About Mexico - Past and Present/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAND: ITS PRODUCTS AND CITIES.
AFTER more than half its territory had been taken by its grasping neighbor the United States, Mexico still was about four times the size of France, with a coast-line of fifty-eight hundred miles and a common boundary with the United States of eighteen hundred miles.
Exclude the Rio Grande, which divides the two nations for nearly half this distance, and Mexico may be called a riverless country. The magnificent harbors which open along its western coast are just beginning to be known, though several of them are among the finest in the world. Guaymas, a village at the mouth of a small river emptying into the Gulf of California, is now the terminus of a railroad which gives direct communication with St. Louis, Philadelphia, New York and all our great cities. An active trade is springing up which will soon bring the place into competition with some of its better-known neighbors. From San Bias, farther south, on the Pacific coast, a road runs eastward to Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico. Acapulco, another railroad terminus, has a noble land-locked harbor, and is likely to be one of the queen-cities of the South-west. It is probable that Mexico, so long closed to a free commerce, will first be opened on the north, on its landward side, and that its lack of water-communication will be more than made up by several great railroad systems converging toward
the ancient capital and linking the sleepy old cities along their routes with the wide-awake world outside. Habits and customs which are wrought into the very life of the people are fast giving way before American ideas. In spite of the national bugbear of annexation, Mexico is to-day in a receptive mood.
She seems to stand like one of her own Indians who come out of their cabins to see the train go by. Gaunt and speechless, with faces as unmoved as are those statues, they wave a permissive hand to the bold intruder as they stand gazing at this wonder of our rushing age. If old Popocatapetl, the home of the gods, is safely tunneled for a new track, and the holy hill of Cholula is cut away to make room for the inevitable locomotive, innovations like American looms and ploughs and reapers will surely be tolerated in old Mexico, and the modern express-wagon will be permitted to take the place of the primitive ox-cart. There are immense districts, however, where such foreign wares are still unknown. One has only to find one of these out-of-the-way places to see husbandry carried on as it was when Joseph was Pharaoh's overseer in Egypt. If by chance an American plough makes its way there, it is apt to be broken up for its iron, since that can be turned into cash, while the farmer plods contentedly on in the rut his ancestors made five hundred years ago. But the lower classes in town and in city have been aroused to new life. Those who used to beg or to steal because they had nothing else to do can now earn an honest living with pickaxe and spade along the route of some of the new railroads. There has been a very perceptible change not only in arrests for crime, but m that turbulent spirit which found vent in endless revolutions. It was estimated that in 1883 more than fifty thousand Mexicans were at work digging, felling trees, building bridges and cutting roads through forests and over mountains. Many of these had never before done a full day's work. At least six railroads are now heading toward as many cities on the Pacific shore of Mexico, while the country is crossed by half that number of transcontinental roads.
There are but two seasons in Mexico—the wet season and the dry season. The mean temperature in January is 52.5° Fahrenheit; in July, 65.3°. From October to May there is but little rain. As the heavy floods of autumn are left behind the streams then swollen by freshets dry up, the meadows look parched, the shrubs wither and on the high plateau clouds of dust fill the air. In some parts of the country water becomes scarce, even for culinary purposes, and the precious fluid may be seen traveling in barrels behind the donkey and its master from some stream to the home. In May there are frequent showers, and by September tiny rivulets become raging torrents leaping from shelf to shelf of their rocky beds through some great crevice in the mountains.
On the Pacific coast the steep sides of the Cordilleras are cleft by long valleys running east and west and opening
out directly on the sea. The surf often thunders up to the very mouth of the deep mountain-glen till the green of its perpetual spring is moistened by the spray. A large part of Mexico has been denuded of its forests. The Spaniards neglected the system of irrigation used by the more provident natives, and many parts of the country once profitably cultivated are now lying waste. The great naked mountains and the leafless character of much of the vegetation give to some portions of Mexico a sterile appearance which always makes an impression on strangers. Some varieties of prickly pear grow to the size of quite large trees. The fluted columns of the organ-cactus tower up to the height of sixty feet in favorable soil. The prickly-pear cactus is
used for hedges, and, as it bristles with thorns and spines, intruders are kept at a respectful distance. The Indians, who are very fond of the fruit of this cactus, go out in August, when it is ripe, and hook it down with forked sticks. Mexico seems to be the home of the cacti. Their grotesque forms are seen everywhere, brightened in their season with beautiful blossoms—pink, pale-yellow, warm tints of red or deep gold. One of the most common plants is the maguey (Agave Americana). This grows wild everywhere and is useful to its last particle. It furnishes thread, needles, cord, ropes, thatch and paper, and also bears a palatable fruit when its blossoms are allowed to come to perfection. Its chief commercial value is in its sap, out of which pulque, the national beverage, is made. The agave matures very slowly, needing about ten years of growth to become productive. The Indians who have watched it know to a day when the blossom will be ready for the knife. The whole heart of the plant is then cut out, leaving nothing but the stiff outside circle of leaves. Into the deep cavity thus left oozes the sap, which is carefully dipped out two or three times each day. The basin of the wounded plant will hold a pailful of the sweet honey-water. When this ferments, as it does in twenty-four hours, it becomes pulque (pronounced pool-hay). The sap from one plant will often run in this way for three months. The plant then dies, and others spring up from its roots, to run the same course.
Pulque is produced in large quantities about Puebla and the capital. When ready for use, this beverage has a taste which is a cross between sour milk and slightly-tainted beef; it is seldom palatable on first acquaintance, but a relish for it is soon acquired, and drunkenness from its excessive use is common. The Indians are its natural victims. Humboldt says that in his day "the police in Mexico sent around tumbrels to collect the drunkards to be found stretched out in the streets. These Indians are carried to the principal guard-house. In the morning an iron ring is put on their ankles, and they are made to sweep the streets for three days."
Mexico has well been called an "agricultural cosmos;" there is not a plant of any zone or of any soil which cannot flourish within its borders. All European cereals are at home on the table-lands, with the fruits and the forest-trees of other temperate regions. In the forests below one hundred and fourteen varieties of timber suitable for cabinet-work have been counted, with seventeen kinds of oil-bearing plants and several valuable species of gum
trees, of which the india-rubber variety is a specimen. Sugar is a staple crop, and coffee, introduced during this century, is very productive. The government has recently ordered two millions of fast-growing trees to be planted within four years. Among these is the eucalyptus, which flourishes well in the lake-regions of Mexico.
The people are mostly vegetarians; maize and beans, with pepper, form their main diet. The banana has been a wonderful boon to the poor of this country; four thousand pounds of bananas may be gathered from ground which yields thirty pounds of wheat. Within a year after the suckers are set out the plant is in full bearing, which means three crops in a year.
Nothing in Mexico has so fastened upon the world's attention as have its wonderful mines; between a. d. 1519 and a. d. 1826 precious metals to the value of $2,588,732,000 had been taken from them. Silver and gold were exported by the ton. At the close of the eighteenth century the famous old vita madre, or mothervein, of Guanajuato had yielded one-fifth of all the silver then in circulation in the world. Most of this treasure found its way to Spain, but vast quantities of it were hoarded up in the churches built everywhere in Mexico.
Candlesticks of gold too heavy for one man to lift, pyxes, crosses, statues, of precious metals encrusted with gems and most elaborately wrought, adorn the shrines, whose wealth of ornamentation exceeds anything known elsewhere. When the mines of St. Eulalia, near Chihuahua, were in full operation years ago, there was a tax of twelve and a half cents on every eight ounces of silver drawn from the mines, and in fifty years the proceeds had reared one of the grandest churches in Mexico. Many of the richest mines in the country—those of St. Eulalia among the number—have been closed for generations. In the eager search for "bonanzas" the owners passed by a great deal of valuable ore rather than work for it. The government has recently issued a permit to an enterprising Yankee to reopen this old mine. He has erected a mill in Chihuahua fitted up with modern machinery, and after tunneling the mountain in two directions has turned out from fifteen to twenty-five thousands of dollars in silver bullion in a month, with a prospect of doing better when the capacity of his works is increased. Other metals seem to be waiting for energetic miners. Quantities of tin are found in Michoacan and Jalisco, and a ton of this metal was recently brought to the United States from Durango. In the same neighborhood is the famous mountain of magnetic-iron ore—a treasure of which the Aztecs never knew the use, and which the Spaniards were too much occupied with gold-hunting to consider.
Old Mexican mines have entered on a fresh lease of productiveness of late years, and new ones will soon be opened. Already the miner's toil is lightened by modern helps, and men are not used as beasts of burdens. Time was when all these tons of ore were carried up in baskets slung on men's backs and supported by a band across the forehead. The amount of labor required may be imagined when it is said that one of these old shafts pierced the earth's crust to a depth of sixteen hundred feet, and that it annually yielded five hundred tons of silver and one and a half tons of gold.
Except when drunk, the Mexican Indians are taciturn and patient under their burdens, though taught by ages of oppression to be distrustful. They seem to be contented with their lot, though it must be said that as a people they have in them great possibilities of obstinacy. They are slow workers, but faithful and persevering. They look like a conquered people. Their faces are as sad, their hearts as dark and their minds as ignorant as when the sun went down on their tribes three hundred years ago. Their humility is often most touching. The whites have given them the title of gentes sin razon—"men without reason"—and they accept the reproachful term as readily as it is given.
The Indians never deserve so well to be called "men without reason" as when they give themselves up to the celebration of some feast-day of the Church. The extravagance of a poor man on such occasions, especially when he frequents the pulqueria, or dram-shop, is marvelous. Money is borrowed in advance, to be returned in labor; debt thus becomes the bane of the Mexican peasantry. The debtors (mozos) make up a large part of the population, and a more hopeless slavery it is not possible to imagine. Another great source of this and other evils is the extravagant marriage-fee demanded by the priests. This is never less than fourteen dollars; and if this ceremony is not altogether dispensed with—as it is in a majority of cases—a young man begins his career as a mozo by borrowing money to defray the expenses of his wedding.
In love of wife and children Mexicans of every class are not excelled anywhere. If Diego or Juan is at work on one of the new roads, thither he transports his wife and his babies. He has a shelter for them somewhere among the cactus or mesquite and stunted palms, or lie burrows in a hillside or has a little thatch amid the brush, where, though not very comfortable according to our ideas, he has a home. Here the little brown children roll in the sun with the pigs, who have accompanied the family in their migration. The pony, if they have one, is tethered close by, and the inevitable burro, or donkey, goes hobbling about, as long-suffering as the Indian and with something like his history.
The ordinary homes of the common people are generally built of adobe, or, if near a forest," of pine-slabs leaning against a framework of logs or supported by a tree. The roof is a thatch of cornstalks or branches of trees or the stiff, sword-like leaves of the agave. Very
few of these hovels have doors, and none of them have windows. A heap of stones in the corner or a great flat slab in the centre serves for a fireplace on the earthen floor, and the smoke easily finds its way out through the cracks. Corn is ground between two stones, after the simple ancestral fashion. Tortillas—cakes made of crushed corn and water, baked hard—and rich brown beans, called frijols, hot with pepper, form the staple food. A few unglazed pots and dishes, a rude pitcher or two for water, gourds for cups, a tortilla-trough and kneading-stone, handed down perhaps for generations, with mats for seats and bedding, form all the furniture of the hovels in which most of the people live. The making and the eating of tortillas, however, are not confined to the poor. These are points on which all Mexicans are united. Twenty-five years ago chairs and tables were so little used in Mexico by the poorer people as to be more ornamental than useful; they preferred to sit on their heels or to lounge on the floor. Very few had knives or forks, and a spoon was always made of a tortilla folded together and dipped in the family-dish. The food and the clothing in such a home are generally homemade.
The women are industrious, and manage to weave with their old Aztec looms such cloth as their ancestors gave to Cortez by the bale. The apparatus looks like a few sticks tied together, and when not in use hangs on the wall. While some of the Indians of Mexico have pushed their way up to positions of influence, and sometimes of wealth, they are generally very poor, herding together in the cities in a quarter of their own, a people within a people. They number about five millions—more than half the entire population—while Indian blood predominates in the mestizo, or mixed, race of the country, the Creoles, or Europeans and their descendants, forming not
more than one-tenth of the inhabitants of Mexico. The Toluca Valley, about forty miles west of the capital, is owned by Indian pueblos, or corporations. Near Cuernavaca, where Cortez fought a fierce battle with the natives, is a village which has successfully resisted Spanish influences and maintained its old institutions to this day. Nor is this a solitary instance. The Indians are not dying out nor losing their tribal identity; they are a hardy race, and still thrive under treatment which blotted out the islanders among whom the Spaniards first settled. They often live to be a hundred years old; the women are especially long-lived. Few of either sex are deformed.
The whole race of village Indians, Aztecs and others, are an industrious people. Men and women share in the burdens of caring for the family; a woman may work in the fields, but the heavier part of out-door labor comes on the men. They all seem to be natural burden-bearers. Those of them who are too poor to own one of their little unshod ponies, or even a "burro," will all day carry on their own backs a load of from seventy-five to a hundred pounds. They take short steps and go on their long journeys up and down hill in a jog-trot, returning satisfied if they have earned a dollar or two at most. Their peculiar tenacity of purpose is shown by the fact that they are apt to go to the very place they set out for, even though they could make as much money by selling before they reached there. A missionary tells of a poor fellow who brought a hundred pounds of charcoal to market. He had spent a week altogether cutting and burning it, carried it twenty-five miles on his back and sold it for seventy-five cents. Some of these laborers earn from twelve and a half to thirty cents a day; others, loaded with debt, work for a bare subsistence and scarcely see money from one year's end to another.
Mexico has never been a densely-populated country. On an all-day journey by rail through the State of Chihuahua the vast, grassy plain over which the road passes, bounded on either side by fantastic mountain-peaks, has scarcely a sign of human habitation except the station-buildings along the track. Immense herds of cattle and numerous flocks of sheep are seen quietly feeding around some lake, as though they had been taking care of themselves for generations. This is not the case, however, for somewhere, hidden in a clump of trees or on a sightly hill, the comfortable mansion of some lordly proprietor (haciendado) arises surrounded by fields and orchards and a village of his peon herdsmen. Perhaps all the land which has been in sight for a whole day has been the property of one family for a century or more. Slavery was abolished when Mexican independence was secured, but the evil effects of the hacienda system—as this one-man power is called—remained.
Up to this time the towns and the hamlets of Mexico look very much as they have looked for the past three hundred years—bits of old Spain dropped into the New World soil amid the mouldering ruins of its ancient civilization. Forty miles north of the capital the Mexican Central Railroad passes Tula, one of the Toltec cities which was ruined before Cortez came. Here, among the fields near the famous pyramids of the sun and moon, thousands of little images are found by following the ploughman as he turns over the sod; they are supposed to be votive offerings once brought to this old Toltec shrine. No two faces are alike, but the sad expression worn now by the Indians is characteristic of these clay heads. Arrows, pottery and other remains show that this plain was in bygone ages the home of a large population.
Most of the interesting cities of Mexico are, or soon will be, reached by railroads. Monterey, one of the oldest cities on this continent, is on the Mexican National Railroad, about six hundred miles north-east from the capital. It stands at the head of a beautiful valley, on the Rio Catarina, one of the tributaries of the Rio Grande. It is entirely shut in by mountains whose strange shapes give to the scenery a peculiar character which cannot be lost when the tide of travel shall sweep away many other landmarks. These frowning summits are so high that the city nestling near at their base is still more than sixteen hundred feet above the sea. Streams of pure cold water flow through the streets from springs not far away. The city, embowered with orchards and gardens, has the same Moorish architecture seen elsewhere, while the fortress-like houses and the flat roofs mark it as one of the cities of olden times. A new cathedral, begun twenty years ago, is yet to be finished. The old one stands on the plaza, a pleasant spot beautified by the hapless Maximilian with winding walks, fountains and parterres of bright flowers.
Chihuahua is a city about twelve hundred miles north-west from the capital and two hundred miles from El Paso. The Mexican Central Railroad was opened through this place in March, 1884, making communication complete between this point and the City of Mexico.
Chihuahua had been subject to many inroads from the wild Indians of the North, and for years no enterprise was safe now, what with the new railroads, telegraphs, horse-cars, omnibuses, and the whir of American machinery in mills and factories, old times and new are in strange juxtaposition. The city stands in a beautiful valley opening toward the north between the spurs of the Sierra Madre. It is in the same latitude as is Southern Florida, but, being more than five thousand feet 
The police-force of the Mexican cities is generally very efficient. In Chihuahua watchmen walk the city all day with revolvers ready for action; at night they don a great serape, shoulder a gun and patrol the streets with huge square lanterns, calling out to each other with ostentatious regularity; and woe betide the offender who is caught disturbing the public peace and quiet in a less orderly manner than they do themselves! The next day finds him hard at work in the chain-gang, from which he never escapes until he has suffered the utmost rigor of the law.
Six hundred miles farther south, on the same rail road, is the city of Zacatecas, capital of the State of the same name. It is built in a cleft in the naked mountains so characteristic of this region and directly over a rich vein of silver. It is so situated that it does not come into view until one is within a mile and a half of it, and then only in sections unless one has climbed the hills to look down upon it. A number of churches and public buildings make a fine appearance.
Guanajuato has another of the curiously picturesque situations which Nature has provided for the cities of Mexico. It was founded by the Spaniards in 1545 for mining purposes. It is approached by a deep cañon. In what seems to be a collection of villages clinging to the steep mountain-sides are the houses of at least sixty thousand people. Along the winding streets or perched here and there on some "coign of vantage" are well-built houses of hewn stone. Deep as is the valley where these are situated, the whole place stands six thousand feet above the sea.
Guanajuato is the place where Hidalgo raised the standard of revolt in 1809 after gaining over the garrison, and not far away is the small village of Dolores, where he had his home.
Queretaro, also on the Mexican Central Railroad, is another city among the clouds, a thousand feet higher than Guanajuato. The whole State of which this city is the capital is remarkable for its fine scenery and its salubrious climate. Queretaro is furnished with water brought thither from springs six miles away. An aqueduct two miles long crosses the meadows on arches ninety feet high and joins a tunnel in the neighboring hills. This noble structure was built at his own expense by one of the early viceroys. In this beautiful city Maximilian took refuge with a few followers, and on a hill in its suburbs he was put to death. The place is also noted for the treaty of peace which was concluded here between Mexico and the United States in 1848.
At Lagos the Mexican Central branches off to the west, to San Blas.
Halfway to the Pacific coast is the quaint old city of Guadalajara, in the State of Jalisco. The bare brown hills by which it is surrounded would look dreary enough but for the gold of the sunlight and the blue of the sky, nowhere brighter than in Mexico. The city is two miles square and is laid out with straight wide streets crossing at right angles, with narrow sidewalks and one-story flat-roofed houses built about a large courtyard. It is a city of churches. The sky-line is everywhere broken by domes and spires with minarets and round towers built by men who learned architecture from the Moors. It has a beautiful alameda and many fine old trees, with arcades surrounding the public square in the centre of the city. Dominating all is the great cathedral with its decorations of blue and gold and a spire two hundred feet high; this building was very much injured by the great earthquake in the early part of this century. Among so many demolished churches and churches at auction and churches given away, it is remarkable that Guadalajara is building a new one which when completed will be very magnificent. To preserve the building from earthquakes a huge cross has been erected within the walls.
Guadalajara boasts sixteen public squares and many fine public buildings, the State university, the mint, the palaces of the governor and the archbishop and the largest theatre in America. Nor is it behind in modern 
Puebla, nestled among the cloud-capped summits overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, ranks next to the capital in size and importance. From this situation, seven thousand feet above the sea, is a magnificent outlook. The climate is unsurpassed even in this land of perpetual spring. Puebla is connected by a branch road with the railway from Vera Cruz to the capital. Its wide, clean, well-drained streets, imposing churches, substantial, houses and delightful surroundings of hill and grove are pleasant to look upon whichever way the eye may turn. The whole place had an air of thrift and enterprise before the great awakening of recent years. Its cotton-and flouring-mills, foundries, porcelain-and glass-works and the manufacture of pulque make it quite a business centre, but it is chiefly noted as one of the holy cities of Mexico. Its cathedral is proudly called "De los Angelos," from the old tradition that after its massive towers had been upreared the angels came down each night and helped to decorate the magnificent interior. Its pillars, ninety feet high, support a graceful dome from whose centre hangs a ponderous chandelier whose solid gold and silver are tons in weight. The high altar, of translucent marble inlaid with gold, was a gift of one of the bishops. Some of its great stones are as exquisite in color and finish as is any gem in a lady's ring. The image of the Virgin shrined here is almost life-size, and is so bedizened with pearls and emeralds and diamonds as to be worth millions. Delicate and airy wood-carvings, splendid tapestries wrought in old Spain by royal hands, paintings by old masters, a wilderness of statuary gilded and graven and sanctified by years of worship, make the cathedral of Puebla one of the sights of Mexico. Here, also, in a city of churches, convents and priests, was a branch of the Inquisition, under the care of Dominican friars; its buildings have recently been purchased from the government by the Methodist mission. One of the gilded rooms of which they took possession had in its walls a door which had been plastered up. This was knocked open, and a room was found in which were many human skeletons. The hapless victims had evidently been let down through a well-like opening overhead and left alone to die, the living among the dead. From the courtyard of this terrible prison thirteen cartloads of human bones were taken before it could be made suitable for the purposes of the mission.