On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

I stood, this morning, within the splendid cathedral, built upon the very spot where once towered the gigantic pyramid on whose summit the Aztec priests sacrificed their human victims to their gods, while down in the dungeons beneath my feet, the Holy Inquisition, a few years later, had also tortured men to their death, human victims sacrificed to the glory of the Roman Church. An Aztec pagan, a Spanish Christian, both sped the soul to Paradise through blood and pain, and I wondered, as I watched an Indian mother kneel in humble penitence before an effigy of the Virgin, and fix a lighted taper upon the altar before the shrine, whether she, too, felt clustering about her, in the sombre shadows of the semi-twilight, memories of these tragedies which have so oppressed her race.

On these pavements, also, I review in fancy the serried regiments of France and Austria marshaled in the attempt to thrust Maximillian upon a cis-Atlantic Imperial throne. In this day, one recalls almost with incredulity the insolence of this conspiracy by European Monarchy to steal a march on Western liberty, when it was thought that democracy was forever smitten to the death by civil war. But the bold scheme was done to death by Juarez, the Aztec, without Sheridan’s having to come further south than the Rio Grande.

All these pictures of the past, and many more, crowd thick upon me as I walk the streets and avenues of this now splendid modern city.

I have also tried to see what I could of the churches, – the more important of them – which here abound, but my brain is all in a whirl, and saints and Madonnas troop by me in confused and interminable train.

Ever since Cortez roasted Guatemozin upon a bed of coals, to hasten his conversion to the Roman faith and quicken his memory as to the location of Montezuma’s hidden treasure, the Spanish conquerors have been building churches, shrines and chapels to the glory of the Virgin, the salvation of their own souls and the profit of their private purse. Whenever a Spaniard got in a tight place, he vowed a church, a chapel or a shrine to the Virgin or a saint. If luck was with him, he hadn’t the nerve to back down, but made some show of keeping his vow and, the work once started, there were enough other vowing sinners to push the job along. Mexican genius has found its highest expression in its many and beautiful churches, and perhaps it has been a good thing for genius that so many sinners have been ready to gamble on a vow.

When Juarez shot Maximillian he also smote the Roman Church. The Archbishop of Mexico, and the church of which he was virtual primate, had backed the Austrian invader. Even Pope Pius IX had shed benedictions on the plot. When the Republic crushed the conspirators, the Roman Church was at once deprived of all visible power. Every foot of land, every church edifice, every monastery, every convent the church owned in all Mexico was confiscated by the Republic. The lands and many buildings were sold and the money put in the National Treasury. Monks and nuns were banished. Priests were prohibited from wearing any but ordinary garb. The Roman Church was forbidden ever again to own a rod of stone or a foot of land.

So now it is, that the priest wears a “bee-gum” hat and Glengarry coat, and the state takes whatever church-edifices it wants for public use. The church of San Augustin is a public library. Many churches have been converted into schools. Others have been pulled down, and modern buildings erected in their stead. The cloisters and chapel of the monastery of the Franciscans are leased to laymen, and have become the hotel Jardin. What churches the Republic did not need to use, it has been willing to rent to the Roman hierarchy for the religious uses of the people. So many have been these edifices that, despite the government’s appropriations and private occupations, there yet remain church buildings innumerable where the pious may worship and the priesthood celebrate the mass. But the Roman hierarchy has no longer the wealth and will to keep these buildings in repair and in all of those I visited there was much dilapidation.

While it is true that the stern laws of the Republic debar the Roman Church from owning land, yet, it is said, this law is now evaded by a system of subrosa trusteeships, whereby secret trustees already hold vast accumulations of land and money to its use. And although the church cannot go into court to enforce the trust, yet the threat of dire pains in Purgatory is seemingly so effective that there is said to have been extraordinary little loss by stealing. The promise of easy passage to Paradise also makes easy the evasion of human law.

VI

Vivid Characteristics of Mexican Life

    Hotel Iturbide, Mexico,
    November 22d.

This limpid atmosphere, this vivifying sun, – how they redden the blood and exhilarate the spirit! This is a sunshine which never brings the sweat. But yet, however hot the sun may be, it is cold in the shadow, and at this I am perpetually surprised.

The custom of the hotels in this Latin land is to let rooms upon the “European” plan, leaving the guest free to dine in the separate café of the hotel itself, or to take his meals wherever he may choose among the city’s multitude of lunch rooms and restaurants. Thus I may take my desayuno in an “American” restaurant, where the dishes are of the American type, and my almuerzo, the midmorning meal, in an Italian restaurant where the dishes of sunny Italy are served; while for my comida, I stroll through a narrow doorway between sky blue pillars, and enter a long, stone-flagged chamber, where neat tables are set about and where the Creole French of Louisiana is the speech of the proprietor. Here are served the most delicious meals I have yet discovered. If you want fish, a swarthy Indian waiter presents before you a large silver salver on which are arranged different sorts of fish fresh from the sea, for these are daily received in the city. Or, perhaps, you desire game, when a tray upon which are spread ducks and snipe and plover, the heads and wings yet feathered, is presented to you. Or a platter of beefsteaks, chops and cutlets is held before you. From these you select what you may wish. If you like, you may accompany the waiter who hands your choice to the cook, and you may stand and see the fish or duck or chop done to a turn, as you shall approve, upon the fire before your eyes. You are asked to take nothing for granted, but having ascertained to your own satisfaction that the food is fresh, you may verify its preparation, and eat it contentedly without misgiving. In this autumn season, flocks of ducks come to spend their winters upon the lakes surrounding the city. At a cost of thirty cents, our money, you may have a delicious broiled teal with fresh peas and lettuce, and as much fragrant coffee as you will drink. The food is cheap, wholesome and abundant. And what is time to a cook whose wages may be ten or fifteen centavos a day, although his skill be of the greatest!

The city is full of fine big shops whose large windows present lavish displays of sumptuous fabrics. There is great wealth in Mexico. There is also abject poverty. The income of the rich comes to them without toil from their vast estates, often inherited in direct descent from the Royal Grants of Ferdinand and Isabella to the Conquestadores of Cortez, when the fruitful lands of the conquered Aztecs were parceled out among the hungry Spanish compañeros of the Conqueror. Some of these farms or haciendas, as they are called, contain as many as a million acres.

Mexico is to all intents and purposes a free trade country, and the fabrics and goods of Europe mostly supply the needs and fancies of the Mexicans. The dry goods stores are in the hands of the French, with here and there a Spaniard from old Spain; the drug stores are kept by Germans, who all speak fluent Spanish, and the cheap cutlery and hardware are generally of German make. The wholesale and retail grocers have been Spaniards, but this trade is now drifting to the Americans. There are some fine jewelry stores, and gems and gold work are displayed in their windows calculated to dazzle even an American. The Mexican delights in jewels, and men and women love to have their fingers ablaze with sparkling diamonds, and their fronts behung with many chains of gold. And opals! Everyone will sell you opals!

In leather work, the Mexican is a master artist. He has inherited the art from the clever artificers among the ancient Moors. Coats and pantaloons (I use purposely the word pantaloons) and hats are made of leather, soft, light and elastic as woven fibre. And as for saddles and bridles, all the accoutrements of the caballero are here made more sumptuously than anywhere in all the world.

The shops are opened early in the morning and remain open until noon, when most of them are closed until three o’clock, while the clerks are allowed to take their siesta, the midday rest. Then in the cool hours of the evening they stay open until late.

Over on one side of a small park, under the projecting loggia of a long, low building, I noticed, to-day, a dozen or more little tables, by each of which sat a dignified, solemn-looking man. Some were waiting for customers, others were writing at the dictation of their clients; several were evidently composing love letters for the shy, brown muchachas who whispered to them. Of the thirteen millions constituting the population of the Mexican Republic, less than two millions can read and write. Hence it is, that this profession of scribe is one of influence and profit.

I have once more visited the famous cathedral which faces the Plaza Grande. From the north tower of it, to the top of which I climbed by a wonderful convoluted staircase, ninety-two spiral steps without a core, I gained a view of the city. North and south and east and west it spread out several miles in extent. It lies beneath the view, a city of flat roofs, covering structures rarely more than two stories high, of stone and sun-dried brick, and painted sky blue, pink and yellow, or else remaining as white and clean as when first built, who knows how many hundreds of years ago? For here are no chimneys, no smoke and no soot! To the south I could descry the glistening surface of Lake Tezcoco, and to the west, at a greater distance, Lakes Chalco and Xochomilco. Never a cloud flecked the dark blue dome of the sky. Only, overhead, I noted one burst of refulgent whiteness. It was with difficulty that I could compel my comprehension to grasp the fact that this was nothing less than the snow summit of mighty Popocatepetl, so distant that tree and earth and rock along its base, even in this pellucid atmosphere, were hid in perpetual haze.

It is said that peoples differ from one another not merely in color, in form and in manners, but equally so in their peculiar and individual odors. The Chinese are said to find the European offensive to their olfactory nerves because he smells so much like a sheep. The Englishman vows the Italian reeks with the scent of garlic. The Frenchman declares the German unpleasant because his presence suggests the fumes of beer. Just so, have I been told that the great cities of the world may be distinguished by their odors. Paris is said to exhale absinthe. London is said to smell of ale and stale tobacco, and Mexico City, I think, may be said to be enwrapped with the scent of pulque (Pool-Kay). “Pulque, blessed pulque,” says the Mexican! Pulque, the great national drink of the ancient Aztec, which has been readily adopted by the Spanish conqueror, and which is to-day the favorite intoxicating beverage of every bibulating Mexican. At the railway stations, as we descended into the great valley wherein Mexico City lies, Indian women handed up little brown pitchers of pulque, fresh pulque new tapped. Sweet and cool and delicious it was, as mild as lemonade (in this unfermented condition it is called agua miel, honey water). The thirsty passengers reached out of the car windows and gladly paid the cinco centavos (five cents) and drank it at leisure as the train rolled on. Through miles and miles we traversed plantations of the maguey plant from which the pulque is extracted. For pulque is merely the sap of the maguey or “century plant,” which accumulates at the base of the flower stalk, just before it begins to shoot up. The pulque-gatherer thrusts a long, hollow reed into the stalk, sucks it full to the mouth, using the tongue for a stopper, and then blows it into a pigskin sack which he carries on his back. When the pigskin is full of juice, it is emptied into a tub, and when the tub is filled with liquor it is poured into a cask, and the cask is shipped to the nearest market. Itinerant peddlars tramp through the towns and villages, bearing a pigskin of pulque on their shoulders and selling drinks to whosoever is thirsty and may have the uno centavo (one cent) to pay for it. When fresh, the drink is delightful and innocuous. But when the liquid has begun to ferment, it is said to generate narcotic qualities which make it the finest thing for a steady, long-continuing and thorough-going drunk which Providence has yet put within the reach of man. Thousands of gallons of pulque are consumed in Mexico City every twenty-four hours, and the government has enacted stringent laws providing against the sale of pulque which shall be more than twenty-four hours old. The older it grows the greater the drunk, and the less you need drink to become intoxicated, hence, it is the aim of every thirsty Mexican to procure the oldest pulque he can get. In every pulque shop, where only the mild, sweet agua miel, fresh and innocuous, is supposed to be sold, there is, as a matter of fact, always on hand a well fermented supply, a few nips of which will knock out the most confirmed drinker almost as soon as he can swallow it.

I was passing a pulque shop this afternoon when I noticed a tall, brawny Indian coming out. He walked steadily and soberly half way across the street, when all of a sudden the fermented brew within him took effect and he doubled up like a jackknife, then and there. Two men thereupon came out of the self same doorway, picked him up head and heels, and I saw them sling him, like a sack of meal, into the far corner of the shop, there to lie, perhaps twenty-four hours, till he would come out of his narcotic stupor.

Riding out to the shrine of Guadeloupe the other afternoon, I passed many Indians leaving the city for their homes. Some were bearing burdens upon their backs, some were driving donkeys loaded with goods. Upon the back of one donkey was tied a pulque drunkard. His legs were tied about the donkey’s neck and his body was lashed fast to the donkey’s back. His eyes and mouth were open. His head wagged from side to side with the burro’s trot. He was apparently dead. He had swallowed too much fermented pulque. His compañeros were taking him home to save him from the city jail.

The Mexicans have a legend about the origin of their pulque. It runs thus: One of their mighty emperors, long before the days of Montezuma’s rule, when on a war raid to the south, lost his heart to the daughter of a conquered chief and brought her back to Tenochtitlan as his bride. Her name was Xochitl and she gained extraordinary power over her lord, brewing with her fair, brown hands a drink for which he acquired a prodigious thirst. He never could imbibe enough and, when tanked full, contentedly resigned to her the right to rule. Other Aztec ladies perceiving its soothing soporific influence upon the emperor, acquired the secret of its make and secured domestic peace by also administering it to their lords. Thus pulque became the drink adored by every Aztec. The acquisitive Spaniard soon “caught on” and has never yet let go.

The one redeeming feature about the pulque is that he who gets drunk on it becomes torpid and is incapable of fight. Hence, while it is so widely drunk, there comes little violence from those who drink it.

But not so is it with mescal, a brandy distilled from the lower leaves and roasted roots of the maguey plant. It is the more high priced and less generally tasted liquor. Men who drink it become mad and, when filled with it, sharpen their long knives and start to get even with some real or imaginary foe. Fortunately, mescal has few persistent patrons. It is pulque, the soporific pulque that is the honored and national beverage of the Mexican.

VII

A Mexican Bullfight

    Mexico City,
    Sunday, November 24th.

A feeling first of disgust and then of anger came over me this afternoon. I was sitting right between two pretty Spanish women, young and comely. One of them as she came in was greeted by the name Hermosa Paracita (beautiful little parrot), by eight or ten sprucely dressed young Spaniards just back of me. The spectators with ten thousand vociferous throats had just been cheering a picador. He had done a valiant deed. He had ridden his blindfolded horse around the ring twice, lifting his cap to the cheering multitude. He was applauded because he had managed to have the belly of his horse so skillfully ripped open by the maddened black bull, that all its vitals and entrails were dragging on the ground while he rode it, under the stimulus of his cruel spurs and wicked bit, twice around the ring before it fell, to be dragged out, dying, by mules, gaily-caparisoned in trappings of red and gold, tugging at its heels! Paracita clapped her pretty bejeweled hands and cried “bravo!” And so did the scores of other pretty women; women on the reserved seats, elegant ladies and pretty children in the high-priced boxes on the upper tiers! The howling mob of thousands also applauded the gallant picador! Would he be equally fortunate and clever and succeed in having the next horse ripped open so completely, all at one thrust of the bull’s horns? Quien sabe?

The city of four hundred thousand inhabitants, capital of the Mexican Republic, had been profoundly stirred all the week over the arrival from Spain of the renowned Manzanillo and his band of toreadors (bullfighters). Their first appearance would be the opening event of the bullfighting season.

Manzanillo, the most renowned Toreador of old Spain! And bulls, six of them, of the most famous strains of Mexico and of Andalusia! Señor Limantour, Secretary of State for Mexico, spoken of as the successor to President Diaz, had just delighted the jeunesse dorée by publicly announcing his acceptance of the honor of the Presidency of the newly founded “Bullfighting Club.” Spanish society and the Sociadad Española had publicly serenaded Don Manzanillo at his hotel! A dinner would be given in his honor after the event! Men and women were selling tickets on the streets. Reserved tickets at five dollars each, could only be obtained at certain cigar stores. The rush would be so great that, to secure a ticket at all, one must buy early. I secured mine on Thursday, and was none too soon. The spectacle would come off Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, by which hour all the churches would have finished their services, and the ladies would have had their almuerzo, and time to put on afternoon costume.

By noon the drift of all the street crowds was toward the bull ring, a mile or two out near the northwest border of the city. All street cars were packed and extra cars were running; even all carriages and cabs were taken, and the cabmen commanded double prices. I had retained a carriage the day before. At the restaurant I could scarcely get a bite, the waiters and cooks were so eager to get through and escape, even for a single peep at the spectacle. As I drove out, young ladies were standing in groups at the gateways of many fashionable residences waiting for their carriages to take them to the ring. As I approached the arena, the throngs upon the streets and sidewalks blocked the way.

Hundreds of Indians and Mexicans, mostly women, had set up temporary eating stands along the roadside. Fruit, tortillas, steaming broth and meat roasting over fires, tempted the hungry. These stands would feed a multitude. It was early, but the city fire department was already on hand with apparatus to extinguish any possible blaze among the wooden tiers of seats. A battalion of mounted police sat on their blood-bay horses at intervals along the road, their gaudy blue and gold uniforms setting off effectively their dark brown skins. We entered a large gateway, gave up half of our tickets, and then passed in to a broad flight of steps. We ascended to the tiers of seats and chose good places. Presently, two companies of infantry with set bayonets also entered and took up their positions. Often the mob becomes so mad with blood-lust, that bayonets are needed to keep order, sometimes also bullets.