Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive/Religion and Education

by Mary Elizabeth Blake and Margaret F. Sullivan

 

CHAPTER XI

 

RELIGION AND EDUCATION

If we look more closely at the Mexico of this century, of this quarter of the century, and of the present decade, it becomes apparent that a change, organic and constitutional, has been silently coming upon this ancient and secluded country. It is not a change brought about by war, nor substantially advanced by diplomacy. It is a silent revolution, moving gently in the footsteps of peace. We must seek the evidences of it in education, agriculture, and manufactures, and in the sources and uses of revenue.

The story of education in Mexico is one of hopelessly tangled threads. As the mystic symbols on the monuments of Egypt have only begun to yield their secrets to the archælogist, we need not despair of yet knowing something of the antiquity of a country whose age is beyond present estimate, and whose earliest civilization, as indicated by her superstitions, architecture, costumes, and myths, was Oriental. Of her middle age, that long period following the Spanish invasion, and preceding authentic accessible accounts by travellers or natives, the vain spirit of exaggeration has been the chief exploring activity. On the one hand, hostile prejudice has charged against the ostensible religion of the Spaniards the results due in large measure to natural causes, which neither political forms nor moral forces could easily overcome. On the other, shallow religious partisanship has credited the Spaniards with achievements in Mexico, educational and moral, of which there is little material proof.

Itemizers of history, for instance, who rush into discussion with an isolated date, and who assume the dignity of the architect with the function of the brick-carrier, have made ado over the fact that the first university on this continent was established in Mexico in 1551. It is not true even as an isolated fact. If it were true, its historical value would consist in the impression it made on the national life, not in its categorical precedence. The ceremonious authority for the creation of a university in Mexico was given by Charles V. of Spain in that year; but the actual beginning was not made until two years later, and then in temporary buildings. The institution could not have known a prosperous infancy, for it had no home of its own for nearly another half-century. The building which now bears its name was not put up for nearly two centuries later. Very little trustworthy information can be procured concerning its founders. It was a child of Salamanca, and Salamanca in the middle of the sixteenth century was in its glory as the exponent and defender of Thomas Aquinas. His latest biographer, speaking of the Christian Fathers, says, "They did not veil themselves away from the sight of men when they took up their pens to write; but on the contrary, with beautiful frankness and simplicity, they wove their own portraits in amongst their teachings, and that with a grace and an unconsciousness of self which are amongst the most charming characteristics of single-minded genius."^[1] The pioneers of Christian learning in Mexico did not follow their example, but nevertheless they were brave and devoted, as well as erudite and pious, as is manifest from their abandonment of their native land and the intellectual luxuries of its university society, for the hardships, mental and physical, of a land to be reached by perils of a still strange sea.

Doubtless the university of Mexico did something for science and art; but its usefulness was necessarily restricted to those who learned or inherited the Spanish tongue, and were able to acquire the preparatory education requisite for admission. That the area of its usefulness was very narrow, needs no demonstration. It must have had some independence and aggressive energy, for it was several times suppressed by the Spanish Government. In 1822 a visitor found the building very spacious, and the institution well endowed; "but at present there are very few students." Two hundred is the highest number mentioned as having been in attendance at any time. The library consisted then "of a small collection of books." In the city there were "a few book-shops," and the few books in them "were extravagantly dear."^[2] "Under the colonial system liberal studies were discouraged." In 1844, when Brantz Mayer was in the capital, the appropriation for the salaries of the professors in the university was $7,613. There was no appropriation for elementary schools. Of the colleges he says, "The students who live within the walls are expected to contribute for their education, while others, who only attend the lectures of the professors, are exempt from all costs and charges; so that about two-thirds of the pupils of every college receive their literary education gratuitously." Colleges appear to have been then as useless as the university; for out of a population of seven millions, less than seven hundred thousand could read.

In a well-known Church history published in 1878, it is said, "There is but one university in the country, that of the City of Mexico, founded in 1551, having twenty-two professors and a library of fifty thousand volumes."^[3] The statement,

whether it refers to the year of the foundation or the year of the publication, is certainly misleading. The reference is probably to the year of publication, but it must have been based on much earlier records; for there is no university in the country to-day, and there was none in 1878. It was abolished in 1865. The building was first transferred to the Ministry of Public Works; now it is the National Conservatory of Music. Among the subjects of the paintings in the interior are St. Thomas, St. Paul, St. Catherine, and Duns Scotus.

The charge that the Spaniards endeavored to prevent the spread of letters, and that the Church has antagonized education, requires careful examination. The printing-press was set up twenty years after the conquest. The natives could be reached by the press only through the extension of the Spanish language. The Spaniards, unlike the English in Ireland, did not make the native tongue penal, and enact special statutes for hanging, disembowelling, exiling, or imprisoning those who employed it for teaching purposes. They kept the printing-press busy turning out dictionaries, by which rulers and ruled were enabled to get a little nearer each other. They printed books of devotion, — a fact which irritates some; but would they have had the Greek classics printed for the natives, and works on metaphysics, science, and natural philosophy? Who could have read them? It is true that the printing-press does not seem to have accomplished much. But the obstacles in its way were like their enormous mountain-ranges, which kept forever apart, unless they met in war, tribes, if not races, whose dialects were inexchangeable. The printing-press had to make, not one Spanish-Indian or Aztec dictionary, but as many dictionaries as there were tongues. The natives refused the Spanish spelling-book, and continued to hate and tease the invaders. To-day this diversity of speech remains to prove that the failure of the printing-press does not constitute good ground for indictment. There are at least five distinct languages in Mexico, and millions of the people remain totally or partially ignorant of the official language of the republic.

There was, moreover, a political force always at work against the diffusion of education through the agencies of the Church. It was the same cause which operated in Ireland: the Church, maintained by the State, was not maintained for the sake of religion or education, but to provide for favored sons of the invaders. The bishoprics were filled with appointees of the Spanish court. The support of their establishments was made a legal burden, and the story of the Established Church in Mexico runs in a parallel with that of the Established Church in Ireland. "It was the policy of the Spanish cabinet to cherish the temporalities of the Mexican Church. The rights of primogeniture forced the younger sons either into the profession of arms or of religion, and it was requisite that ample provision should be made for them in secure and splendid establishments. Thus all the lucrative and easy benefices came into the hands of Spaniards or their descendants, and by far the greater portion of the more elevated ecclesiastics were persons of high birth or influential connections." ^[4] It was inevitable that the causes and customs which gave princely incomes to clergymen without congregations in Ireland; which enabled bishops of the Establishment, entering as paupers their sparse dioceses, to leave legacies of thousands of pounds to their personal heirs, while thousands from whom their tithes were wrung died unlettered and in want, — should create in Mexico an ecclesiastical class and condition of a corresponding kind. "As long as Mexico was a dependency of Spain, . . . the bishops had very handsome revenues; the largest being about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and the smallest about twenty-five thousand dollars."^[5] The real estate and personal property of the religious establishments accumulated, from an estimate of ninety million dollars in 1844, until, when the revolution arrived, the material wealth of the Church furnished temptations too great to be resisted.

As late as 1829 the Spanish court disputed with the Pope the right to nominate bishops for Mexico. In that year there was only one see filled in the entire country. The rival parties of the country made the most of the political factiousness which surrounded religious office; and in 1833 it was proposed to confiscate the Church property, and apply the proceeds to the payment of the national debt. This was slowly and spasmodically done, and was fully accomplished when Maximilian arrived in the capital as emperor. Alzog relates the rest of the chapter: "Directly on his arrival . . . the clerical party demanded the immediate and unconditional restoration of the ecclesiastical property confiscated and sold during the ascendency of Juarez and the French agency. As this amounted to about one-third of the real estate of the empire, and one-half of the immovable property of the municipalities, and had already passed from the first to the second, and in some instances to the third, purchaser, it was plainly impossible for the emperor to satisfy this demand." The papal nuncio avowed his inability to find any satisfactory solution of the question, and resigned. Maximilian instructed his ministers to bring in a bill, which was promptly passed, vesting the management and sale of ecclesiastical property in the council of state.

What Brantz Mayer wrote of the common clergy in 1844 doubtless continued to be true: "Through- out the republic no persons have been more universally the agents of charity, and the ministers of mercy, than the rural clergy. The village curas are the advisers, the friends, and protectors of their flocks. Their houses have been the hospitable retreats of every traveller. Upon all occasions they constituted themselves the defenders of the Indians, and contributed toward the maintenance of institutions of benevolence. They have interposed in all attempts at persecution, and, wherever the people were menaced with injustice, stood forth the champions of their outraged rights. To this class, however, the wealth of the Church was of small import." That is the testimony of an enemy of the Church. It is corroborated by that most imposing fact in Mexican history since the invasion, — that it was a priest who led the people in their first genuine effort to throw off a foreign yoke, and found a national republican government.

The separation of Church and State, although the mode involved injustice, has had the effect of stimulating both in behalf of popular education. There is no national university, but the people are learning to read. The few princely sees have disappeared, but the people sustain their clergy generously. A foreign political power no longer fills the bishoprics, but Rome has increased their number so as to bring religion more closely to the people. The first and most general result is, that the all but universal illiteracy of fifty years ago is rapidly diminishing. The schools are supported, partly by the national Government, partly by states and municipalities, partly by benevolent societies. Forty years ago the total sum expended on education by the Government could not have exceeded a hundred thousand dollars. Now it is more nearly five million dollars, if we include with the national appropriation the contributions from other sources, public and private. "With very few exceptions," says Janvier, "free schools, sustained by the state or municipal governments, the Church or benevolent societies, are found in all towns and villages; and in all the cities and larger towns, private schools are numerous. In the more important cities, colleges and professional schools are found. . . . Included in the general scheme are free night-schools for men and women, as well as schools in which trades are taught." It must be owned, however, that the history used in the schools gives a version of the American war with Mexico which would somewhat surprise Gen. Scott and the gallant lieutenants who fought with him.

A distinguished American economist,^[6] who saw the country two years ago, says of the recent development of the educational spirit : — "It is safe to say that more good, practical work has been done in this direction, within the last ten years, than in all of the preceding three hundred and fifty. At all of the important centres of population, free schools, under the auspices of the national Government, and free from all Church supervision, are reported as established; while the Catholic Church itself, stimulated, as it were, by its misfortunes, and apparently unwilling to longer rest under the imputation of having neglected education, is also giving much attention to the subject, and is said to be acting upon the principle of immediately establishing two schools wherever, in a given locality, the Government or any of the Protestant denominations establish one."

The Government also maintains national schools of agriculture, medicine, law, engineering, military science, music, and fine arts, as well as a national museum and a national library. The charitable and benevolent institutions, public and private, equal in number and scope, if they do not exceed, our own.

 

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1. Saint Thomas of Aquin. By the Very Rev. Roger Bede Vaughan.
2. The book-stores are not numerous now; but books, and uncommon ones, are cheap. I found in a second-hand shop Tom Moore's Odes of Anacreon (1802); Aventuras de Gil Bias, 4 vols., Barcelona, 1817; Thesaurus Hispano-Latinus, Madrid, 1794; La Gerusalemme Liberata, Turin, 1830; El Nuevo Testamento, London, 1874. The imprimatur is that of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. The volume contains an excellent map and many good illustrations. The translation is approved by the Archbishop of Santiago.
3. Alzog: Universal Church History.
4. Brantz Mayer.
5. Brantz Mayer.
6. Mr. David A. Wells, like Mrs. Blake and the writer, was a member of the first Raymond excursion party which went from Boston over the Mexican Central. It would be imprudent, at least for the present, for women, or for men not fond of "roughing it," to make this delightful journey overland, except under experienced management such as we enjoyed, which charges itself with all responsibility for the traveller.