Chapter I: Our Southern Neighbors

The foreign land nearest to our United States of America is Mexico. Although most of us live closer to Canada than to Mexico, we hardly think of the Canadians as foreigners. True, they are citizens of the British Empire, and do not vote in our elections. But any of you who have been in Canada know how much it is like home—how very few things are different at all.

Mexico, on the other hand, is very foreign indeed. The Mexican people and their ways, even the Mexican scenery and climate, are as unlike us and our ways, our scenery and climate, as if they were on the opposite side of the globe instead of just across a shallow river. Yet close as it is, and interesting as it would prove to be, most of us know and care less about Mexico than we do about Europe. A thousand Americans cross the Atlantic and travel in Europe to one who steps across the Rio Grande and enjoys visiting our quaint southern neighbors. In school we study a great deal about European history, but most of us never hear of Mexico in history class, except in connection with what we call our Mexican War.

Surely it is important to know one’s closest neighbors; so I am going to invite you to come with me on what I think will be an interesting journey, not only through Mexico but clear down through Central America, with its half dozen smaller and smaller republics, until we reach our own people again along the Panama Canal. Some of the traveling will be rough; sometimes our lodgings will not have all the comforts of home. But I will do all the walking and coarse eating and hard sleeping for you, so you can give all your attention to the pleasures of the trip and bring home a clear knowledge of the people and the land so close to us.

Some Things We Should Know First

Sometimes it is fun to visit a foreign country before we know anything about it, but in the end it is not the wisest plan to do so. Before we start it will be worth while to stow away in our knapsacks a few facts about Mexico and the smaller lands beyond.

In Mexico we shall be in another _United States_, for the official name of the country is the “Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” which means the “United States of Mexico.” If, some day, you go on traveling with me beyond the Panama Canal, into the great continent of South America, we shall find still other _United States_. There are twenty-eight states in Mexico, two territories, and a federal district. The capital is in the federal district, which is almost surrounded by the _state_ of Mexico. On the south it is bounded by the state of Morelos. Some people are surprised that the name Mexico should be given to a city, a state, and a country. They forget that, for example, part of New York City is in New York County, and all of it is in New York State.

Mexico is about two thousand miles long. Its width varies from one thousand miles, up near the northern border, to a mere 130 miles down at its “wasp’s waist” of Tehuantepec. It has a coast line of nearly six thousand miles. You will notice that this is much more than double the length of the country, and the reason is that the Pacific Ocean all but surrounds the great peninsula of Lower California, while the peninsula of Yucatan stretches far out into the Atlantic to help form the Gulf of Mexico. The country has one large lake. Very few of its many rivers are navigable.

Some people like figures, even if they are very large ones. For them we may say that Mexico has nearly 800,000 square miles of territory. Perhaps most of you, like myself, will get a better idea of its size if I say that it is almost as large as our five biggest states rolled into one—Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, and Arizona. Down in Central America, however, we shall find that the country of Costa Rica is hardly as large as Pennsylvania, and that Salvador is no larger than New Jersey.

Ward Line. Photo by Hugo Brehme, Mexico City

Miles away one can see the snow-covered head of Mount Orizaba.
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Mexico is a land of mountains. It is really an immense table-land or plateau, beginning far up in the Rocky Mountains. Ciudad Juárez on the frontier is more than 3,700 feet above sea level, and within two hours’ train ride of Mexico City this great plateau is 8,100 feet high. Then it begins to subside, running down to almost nothing in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. We might liken it to a great land wave (with the nation’s capital just over its crest) topped by many snow-clad peaks as white as foam. The Sierra Madre, or “Mother Range,” runs the whole length of the country, as the Rockies do in ours. Besides this main ridge, nearly everywhere more than 10,000 feet high, there are many cross ridges and parallel ranges. Of the great peaks, always capped with snow and ice, Orizaba is over 18,000 feet high, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the “Sleeping White Woman,” are each over 17,000. None of them is as high as Mt. McKinley in Alaska or the giants of South America. Yet there are volcanoes in Mexico which, though as lofty as Mt. Whitney (highest point in the United States proper) are so unimportant, compared to the others, that we do not even know their names.

As you may already know, there are about fifteen million people in Mexico. It would be difficult to take as accurate a census there as is taken every ten years in the United States. About one-fifth or twenty per cent of the inhabitants are purely of the white race. Thirty-five per cent are Indians. The rest, or nearly half the population, are _mestizos_, that is, mixtures of the Indians with the Spaniards who conquered them. In one sense North America south of the United States is not a white man’s country. Yet in another sense it is, for the white inhabitants do most of the governing and have most of the wealth. The _pela’os_, or “peeled ones”—those who are very poor and have no real say in the government—make up about sixty per cent of the population.

The Central American Countries

Central America includes all the countries between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Colombia. Sometimes Mexico also is considered a part of Central America, which seems reasonable enough, for it is surely a part of the central portion of land of the western hemisphere. The whole of this region we are to visit has been likened to a great horn, fastened to the United States as to a head. The horn—or the imaginary animal that owns it!—seems to be trying to gore South America with the sharp curved tip which we call the Isthmus of Panama.

Central America includes the countries of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and the British crown colony of Belize, often called British Honduras. Except this last, and little Salvador, all the countries of Central America are like Mexico in stretching clear across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They somewhat resemble a family of children, lined up according to size, with Mexico as the big brother. We shall see, too, that they have tried several times to live together as one family, but they do not seem to be able to do so peaceably.

Perhaps this is enough to know before we start on our journey. If we know too much about a country before we visit it, we lose much of the pleasure of travel. For then there are no more surprises left for us than there are in a story of which we know the plot. Yet one other matter should be mentioned before we start—the climate. If you think that because Mexico is so far south you will need only summer clothing, you will have many a day of shivering before you reach Panama. Take along the things you wear at home in late autumn and early spring, and remember that there will be many days, and especially evenings, when you will need at least a light overcoat. Most of the time in Mexico we shall be up on the high table-land, and even in Central America we shall sometimes be as high above the sea as Denver is.