Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

For three hundred years had the Mexicans groaned under the lash of their taskmasters, ruled by monarchs whom they never beheld, and enduring innumerable evils, without nourishing a single rebellious or revolutionary thought. If the breeze of liberty that blew over from the north, occasionally awakened in their minds the idea of an improved state of things, the hope, or rather wish, speedily died away, crushed and annihilated under the well-combined system of oppression employed by the Spaniards. The nobles had ranged themselves entirely on the side of the government, the middle classes had followed their example, and the people were compelled to obey. All was quiet in Mexico, long after insurrections had broken out in Spanish colonies further south; and this state of tranquillity was not even disturbed, when news were brought of the invasion of Spain by its hereditary foe, of the occupation of Madrid by French armies, and of the scenes of butchery that took place in that capital on the second day of May 1808. The Mexicans, far from availing themselves of this favourable opportunity to proclaim their own independence, hastened to give proofs of their sympathy with the aggrieved honour of the mother country; and on all sides resounded curses upon the head of the powerful usurper who had ousted their legitimate but unknown monarch from his throne, and now detained him in captivity. Intelligence of the Junta's declaration of war against Napoleon was received with unbounded applause, and all were striving to demonstrate their enthusiasm in the most efficient manner, when a royal decree arrived, issued by the very prince whose misfortunes they were deploring, and by which Mexico was ordered to recognise as its sovereign the brother of that usurper who had dispossessed its rightful king.

A stronger proof of Ferdinand's unworthiness to rule, could hardly have been given to the Mexicans than the decree in question. Loyalty had long been an article of faith with the whole nation; but even as the blindest superstition is sometimes metamorphosed on a sudden into total infidelity, passing from one extreme to the other, so was all feeling of loyalty utterly extinguished in the breast of the Mexican people by this instance of regal abjectness. It would have been long before they revolted against their hereditary Spanish ruler; but to find themselves given away by him in so ignominious a manner, was a degradation which they felt the more deeply from its being almost the only one that had been hitherto spared them. Discontent was universal; and by a unanimous and popular movement, the decree was publicly burned.

With just indignation did the Mexicans now discover that those persons who had hitherto most prided themselves on their loyalty and fidelity to the king and the reigning dynasty, were precisely the first to transfer their allegiance to the new sovereign. The whole of the government officers, Spaniards nearly to a man, hastened to take measures for the surrender of the nation to its new ruler, without even enquiring whether it approved of the change. One man only was in favour of a more honourable expedient, and that man was Iturrigaray, the viceroy. Well acquainted with the cowardice and cunning of his captive sovereign, the former of which qualities had dictated the decree, he had nevertheless formed a plan to preserve Mexico for him, in accordance with the wish of its population. A junta, composed of Spaniards and of the most distinguished Mexicans, was to represent the nation till the arrival of further news or orders from Europe. This plan was generally approved of by the Mexicans, who looked forward with unbounded delight to the moment when they should have a voice in the public affairs of their country. The joy was universal; but in the very midst of this joy, and of the preliminaries to the carrying out of this project, the author of it, the viceroy himself, was seized in his palace by his own countrymen, conducted with his family to Vera Cruz, and slipped off to Spain as a state prisoner.

By this lawless proceeding, it was made evident to the weakest comprehension, that so long as the Spaniard ruled, the Mexican must remain in a state of unconditional slavery; that he could never hope to obtain a share in the management of his country; and that the act of violence of which Iturrigaray had been the victim, had been solely caused by the disposition he had shown to pave the way for the gradual emancipation of the Creoles. From this moment may be dated the decision of the Mexicans to get rid of the Spaniards at any price; and a conspiracy was immediately organized, which was joined by at least a hundred of the principal Creoles, and by a far larger number of the middle classes, and of the military — the object being to shake off the ignominious yoke that pressed so heavily upon them. The treason of one of the conspirators, who on his death-bed, in confession, betrayed his confederates, accelerated the outbreak of the plot.

It was at nine o'clock on the evening of the 15th September 1810, that Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga, captain in the royal regiment de la Reyna, came in all haste from Gueretaro to Dolores, and burst into the dwelling of Padre Hidalgo, the parish priest of the latter place, with news that the conspiracy had been discovered, and an order issued to take prisoners, dead or alive, all those concerned in it. With the prospect of certain death before their eyes, the two conspirators held a short consultation, and then hastened to announce to their friends their firm decision to stake their lives upon the freedom of their country. Two officers, the lieutenants Abasalo and Aldama, and several musicians, friends and companions of the cura, joined them, and by these men, thirteen in number, was the great Mexican revolution begun.

Whilst Hidalgo, a crucifix in his left hand, a pistol in his right, hurried to the prison and set at liberty the criminals confined there, Allende proceeded to the houses of the Spanish inhabitants, and compelled them to deliver up their plate and ready money. Then, with the cry of "Viva la Independencia, y muera el mal gobierno!" the insurgents paraded the streets of Dolores. The whole of the Indian population ranged themselves under the banner of their beloved curate, who, in a few hours, found himself at the head of some thousand men. They took the road to Miguel el Grande, and, before reaching that place, were joined by eight hundred recruits from Allende's regiment. Shouting their war-cry of "Death to the Gachupins!"5 the rebels reached San Felipe; in three days their numbers amounted to twenty thousand; at Zelaya, a whole regiment of Mexican infantry, and a portion of the cavalry regiment of the Principe, came over to them. On they went, "Mueran los Gachupinos!" still their cry, to Guanaxato, the richest city in Mexico, where they were joined by some more troops. Indians kept flowing in from all sides, and the mob, for it was little more, soon reached fifty thousand men. The fortified alhondega, or granary, at Guanaxato, was taken by storm; the Spaniards and Creoles who had shut themselves up there with their treasures, were massacred; upwards of five millions of hard dollars fell into the hands of the insurgents. This success brought more Indians from all parts of the country. There were soon eighty thousand men collected together, but amongst them were hardly four thousand muskets. Pressing forward, by way of Valladolid, towards Mexico, they totally defeated Colonel Truxillo at Las Cruces, and, on the 31st October, looked down from the rising ground of Santa Fé upon the capital city, within the walls of which were thirty thousand Léperos,6 who awaited but the signal to break into open insurrection. Only two thousand troops of the line garrisoned Mexico; Calleja, the commander-in-chief, was a hundred leagues off; another general, the Count of Cadena, sixty; in the mountains the people were rising in favour of the revolution; another patriot chief was marching from Tlalnepatla to support Hidalgo, while the viceroy was preparing to retire to Vera Cruz. The fate of Mexico was, according to all appearance, about to be decided; one bold assault, and the Indians would again be the rulers of the country. But on the very day after their arrival within sight of Mexico, Hidalgo, with his hundred and ten thousand men, commenced a retreat. The capital was saved; and from that day may be dated the sufferings and reverses of the patriots.

Or the 7th November, at Aculco, Hidalgo met the united Spanish and Creole army, and was defeated in the combat that ensued. Soon afterwards, Allende experienced a like misfortune at Marfil; and a third action, near Calderon, decided the fate of the campaign. Hidalgo himself was betrayed at Acalito, with fifty of his companions, and put to death.

The first act of the revolutionary drama was over, within six months after the bloody curtain had been raised; but the torch of insurrection, far from being extinguished by the fall of its bearer, had divided and multiplied itself, as if to spread the conflagration with more certainty. Thousands of those who had escaped from the battle-fields of Aculco, Marfil, and Calderon, now spread themselves through the different provinces, and commenced a war of extermination that was destined, slowly but surely, to sweep away their unappeasable tyrants. Most of these bands were commanded by priests, lawyers, or adventurers, who acted without plan or concert, and possessed little or no qualification for their post as leaders, save their hatred of the Gachupins. But few of the better class of Creoles were to be found amongst the insurgents; and the strife was to all appearance between the Indians and half-bloods, on the one hand, and the property and intelligence of the country, represented by the Spaniards and Creoles, on the other.

The Creoles, although considerably less oppressed than the coloured races, had felt themselves more so; because, being more enlightened and civilized, they had a livelier feeling and perception of the yoke than the Indians and half-castes. Children and descendants of the Spaniards, who looked with sovereign contempt upon every thing Creole, even to their own offspring, the white Mexicans imbibed hatred of Spain almost with their mothers' milk. Far from enjoying what the letter of the law gave them, the same rights as their European fathers, they found themselves driven back among the people; while all offices and posts were filled by Spaniards, who, for the most part, came to Mexico in rags, and left it possessed of immense wealth. Even the possession of magnificent estates, with their incalculable subterranean treasures, was of precarious benefit to the Creoles; for the Spaniards paid small respect to the laws of property, and, in the name of their royal master, assumed unlimited power over the land.

The bitterness of feeling consequent on this state of things, at length roused into activity the latent desire of freedom from the Spanish rule, a freedom which was to have been obtained by the conspiracy already referred to. On a given day, there was to have been a general rising throughout Mexico; all the Spanish officers and employés were to have been arrested, and their places filled by Creoles; the seaports were to have been seized and garrisoned, so as to prevent succours coming to the Spaniards from the neighbouring island of Cuba. The discovery and premature outbreak of the plot, as already mentioned, were the causes of its failure. Hidalgo, who was too deeply compromised to recede, had put himself at the head of the revolution, and enraged against the Creoles, who had, for the most part, managed to draw their heads out of the noose, commenced with his Indians a war of extermination that spared neither Spaniards nor Creoles. This terrible blunder on the part of the soldier-priest, of itself decided the fate of the outbreak. The Creoles were compelled to unite with the very Spaniards whose downfall they had been plotting; and it was mainly through their co-operation that the three battles with the rebels had been won. The Spaniards, however, instead of being grateful for the assistance they had received from the Creoles, persisted in looking upon the latter as a pack of unlucky rebels, whose treason had not even been rendered respectable by success.

Enraged at the revolt that had threatened to deprive their king of his supremacy, and themselves of the plunder of the richest country in the world, the Spaniards applied themselves to obviate the possibility of any future rebellion, by pretty much the same measures that a bee-hunter takes to secure himself against the stings of the bees before seizing their honey, namely, by fire and the axe. Twenty-four cities, both large and small, and innumerable villages, were razed to the ground during the first eighteen months of the revolution, and their inhabitants utterly exterminated, as a punishment for having favoured the insurgents. Even then, these bigoted and barbarous servants of legitimacy were not satisfied with this wholesale slaughter. Through the medium of the church, and in the name of the divine Trinity and of the blessed Virgin, they proclaimed a solemn amnesty, and those among the credulous and unfortunate rebels who availed themselves of it were mercilessly massacred. This infamous and blasphemous piece of bad faith rendered any pacification of the country impossible, and went far towards uniting the whole population against its contemptible and blood-thirsty tyrants.

Amongst the adventurers who had joined Hidalgo on his triumphant march from Guanaxato to Mexico, was his old friend and schoolfellow, Morellos, rector of Nucupetaro. Hidalgo received him as a brother, and comnissioned him to raise the standard of revolt in the south-western provinces of Mexico. Morellos, who was then sixty years of age, repaired to his appointed post with only five followers. In Petalan he was joined by twenty negroes, to whom he promised their freedom; and soon afterwards several Creoles ranged themselves under his banner. Unlike the unfortunate Hidalgo, he began the war on a small scale, and after the fashion of those guerillas who in Spain had done so much mischief to the French armies. Gradually enlarging the sphere of his operations, he had, during a sixteen months' warfare, gained several not unimportant advantages over the Spanish generals. Report represented him as a man of grave and earnest character — quite the converse of the hasty and unreflecting Hidalgo — of sound judgment, irreproachable morals, and far more liberal and extended views than could have been expected from the confined education of a Mexican priest. The influence he possessed over the Indians was said to be unbounded.

At the time at which the action of the book now before us commences, namely, upon a carnival day of the year 1812, Morellos had marched into the vicinity of Mexico at the head of his little army. The principal leaders of the patriots, Vittoria, Guerero, Bravo, Ossourno, and others, had placed themselves under his orders; and the moral weight of his name seemed to be at last producing what had been wanting since the death of Hidalgo — namely, that unanimity in the operations of the patriots, and that degree of discipline amongst their troops, which were calculated to gain them the confidence of the nation.

The first two chapters of the "Viceroy" are of so striking a nature, and give such strange and startling glimpses of the state of Mexican society and feeling at that period, that, with some slight abridgement, we shall here translate them both.

Chapter the First

"'Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout All countries of the Catholic persuasion, Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about, The people take their fill of recreation, And buy repentance, ere they grow devout, However high their rank, or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking, And other things which may be had for asking." Byron.

The siesta was over; and the profound stillness in which the capital of New Spain had been buried during the preceding two hours, was suddenly broken by the hum of innumerable voices. The noise, which commenced in the suburbs, extended itself rapidly, and increased almost to a roar, scaring away the gallinazos and other birds of prey, that were as usual seeking food in the streets and squares of the city of Mexico. Thousands of the inhabitants arose from their resting-places under the porticoes of houses, churches, and palaces, or hurried forth from the great bazar, eager to celebrate the carnival with that boundless mirth and license by which Roman Catholic nations seem to console themselves for the fasts and privations that are to succeed it.

The variety of the costumes in which the maskers had arrayed themselves was endless, while the profanity of some of them was no less remarkable. Here might be seen a gigantic tenatero, or porter, in a sergeant's jacket, and with the enormous cocked hat of a Spanish general upon his head, a globe and sceptre in one hand, in the other a pasteboard cross, strutting proudly about in the character of the Redeemer of Atolnico;7 while around him a party of Indians, Zambos, and Metises, metamorphosed into Apostles, Pharisees, and Jewish women, performed dances of very questionable propriety in honour of their divine master. In another place, Adam and Eve were incessantly driven out of Paradise by an angel with a flaming sword — the three figures resembling very much the same persons, as they used to be represented in the halfpenny woodcuts of the past century. Beside them, Dios el Padre led off a dance to the sound of a cracked guitar, which St Cecilia was twanging as an accompaniment to the nasal melody of the gangaso;8 and a little further on, the child Jesus, mounted on a jackass, was flying into Egypt, and squirting, as he went, streams of water into the open windows of houses, and into the faces of the passers-by. Mingled with the mummers were crowds of loathsome léperos; and again, amongst these might be seen numerous groups of perfumed dandies and elegantly dressed ladies, who contrasted with the throng of Indians as swamp-lilies do with the filth and corruption of a pestilential marsh. In spite of the broad sunlight, rockets were going off on all sides, to the great amusement of the Indians, who burst out into screams of wild delight each time that one of the fiery missiles caused alarm and confusion amongst the gaily attired dames who thronged the balconies, and gazed down from their windows upon the motley scene. The contrast of all this movement and uproar with the silence and solitude that had reigned so few moments before, was startling. It was as if the earth had suddenly opened and vomited forth the thousands of Mulattoes and Zambos, Indians, Metises, and Creoles,9 that now sang, danced, chattered, screamed, and shouted — doing their utmost worthily to play their part in the time-honored saturnalia of the Romish church.

Differing from the custom of more refiled, although perhaps not more enlightened, countries, only a very few of the numerous parties of maskers seemed to aim, by their costume or action, at a satire on the follies, foibles, or occurrences of the times. Now and then, however, an exception was to be met with; and this was especially remarkable in a group which it becomes necessary here to describe.

It consisted of twelve persons, the majority of whom were fantastically attired in the national costumes of the various Indian tribes. These were grouped round a carro, or two-wheeled cart in so picturesque a manner, that it was easy to see that their performance had been preconcerted and rehearsed. They wore symbols of mourning, and seemed acting as pall-bearers and followers of a funeral; while upon the cart itself were two figures, in which the horrible and the comic were blended after a most extraordinary fashion. One of them was a Torso, from whose breast and headless neck, and on the stumps of his arms and legs, blood was incessantly dropping, and as fast as it dropped, it was greedily licked up by several persons in Spanish masks and dresses. The mutilated form seemed still to have life in it, for it groaned and gave out hollow sounds of agony and complaint; at the same time struggling, but in vain, to shake off a monster that sat vampire-like upon its body, and dug its tiger claws into the breast of the sufferer. The aspect of this monster was as strange as that of its victim. It had the cowl, and the sleek but sinister countenance of well-fed Dominican friar; on its right hand was fixed a blazing torch, on its left stood a dog that barked continually; its head was covered with a brass basin, apparently meant to represent the barber helmet of the knight of La Mancha. From the shoulders of the figure protruded a pair of dusky wings, not unlike those with which griffins and other fabulous monsters are represented in old books of heraldry; its back was terminated by the tail of the coyote, or Mexican wolf; while the claws with which it seemed digging into the very bowels of the Torso, were those of caguar or tiger.

This singular pageant passed through the Tacuba street into that of San Agustin, thence through the Plateria and the Calle Aguila into the quarter of the city known as the Trespana, where it came to a halt before the hotel of the same name. During this progress, the crowd of Indians, Metises, and other coloured races, had been augmented by numerous parties of Creoles; while the Spaniards contented themselves with gazing distrustfully at the procession from the windows of their houses. The strange group was now surrounded by thousands of Zambos, Creoles, Metises, and Indians, presenting a variety and originality of costume, physiognomy, and colour — a contact and contrast of the most costly and sumptuous habiliments with the meanest and most disgusting rags, such as it would be in vain to seek in any other country than Mexico.

Amongst the most elegantly dressed of those whom the enigmatical masquerade attracted, was a young man, of whom it would have bee difficult to say to what race he belonged. His face was covered by a closely-fitting silken mask, in which every hue of the rainbow was blended, but which, nevertheless, was adapted so admirably to his features, as at first to leave the spectators in doubt whether it were not the real colour of his skin. He skipped airily out of the fonda of Trespana into the street, cast a keen but hasty glance around him, and then began to make his way through the mob that surrounded the pageant. There was a nameless something in his manner and appearance that caused the throng to open him a willing passage towards the object of general curiosity.

"Foolish mob! brainless mob! swinish mob!" cried the stranger, when he at length stood beside the cart upon which the monster was still rending its hapless victim; "whither are ye running, and pressing, and crowding, and what are ye come to see? Know ye not that in Mexico it is forbidden to see, especially to see clearly?"

The tone of the speaker, his sudden appearance, and the bold originality of his manner, contrasted strongly with the timidity of the other Creoles, who had all in their turn approached the cart cautiously, viewed it for a few moments with an air of mistrust, and then withdrawn themselves to a distance, in order to await in safety what might next ensue. The daring address of the new-comer, so different from this prudent behaviour, did not fail to attract universal attention.

"What now, men of Mexico, or of Anahuac, if you prefer that name, Aztecs and Tenochtitlans and Othomites, and Metises and Zambos and Salta-atras, and whites, whom the devil fly away with," added he in a lower tone, "or at least with one-twentieth of them?"10

"Bravo!" vociferated hundreds of Metises and Zambos, whom the last few words had suddenly enlightened as to the political opinions of the speaker. "Bravo! Escuchad! Hear him!"

The object of this applause was apparently busied examining the composition of the pageant. When silence was restored, he again turned to the crowd.

"And so you would like to know what it means?" said he. "Fools! know ye not that knowledge is forbidden? And yet, if you are any better than a parcel of mules, you may see and understand."