Chapter VI: Part I: Old Mexico (4)

All who know European life, however, are aware that the theatre and the café, with people of the Latin race, largely take the place of the social visiting and entertaining at home prevailing among Anglo-Saxons. Our next-door neighbors, after all, may only have followed, making a little more severe, the traditions of Old Spain. Ladies do not often appear at the cafés, but they are often at their boxes at the theatres, to which they subscribe by the season; and they would go more frequently yet, no doubt, were the pieces as a rule better worth their consideration. There are three large, well-built theatres, the Nacional, Principal, and Arbeu, and minor ones for the working-class.

The entertainments esteemed of chief importance are those of the French opera companies which come over from Havana, on their rounds. A native Spanish opera-bouffe and ballet, called _zarzuela_, is much given at other times. For the rest, the theatrical pieces presented are the works, in prose and verse, of the Spanish dramatists current at home, or occasionally of some native dramatist, announced with an extra flourish which his production does not usually justify. They are all announced with a sufficient flourish, so far as that is concerned. There is always going on some especially _Gran Funcion_, as, for example:

“The grand Drama of Customs, Entirely New, in three acts and verse, by the distinguished poet, D. Leopoldo Cano, author of the precious comedy, ‘La Mariposa,’ entitled ‘LA OPINION PUBLICA.’

“This sublime work of the distinguished poet, D. Leopoldo Cano,” the bill goes on to say, “was received at Madrid with an astounding acclaim. The Spanish Press has lavished upon it a thousand eulogies.... In choosing it for the second subscription night, we feel that the public will know how to value it as it truly merits, and to value at the same time the skill of the Company in their most finished studies and essays.”

I do not recollect any of this as very novel, or likely to be of interest if translated, apart from some portions depending upon such a difference of manners and customs as to be hardly intelligible to an American audience. My acquaintance with the theatre began with a piece at the Nacional, called “The First Patient.” There was a young doctor on the stage, and an acquaintance of his had fallen in love with his wife, and put a note in her work-basket by way of telling her so. The note was conveyed to the husband, who, instead of shooting the imprudent writer, took occasion presently to assume a look of horror, and pretend that the latter had gone blind. Before the Lothario could protest, a bandage was clapped over his eyes, medicaments given to make him believe in his own misfortune, and he was put under a course of onerous treatment.

After a series of absurd situations he was finally released, persuaded by degrees that he was cured. The patient raised the bandage. “_Veo! veo!_”—“I see!”—he exclaimed, in wild delight.

“Very well, then—see that!” said the husband, thrusting the offending letter under his nose.

This was amusing enough, but I was quite as much amused all the time with the studious efforts of a companion who had come with me—the French engineer sent out to examine mines, before mentioned—who proposed to turn the theatre into a school of languages. He grasped at every word a semblance of which he seemed to catch, and dived for verifications of it into his grammar and dictionary. He resented in his ambition any interpretation of passages which he did not himself originate, and constructed such a theory of the play as its author would by no means have recognized. When the _dénouement_ came, in the bold “_Veo!_” he seized upon it with avidity.

“_‘Veo,’ c’est bien trouvé ça—‘veo,’_” he said, reflectively, digesting it at his leisure. “_Je vais le retenir ce ‘veo;’ vous-allez voir._”

And so he did, and proceeded to use it vigorously in the restaurants and the like on the following day.

IV.

Though so much more be still proposed, there are certainly some reasons for self-complacency in the country even from the American point of view. Education is found to be provided for in a manner that awakens admiration and surprise. The primary schools are least looked after, but the pupils who pass through these with a disposition to go farther have an array of advantages open to them at the capital superior to anything of a parallel sort in the United States. The Government maintains national schools respectively of engineering, law, medicine, agriculture, mechanic arts, and trades (for both sexes), a conservatory of music, an academy of fine arts, and a library, provided with an edifice that New York well might envy. It maintains a museum, institutions for blind, deaf and dumb, and insane, for orphans, and young criminals, and a long list besides of the usual charities of enlightened communities. The schools are open without money and without price to all, and there are even funds to provide board, lodging, and pocket-money for students from a distance, who are selected on certain easy conditions.

The students in agriculture pass some months of the year at the haciendas to observe different crops and climates. The graduates of the School of Arts and Measures go out into the world prepared to make their living as carpenters, masons, photographers, electro-platers, and at numerous other trades. Before an opinion is passed upon Mexican civilization the accommodations and neat uniforms of the pupils of the blind institute should be seen; the noble building erected in the last century for the School of Mines; the beautifully clean, wide corridors, sunny class-rooms, embroidery-rooms, dormitories, and drawing-rooms of the _Viscaynas_, the national college for girls; and the arcades and charming central garden of the National Preparatory School (in the professions) for young men.

There was a fountain spouting among tropical plants in the garden of the Preparatory School the day I went there, and by the fountain was a young panther, or lion, of the country, as they call it, confined in a cage. The students, young fellows, who did not differ so greatly from Yale and Harvard undergraduates in aspect, except for the dusky Indian complexions among them, came now and then and stirred up the lion a little, making him play with a ball in his cage. They seemed to prepare their recitations walking around the garden or sitting in the ample corridors.

The principal text-books are studied in French or English, in which languages they are apt to be written, and the recitations are conducted in the same languages; so that, what is so rare with us, graduates emerge from these schools very tolerable linguists without ever having been out of their own country.

All these institutions are housed for the most part in the vast ancient convent edifices, which furnish ample quarters to whatever is in need of them—to barracks, hospitals, post-offices, prisons, railway stations, iron founderies, and cotton-mills.

Each state of the republic, again, has its free college. Judging from that of the state of Hidalgo, however, which I saw at Pachuca—its internal arrangements in a very filthy condition—all do not follow very closely the example of the capital.

In the department of jails, unhappily, there is a deficiency. As at present arranged, they can present but moderate terrors to evil-doers. The really fine penitentiary at Guadalaxara is the only one in which modern ideas of penal discipline are followed. There is by law no death penalty at present. The number of nefarious criminals is kept down by semi-official lynchings, shooting on capture, into which nobody ever inquires. Others are transported to Yucatan. There still remain enough, however, to make one look with uneasiness on the slightness of the means of restraint employed. The bolts and bars are often only lattices of wood instead of iron. At the city prison of Belen some two thousand persons are confined. It seemed to me that a large part of them must be much more comfortable than at their own squalid homes. They made a strange spectacle indeed, looked down upon in their large courts. Of all ages, and for sentences of all durations, they eat, sleep, and work at various light occupations together. No attempt is made to prevent their communicating or staring about. They have good air, light, and food, and are allowed a part of their own earnings. They take a siesta at noon, play checkers, gossip, and even bathe luxuriously in a central tank.

The liberality toward education spoken of is the more creditable since the Mexican treasury is not flourishing, and a yearly deficit is more common than a surplus. These expenses appear to be regarded as essential, whatever else may suffer. It is the more creditable, too, since the heads of the government do not indulge themselves in expensive surroundings. The American legislator is not himself without his marble colonnades and his furniture of black walnut upholstered in Russia leather; but President and Cabinet ministers here walk upon threadbare carpets in the National Palace. The chamber of the Senate is a modest little hall; and the Deputies sit in shabby quarters in another part of town, which were once simply a place of amusement, the Theatre Iturbide.

The museum, chiefly of Aztec antiquities, to which one turns with interest, is not of the extent or informing character that may have been expected, and is under by no means brilliant management. Its greatest attraction is the arrangement of some of the larger fragments, particularly the great sacrificial stone from the ancient temple of the war-god, in the court-yard. There is a setting of shrubbery and vines about them, and the sunlight striking in among these upon the gray old remains, produces some charming effects.

X.

_THE FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE._

I.

The school of fine arts, on the other hand, the Academy of San Carlos—which was to celebrate with a special exhibition the one hundredth anniversary of its foundation—produces, both in its collections and the ability of its directing professors, a most satisfactory and agreeable impression. You enter galleries which carry you back again to the Louvre and Uffizi. They used a great deal of bitumen, the old painters here. In its darkening it has left now and then only isolated lights upon a face or bits of drapery to glimmer out of a midnight gloom. It is an artificial taste, no doubt, to like it, and “caviare to the general;” but like it one does, at its most artificial, after a long absence from anything of the kind.

The walls recall such galleries as that of Bologna in the liberal scale of the works displayed. With such models before them, there is no reason why students should fall into a niggling and petty style. As a matter of fact, they do not. They seem to excel in a bold, large composition and the rendering of grandiose ideas. This, rather than color, is their strong point. If our New York schools of art are able to equal the portfolio of drawings I saw as the result of a fortnightly exercise, they are certainly not in the habit of doing so. Nor were they at all equalled by those of the prize competition of the students of the British Royal Academy which I saw in the first year of the presidency of Sir Frederick Leighton. This devotion to large academical ideas—the fortunes of Orestes, Regulus, and Belisarius—it is true, is a source of weakness rather than strength from the money point of view. The market of the time demands a domestic, _genre_, realistic, and not a grandiose art. The market for art of any kind in Mexico is extremely small. There are no government commissions farther than an occasional portrait or two, and enlightened patrons hardly exist. There are no pictures of consequence in the best Mexican houses. The predictions at Havana were not verified. The abundance of native talent receives little encouragement. Many a bright genius is forced to paint his inventions on the walls of _pulque_ shops, and finally to quit the profession for lack of support.

The subjects are, for the most part, severely religious, in consonance with the taste of the wealthy convents, the patrons of art for whom they were originally painted. The series is in a declining order of merit chronologically. The earliest Mexican masters are the best. They came from Europe, contemporaries of Murillo, Ribera, the Caracci, trained in the splendid Renaissance period at its acme, and they left here works which do it no discredit. Mexico was a hundred years old already, and it was high time that art should arise when Baltazar Echave began, somewhat after the year 1600. There is a romantic tradition that it was his wife who first taught him to paint.

The genius of this early school is very decorative, and marked at once by refinement of sentiment, breadth, and vigor. It delights in rich stuffs and patterns, in the glitter of plate and weapons. It fills up all portions of the canvas symmetrically, and colors with a subdued richness. I recall a St. Ildefonso, by Luis Juarez, as an exquisite work. The saint, in a rich red mantle, by a praying-desk and chair, both draped in the same color, is receiving from angels the paraphernalia of a bishop. The mantle of the nearest angel is in burnt sienna, and these warm red hues, relieved by cool whites, are repeated throughout. There is a group of six angel heads composed in an ellipse, and, in the air, a Virgin, with that bevy of fluttering angels about that take the place of clouds in landscape. The minor heads, painted chiefly from the same model, are full of sweetness and intelligence.

Arteaga has a noble St. Thomas; José Juarez, a quaint couple of child martyrs, Saints Justo and Pastor, who trudge along hand-in-hand like a pair of burgomaster’s children (the scenes of their martyrdom shown in the background), while angels rain down upon them single pinks, roses, and forget-me-nots, carefully painted. A younger Baltazar Echave, and Juan and Nicolas Rodriguez, are of almost equal force.

A second period begins with Ibarra and Cabrera—the latter very much the better—at the end of the same century. They are without the same distinction. Their figures have a bourgeois air. They aim to be pictorial instead of decorative. The crude red and blue garments with which we are monotonously familiar in religious art come in with them; and the draperies, in smooth, large folds, are apparently made up out of their heads.

The foreign gallery boasts many excellent works of the school of Murillo, and an original each of Murillo, Ribera, Carreño, Leonardo da Vinci, Teniers the elder, and Ingres, with also probable Vandycks and Rembrandts.

A collection has also been formed of works of merit, contributed to the regular biennial exhibitions, and purchased by the Academy to illustrate modern Mexican art. The religious tradition still prevails to a large extent, though the subjects are now taken from the Scriptures instead of the Bollandists. They are Hagar and Ishmael, the good Samaritan, the Hebrews by the waters of Babylon, and Noah receiving the olive-branch, and the like.

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There is in this contemporary work the general fault of an over-delicacy and smoothness of painting, and a lack of realism, while the design is excellent. These voyagers in the ark have not experienced the woes of a deluge, and the shepherds have the complexion of Lady Vere de Vere. Rebull, who studied at Rome under Overbeck, repeats here the dove-colors, violets, and lemon-yellows of the modern decorations of the Vatican done under that school.

The works of the latest period, under the able direction of Señor Salome Pina, a pupil of Gleyre, are much more virile, and the subjects more secular. We have now Bacchus and Ariadne; the death of Atala; the slaying of the sons of Niobe; an arch and dainty Cupid poisoning a flower, by Ocaranza; a charming fisher-boy, by Gutierrez. Some of the artists have had the advantage of study also abroad. The strongest of them all, Felix Parra, now enjoying a grand prize of Rome, produced the masterpiece, a great canvas representing the friar Las Casas protecting the Aztecs (from slaughter by the Spaniards)—a work in sentiment, drawing, and color worthy to hang in any exhibition in the world—before he had seen any other country than his own.

Velasco has set a powerful lead in landscape. He is especially a master of great distance. His favorite theme is the curious, sienna-colored Valley of Mexico, which he paints to the life.

There are some scattered works of the early school, besides, in the houses of a few _dilettanti_ at the capital and Puebla; and some few in the cathedrals of the same places, though scarcely to be seen, from their disadvantageous positions. Good pictures need not be looked for in the churches. No doubt they were once numerous, but they have been sacked from the country by invaders and others, and found a profitable market abroad.

II.

In sculpture there is talent corresponding to that in painting. The stately system of burial, in the _panteons_, lends itself to sculpture and furnishes opportunities which with us are relegated to the commonplace tombstone-makers. The _panteon_ is a solid city of the dead, walled in, paved, and with courts and arcades like a city of the living. The monument of greatest note is that, by Manuel Islas, at the Pantheon of San Fernando, to Benito Juarez, “the second Washington” of his country, old Padre Hidalgo having been the first. His effigy in marble, so realistic and corpse-like that it seems to have been modelled from an actual cast in plaster, lies upon a mausoleum, with a figure of Fame bending over it. The realism of the principal figure is almost repulsive, but it is redeemed by the grace of the angel, and nobody can deny to this large work great vigor and dignity.

The bodies are not buried, but sealed up in mausolea, or in niches in a wall, which present somewhat the aspect of a Roman columbarium. Some of the monuments are of the lovely Mexican onyx, with letters in gilt. I noted one bearing only the initials M. M. They were alluring to the curiosity, and on inquiring I found that it was that of Miramon, general-in-chief of Maximilian, who fell by the executioners’ bullets, with his master, and General Mejia, at Queretero.

There were no flowers on this one to-day, but the tombs of the patriots were elaborately decked, for it was the great festival of the Cinco de Mayo.

I walked out and stood in the round-point by the colossal bronze statue of Charles IV. The Paseo de la Reforma and the causeways glittered with bayonets; the cadets were coming down from the Military School back of Chapultepec, and the garrison from the Citadel, to join in the procession. The troops were reviewed in front of the National Palace—as troops in smaller numbers seem always being reviewed there. They are mainly of Indian blood, and small in stature. The cavalry especially had a rusty look in their outfit, and did not compare with the dashing _Rurales_. The officers, on the other hand, are trimly uniformed and quite French in aspect. There were patriotic speeches in the Zocalo; the main thoroughfare was strung with lanterns; and our Iturbide hotel was very picturesque, with its three tiers of balconies draped in the national colors—green, white, and red.

From time to time, as the procession moved, cannon were fired in the Plaza, and the bells of the cathedral turned over and over, like the wheels of machinery. I never saw a better-conducted crowd. There was no fighting, no inconvenient elbowing, no drunkenness. In the evening the lanterns were lighted, and the great square was filled with venders of fruits and knick-knacks, around little bonfires of sticks, where they would bivouac for the night. Later, red lights were kindled in the towers of the cathedral, and every detail within stood out upon a lurid ground as if they were burning. One could imagine the camped venders in the square to be the ancient Aztecs resting upon their arms, in order to attack Cortez in his quarters on the morrow.

III.

Scarcely the same improvement is to be got from Mexican literature as from Mexican art, but it is not without its interest, both in itself and as an aid to knowledge of the people.

Journals are very numerous. They are started upon slight provocation, and as easily disappear. They attain, as a rule, but a circulation of a few hundred copies. It is thought that the _Monitor Republicano_, by far the most important, may circulate from six to eight thousand. The problem of existence for many of them would be difficult without government aid. Subventions are given, without public objection, so far as I have observed, to the greater part of those managed with ability. The system of subventions to the press was begun by our old friend of school history, Santa Anna, and has been continued ever since by governments which could not afford to have anything more than the truth told about them, at any rate. It is an encouraging sign, however, that the _Monitor_ is not a subventioned organ, yet speaks its mind temperately and without apparent malice.

There is no efficacious law of libel, since extreme violence of language is often indulged in by the periodicals in their controversies with each other and outsiders. The duel, which still survives, is somewhat of a corrective upon this. The newspaper is about such a one in appearance as at Paris, and includes a daily section of a serial story. A Sunday edition is published, with literary selections, and particularly poems, in large supply.

Actual literature as such is poorly paid. The reading public is small. A thousand copies is a good edition even for a popular book. The chief literary lights are found, as a rule, not of the shy, scholastic order, but possessed of talent for oratory and bustling affairs. They take posts in Congress, and are appointed as cabinet ministers. General Riva Palacio, Juan Mateos, Prieto, Paz, Altimirano, Justo Sierra, Peza, are deputies; Payno, a senator; Cuellar, who wrote under the pseudonym of “Facundo,” a secretary of legation. These are the native writers whose works are more frequently in the hands of the public than any others.

Prieto, who is chiefly a poet, however, has written a book of his travels in the United States, in which some amusing things will be discovered. He finds that with us “the totality [_lo colectivo_] is grand and admirable, but the individual egoistic and vulgar.” He saw Booth’s Theatre, which is all of white marble (_el Teatro de Both, todo de marmol blanco_); and, besides our hotels, the establishment which we call a “Boarding” (_el Boarding_). The Hudson and East rivers, he says, are two arms of the sea, which freeze in winter, and even the immense quantity of ice collected from these does not suffice for the demands of the summer.

The poetical talent, of which we had a premonition in Cuba, is that which principally abounds. There is plentiful skill in versifying, with here and there a strain of something very much higher, in the volumes of the numerous authors. Prieto, above-mentioned, is found principally a poet of “occasions.” He writes for the unveiling of statues, to steam, electricity, and the like. Juan Mateos strikes a fierce patriotic note. Altimirano, a fiery Indian orator, who models himself in Congress rather after Mirabeau, chooses as his themes for poetry bees, oranges, poppies, morn, the pleasures of rural life. They are excellent subjects in themselves, but it is an artificial, and not a real, existence he describes. He would like to be Horatian, summons nymphs to disport with him in the shade, and abounds in florid terms, without thought.

Carpio is inspired more or less by Biblical subjects, as Pharaoh and Belshazzar. In De Castro, Zaragoza, Gustave Baz, and Cuenca are found charming conceits, of pensive cast, and bits of description of a limpid purity. Jewellers in words they may be called at their best, affiliated to the Venetian school.

The argument of Zaragoza’s “Armonias” (Harmonies) is briefly as follows: “When the flowers are dead, and spring is over, the swallows take their flight; and when again the flowers of spring adorn the mead, they, too, return, bringing blessings on their wings.

“But when the illusions depart and leave behind them only the thorns of the passions, in vain we invoke and wait for them to return. The illusions, the swallows of the heart, return, alas! never.”

So Gustave Baz, brooding in the sere winter over some heavy sorrow, reflects upon the return of spring. But the very contrast of its joyousness, the fresh rippling of the brooks and melody of the birds, will but render his sadness the heavier. “Then most keenly,” he laments, “will break forth my grief. Then weightiest will the air be laden with my sighs.”

The gem of the Lyra Mexicana is undoubtedly a certain fugitive sonnet, “A Rosario,” by an unfortunate young man, Acuña, who ended by taking his own life. The poem expresses the charming ideals in love and the bitterness of its disappointment, in a youth of fine and sensitive nature. It has a poignancy and realism which have, perhaps, never been surpassed. He returned from a long journey, as the story is told, and found his betrothed the wife of another. The shock proving unendurable, he committed suicide, leaving to the faithless one the poem, a part of which may be thus rendered:

“Well, then, I have to say that I love you still, that I worship you with all my being. I comprehend that your kisses are never to be mine, that into your dear eyes I am never to look.... Sometimes I try to sink you into oblivion, to execrate you.... But alas, how vain it is! my soul will not forget you. What will you, then, that I should do, oh, part of my life? What will you that I should do with such a heart?... Oh, figure to yourself how beautiful might have been our existence together!... But now that to the entrancing dream succeeds the black gulf that has opened between us—farewell! love of my loves, light of my darkness, perfume of all flowers that bloomed for me! my poet’s lyre, my youth, farewell!”

IV.

If one try to select the most obvious trait in the native fiction it is undoubtedly patriotism. This patriotism is rampant in the press, and in the forms of official life. The authorities are Citizen President, Citizen General, and the like, as in the first French Republic, and they conclude their official documents with the formula: “Liberty In The Constitution.” The usurpation of Maximilian served to bind the country into a certain unity and awake this feeling to its utmost.

Two romancers, General Riva Palacio, and Juan Mateos, have made use of the events of the French invasion in a curious class of bulky novels, to call them so, which have scored a popular success. “The Hill of Las Campañas,” and “The Sun of May,” of Mateos, are respectively more or less authentic accounts of the final defeat and execution of Maximilian, and the defence of Puebla, slightly disguised. The “Calvary and Tabor,” Riva Palacio, treats of the career of the Army of the Centre in the same wars. Numbers of the characters therefore are persons actually living, to be met with every day, which gives to this fiction a singular effect.

Thus, in “El Sol de Mayo,” Manuel Payno, Altimirano, and Riva Palacio himself are mentioned and their manners described in the debate on the financial measure which brought on the Intervention. Lerdo, long since an exile, resident in New York, was at that time “_el profeta inspirada de nuestra nacionalidad_” (the inspired prophet of our nationality).

I pick out from the same book this paragraphic mention of our own civil war: “And Edmundo Lee shone like a star in the victories of Springfield and Bull Run.” Perhaps the friends of General Robert E. Lee would have some difficulty in recognizing him under such a description.

These novels are printed with each sentence as a separate paragraph, for easier reading. They first began to rival somewhat the popular Fernandez y Gonzalez, by some called “the Spanish Dumas,” whose works are printed in the journals, together with translations of those of Gaboriau and Dickens. Another flimsy series, in covers of green, white, and red, called “_Episodios Nacionales_,” aim to sugar-coat a didactic exhibition of the events of the War of Independence. One individual after another tells a long, dreary narrative about what happened; these fall in with somebody else who tells more, and so it goes.

These stories are read chiefly by the middle and lower classes, the upper class, as in most provincial states of society, preferring books from abroad. Their favorable reception may be accounted for in part by the lack of regular histories and of newspaper intelligence, so that the populace may to some extent be getting their information for the first time.

Riva Palacio has written also, with Manuel Payno, a large work appropriately called _El Libro Rojo_ (The Red Book). It gives an account (and graphic illustrations) of the heroes and other notables in Mexican history who have come to violent ends. This is a fate that has overtaken aspirants to distinction quite regularly, and the plates from the book, hung up at the book-stalls in the Portales, are a ghastly chamber of horrors. The three fighting curates of the early insurrection, Hidalgo, Morelos, and Matamoras begin the series; and Maximilian, Mejia, and Miramon, standing with bandaged eyes at the Hill of las Campañas, for the present conclude it.

Several minor writers have feebly essayed the Aztec material for fiction. Riva Palacio has availed himself also of the picturesque life under the Spanish viceroys. Of him it is to be said that, though of the sensational school, and careless in plan, he has, not unfrequently, passages of genuine force, and unhackneyed incidents that enchain the attention.

XI.

_SOME TRAITS OF PECULIAR HISTORY, AND THE MEXICAN “WARWICK.”_

I.

It would seem that history in Mexico might be a somewhat confusing study; and so, in fact, it is. There have been fifty-four Presidents, one regency, and one Emperor, in fifty-six years, and a violent change of government with nearly every one.

Picking up the little volume by Manuel Payno, used in the schools, and opening it at random, I find—

“_Question._—What events followed?

“_Answer._—Truly imagination is lost, and memory confounds itself, among so many plans and _pronunciamentos_; but we will follow the thread as best we can.”

The period referred to is that of the revolt of Texas, which proceeded to constitute itself “The Lone Star Republic.” Looking a little farther with interest to see how this is accounted for, we find:

“The settlers were North Americans, a portion, as we have said, colonized by Stephen Austin. They set up the pretext that they were not permitted to sell their lands, and, later, that the Federal Constitution had been violated; and they rose against the Government. The latter felt it necessary to put down the rebellion, and took measures to assail that remote and sterile State.”

These dispositions, as we know, ended in the defeat and capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. There is always a fascination in being behind the scenes, and I confess that this little opportunity of finding out what was thought of itself by a country which has jarred so much with our own was one of the attractions of being in Mexico. The American war is accounted for as a wicked attempt to sustain and annex the revolted province of Texas; and equally good solutions are found for the various other invasions by foreign powers.

What! is there no absolute right? Are all combatants alike striking for their altars and their fires, and resisting wanton aggression? Will not these Mexicans even yet admit, though beaten, and though it has passed into history, that they terrorized our frontier, and oppressed an industrious and enterprising province? Why, then, perhaps both sides were wrong; and let us aspire for the day when all such quarrels may be settled by an international arbitration.

II.

The young Mexican learns first about his Aztec ancestry, the mild semi-civilized aborigines, who built cities and temples, and were ruled by luxurious Montezuma and scholarly Nezhualcoyotl. The latter, at Texcoco, was a maker of verses and stoical maxims like another Marcus Aurelius.

Cortez conquered the Aztecs in 1519. Then followed a government of nearly three hundred years by sixty-four Spanish viceroys. A rebellion, of eleven years’ duration, marked by many of the features of a servile uprising, drove out the Spaniards in 1821. Grasping and inconsiderate in their colonial management as their way has always been, the Spaniards had probably only themselves to thank for it.

Iturbide, who commanded the revolt at the end, made himself briefly Emperor. His generals, notably the irrepressible Santa Anna, who first here comes into view, rose against him, and proclaimed a Federal Republic. Santa Anna, when the opportunity offered, made himself Dictator, and changed the Federal Republic to a centralized republic, and the states to departments. Santa Anna had numberless ups and downs, having obtained possession of the supreme power no less than six times, with intervals of overthrow and banishment.

The Federal Republic was reconstituted in time, with twenty-seven states, one territory and a federal district, pretty much on the model of our own, and it still retains this form, as it is likely to. There is no doubt about the democratic tendency of the people, but perhaps it is something in the impulsive blood of the Latin race which has prevented the leaders from conceiving a republic on the Anglo-Saxon plan. They have been inspired almost without exception by a craving for the sweets of power. Their rampant patriotism has been like the religion of those persons who would die for a cause, but will not live in accordance with the least of its dictates. There seems to have been no conception until lately of that larger patriotism which educates the people in their duties, and constitutes a state of society where the rights of all are guaranteed and people go about their avocations without interference.

III.

Would you recall, by-the-way, what became of Santa Anna? He, who had so indignantly shaken off the yoke of Iturbide, wrote a missive of congratulation, while living in banishment in the West Indies, to Maximilian, and endeavored to take service under him. His aid was rejected, whereupon he turned to Juarez, only to be repulsed again. In a rage at both sides, he fitted out an expedition on his own account, landed in the country, and was well-nigh being shot, after the model, and almost on the same ground, as that Iturbide whom he had pronounced against forty-two years before. The court-martial, however, spared his life, “in consideration of the ancient services done to his country in Texas, at Tampico, and Vera Cruz,” and sent him again, superannuated and poor (for he had squandered an ample fortune in this attempt), to finish his days in banishment.

I cannot forbear going a little farther into the questions and answers of the little history. Of the gallant generals who fought so well for the Independence, Victoria was the first President. Bravo pronounced against him, and was exiled to South America. Guerrero, defeated as a candidate for the succession by Pedraza, took up arms and seized it by force. He repelled, while in office, a new attempt by the Spaniards to recover the country.

“_Question._—I suppose that with this triumph the government of Guerrero was firmly established?

“_Answer._—This was to have been hoped, but that happened which always happens in Mexico—just the contrary.”

Bustamente, in fact, pronounced against Guerrero; and when the latter would have returned to the capital from an expedition designed to put down the revolt, he found it closed against him, and in favor of Bustamente also.

“_Q._—What end had this revolution?

“_A._—The most terrible that can be imagined. The Government at Mexico, feeling that it could not overcome Guerrero ... bought over, for $70,000, a Genoese named Picaluga, who commanded a vessel anchored in the harbor of Acapulco. Picaluga invited Guerrero to dine on board, and this manifestation of hospitality was accepted in good faith. When they had dined the Genoese signified to Guerrero that he was a prisoner, and set sail with him to the port of Huatulco and delivered him into the hands of his enemies. This great and good man, valiant and worthy of the respect and gratitude of the nation ... was shot in the puebla of Cuilapa, on the 15th of February, 1831.”

It was not till 1848, for the first time, that the Presidency was transferred without violence, and under the law. The incumbent was General Herrera, and he was succeeded peaceably by General Arista. These two administrations “will forever place themselves before historians, both Mexican and foreign,” says the history, “as models of honor, economy, and order.” But Arista was deposed in two years, and in the next three months there were four Presidents, the last of them Santa Anna, on one of his periodic returns.

Thus the turmoil of revolutions has continued down to recent times. A certain Don José Maria Gutierrez Estrada directed a letter to the authorities in 1840, proposing, as a measure of relief, that a monarchical government should be established in Mexico; and the idea, in the distracting state of things we have seen, cannot be considered wholly without reason. It caused great scandal nevertheless, but Gutierrez Estrada stuck to it tenaciously, and, by a very singular coincidence, he was one of those who, twenty-four years after, went to Miramar to present the imperial crown to the Archduke Maximilian.

If I cite a number of such events from the past it is not for the purpose of being disagreeable or arguing that the same state of things is to last. It is partly because they are amusing, and partly to obtain a more encouraging point of view for the present. It will be seen that the later administrations, though not without their faults, are a vast improvement upon their predecessors, and do not constitute a declining ratio.

General Porfirio Diaz occupied unmolested a full term, from 1876 to 1880, and handed over the place to General Manuel Gonzales, who holds it at present in the same security. Diaz began the current career of improvement by his liberal chartering of railroads, and Gonzales follows in his track. Both must be considered to have made a most exemplary and promising use of their powers. But, since we have arrived at “Don Porfirio,” let us see how he entered upon office in the beginning.

IV.

Since he is, by general admission, the power behind the throne, the Mexican “Warwick,” the President who has been, is, and is to be, let us inquire a little also who he was. “His influence in the country,” says the _Monitor_, “is decisive, incontestable. Something more than Benitez in the past, he is not only the great commoner, but the one man of the present.”

Porfirio Diaz was born in Oaxaca, in 1830. His family destined him for the law, but he took to soldiering instead. Beginning as a private, he entered the city of Mexico as general-in-chief of the forces which wrested it from the French. Once in these wars, when a prisoner at Puebla, he let himself down by a rope from a tower and made his escape. His career is studded with romantic incidents, but the career of what Mexican leader is not?

The Latin race admires the military type, and “Don Porfirio,” or more familiarly “Porfirio,” as the people delight to call him, bethought him to turn his prestige in the field to account. He offered himself for the Presidency against Juarez, on the platform of no re-election, in 1871. Lerdo de Tejada, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was also in the field as a third candidate. Let the figures in this remarkable election be noted, as an indication of the acute interest the Mexican voters take in their own balloting. In a population of 8,836,411 a total of only 12,361 votes were cast. Juarez received 5837, Diaz 3555, Lerdo 2874, and 95 are recorded as “scattering.”

“_Q._—Relate to me what happened thereafter.

“_A._—General Porfirio Diaz issued, from his hacienda of La Noria, a manifesto, hence called the _Plan of La Noria_, repudiating the existing powers, and proposing to retain military command until the establishment of a new order of things.”

A bloody war of more than a year followed, in which the Porfiristas were utterly routed. Diaz, amnestied, presented himself at the capital, and was affably received by Lerdo, who assured him, on the part of the Government, that he might live tranquil without fear of persecution or harm. “Nothing,” breaks forth our historian, in enthusiasm about these times, “gives a better idea of the constancy and elevation of the Mexican character, a heritage from its Spanish ancestry, than what passes in our wars, both civil and foreign. It appears that defeats but serve as stimulus and fresh aliment to the fray.”

Upon what possible theory these ambitious chiefs have always made their partisans so ready to be slaughtered for them, is a speculation which I shall not go into. Porfirio now remained quiet till 1876, when he issued the _Plan of Palo Blanco_, and rose against Lerdo, who had succeeded Juarez. He captured Matamoras by a bold stroke of strategy; was himself captured on shipboard; and escaped from the Lerdists by leaping into the sea, through the connivance of the French captain, whom he afterward made consul to St. Nazaire. After a series of such-like adventures his persistence won the day, and Lerdo took to flight. “Don Sebastian” Lerdo is spoken of as probably the most scholarly and accomplished President the republic ever had. He had been a school-master, however, and tried to govern the country in the pedagogue spirit to which he had been used. He lost favor, too, by his lack of military talent, and fled when his fortunes were by no means desperate. The country people were strongly on his side at first, but this singular thing happened—that, finding him unable to protect them against the roving bands of revolutionists favoring Diaz, they joined them in disgust, and went on with them to the capital.

It is upon such original guarantees that the authority which Porfirio has devoted to the extension of law and order and the benefits of civilization reposes.

V.

The subject of these remarks is a person neither talkative nor taciturn. He is of commanding height, a swarthy, half-Indian complexion, a figure stalwart but not heavy, and of a military yet somewhat nonchalant bearing, all of which may form a part of his attraction. He knows how to utilize the arts of peace as well as war. Perhaps he believes a little in the motto, “Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws;” for the ballad-singers at Santa Anita, on the Viga Canal, whither the populace swarm on Sundays to indulge in dancing, _pulque_, _tamales_, and flowers from the floating gardens, have many a long-drawn refrain to the praises of Don Porfirio Di-i-i-az. It is hardly fair, perhaps, to suggest that these are subsidized, since they may rest upon pure admiration of his merits, after all.

The Mexican law prohibits re-election, except after an interval of four years, and Porfirio Diaz was too ardent a one-termer to be able to overstep this prohibition with any consistency. He has placed his friend and fellow-soldier Gonzales in office as his _locum tenens_. He will assume it himself for the next term, dating from 1884. After that—so the plan is supposed to be arranged—he will give it to General Treviño, his companion in arms and strong auxiliary in his pronunciamentos. Treviño has married the daughter of an American general, Ord, and it may be supposed that American interests will not suffer in his hands.

Porfirio is romantic even in his Machiavellianism. The only source from which he might have had anything to fear was perhaps a lingering Lerdist sentiment. It represents, or represented, a conservative element, of better social position than the rude democratic force in power. He set to work to conciliate this Lerdist sentiment. He has been able to take of late the effectual means of marrying into the very midst of it, having chosen for his third wife the daughter of Senator Romero Rubio. Romero Rubio was the right-hand man of Lerdo, and his companion in exile. He is now president of the Senate, and the official who is empowered by law to call and control a new election, in case of a vacancy in the Presidency of the nation. Gonzales suffers from an old wound, received at Puebla, and it has been thought by some that Diaz might need to be called to the chair even before the appointed limit of time.

Nor could he have had any personal repugnance to overcome in this match. His usual good-fortune attends him. The young lady is under twenty, accomplished, and of a high-bred air. She will be recollected by Americans as among the prettiest of the belles who took part in the round of festivities given in honor of General Grant at his last visit. This, too, will be pleasing to the people. Don Porfirio means that the people shall be pleased. When General Grant, on his first visit to the country in his tour around the world, was the curiosity and hero of the hour, Porfirio was his inseparable attendant and courteous host. A certain resemblance was traced between them. Both had been illustrious generals, both presidents. When Grant returned a second time, and was now less popular, on account of his interest in the railway concessions, and a jealousy which had meantime arisen of American aggression, Don Porfirio was unfortunately obliged to be far distant, distributing charity to sufferers on the northern confines of the republic.

The work of conciliation has long been going on. Old functionaries have been reinstated in place; veteran army officers have been approached and offered new commands. One of these latter told me that President Gonzales had sent for him, after having kept an espionage on his conduct for some time, and asked him, in a bluff way,

“Why do you continue to talk against the Government, and pass your time in idleness—you who were once so good a soldier?”

“Sir,” he replied, “you know my sentiments, and the cause for which I fought. I cannot deny that I hold them still. I take the consequences. I have pawned my valuables and clothing for food. If I rust in idleness it is because I have no occupation to turn to.”

“I admire your manliness,” the President replied. “Here is your appointment to the command of a regiment. Your cause is dead, as you know, and cannot be revived. I ask of you no political services. I ask of you only to be as before—a soldier.”

It is needless to say that after this there was at least one Lerdist the less.

I do not wish to be understood as finding fault with this policy of astute conciliation; far from it. The hammer-and-tongs method has been so long in vogue that it is a delightful relief. The chicanery of matrimonial alliances, and assumption of frank and soldierly manners, will be welcomed by all the foreign capital in the country as a great improvement upon throat-cutting.

From vast estates in Oaxaca, which with a commendable economy he has amassed meantime, the Mexican Warwick, controls the destinies of his country with an ease like moving one’s little finger. He pleases himself in the interim to be governor, and commander of the forces, of this fighting state. In the absence of any efficient electoral system the country is under his absolute dictatorship; while, with the ostensible division of powers, there is no way of tracing the responsibility to its source.

Not that there is the least danger of anybody’s trying to do so. There are apparent Brutuses in both Houses of Congress, orators and poets who have turned off many a diatribe and many an ode to freedom on the best classic and French republican models, but they have nothing to say against this Cæsar. They are not very free agents, to tell the truth. They are really sent by the governors of the respective states, and these governors have been manipulated in advance. Porfirio can undoubtedly make threats as well as promises; and an unlucky representative, if content to forego a better place, may even lose the one he has. He cannot depend upon adequate support, either, should he have a notion to resist. The “boys” are much given to “going back” on one another in Mexican history.

I shall be found fault with by some persons, as likely as not, for undue severity. He is a beneficent Cæsar, after all, compared with former times; he has brought back something like a Golden Age; he oppresses nobody, at least, not the foreigners, and gives a stimulus to every worthy enterprise.

So be it; and probably there is no more genial government than a Cæsarism of the beneficent sort, fairly established. But it is too full of dangers. Porfirio is doing nothing to educate the nation. “In effect,” one of his own papers says to him, “it is not alone with railways that a nation so disorganized as ours can reconstitute itself; not alone the locomotive and the telegraph that can make us happy. There should emanate from the regions of power something like an impulse of obedience to the law and observance of the institutions upon which the social and political well-being of the country rests.”

It is not probable that there will soon again be serious disturbances. “All the grabbers have got places,” say some critics of a cynical turn, “and there will be no more revolutions.” A better saying, however, is current: “A bad government is preferable to a good revolution.” There is a weariness of fighting. The country seems to savor the little-known luxury of peace with a positive gusto. The railways diminish the chance of trouble by for the first time furnishing ample employment to the idle, who formerly occupied themselves in plunder and were ready to follow the banners of insurgent chiefs. They will be a potent military engine in enabling the Government to mass its forces at points of danger. The fear, too, may be present of interference by foreign governments, should the enterprises of their citizens be threatened with serious damage by new upheavals.

Still, there are great administrative abuses. The civil service is notoriously corrupt. Opportunities for galling oppression are open to the governments, both federal and state, and, most ominous of trouble, redress by the ballot is not possible. The anomaly is presented of a republic in which there is no census nor registration of voters, no scrutiny of the ballot-box except by the party in power. There is hardly a ray of interest in the political machine by the people themselves. The number of votes cast at elections is pitifully small, as we have seen. It is not considered worth while to vote. The lower classes read no informing journals, have no public speakers. No organized opposition exists. Such opposition as there is is purely personal. All contests for office are personal, and not a matter of principles. The Government—that of the centre influencing the states, and these in turn the communities—sustains and counts in what candidates it pleases. There are no data for objection, since nobody can point to the real number of voters in a given place, nor their names.

When this is understood it seems to account for almost all that has happened. There is absolutely no remedy for oppressive domination but in rebellion. With the best of dispositions, the most entire patience, what has happened in the past may happen again.

If there be any statesmanship in Mexico, may we not hope to see some champion arise to remedy this, instruct the masses in their rights, enumerate and register them, and insure them the first essential of a free government—an accurate and unfettered suffrage?

XII.

_CUATITLAN, AND AROUND LAKES XOCHIMILCO AND CHALCO._

I.

The saying is current that “Outside of Mexico all is Cuatitlan.”

It shows that the capital entertains a true Parisian esteem for itself, and a corresponding contempt for the rest of the country. Cuatitlan is a little village twenty-five miles to the northward, reached by a narrow-gauge railroad, built by Mexicans, but purchased by the Mexican Central. It was at Cuatitlan that I saw my first bull-fight. It is one of the two places in the vicinity where the capital thus amuses itself, the sport being prohibited in town. In some states, as Zacatecas, it is abolished entirely.