Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/From Conquest to Independence

by Mary Elizabeth Blake and Margaret F. Sullivan

 

CHAPTER IX

 

FROM CONQUEST TO INDEPENDENCE

"The art and beauty of historical composition," said Capt. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a lieutenant of Cortez, "is to write the truth;" and from the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, when, "in the residence of the royal court of audience," the Spanish historian finished his narrative, down to our own days, there has been only one story of the pictorial aspects of Mexico. The vivid and accurate description which is given in these pages is not surpassed for precision, for taste, for sympathy, by that of any earlier writer of all who may say with Mrs. Blake, as Bernal Diaz said of himself, "This is no history of distant nations, nor vain reveries: I relate that of which I was an eye-witness and not idle reports or hearsay;_for truth is sacred,"

But whoever undertakes to write of material Mexico, even though he can say with equal truth that he was an eye-witness, and holds truth sacred, will find himself falling into vain revery. "Reports" he may procure, but, in more senses than one, they are "vain;" hearsay he will find copious and contradictory; and although hundreds of authors have travelled the country, and left their impressions on record, out of the mass of their labor little that is of absolute value can be extracted.

Diaz himself complains of the elegance and untrustworthiness of the earlier work of Francisco Lopez de Gomara. The Abbé Clavigero, who wrote of Mexico one hundred and fifty years later, enumerates forty Spanish, Italian, and Mexican historians from whose pages he derived his own narrative; and he alludes somewhat doubtfully to a long catalogue of French, English, Dutch, Flemish, and German writers of whom he is not willing to admit that they held truth sacred. His patience was justly exhausted by one among them who described native princes going on elephants to the court of the Montezumas. One is impressed, however, in reading the literature of the past about this strange and still only dimly understood country, with the permanency of nearly every thing in it. Bernal Diaz himself was not less affected than Mrs. Blake by the wondrous beauty of the landscape; while others, of a later date, have written about the manufactures and customs of the country in phraseology which we, who were there only yesterday, as it seems, would scarcely alter. Don Antonio de Solis, for instance, "secretary and historiographer to his Catholic Majesty," tells us that he saw cotton cloths "well wove, and so fine that they could not be known from silk but by feeling." "A quantity of plumes," he continues, "and other curiosities made of feathers, and whose beauty and natural variety of colors (found on rare birds that country produces) so placed and mixed with wonderful art, distributing the several colors, and shadowing the light with the dark so exactly, that, without making use of artificial colors or of the pencil, they could draw pictures, and would undertake to imitate nature." The same work contains an excellent woodcut of Mexican women making bread. The process, the utensils, the implements, are precisely the same as those which Mrs. Blake describes as now in use.

Writers in the present century only repeat the narratives of those of the preceding ones. "Notes on Mexico" in 1822, by "A Citizen of the United States," and printed in Philadelphia, might have been written two hundred years ago, or last week. Mexico is in many things the unchanging country of this continent. The American acknowledges his debt to the works of Lorenzana, Alzate, Clavigero, Boturini, Mier, Robinson, and Humboldt; but by far the most interesting portion of his volume is his unadorned tale of what he saw and heard.

The arcades in the neighborhood of the cathedral, in which we spent a good deal of time, existed in his day. "They resemble the bazars of the East, and are furnished with every variety of goods." Costumes have changed no more than the making of intoxicants.

In 1836 Charles Joseph Latrobe wrote "The Rambler in Mexico." If we should take his account of scenes during Lent, it would be unnecessary to alter a word. Mexican piety is somewhat theatrical and realistic during that holy season. On Maunday Thursday, for instance, they fill the air with the cricket-like sound of rattles, made in all manner of designs, of wood or silver, the substitute for bells; and on Good Friday they disport Judases of all shapes and sizes, filled with gunpowder, which at the proper moment explodes. On Palm Sunday they fill the churches in their indescribable variety of gay and striking costumes, bearing in their hands tall, yellow palms, making a much more impressive sight, and closer to the narrative of the Gospels, than our colder climate enables us to have. Capt. G. F. Lyon, who went from England to Mexico in 1828, examined closely the labor, especially the mining, of the country. Herdsmen received five dollars per month, and agricultural laborers seven pence per day. Wages have slightly risen since then, but, unfortunately, so have the prices of food and clothing. "Mexico as it was and is," by Brantz Mayer, was written in 1841-42 by the Secretary of the American Legation. He sought especially to collect data from authentic sources upon commerce, agriculture, manufactures, coinage, mines, church and general government. He is obliged to add: "In many instances I have only been enabled to present estimates." Two recent writers, Thomas A. Janvier^[1] and David A. Wells^[2] have been similarly engaged. They have produced useful, but differing compilations. In many instances they have been able only to present estimates. During our stay in the City of Mexico, we examined all the book-stores, and endeavored to enlist the interest of kind friends there for the procurement of statistical publications upon material Mexico. The result was two books, — one, "Atlas Metodico," by Antonio Garcia Cubas, from the titlepage of which it is apparent that there is a geographical and statistical society; but this atlas contains only local geographical information and maps, with two pages of questions for teachers and students. The other book was "Annuario Universal," editor Philomena Mata, and the issue for 1886 was the eighth annual publication. It is a well-printed duodecimo, two columns to the page, a thousand pages solid nonpareil; and the total of the statistics in it occupies less than four pages. The custom-house claims the rest.

Partly from observation and partly out of authorities selected from various groups, — in an effort to keep clear of partisans against Mexico, — and with the understanding that in statistics estimates must be employed often in lieu of ascertained facts, I venture to offer some brief considerations.

 

"For the commission was to be extended no farther than barter and obtaining gold."

 

In that sentence, written by Bernal Diaz, is compressed the whole story of the Spanish invasion of Mexico, its scope, its motive, its object. The part that religion played in it is acknowledged by the same unquestionable witness with like candor. When Cortés was ready to set out upon the expedition, he caused to be made a standard of gold and velvet, with the royal arms, and a cross embroidered thereon, and a Latin motto, the meaning of which was, "Brothers, follow this holy cross with true faith, for with it we shall conquer." The occasional words of the Spanish captains to the natives concerning religion appear to have been called forth more by the shock of seeing human sacrifices, and hearing that children's flesh was served upon the table of Montezuma, than by any earnest desire to induce the Mexicans to embrace Christianity.

If they had any such desire, their own conduct was more than sufficient to account for the refusal of Montezuma to act upon their suggestion; and the letters of Cortés himself, as well as the writings of many of his companions and contemporaries, show that what defects the visitor in Mexico may see to-day in the social organization are precisely of the kind of Christianity which the Spaniards taught by their example. The vices their chroniclers denounce in the emperor and native princes on one page, they themselves adopt on the next; and the most revolting practices, abhorrent to faith, and ruinous of the most firmly organized society, find avowals in language intermixed with prayers and ejaculations of devotion. They charge the natives with superstition: they were themselves superstitious. They charge the natives with low morals: they added lower ones, if lower were possible. They charge the natives with cruelty: they set up the Inquisition among them to enable the State to be cruel, while the name of the Church was borrowed to wear the responsibility, and carry down to our own time the reproach.^[3] They charge the natives with treachery: they taught them masterly tactics in that vice, when they procured entrance into the palace and confidence of Montezuma.^[4]

No matter who, after Cortés, ruled Mexico for Spain, he carried out the original design of the governor of Cuba who planned the invasion. Barter and the obtaining of gold, with the employment of religion as a means to that end, is written over every chapter of Spanish rule; and the traditions of despotism, the bigotry against commerce, the hostility towards foreigners, the avarice and sloth which politicians infused into the religious orders for their own ends, resulting at last in a great crisis, are all directly traceable to the rapacity, the hypocrisy, and the feudalism of the invaders.

It would have made no difference if the invader had been England, and the new religion Protestantism. The Spanish domination in Mexico lasted for just three hundred years, from 1521 to 1821. "The government, or viceroyalty, established by Spain in Mexico seems to have always regarded the attainment of three things or results as the object for which it was mainly constituted, and to have allowed nothing of sentiment or of humanitarian consideration to stand for one moment in the way of their rigorous prosecution and realization. These were, first, to collect and pay into the royal treasury the largest possible amount of annual revenue; second, to extend and magnify the authority and work of the established Church; third, to protect home [i.e. Spanish] industries."^[5] Is not that the description of the English domination in Ireland? The consequences are curiously correspondent. The land in Mexico, like the land in Ireland, is owned by a small number of proprietors. The tillers in Mexico have no more interest in the results of their toil, than had the tenants in Ireland prior to the beginning of the land-reform era forced upon the English Government by the people of Ireland. The Mexican landlords reside abroad in large numbers, like the absentee landlords of Ireland; and the money produced by the soil flows out of Mexico in exports of bullion for these absentees and their creditors, precisely as the crops and money of Ireland are carried from her to replenish the purses of her landlords. The native manufactures of Mexico, slight as they were, were discouraged by the Spanish administration, for the same reason that England destroyed the more vigorous industries of Ireland as rapidly as they appeared. Mexico was to buy only from the manufacturers and merchants of Spain; gold and silver, woods, and a few products of soil and labor combined, she was required to give in exchange for what Spain had to sell. Ireland and India have been required to give products of labor and soil combined in exchange for English manufactures. Religion in each case was degraded into the uses of the conqueror. Human greed was the passion in both cases. The sleep of Mexico, disturbed at intervals by hideous convulsions, was the result on this continent. A more muscular race made a more persistent resistance to England, and Ireland has begun the recovery of her complete rights. India's day is not yet at hand.

It is a droll satire upon political economy, that Spain accomplished her purpose by protection in Mexico, and England by free trade in Ireland and India. There is no abstract theory yet devised by man superior to natural avarice enforced by arms.

A patriot priest, the divine instinct of nationality carrying him above the dreaming masses of his fellow-countrymen, at length arose against the Spanish domination. He paid with his life for his devotion to his country, but the death of Hidalgo blew the breath of liberty into Mexico. His country relapsed for a time under the old oppression. In another decade she made another desperate and more successful, but far from sufficient, effort; and, when the flag of the republic was unfurled in 1821, the symbol upon it was that of the old native race, — the eagle and cactus, the emblems of the Aztecs. A people without means of inter-communication, of different languages, in whom the poetry of paganism was often mingled with a dull understanding of Christian principles; whose more subdued classes scarcely cared to be awakened to exertion, and whose intellectualized caste was filled with languid selfishness; a people who had no interest in their land, no manufactures, no education; whose wants were simple and easily supplied; who knew little of arms, and possessed none, — it was impossible that such a people should be eager in seizing upon chances for the erection of representative government on the ruins of hereditary despotism; hereditary, that is, not in the line of the Spanish viceroys, but in the ideas by which Mexico was held under foreign rule. It is not wonderful that revolution followed revolution. It is not surprising that province attacked province, and faction collided with faction.

With the expulsion of the Spaniards, new foes came in from without. England, the usurer of the world, advanced money upon what she intended to be, as in the case of Egypt, the security of the entire country. The United States was beguiled into an invasion by which Mexican valor was made to stand a superb test against soldiers, who, unlike Cortés and his companions, defeated the Mexicans by arms, but not by treachery. Not the worst misfortune which befell Mexico in consequence of the Northern invasion was the increase of her obligations to England. A direct consequence of her bankruptcy was the intrigue of France, Spain, and England for the invasion of Mexico after the breaking out of our civil war.

The progress of that struggle convinced two of the copartners that the contemplated enterprise would be perilous, with the Monroe Doctrine still vital, and a considerable army of experienced troops, North and South, to answer with equal alacrity the call of their common country to expel European despotism from this continent. Louis Napoleon, desperate for new delusions to postpone his fall, resolved to take the chances; and the last invasion of Mexico was the child of his ambition.

It is true that Maximilian was not the designer of his own ruin. It is unquestioned that he was anxious to win the good-will of the Mexican people, and that it would have been the highest happiness to him and his amiable wife to have ruled Mexico for her own good. The earth is not yet ready to dispense with the luxuries of royalty, and large aggregations of the human race are persuaded that it is wise to pay for the glitter and mockery of thrones. And it may be true that a monarchy in Mexico, constitutional and conservative, maintained with just firmness, would have afforded that tranquillity essential to national development. But experience, human nature, and the re-consolidation of the United States were all opposed to Maximilian, — experience, because there is no instance of genuine or enduring national development under a ruler representing political and industrial interests opposed to those of the people he tried to rule; human nature, because his own blind and deceitful course rendered it certain that he should fail; and the reconsolidation of the United States, because the spirit of the American people, calm after the conflict, and purged by the effacement of slavery from their own soil, would not suffer Old-World despotism to repeat in our own day the story of earlier ages.

Maximilian, and the still more deeply and deservedly pitied Carlotta, have been the cause of much denunciation of the Mexican people. To refuse sympathy to Louis Napoleon's hapless and beautiful victim, whose reason toppled after her heart was broken, is surely beyond human power. The sternest heart cannot tread unmoved the lonely cypress paths of Chapultepec, where her sad feet sought to escape the troop of sorrows that encompassed her husband, Toussaint l'Ouverture, the emancipator, dragged from his farm in Hayti by the treachery of the great Napoleon, and starved to death in the dungeon of Joux on the bleak and snowy Jura, is the companion picture for the demented daughter of the king of the Belgians, widowed and crazed, in a palace of the Montezumas, by the last of the Napoleons.

Maximilian had the misfortune to follow too closely the example of his patron. His assumption of the crown of Mexico was made contingent upon a popular vote of approval; but the assembly of reactionaries who went through that ceremony for him no more represented the people of Mexico than the people of any other land. The pretext served its purpose; but he speedily freed himself from those who had been the aiders of his fortunes. The spoliation of the Church by the republic, ruthless and undiscriminating, had created a conservative party, not blameless altogether, but yet honest; and to that party Maximilian was pledged. To that party he owed his crown. He cast them off in the expectation that he could succeed better by making friends of their enemies. At the same time, acting, it is charged, upon the advice of Bazaine, and defying the best sentiment of all classes of the people, defying humanity itself, he issued a decree which would have revolted Cortés himself. He ordered that all persons found in rebellion against his pretensions should be shot as outlaws. This appalling order sealed his own doom. The mercy he showed to Mexico, Mexico showed to him. It was a noble impulse which induced our Government to plead for his life on condition that he should leave the country whose soil, as a pretender to a crown, he had no right to touch. It would have been better heeded had Mexico been able to recall to life those whom, loving their native land, and justified in resisting foreign invasion, he had relentlessly sent to unhonored graves.

Could Mexico have hoped for much under a ruler who sought to force a monarchy upon a people who had heroically established a republic; from a prince whose exemplars were Napoleons; whose first step after his enthronement was the betrayal of those who had enthroned him, whose second was an order for the massacre of political opponents? What is there in the traditions of crowns won by invasion, maintained by treachery, and spattered with popular blood, to justify the expectation that Maximilian would have taught the Mexicans self-government ?

The only way for a nation to learn self-government is to practise it.

 

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1. The Mexican Guide. By Thomas A. Janvier. Scribners.
2. A Study of Mexico. By David A. Wells, LL.D., D.C.R. Appleton
3. Janvier, p. 27.
4. Mr. Wells seems a little unfair to the military character of the Mexicans, when he directs attention to the fact that Cortez conquered the empire with so insignificant a force. Treachery on the part of the invaders, and hospitality on that of the natives, had as much as arms to do with his success.
5. David A. Wells.