and devoted to secular purposes. Every religious society of Jesuits and Sisters of Charity was banished from the country. So thorough was his work, that now no convent or monastery can openly exist in Mexico, and no priest or nun or Sister of Charity can now walk thestreets of Mexico in any distinctive article of dress to distinguish them from any other citizens.
Catholic worship is still permitted in the cathedral, but the Mexican flag floats from the tower to show that it is a state institution and can at any time be closed or sold or converted into any use the government sees fit, and that the clergy and priests are “tenants at will.” All those rites which once supported the claims of the Catholic Church to omnipotence are now performed by the state. The civil authority performs the marriage ceremony, registers births and provides for the burial of the dead. Marriage ceremony by the priests is not prohibited, and they are legally superfluous, but those who cling to the old, first secure the state rite and afterwards seek the church service. The church controlled all educational institutions, all public opinion and the keys of heaven and hell.
When the soldiers of Juarez pulled down the fetishes of the Indians, the Indians stood speechless expecting fire from heaven to consume them for sacrilege, for thus they were taught by the priests. The exiled monks cursed them foranathema maranathaand prophesied that the earth would open and destroy the despoiled, but the soldiers laid paved streets across the yards of convents that had witnessed crimes and debauchery in the guise of holiness in the “Retreats” that would smell to heaven, and not a soldier was engulfed. For the first time the ignorant people learned that the priesthood was not infallible, that the fear of the church had no terrors to this Indian president, and the old Aztec spirit returned, and for the first time the veneer christianity of the Catholic faith showed its shallow depths, and the disappointed adherents lifted not a finger against this dark-skinned iconoclast. The church at that time owned eight hundred and sixty-one large country estates valued at $71,000,000. Twenty-two thousand lots of city property valued at $113,000,000 and other property not listed, making a total of $300,000,000, and the revenue of the clergy from the people direct was $22,000,000 annually, which was more than the income of the government from all its customs and internal taxes. By the irony of fate, Protestants who before this were not allowed in the country, now bought from the state this very property.
Thus, the former spacious headquarters of the Franciscans with one of the most beautiful chapels in the world, fronting Calle de San Francisco, the most fashionable street in Mexico, was sold to Bishop Riley, acting for the American Episcopal mission, at the price of $35,000, and is now valued at over $200,000. Likewise in Puebla the American Baptists have bought the old palace of the Inquisition, and a similar palace in the City of Mexico is now a medical college. The national library occupies an old convent, and a large share of its treasures were confiscated from the Roman churches. Since 1867 Protestant churches are springing up everywhere, where it was worth a man’s life to propose such a thing before. Previous to this so persistent was the church that the national seal bore the legend: “Religion, Union and Liberty,” placing the church first, and even after Mexico secured independence the seal remained the same.
Juarez was both a Washington and a Lincoln to Mexico, and so when July 18th comes around to mark the day of his death, from Dan to Beersheba is one vast blast of bunting and fireworks. I was in the capital on that memorable day when the city put on its holiday dress to do honor to the name of Juarez and to strew flowers on his grave.
All lovers of liberty were given an opportunity to hear the eagle scream. President Diaz was the chief figure in the procession and was the first to lay his offering on the tomb, followed by the members of congress, the diplomatic corps and the military bodies. The stars and stripes were there of course, end the Spaniards were there in numbers. Two hundred and fifty Cubans had a place in the procession, each with a miniature flag of Cuba on his coat and “Cuba Libre” on his badge. They objected to the Spaniards on the ground that the celebration was in honor of liberty and a patriot, to neither of which virtues could Spain lay claim while Cuba was breathing her life out in a death struggle, and the police had to intervene to prevent blood-shed over the patriot’s grave.
By the decree of Juarez, there came to Mexico freedom from a worse slavery than that which darkened our shores; the slavery of the Romish Church. The Catholic religion still prevails, but it is a Juggernaut with pneumatic tires, and it runs a course lined with bayonets. There are millions of benighted adherents yet under the spell of the priesthood, but Protestant churches are springing up everywhere with the free bible. After the wonderful achievements of the Juarez administration, it seems remarkablehow conspicuous by its absence is the Indian face from public affairs in Mexico. She has a standing army of over 45,000 men, but all its officers are white, and the same is true of the police force, and the military bands whose rank and file are of Indian blood have the leaders white. The students of the military academy are white, so are all members of congress, the superintendent of public works and all places of trust, although legally, every man of age is privileged to vote and hold office.
But behind the law are theleges non scriptæ, the spirit of social caste, as broad as the leagues of territory, and as powerful as a Corliss engine. The Indian’s face is no debar from good society nor a residence in any part of the city where he may buy, but the old regime of Spaniard and Indian, master and servant, has taken deep root and is still as powerfully in evidence as in the slave states of America. Of the twelve million inhabitants, one-third are pure Indians, speaking a hundred and twenty different languages. Onehalf are Mestizos or mixed races, and the remaining one-sixth are foreigners, the Spaniards predominating, and the remnant is the governing power.
Public opinion in Mexico has been defined as “the opinion entertained by the president;” and this is almost absolutely true, if you may also add a few thousand land owners, professional men, professors and students. The rest do not count. No such thing as a public mass meeting to discuss public questions has ever taken place in Mexico. A presidential canvass simply means that the candidate who first gets control of the army gets elected, but a campaign, never.
While every adult male citizen has a right to vote, less than thirty thousand votes are cast in a presidential election, and the great mass of the people never know there is a change unless there is a revolution.
One day before the election I saw a two-line announcement in an American paper published in the city which said: “Tomorrow the citizens of Mexico will elect a president.” Early the next morning I was on the street expecting a great excitement or patriotic demonstration, but not a cog of that great wheel of industry missed a revolution. About ten o’clock I began to ask people about the election, but no one could give me a word of information. I went to the National Palace and everything was going on as usual. I asked a number of people where could I find the voting places, but got no information whatever, and I began to think the announcement was a canard. Two days afterwards I was in the state of Vera Cruz and saw in another paper the following election news: “Porfirio Diaz was unanimously elected president of Mexico for the fifth time.” That was all. I had been on the streets the whole of election day and could not find a single person who could tell me of the election.
To differ in speech or newspaper from the policy of the party in power is to prepare your own grave for treason, or for banishment, so those who have a grievance against the government have no recourse by electing a better governing power, so they simply wait till they feel strong enough and find a man to issue a “Pronunciamento,” and a revolution is born, and sad but true, there is no other way. Freespeech and mass-meetings and opposition candidates are unknown except at the point of a bayonet. Excepting Juarez, the Indian, Porfirio Diaz—who is part Indian of the same tribe as Juarez—is the most progressive president the country has ever had, and the constitution was changed so he might succeed himself and thus complete the good work he inaugurated, but Diaz’s first term was gained at the head of a revolution. He was a candidate in 1871, and in the election only 12,661 votes were cast, of which Juarez received 5,837, Diaz 3,555, and Lerdo 2,874. Diaz refused to abide by the decision and issued a manifesto and entered the capital at the head of an army, assumed the presidency, had the people ratify his proceedings, and then proceded to build railroads and encourage foreign capital to come in and rehabilitate the wasted country, and, regardless of fear or favor, has created the modern Mexico. So successful was he that the people decided it was better to keep him than have the annual revolution, so the constitution which Juarez had framed was changed to permit him to succeed himself, which he has done so well that he is serving his fifth term, but not all consecutively.
Cardinal Newman once said: “To be perfect, one must have changed often.” If that be true, the government of Mexico ought to be pluperfect by now. Since her Independence in 1821, she has had fifty-seven presidents, two emperors and one regency, and with possibly four exceptions, each change of administration was attended by violence.
In 1848 occurred the first change without violence, but Arista was banished in the next twoyears, and in the next three months there were four presidents, which brings the average up to normal. What a bonanza for the Salt River candidates of the United States!
When you visit the picture gallery of the National Palace, the guide will say: “This is president so-and-so, elected at such a date, and who was shot at such a time. And this is president so-and-so, who was shot at such a date.”
All the leaders of the war of Independence were shot, so were both the emperors, and nearly all the presidents were shot or banished. These presidential shooting matches have made the country a land of experts in teaching the young idea how to shoot. Whenever the winning man has secured the army and re-entered the capital, the other fellows, in the language of General Crook, “rise like a flock of quail and light running.”