CHAPTER XIII.
WITHIN THE GATES.
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 Spanish dos reales but 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 hotel prietor what 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 he will 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-five cents. 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 and can 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, the politico will take you to the next crossing and deliver you to another and you may thus be passed to a dozen politicos, 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 no politico would 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 at your 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, the politico takes 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 the politico. You sit at a public table or other place, and the proprietor refuses to serve you on account of color, the politico locks 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 a politico but a rurale, a horseman dressed in buckskin and “booted and spurred and 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 to be 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 smile a 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 is willing—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, and always presumes that the parents will be unwilling and must be outwitted, and this invents plots and counter plots ad 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-nine of 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 Fiesta de las Flores”—the feast of flowers, is held on Friday before Holy Week; “Viernes de Dolores” or Sad Friday. This fiesta was 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 last auto-da-fe and 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 on Viernes 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 of flores, and everybody buys flowers and decorates and makes himself pleasant. No one must fail to do homage to Flora, the goddess of flores, 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 another Fiesta de los Flores, a fiesta, 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. Another was 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, as the 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 a desire 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 famous grito, 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 the Aztecs 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 the grito that 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 in the 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 and fiestas and 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 the streets 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 for anathema maranatha and 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 remarkable how 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 the leges 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. Free speech 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 two years, 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.”
