Un Santo Cristodos CandelerosY tres majaderos.[16]
Un Santo Cristodos CandelerosY tres majaderos.[16]
Un Santo Cristodos CandelerosY tres majaderos.[16]
A merited jest for that which knew not how to respect worthy and valiant heroes, such as Hidalgo and Morelos.
Francisco Sosa was born in Campeche, April 2, 1848. When he was still a child his parents removed to Merida, where the boy received his education. His first poetical effort appeared in a local paper, when the writer was but fourteen years of age. At that time, he was editor—in union with Ovidio and Octavio Zorilla—of the paper,La Esperanza(Hope), in which it appeared. Four years later hisManual de Biografía Yucateca(Manual of Yucatecan Biography) was published,showing his early devotion to the field in which he has chiefly figured, that of biography. With Ramón Aldana, he foundedLa Revista de Merida(The Merida Review), which is still published and is, unquestionably, the most influential paper in Yucatan. In 1868, when but twenty years old, he went, for the first time to the City of Mexico, where most of his life since has been spent. He had, however, already been a prisoner, for political reasons, in the famous and dreadful fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, at Vera Cruz. He became promptly associated with the literary men of Mexico and collaborated with them, upon a number of important periodical publications, literary and political. In 1873 he was associated with Gen. Riva Palacios in the editorship ofEl Radical(The Radical). Later as editor of theFederalista(Federalist), he gave to that paper a notable literary reputation and contributed to it, both prose and verse. He was one of the editors ofEl Bien Publico(The Public Good), a paper aimed to combat the administration of President Lerdo de Tejada; while thus connected, he went to Guanajuato to join the standard of Iglesias, returning, at the downfall of Lerdo de Tejada, to the City of Mexico. Since that time, he has edited various periodicals, includingEl Siglo XIX(The Nineteenth Century),El Nacional(The National), andLa Libertad(Liberty).
Señor Sosa’s books have been mainly in the lineof biography. Besides the volume on Yucatecans already mentioned, he has publishedDon Wenceslao Alpuche, Biografías de Mexicanos Distinguidos(Biographies of Distinguished Mexicans),El Episcopado Mexicano(The Mexican Episcopacy),Efemérides Historicas y Biograficas(Historical and Biographical Ephemerids),Los Contemporaneos(The Contemporaries),Las Estatuas de la Reforma(The Statues of “the Reforma”) andConquistadores Antiguos y Modernos(Ancient and Modern Conquerors). He has also written an appreciative work upon South-American writers—Escritores y poetas Sud-Americanos. Among his works in other fields are a volume of stories—Doce Leyendas(Twelve Stories), and a book of sonnets,Recuerdos(Recollections).
In his poetry Sosa is vigorous, chaste, and strong. In prose he is direct and simple, but careful in language.
Señor Sosa has ever been interested in every cause tending toward the advancement of Mexico and has actively participated in the organization and conduct of literary and learned societies. It is to his efforts that the interesting series of statues, that border the Paseo de la Reforma, is due.
Our selections are taken from hisEstatuas de la ReformaandBiografías de Mexicanos Distinguidos.
In 1887 Sosa published an article inEl Partido Liberal(The Liberal Party), which has produced a happy result. From it, we quote:
The inauguration of the magnificent monument with which the Federal Government has honored the memory of the illustrious Cuauhtemoc and that of the principal chieftains of the defense of the native land in 1521, has shown, not only that Mexico does not forget her heroes, but, also, that among her sons are artists capable of producing works creditable to any cultured nation.
This affirmation is not born from our enthusiasm for all that redounds to the glory of our native land. Foreign writers have not hesitated to say that the monument of Cuauhtemoc may be considered the finest in America, in its essentially American architecture and in being a work exclusively realized by Mexican artists.
It is well known that, in decreeing, in 1877, the erection of Guatematzin’s monument, the government also decreed that in the following glorietas should be erected others to the heroes of the Independence and of the Reform; and, no one doubts that, the government persevering in its plan of embellishing the finestpaseoin our metropolis, thispaseowill come to be a most beautiful spot, consequently most visited by both citizens and foreigners. We believe that, to the laudable efforts ofthe Federal Government, those of the Governors of the federative states should be united. We shall state, in what way.
In the great Paseo de la Reforma, there already exist pedestals, destined to support statues and other works of art, appropriate to a place of resort, where daily gather the most distinguished members of society; until the present, there has been no announcement regarding the statues and art works for which these pedestals are intended.
It is plain that, however great may be the willingness of the Federal Government, it will need to employ large sums and many years, in carrying out, unaided, the whole work of adornment, demanded by apaseoof the magnitude of that of the Reforma, since they must be in consonance with the artistic value of the monuments already erected and those in contemplation. What would be of slow and expensive realization for the Federal treasury, would be easy, prompt, and convenient, if each of the Mexican States should favor our plan.
However poor any one of the smallest fractions, into which the Republic is divided, may be, it is certain that it could, at no sacrifice at all, pay the cost of two life-size statues—such as these pedestals could support; and, however meagre may be the annals of some of these fractions, no one of them can have failed to produce two personages,worthy of being honored with a monument, which, recalling his deeds, perpetuates them.
* * * *
... the three conditions, which ought to be demanded in accepting the sculptures:
1. That the honor should be decreed only to the notable dead.
2. That all the statues should be of life-size and of marble or bronze.
3. That the plans or models should be approved by a special jury, named by a cabinet officer, in order that only true works of art, worthy of figuring in apaseoin which exist monuments of the importance of those of Columbus and Cuauhtemoc, may be accepted.
Sosa’s suggestion was well received and, up to the present, something like forty statues have been erected, forming a notable gallery in which the nation and the states may well take pride. The states have taken their turns and one, each year, presents two statues, on the anniversary of National Independence—September 16. On the whole the statues have met the three requirements and not only form a Mexican house of fame, but an artistic adornment to a beautiful driveway.
According to the testimony of judicious investigators, this celebrated Indian woman was born inthe pueblo of Painala, in the Mexican province of Coatzacoalco (Vera Cruz). Her father had been a feudatory of the crown of Mexico and lord of many pueblos. Her mother, left a widow, contracted marriage with another noble, by whom she had a son, and “it seems,” says an esteemed biographer, “that the love felt by the couple, for this fruit of their union, inspired them with the infamous plan of feigning the death of the first born, that all the inheritance might pass to the son, availing themselves of a stratagem to remove suspicion.” A daughter of one of their slaves had died at that very time, and they made mourning as if the dead were their own daughter, secretly disposing ofherto some merchants of Xicalanco, a town located on the border of Tabasco. Those of Xicalanco gave, or sold, her to their neighbors, the Tabasqueños, among whom Malintzin was, when on March 12, 1519, the Spanish armada, under orders of Herñan Cortes, arrived at the river of Tabasco, to which he gave the name Grijalva. It is well known that the Tabasqueños, at first, attempted to fight against the Spaniards in defense of their territory, but—before the unusual valor, before the fire-arms, before the battle horses of the Conqueror—a violent reaction took place, the combats ceased, and a peace, which could not last, was pretended.
Among the gifts with which the Tabasqueños desired to demonstrate their submission, weretwenty women, of whom one was notable for her extraordinary beauty. Malintzin, the girl who had been cruelly thrust out from the parental home, was this woman. They baptized her under the name of Marina, which the Aztecs pronounced Malintzin. “When the Conqueror received her as a gift from the lords of Tabasco, in company with the other women, he distributed to each captain his woman, giving Malintzin to the Cavalier Alonso Hernández Portocarrero, who was cousin of the Count of Medellin.” So says the biographer to whom we have referred.
Continuing this imperfect narrative, we may say that Malintzin was useful to the conquerors from their arrival at Vera Cruz, since she knew the Aztec language,—although we cannot explain how she could, in a few days, learn the Spanish to discharge the rôle of interpreter so perfectly as historians declare. However that may be, this Indian woman appears as one of the most notable characters in the epic poem of the Conquest. To detail her doings in this biography, would be to reproduce the whole history of the Conquest of Mexico, and good books abound for furnishing the data, which anyone may especially desire. We limit ourselves to giving a few further notices regarding Malintzin and to saying some words in her defense.
As has been said Hernández Portocarrero was the fortunate Spaniard to whose lot the beautifulIndian maiden of Painala fell. In spite of this, the chroniclers of the expedition state that Cortes had a son by Marina and there is no doubt that he maintained love relations with her until 1523. In that year, he married her definitely to Juan de Jaramillo, who, in spite of his noble rank, had no embarrassment in uniting himself to the woman whom Cortes abandoned.
He, passing to Coatzacoalco, called together the lords of the province, and among them Marina’s mother and step-father, who immediately recognized her and plainly showed their fear that the young woman would avenge herself for the infamous act which had brought her into the position in which she found herself. Far from it; Marina gave them splendid gifts and treated her injurers well—not without making some parade of her bearing a son to Cortes. In this expedition, took place the infamous execution of Cuauhtemoczin and Marina figures as aiding him to a pious death.
The Conquest ended, nothing more is heard of Marina until 1550, when she still lived and complained to the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, that the Indians of Jilantongo did not pay the tribute nor yield the service, to which they were obligated.
The year and place of her death are not known. There is nothing more to state save that the son of Cortes by Marina was named Martin and that he figures badly in Mexican history.
The estimable writer, José Olmedo y Lama, in the biography of Marina, with which he opens the second volume of the interesting work “Hombres ilustres Mexicanos,” biography which we have had at hand in making these jottings, says these cruel words: “Malintzin almost always appears repugnant, and we believe that, only by lending to her fantastic and imaginary attributes, that is to say, by falsifying history, can she be made great.” It is strange, indeed, that one, who held such an opinion, should have cared to introduce the name of therepugnantIndian woman into a gallery ofilustres, not merelycelebres, personages. Señor Olmedo reproaches Marina for her treason to her country, serving as interpreter to the Conquerors; he reproaches her, because, married with Hernández Portocarrero, she had amours, and even a son, with Cortes; he blames her, because she did not prevent the execution of Cuauhtemoc and because she boasted to her mother of having been the first Mexican woman to bear a son to the Conqueror, and because she betrayed the conspiracy, plotted by her people, for the destruction of the Spaniards. These faults, which we would not pretend to excuse today in a heroine, have, if not an excuse, at least some just defense, in transferring ourselves to the sixteenth century and in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of the woman.
What sentiments had her parents aroused in her, by repudiating her and selling her to merchants?What idea of fidelity, considering the customs of her country, could she have in finding herself in the arms of a man, to whom she had fallen by lot, like any object in a raffle, and what respect could a man inspire, who servilely lent himself to any arrangement rather than to cross his captain? Had she not seen that the Tabasqueños, in place of dying, battling in hand-to-hand combat for their native land, had made rich gifts to the Spaniards, even presenting them with women, of whom she was one? Ought we to demand from her greater ardor and patriotism than from the warriors? As for her not having prevented the execution of Cuauhtomoc, employing, for that end, her ascendency over Cortes, it must be remembered that Malintzin, as a shrewd woman, could not conceal from herself, that in her wild lover, other passions than love dominated, and, therefore, every plea would be vain.
But, above all, Señor Olmedo, in hurling the darts of his censure upon the Indian woman, should remember that all those faults, which we today count as such, committed by her, are explained by saying, supported by the testimony of historians, that Malintzin loved Cortes blindly, from her first meeting him. Señor Olmedo is intelligent enough to know that love is the most enthralling of human passions. Malintzin loved the great Conqueror. What wonder, then, that for him she should forget her other duties? But, however that may be, thebeautiful interpreter of the Spaniards holds a most prominent place in the history of Mexico.
The illustrious architect Tres Guerras has left us, in the Carmen of Celaya, a work which is the monument of his fame and the proof that he was the most skilled architect that Mexico has yet produced.
Francisco Eduardo Tres Guerras was born in Celaya, May 13, 1745, and at fifteen years united great proficiency in drawing, to his early studies; soon after, he devoted himself to the fascinating art of painting, having received lessons, in Mexico, from the most accredited artists; but, he found no stimulus, since those paintings in which he gave full play to his natural tendencies and which were most conformed to the demands of art, were the least admired, while those trifles which he dashed off in order to secure resources for his daily needs were highly admired. Disgusted with these bitter disappointments, he desired to take the habit of a monk and had even made some steps in that direction, but the love of art rekindled itself in his heart with redoubled force, and he desisted from his intention. He then began to turn the pages of Vignola and dedicated himself to the study of architecture under intelligent masters.
The Carmelites entrusted to him the work ofthe church of Celaya and the good taste and elegance of proportion, united with solidity, caused its fame to be spread through the Republic and the monks were well pleased. During the construction of this temple, some ill-disposed persons tried to instigate the monks to deprive him of the direction of the work; among these were the architects Zápari, García, Ortiz, and Paz; but, to the constancy and persistency of these friars, we owe the conclusion of a work, which does honor to the Republic.
Tres Guerras has left many notable works in many cities of the interior of the Republic, such as the Theatre at San Luis Potosí, the Bridge at Celaya, and others, and in them all are noticed a perfect taste and observance of the rules of art.
He was Sindico, Regidor, and Alcalde of Celaya and was nominated a member of the provincial deputation of Guanajuato, when the Spanish Constitution was re-established in 1820. He died of cholera the third of August, 1833. Tres Guerras was not only an artist and a painter, but also a poet. His aptitude was great for all and he revealed genius in whatever he undertook. His love of national liberty was such that his demonstrations of delight on the consummation of independence were deemed delirious.... In closing, we will narrate an anecdote relative to the death of Tres Guerras:
The terrible epidemic of cholera was makingfrightful ravages in our land. In the presence of the peril, the celebrated architect arranged all his affairs and, on August 2, sallied precipitately from his house to seek a confessor. A friend met him in the street and said:
“Where are you going in such haste, my friend?”
“Well asked”—calmly answered Tres Guerras—“Death pursues poor mortals with dreadful fury! As for me, but little time remains for me in this world.”
“But!” replied the friend, “you are still robust, healthy, and well. Tell me—where did you get such an idea?”
“My friend, I have no time to talk with you. Adieu.”
Tres Guerras departed, leaving the inquirer with the question on his lips. The following day, the octogenarian artist died. Fortunately his works survive and they perpetuate his memory.
Born in Comalcalco and left an orphan at sixteen years of age, he succeeded, by activity and honorable dealing, in gaining a capital, if not large, at all events sufficient to render him comfortable. In 1859 he founded, at his own expense, a night school and, in the following year, another of music. Thus, doing good and devoted to his business, he lived beloved in his village, without dreams of political ambition or military fame, when General Arévalo took possession of San Juan Bautista and unfurled the banner of the Intervention. The Governor, Victorio Dueñas, offered no resistance and on the thirtieth of June, 1863, was routed. The first step of the Conqueror, Arévalo, was to condemn to exile those citizens who were reputed liberals, among them Gregorio Méndez; but he, in place of bowing to the orders of the usurper, organized a revolutionary movement, which broke out at Comalcalco, on October 8th. In Jalpa, Méndez seized some muskets; at the same time another patriot, Andres Sánchez Magallanes, rose in arms in Cárdenas. The republican revolution thus initiated, the commandant, Vidaña, was designated to act as Chief of Brigade, and Colonel Pedro Méndez as Governor; but, as the latter was captured at the capital and Vidaña was wounded, the military leadership fell upon the subject of our study, with no arrangement made for the civil government.
Thus the war of the Restoration began in Tabasco. In a few days the forces of Méndez joined those of Sánchez Magallanes, and the two leaders undertook the campaign with ardor, seconded by a population, unsurpassed in patriotic spirit; most brilliant deeds of war followed one another from then on until the final triumph of the Republic; examples of valor and abnegation were multiplied;patriotism inspired the noblest actions, forever placing the name of the State of Tabasco in the foremost line.
To follow Colonel Méndez in each and all of the events which took place in that memorable epoch; to relate his personal deeds and those of his brave companions, would be to transfer here the extended and detailed report rendered by him to the Minister of War, the seventeenth of October, 1867—report which is a veritable history of the republican Restoration in Tabasco, which had a happy issue, the twenty-seventh of February, 1864, with the capture of San Juan Bautista....
This was not, indeed, the full extent of the fatigues of those patriots, since they maintained themselves in arms and fortified their towns to prevent fresh assaults, since in all parts—Vera Cruz, Campeche, Yucatan, Chiapas—combats were still taking place, and Colonel Méndez did not limit himself to securing the re-establishment of the republican regime in Tabasco, but placed the resources under his control at the service of the neighboring States and, in general, at that of the cause defended by him with such admirable vigor.
And, it must not be thought that the work of Colonel Méndez, in those difficult circumstances, was confined to fulfilling his duties as military chief. Far from it; all the branches of civil administration were carefully arranged, thanks to the fact that he was ever warmly seconded in his nobleefforts by all classes of the community, who never refused their adhesion or their resources—because he was not only respected for his patriotism, but admired for the stainless honor, which characterized him. If he numbered among his soldiery, those capable of using arms, and among them many who afterward figured in loftier posts than he himself, he also numbered in his civil helpers the most intelligent Tabasqueños, among them Manuel Sánchez Mármol, who contributed (equally with any) to the Restoration, by his intelligence and wisdom, discharging the secretaryship of the government of Méndez and other arduous duties, with the ardor natural to youth and with the heartfelt affection which he felt for the valiant leader, in whom he saw his democratic ideals embodied. From the lips of Colonel Méndez himself we have repeatedly heard, that to Señor Sánchez Mármol he owed, in that trying epoch, services he could never forget and which influenced, in a decisive way, in the triumph of the Republican cause, and in the public administration. ‘If, of these services,’ Colonel Méndez has said to us, ‘full mention is not made in my report to the Minister of War in 1867, it is because this report was edited by Señor Sánchez Mármol, and he did not care to make his own panegyric, although the document was not to bear his name.’
On the sixth of June, 1867, when, as he himself says in the before-mentioned report, order andpublic repose were solidly re-established he had the satisfaction of resigning the government into the hands of Felipe J. Serra, named as his successor by the General Headquarters of the Army of the East.
Julio Guerrero was born on April 18, 1862, a day notable in Mexican history, in the City of Mexico. His parents were José María Guerrero and Luisa Groso, both natives of Durango. His father, a lawyer of eminence, was for fifteen years a Judge of the Supreme Court; a pronounced Liberal in politics, he was a friend and trusted adviser of Benito Juarez. The young Julio was sent to Rhodes’s English Boarding School, then totheEscuela Preparatoria(National Preparatory School). He, later, studied in theEscuela de Jurisprudencia, receiving his title of Licenciado by acclamation, on October 4, 1889. In that same year, he was one of the founders of theRevista de Jurisprudencia y Legislacion(Review of Jurisprudence and Legislation), upon which he is still a collaborator and to which he has contributed many articles. His most important literary work isEl Genesis del Crimen en Mexico(The Genesis of crime in Mexico). The title of the book scarcely accords with its content. It is really an analysis of the Mexican society and character. Rarely does any student see, so clearly as does Guerrero, the actual condition of his own society; still more rarely does one so clearly state it. In some of his conclusions and views Guerrero differs profoundly from us, but we are forced to admire his sincerity and earnestness. His book met a notable reception. Under the presidency of Porfirio Parra, a group of the leading members of the scientific societies of Mexico, devoted ten consecutive meetings to its consideration and discussion, the author himself being present. During the recent political agitation by the partisans of Limantour and Reyes, Guerrero established and edited a monthly journal,La Republica. It was ardently liberal and democratic in spirit and dealt vigorously with live questions. It was suppressed by the government, after fourteen issues. Guerrero has not abandoned hispropaganda and will shortly establish another journal for the propagation of his ideas. He has much matter ready for printing. Of this, undoubtedly the most important is hisReformas projectadas(Proposed reforms), in which the question of the Presidential succession is discussed. Guerrero is a good thinker, intense in his convictions, vigorous in their expression. Our selections are from theGenesis del crimen. Guerrero’s style is not always beyond reproach and his punctuation is absolutely his own. In translation, we have followed both with care.
As a psychical phenomenon, natural to so pure an atmosphere, there have developed in Mexico those faculties, which require perfect eyesight. Mexican photographs have attracted notice in New York, and Mora conducts, in competition with the best photographers of that metropolis, a profitable business, being quite in vogue with the American aristocracy. The photographic views of the central plateau are distinguished by the sharpness of their outlines, shadows and details and are exported to Europe and the United States, constituting, in those regions, of less clear vision, an irrefutable proof of the perfection of our landscapes transferred to their canvases by Velasco and other painters of scenery; when he desired to exhibit hispaintings of the Valley, in the exposition of 1889, he found opposition on the part of Meissonier, who believed it impossible that there should be such sharp and vivid detail and coloring in a real landscape. Proofs of a different order, and entirely practical, of the sharpness of outline, are given by our professional hunters, who with a miserable musket, sally from their pueblos in the morning in search of game and invariably return with two animals. In the battalions, good shots form seventy-five per cent of the troop, with certainty of aim at five hundred to a thousand metres distance. The wild Indians of Coahuila, Chihuahua, and Nuevo Leon, shoot their arrows at a five-cent piece thrown into the air; and boys on the streets and in the villages strike the bulls-eye with their sling-stones at a distance only limited by their strength. In billiards and bowling, in the suburbs, with badly rounded balls and illy-leveled tables, they make shots as brilliant as if both balls and tables were all they should be.
The arts of drawing have developed as rapidly as the political and economical conditions permitted; and in all America, Mexico has been the only country which has produced a school, so numerous, distinguished, and original have been her painters. Their works have almost been exhausted, by exportation to Europe as paintings of Spanish artists of the great Seventeenth Century, but students stillcome, from the republics to the south, sent to here study the masterpieces which we still retain, since the number of the national painters, of whom some work of merit remains, rises to one hundred and sixty-one. The art they practised was catholic and aristocratic, religious subjects and portraits; consequently it decayed with the colonial regime and fell with the decline of power of the clergy; but, in the lack of demand for such art, the national æsthetic spirit took refuge in popular modeling in clay, rags, or wax, and produced in the figurines of Guadalajara and Puebla an artistic school, only inferior in product and spontaneity to that of Tanagra in ancient Greece.
In the feather-mosaics of Michoacan, in its lacquer rivaling those of China; in the carving on the walking-sticks of Apizaco, atavic manifestation of the ancient Mexican wood-carving which found beautiful expression in the choir-stalls and benches of the churches; in the floral decorations of the Indians of Mixcoac and Coyoacan; in the sculptures of the façades of houses—which are at times caryatids worked, without a single false blow from the chisel, after the blocks have been set in the wall; in the gold and silver filagree, and even in the mural paintings of the pulquerias or in the realistic illustrations of the newspapers, there is revealed the artistic talent, though frequently without technique, of a nation, living in a medium propitious to vision; and in which the line, theshadow, and the tints, are seen without blur or dimmed by haze, since there are, on the average, one hundred and five absolutely clear days in the year and among clouded days, those with mists are rare; and when thesedooccur they last but an hour or two in wintry mornings.
This social phenomenon was aggravated by the distribution ofvillaswithin the territory of each of the provinces, later converted into states; since in many cases it happened that thevillaswere so much the nearer to their respective capitals, as these were nearer to the capital of the republic; andvice-versa, thevillaswere distant from their capitals in proportion as these were distant from the national centre; both consequences of the political division established by Galvez; since, as he based it upon the unequal distribution of population, the more remote provinces must have a more extended territory and more widely separated settlements; thus, the density of population decreased, from the centre outward, in every direction. And as the social development in a province, converted later into an autonomous state, depended on the frequency and importance of the relations between the capitals and their respective districts; it resulted that the culture influence of the capital, weakened by its remoteness from a state, was stillfurther weakened in thevillas, by the great distances which separated them from their governmental centres. And this phenomenon was repeated in a third degree, in the interior of each political subdivision, in the operation of social and political influence of anyvillaupon the lesser settlements subordinated to it.
Ah well, as all the cities of the independent colony were at different distances from the capital, they were at different stages of national development; consequently all had different and often conflicting interests, necessities and aspirations. The political program, philosophical ideas, literature, ideals and models of art, social usages, moral principles, interpretations of law, cut of dress, and even the vocabulary and phrases of polite society, which—as useless, ugly, harmful, absurd, or disagreeable—had been banished from the capital were found in the provincial cities; and those, which were there proscribed, had taken refuge in thevillasand secondary towns. In matter of government the same thing was repeated and those acts by which it displays itself—military equipment, judicial decision, tax levying, seizure of contraband, pursuit of bandits and savages, organization of authority, conspiracies, masonry, political intrigues,—in fact, every political phenomenon which, depended upon or originated in the capital, was repeated in the states, with an imperfectness, so much the greater as the distance separatingthem from it was greater; and, as the conduct of government depended upon this phenomenon, it at last resulted that the co-ordination and harmony between the states and the centre depended on the time necessary for the communication of official orders. Accord between those who constituted the governing classes of all the cities, villas, and subordinate populations, was, consequently, not only difficult, but was often impossible, and, sometimes, useless. Thus, the country was geographically constructed and populated for an inevitable anarchy; an area within which every union of states, provinces, cities, religions, races, or political parties, had to be theoretical and unstable.
The most important corroboration of this law was the separation of Texas, political phenomenon, which, thanks to it, has an explanation actually mathematical. In fact, the settlers, who recognized San Antonio as their centre, did not amount to forty thousand inhabitants scattered over an area larger than that of the French Republic, and depended politically upon the State of Coahuila, of which the capital is Saltillo. The distance which separated, by the cart-roads of that time, these two points, was eight hundred and sixty-eight kilometres, which they traversed in sixteen days in the dry season and in thirty-two days in the period of rains, and the distance from Mexico to Saltillo was nine hundred and forty-seven kilometres—or say, twenty days in the dry and fortydays in the wet season. If instead of considering the local capitals, we consider the frontiers of the provinces, distances double and difficulties increase.
This phenomenon, moreover, is but the anthropological expression of a more general biological law, in virtue of which human races, in order to adapt themselves to the medium in which they are developed, assume a uniform physical type and character, which persists, or repeats itself anatomically and psychically through the ages, in spite of the external forms of their civilization; in the same way as do other animals, and plants. Thus, for example, since the days of Trajan the bullocks of the Danube have had enormous and diverging horns; in China the cattle are hump-backed, despite cross-breeding with other strains; and, although the first offspring from crossing may be like the foreign parent, in the fifth or sixth generation there appears in thecreolecalf the hump of the original and native form. Among the ancientcastasof the vice-reinal society thenegrowas seen to reappear in families of white, or even of red parentage, provided there had been blacks in the ancestry. In the waters of the Nile, the lotus yet floats its blue corolla, which the architects of Memphis copied in the capitals of their temples; and the Fellah of Pharaonic days reappears in familiescrossed with the Macedonians of the Ptolemies; and, in the first centuries of the Arab domination, in spite of the torrents of foreign blood introduced by polygamy. Even today the type reasserts itself in the native regiments of the English army at Cairo—bronzed, titanic, full-chested, a living model, which is copied in the colossi of Isamboul and which is the ethnic brother type of the Rameses and Amenhotep.
In the central tableland of Mexico, arid, hot, and luminous, where the atmosphere keeps the nerves at high tension; where thoughts are clouded by the abuse of tobacco, of alcohol and of coffee; by the irritation of an eternal and fruitless battle for life; and, until lately, by the frightful impossibility, almost age-long, of forming a plexus of social solidarity; character, in the greater part of society has degenerated and the ferocious tendencies of the Aztecs have reappeared. After ten generations, there has returned, to beat within the breasts of some of our compatriots, the barbaric soul of the worshipers of Huitzilopochtl, of those ofthe sacred springtimeswho went, to the lugubrious sounds of theteponastlto make razzias of prisoners in Tlaxcala and Huejotzinco, to open their breasts with obsidian knives, to tear out the heart and eat it in the holocaust of their gods. Three centuries of masses and of barracks have been too little for the complete evolution of character among the people; and if, on the Silesianplain, the Sarmatian of Attila yet appears, so too in our political struggle there has re-appeared, with the indomitable warrior of Ahuitzotl, the sanguinary priest of Huitzilopochtl.
There is, in fact, nothing in our independent history, more lugubrious; even the most illustrious leaders have stained their glory by the shedding, needlessly, of blood. The burning of villages and executionsen massepresent themselves at the turning of every page like the funeral refrain of an infernal poem; and, if it be true, that there are not lacking some superior souls—as Don Nicolás Bravo, who set at liberty three hundred Spanish prisoners, although he knew the Spanish leader had just shot his father—many other leaders, of that and later epochs, systematically executed all who fell into their hands. The system was converted into a custom and gave such an impress of barbarity to our political struggles as is not to be found even in negro Africa; since there war prisoners are held as captives, whose ransom is the motive of war; slavery redeems them from death.
In Mexico, on the contrary, frequently no account is made of prisoners but only of the killed and wounded; and the latter were shot or knifed in spite of the severity of their wounds. Hidalgo himself not only ordered that those taken in battle should be killed without fail; but in Guadalajara and Valladolid commanded the seizure of suspects and caused them to be stabbed at night, in remoteplaces, that they might not, by their cries, cause a disturbance. In this way six hundred innocent persons perished; and he advised the leader, Hermosillo, to do the same in El Rosario and Cosalá. Morelos, after the battles of Chilapa, Izucar, Oaxaca, etc., shot all his prisoners without mercy; and Osorio did the same in the valley of Mexico, García in Bajio, and all the other insurgent leaders, though usually in the way of reprisal.
In the first insurrection, military ferocity developed to a degree only seen in Asiatic and African wars, without the least regard for humanity and with systematic neglect of the rights of nations. The prisoners surrendered with Sarda in Soto la Marina, for example, were taken to San Juan de Ulúa, on foot, in pairs, shackled together, and in the fortress, were entombed in humid, dark, pestilential, dungeons, hot from the tropical sun of the coast lands. This constant corporal subjection, led to mutual hatreds among the unhappy beings, since the natural necessities of the two members of a couple were rarely simultaneous; and in order to satisfy thirst or any other need it was necessary to beg permission of one’s companion; which led to constant bickerings between them and occasioned sport for the jailors. Orrantia personally struck General Mina, when he was taken prisoner, with the flat of his sword. To hasten the surrender of the Fort of Sombrero, the same leader left one hundred corpses, of those who had fallen in thefruitless assaults, unburied, with the object of causing pestilence. The infirm and wounded of Los Remedios were burned in the building which served them as hospital, and those who attempted to escape were driven back at the point of the bayonet. Liñan forced two hundred prisoners to demolish the embankments of the fortress of their own party; and then tied them to tree trunks in the forest that they might be shot for target practice. Ordoñez in Jilotepec shot one hundred and twenty-three prisoners, including wounded and children, by thirties, at the edge of a ditch, in the Cerro del Calvario; first causing the wounded to be carried thither on the shoulders of the uninjured.
This atmosphere, pure and luminous, full of slumberous breezes in the shade and of debilitating heat in the sunshine, capricious and treacherous, not only has an influence upon the physiology, pathology, and life of the Mexicans, but it gives to much of their labor an unstable character. In fact, as permanent rivers are few in those great plains, and as those which exist are due to rain, the sowings of the rainy season, which are the more important, and their fruition, where there are no rivers, demand rains. But since, on the other hand, deforestation, carried on since the vice-reinal days, has been destructive, not only are lackingforests and groups of trees, which, as thermal centres uniformly distributed over the higher plateau, might give shelter to the sowings against the chill of night and early morning, or which, in the guise of fences of foliage, might intercept the cold blasts of northers; but also, through their lack, rains have become rare and irregular, there being regions where they have failed for six, seven, and eight consecutive years; as happened in the Mezquital of the state of Hidalgo, the Llano district of Chihuahua, and the north of the state of Nuevo Leon in the years 1887 to 1895. In 1892 and 1893 the drought was general and desolated a great part of the Central Plateau.
When the season of rains arrives, the fields are transformed in a single week, and where was a barren and arid horizon, there extends itself a mantle of tender verdure with corn-fields and springing wheat, which from day to day develop, open their spikes to the sun, and seem to cast back to it its last rays, as golden oceans, ruffled by the evening breeze. The laborers busy themselves in guarding them; but an unseasonable hailstorm destroys them, or a blast, sudden and nocturnal, from the north freezes them in the very months of August and September; that is to say, when surrounded by summer haze, or under a cloud sprinkled with twinkling stars, the laborers believe their crops secure and slumber, lulled by the most pleasing anticipations. When they wake the corn is lost;in twenty-four hours they pass from wealth to misery; the herd perishes; field labor stops; the laborers go forth to rob on the highways, to swell the ranks of the insurgents, or to beg on the street, according to the character of the government. Before the days of the railroads, droughts were the cause of local insurrections, which today are impossible, because grain may be transported from one district to another—or even to the whole country from a foreign land, as happened in 1894, when $30,000,000 worth of American maize was imported. However, the evil is not easily remediable, and a general drought, or a series of local dry seasons, might, as Búlnes indicates, mortally wound our nascent nationality. Agriculture then, thanks to the droughts of the fields on the one hand, but to the abrupt atmospheric changes on the other, escapes calculation and prevision; and there are converted into an enterprise as insecure as mining, labors which have ever constituted the principal honest means of livelihood for Mexicans.
* * * *
In fine, and ever due, wholly or in part, to the atmosphere, the Mexican of the Central Plateau—and so much the less as the altitude of the region where he lives is greater—has never been able to count upon the future, either for his life, or for his health, or for his fields, or for his mines, or for his daily bread; and the apparent lack ofuniformity in the phenomena of nature, experienced through generations, has developed in him finally a standard of judgment, composed of simple coexistences, which, in turn, has forged the fixed belief that all in nature is uncertain and capricious. As a logical consequence, there has arisen an unconquerable tendency toward the only manner in his power for reproducing in the same unpredictable form the contingencies of fortune and misfortune of life, so far at least as concerns wealth and misery—that is, to gaming; and thus may be explained the extent of this vice in Mexico.
A, (a). Unfortunate men and women who have no normal or certain means of subsistence; they live in the streets and sleep in public sleeping-places, crouched in theportales, in the shelters of doorways, amid the rubbish of buildings in construction, in somemesonif they can pay for the space three or four centavos a night, or stowed away in the house of somecompadreor friend. They are beggars, gutter-snipes, paper-sellers, grease-buyers, rag-pickers, scrub-women, etc. With difficulty they earned twenty or thirty centavos daily; now they may receive more, but the general rise in prices leaves them in the same condition of misery. They are covered with rags, they scratch themselves constantly, in their tangledhair they carry the dust and mud of every quarter of the city. They never bathe themselves save when the rain drenches them, and their bare feet are cracked and calloused, and assume the color of the ground. In general, they do not attain to an old age, but to a precocious decrepitude, worn out by syphilis, misery, and drink.
The men and women of this class have completely lost modesty; their language is that of the drinking-house; they live in sexual promiscuity, get drunk daily, frequent the lowestpulqueriasof the meanest quarters; they quarrel and are the chief causes of disorders; they form the ancient class of Mexicanleperos; from their bosom the ranks of petty thieves and pickpockets are recruited, and they are the industrious plotters of important crimes. They are insensible to moral suffering, and physical suffering pains them but little, and pleasures give them little joy. Venereal disease and abortion render the women of the group refractory to motherhood; paternity is impossible on account of the promiscuity in which they live; these two natural springs of altruism destroyed, they are indifferent to humane sentiments and egoistic in the animal fashion.
Everywhere they may be seen, the repulsive feature of our streets. In speaking they reveal a dwarfed intelligence, as sadly ruined by their life as is their body. Their ideas are rudimentary notions derived from the common talk of thestreets, comments on public events—the escape of one criminal, the sentence of another, the deportation of their companions, the capture of some “crook.” They are godless, with feeble superstition regarding the saints depicted on their scapulars or the medal of the rosary, which they wear beneath their filthy shirt. Their number is enormous; they constitute the dregs of the laboring classes, and their presence betrays the vortices of vice, where the outcasts of civilization are dragged down.
This well-known journalist was born in Mexico, July 15, 1864. His education was gained in theColegio de la Sociedad Católica(School of the Catholic Society), theEscuela Nacional Preparatoria(the National Preparatory School), and theEscuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia(National School of Jurisprudence). He received the title of Advocate, July 7, 1887. While still a student, in 1885 and 1886, he assisted upon the staff oftheBoletin de la Juventud Católica(Catholic Youths Bulletin). In March, 1889, he became associated with the editorial management ofEl Tiempo(The Time), with which he still continues. He has also written many articles for other leading periodicals. In October, 1895, he foundedLa Tribuna(The Tribune), which was not a financial success. An article in this was the cause of his imprisonment in the famous city prison of Belem.
Señor Villaseñor y Villaseñor is a member of various learned and literary societies and has participated, as a delegate, in several important congresses. Among the latter is the First Catholic Congress held in the city of Puebla, in February, 1903.
Señor Villaseñor y Villaseñor is an industrious writer. His contributions toEl Tiempoalone number more than seven thousand. Of books, he has writtenAsunto Poirier(The Poirier Incident),La cuestion de Belice(The Belize Question),Guillermo; memorias de un estudiante(William: recollections of a student),Estudios historicos(Historical Studies),Gobernantes de México(Governors of Mexico),Los Condes de Santiago(The Counts of Santiago),Reclamaciones á México por los fondos de California(The California Funds Claims Against Mexico). This last is of high importance, being an exhaustive discussion of this international question—the firstto be submitted to The Hague tribunal for settlement. It is particularly in questions of public policy, in history, and in biography, that our author is at his happiest. Our selections are taken fromEstudios historicos.
We have intentionally been brief in expressing our opinion regarding the attack at Antón Lizardo and have been full in the presentation of documentary evidence; in this manner remembering that these documents proceed from unimpeachable sources, a clear and full realization will result, that what took place at Antón Lizardo was not so simple a matter as the liberal party desires to make it appear.
In instigating foreign warships to seize vessels in Mexican waters, the government of Juarez permitted the national independence, sovereignty, and dignity to be outraged by the soldiers, officers, and warships of the United States; it betrayed its country, permitting an assault against its sovereignty and humiliated the nation by invoking foreign mercenaries to assist it and to treat Mexicans with profound contempt, and to shed Mexican blood, since those wounded on board the Miramon were compatriots; and those same strangers still preserve among their trophies taken from Mexico, the flags of that vessel.
We believe that, after the publication of this study, no one will venture to deny, as recently was done, that the Juarists took part in the Antón Lizardo incident; that Turner’s intervention completely thwarted the plans of Miramon, as a work written by a well-known liberal confesses, and gave great courage to the Juarists; no one will again venture to say that Marin was a pirate and that the commander of the Saratoga did right; this assault was not merely a partisan measure, as those who are ignorant of historical facts or filled with bad faith pretend to believe, seeing in it an insignificant event without serious consequences.
It was not at Silao or Calpulálpam that the conservative party was defeated, but at Antón Lizardo; nor was it the soldiers of Gonzales Ortega and Zaragoza who routed them, but the marines under orders of Turner.
The Juarist party, beaten at all points by Miramon, Castillo, Márquez, Negrete, Robles, Chacon, etc., at the beginning of the year 1860 held no population of importance, and its directory was confined to the plaza of Vera Cruz with the immediately adjacent region, and it was recognized by the United States alone. On account of the MacLane-Ocampo Treaty, which was then awaiting ratification by the United States Senate and with which we shall occupy ourselves in the following pages, public opinion had declared itself, in the most uniform manner throughout the wholecountry, against the liberal doctrines, which only produced as their bitter fruit the loss of our territory and almost that of our independence.
In order to end at once these parricidal tendencies and to bring to a conclusion the bloody civil war, which was destroying the nation, there was only necessary the effort, which the conservative government was making, to conduct the siege of Vera Cruz by land and sea. Under circumstances so serious for the constitutionalist party, the assault by Turner and the protection given by President Buchanan, gave new life to this party, and a series of disasters like that at Silao or of defections like that of the cavalry at Calpulálpam, opened to it the gates of the capital; but did not give it the final triumph, since the strife still continued.
And, looking a little deeper, it is seen that the events of Antón Lizardo had graver consequences than might be imagined; they brought on the European intervention. They emphasized the ideas expressed by Buchanan in his message to Congress of December 4, 1859, and the unconcealed tendencies of the democrats in the direction of a North American intervention were no longer mere theories, but began to translate themselves into facts. Antón Lizardo and the MacLane Treaty made Europe and the conservative lovers of their country see that Mexican independence was threatened and it was then that it was thoughtthat a radical remedy would save the imperilled nation, and certain combinations, already forgotten, were recalled.
The triumph of the party of demagoguery and the errors which it committed precipitated events and brought on the European intervention, which, when studied with care as to its causes, is clearly demonstrated to be due to the liberal party.
The name of Antón Lizardo will remain, indelible on the pages of our history, a stain of dishonor for that party, which nothing and no one can ever remove.
The United States have adopted a special policy with reference to Mexican affairs, a policy which may, in time, produce results unhappy for us.
During the time of the Three Years War, the democratic party, which brought so many misfortunes upon that country and America, was in power in the North American Union. After restless and ambitious presidents, like Jackson, Monroe, and Van Buren, who, if they had found their nation more powerful, would have embroiled it in long and bloody wars of conquest, came Polk, who brought the war with Mexico to an end and snatched from us more than one-half our territory; in vain honorable men, like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and others, opposed that iniquitous warwhich has been justly condemned by notable men in our sister nation.
Already owners of the “Far West” and of a great part of the coast of the great ocean, rich by the discovery of gold deposits in California, inflated with pride on account of the great extension already gained by their country, believing themselves the absolute arbiters of the destinies of the Americas, and viewing with disdain the old nations of Europe, to which they owe everything, from their population to their freedom, they seriously thought of putting into practice the theory of “manifest destiny” and of making the starry banner float from the Niagara and the Saint Lawrence to Panama.
The Mexican enterprise, which had resulted so favorably for them, was the school in which were educated many of the adventurers, who afterward gave themselves to filibustering, and the example which many others, who through more than a decade disturbed Latin-American countries, set before themselves for imitation. The government in Washington, which observed this tendency with singular pleasure, while publicly reprobating, in secret nourished and aided it.
During Polk’s administration, the government itself had given an exhibition of the ends which it pursued, proposing to Spain to purchase the Island of Cuba at the price of one hundred million dollars, a proposition which that nation did not chooseto entertain. This was but the prelude to the aggressive policy which the people of the United States adopted in their relations with other nations, even attempting to mix themselves in European affairs.
The revolution of Hungary and the efforts of Louis Kossuth met an echo in the United States, and matters were carried even to the point of proposing to aid the Hungarian agitator and his partisans to liberate that country from Austrian domination; it was necessary for Francis Joseph’s government to assume a vigorous attitude and for the nations of Europe to show dissatisfaction before these plans were abandoned, and Kossuth, instead of aid, received only a refuge in the United States.
The island of Cuba was, and yet is, too valuable a prize to escape the eyes of the rapacious Yankees; underhandedly they aided Narciso López to organize his expedition, and it was only when everything was practically arranged, that, for the sake of appearances, President Taylor issued a proclamation, on the 11th of August, 1850, forbidding the fitting out of expeditions to agitate that island and certain Mexican provinces.
Notwithstanding this proclamation, López kept on and completed his preparations and openly sailed from New Orleans, by daylight; defeated, after the attack of Cárdenas, he found a secure refuge for himself, his partisans, and his rich booty, on American soil, and it was only after his secondattempt that he fell into the hands of the Spanish authorities.
Gen. Quitman, one of the generals of the Mexican War, was accused of having taken part in an expedition; although the fact was notorious and the accused was arrested on February 3, 1851, the jury discharged him.
Fillmore’s administration demanded the Island of Lobos from Peru; the annexation of the Hawaiian Archipelago was vigorously agitated; with Mexico the voided Garay Concession was disputed and no concealment was made of the intention to secure possession of a right of way across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and as little concealment was made relative to the desire of right of way in Nicaragua and Honduras at points where inter-oceanic communication was believed to be easy; it was left to the Governor of Texas, Lane, to gain possession of the Mesilla Valley and to qualify as aggressive the conduct of General Santa Anna and of the Governor of Chihuahua, because they protested against such an invasion and made military preparations; Edward Everett, Secretary of State, refused to take part in the convention to which France and Great Britain invited the United States, to guarantee to Spain the control of the Island of Cuba and to prevent the island from passing to the power of any other nation; the notes of these nations relative to the convention were insolently answered; their conquests in the present centurywere enumerated, and the advantages which the acquisition of Cuba had to the United States, it being asserted without concealment “that it was essential for her own security.” When, at Ostende, the plenipotentiaries of the United States, accredited to the governments of Spain, France, and England, were treating of the purchase of the Antillean island, for the sum of twenty million dollars, the leaders of these plenipotentiaries, Mr. Soule, was profoundly irritated because negotiations in the matter were not actively undertaken.
So much in regard to the direct participation taken by the American government in these movements, tending solely to augment the territory and the power of the Yankees on sea and land; as regards the expeditions and agitations undertaken by private parties with the indirect support of that government, the list is as long as it is instructive.
Apart from the attempts of Narciso López and other filibusters against Cuba, Rousset Boulbon, although working on his own account, drew all his supplies for the invasion of Sonora from the United States; Crab came into that same district with the hope of conquering it and annexing it, if he had not been opportunely routed by Gabilondo in Caborca; Zerman had an identical purpose in reaching California; Walker proclaimed the Republic of Lower California, placing upon the flag of that newest nation a single star, which, if his adventure had proved successful, would have cometo be one more star in the North American flag; routed by General Blanco, he went to Central America, where his presence gave rise to a bloody war and innumerable disturbances.
We should never end if we were to enumerate, one by one, all the schemes which the brains beyond the Rio Grande engender for enlarging their territory and dismembering that of the American republics.
Mexico was compelled to spend great sums in combatting the filibusters who appeared and in shooting or severely punishing them; Spain was obliged to send numerous troops to Cuba and to constantly invoke the moral support of European cabinets; an energetic response had to be given to the proposition to buy Savannah harbor and a round denial to the claims for the island of St. Thomas and others belonging to Denmark and Holland; England was forced to establish long-drawn negotiations, resulting in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which in part assured the independence of Central America; necessarily this unchecked appetite for lands and islands exhibited by the United States caused alarm and apprehension throughout Europe. Finally, it was necessary that the great Secessionist War should came, through which this nation expiated a part of its great crimes, a war which brought it to the verge of ruin, but which taught it, in time, to check itself upon the perilous descent, upon which Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and others had started it—men who, without having the qualities of great statesmen, contributed, by their policy and their counsels, to bring about this great crisis to which their unbounded ambition and the cancer infecting their institutions bore them.
It would seem that those men proceeded with the most refined malice, if they were not blind, when we consider that they said with the greatest calmness, as James Buchanan, in mounting to the Capitol on March 4, 1857, that the great territorial increase which the United States had achieved since its independence was due to pacific and legal measures; now by purchase, now voluntary—as with Texas in 1836—adding: “Our past history prohibits the acquiring of territory in the future, unless the acquisition is sanctioned by the laws of justice and of honor.”
This is equivalent to justifying the conduct of Jackson in Florida, that of Fremont in California, of Austin in Texas, of Gaines in the Sabine district, the continued spoliations of the Indian tribes in the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi and to the west of the Alleghanies, the scandalous invasion of California in 1842, the no less scandalous war against Mexico, and so many, many deeds which, to the shame of the United States, are recorded in her history.
Thus, as in the preceding chapter, we briefly made known the situation of Mexico in 1859, inthis one we have sketched in bold outlines, the neighboring nation, in its tendencies and aspirations, in order that our readers may the better appreciate the bearings of the events which we are about to narrate in the following chapters.