On the Mexican Highlands, with a Passing Glimpse of Cuba

Mexico has an able, intelligent, if arbitrary government. She is awake. She is progressive. I have been amazed at the wealth and beauty, the cleanliness and comfort of her towns and cities, at the splendor of her capital, at the fertility and variety of her soils and climates, – the perpetual spring of Ario and Morelia and Toluca and Mexico City, – the eternal summer and tropical heats of the lowlands of the Tierra Caliente, while between the lofty highlands and the lowlands lie the temperate levels, the Tierra Templada, where are climates ranging from those of Cuba to Quebec.

Three hundred years ago Spanish civilization was ahead of that of England and Germany. But Spain and her colonies stood still. To-day our Teutonic peoples are in the lead. Progressive Mexicans, who have no love for Spain, know this, and are fast learning what we have to teach.

No one thing has pleased me more in this splendid, opulent country than to discover that everywhere men are eager to learn the American tongue. That language is taught in all public schools, in all the colleges. It is the hope and pride of every man of means to have his son able to speak English. In fifty years, or less, English will have largely driven out the Spanish speech, and none are more eager for this result than the progressive ruling men of Mexico.

Morelia has much civic pride, and above all else she is proud of her music; proud of her bands. Once a year the musical Morelianos have a competition among themselves, and the band declared the winner is sent to Mexico City to contest with bands from other cities for the musical pre-eminence of the Republic. Great interest is taken in these musical contests. For several years the champion band of Morelia has carried off the national prize. To play in the band is a mark of distinction, and the band leader is a local dignitary. The chief band plays in the plaza throughout each afternoon. This park is filled with fine trees, with many flowers, and has several fountains and comfortable seats, where you may sit and listen to the plash of the tinkling waters and the moving melodies of the band. These seats are free to all. Then, too, there are chairs for which the city sells the privilege, and the chairs are rented for cinco centavos (five cents Mexican, equal to about two cents United States) per hour, for a plain rough-bottom chair; vicenti-cinco centavos (twenty-five cents Mexican) for a big chair with arms. You pay your money, you sit in your chair and enjoy the music as long as you care to listen. Poor peones sit on the free benches; those who have the few centavos to spare rent a plain chair. The rich merchants and haciendados rent the big chairs, and sit there with their families gossiping and applauding the music and watching the circling throngs who walk around the square. The señoritas, three or four abreast, with chaperons, walk on the inside of the broad pavement. The dashing caballeros and rancherros, the dudes and the beaux, in their bravest adornment, walk three or four abreast in the other direction on the outside. Young gentlemen may never speak to young ladies upon the streets, but they dart burning glances at them, and the black eyes of the señoritas are not slow in their response.

I spent one morning viewing the markets and watching the city life on the streets. In Mexico your social standing is marked by the shoeing of your feet, the covering of your head; your boots and your hats are the two things a Mexican first looks at when approaching you. The Mexican loves to thrust his feet into long, narrow toothpick-pointed shoes; the smaller and daintier the happier he is. For a hat, the costly sombrero, for which fifty to one hundred dollars are often paid, covers the man of means; sometimes a hat may cost twice this sum. It may be of felt, or of expensive braided straw with a band of woven gold or silver threads about the crown. Generally, a large gold or silver monogram several inches high is on one side. I wore a pair of broad-soled, oil-dressed walking shoes, with big eyelet holes for the laces. Substantial and comfortable, they would have been quite correct in the States, but the passing throngs upon the streets stared with frank perplexity at these, to them, extraordinary shoes. My sturdy foot gear became the comment of the town. As I sat in the park in the afternoon, several groups of the young and fashionable came up, and pausing, gazed intently at my novel footwear. My hat, a comfortable slouch of the trooper type, also seemed to them of wonderfully little cost – “Only five dollars for a hat!” “Ciertamente! El Señor must have paid more than that!” The American trousers, not fitting tightly to the leg, were also remarked. It is complained, that the young men of wealthy Mexican families, who are now attending Cornell and Harvard and Yale, instead of going to old Spain or to France, return in these American clothes, and insist upon wearing these loose American trousers to the scandal of conservative fashion. Among the ladies, however, the American hat has not yet conquered the mantilla, and for this I have been thankful. The graceful mantilla is so attractive and sits so daintily about the black-braided brow of the señora and the señorita who pass you by!

It is against the laws of Mexico for the religious orders any longer to live within the Republic, but at Morelia there are said to be several of these orders existing clandestinely. A group of ladies, whom we met at the station of departure, all quietly gowned in black, wearing black tapalos– like a reboso but of more costly material – about their heads, were pointed out to me as a subrosa company of nuns.

Morelia is the seat of an Archbishop. The cathedral is a beautiful duplicate of that of Valladolid, in old Spain. It is kept in perfect repair. Within, it is resplendent with gold and silver and richly colored walls and roof. It possesses many beautiful statues of the saints and one of the finest organs in the world. The rich Archbishop is said to be worth more than six millions of dollars (Mexican). He is said to own thousands of fertile acres of the best lands in the State of Michoacan. (All of this worldly wealth the Archbishop holds subrosa, contrary to the letter of the law.)

There are several hundred churches in Morelia. Here Roman Ecclesiasticism looms large and makes itself attractive to the people. We attended a night special celebration of the Mass in a fine, large church, dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Guadeloupe. The church within and without was illuminated with thousands of electric lights. A full orchestra was employed, violins, cellos and mandolins, flutes, cornets, horns and trombones, a fine organ as well as a piano, while several hundred men and boys cassock-clad, chanted and sang in wonderful harmony with the exquisite orchestral music. Many of the voices revealed the highest cultivation, and some of the male sopranos rose strong and sweet and clear as the tones of a Nordica.

As we stood near the portal of the church, listening to the music and watching the multitude of worshipers, an Indian, wild as the Cordilleras of Guerrero, whence he came, timidly entered and paused in the marble portal as one transfixed. His hard, rough feet were without sandals. His red zerape hung in shreds over his tattered, once white garments. His shock of black hair had never known a comb; and even though at last he doffed his sombrero, it was some moments before he pulled it off. He came from the outer darkness. He stood in the blazing glare of the thousand lights, forgetting to cross himself, listening to the mighty melody of the great chorus and many instruments, staring at the brilliant scene. His eyes grew large, his face stiffened, his breast heaved. He conceived himself transported to Paradise! My Protestant missionary friend watched him as did I, and then turning to me, observed, “Can you wonder that the Protestant missionary is not in it, when he undertakes to compete with the sumptuous splendor and organized magnificence of ritual and edifice in the Roman Church? Our only chance is to open schools for the children, take them young and instruct them early, and then, perhaps, when they grow up, some few of them may have learned to adhere to the simple doctrine and plain practice of our Protestant teaching.”

The Jesuits here sustain the fine college of San Nicholas for men, where Hidalgo once taught and Morelos learned, and which, founded in 1540, boasts that it is the oldest institution of learning in the Americas. The Jesuits also maintain a large school for young women. They are endeavoring to resist the tide of progress which is so fast Americanizing the land. But even here the upgrowing generations are giving steadily increasing support to the policies of the enlightened and liberal men now guiding the destinies of the Republic.

XVI

Morelia and Toluca – The Markets – The Colleges – The Schools – The Ancient and the Modern Spirit

Toluca, Estado de Mexico, Mexico,December 14th.

Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock I left Morelia by the National Railroad and reached here at three o’clock in the morning. Tio continued on to Mexico City, but I stopped over to spend the day with my friend, El Padre, the missionary, who has been one of our party to the Tierra Caliente.

From my hotel Jardin, in Morelia, I rode down to the station in a most ancient little car pulled by a single mule; the electric tramway has not yet arrived at that capital.

It was yet dark when I was awakened for Toluca. When I left the train the air was cold, frosty. The city was silent, but it was well lighted with electricity, and a modern electric tram car awaited me at the station. Toluca thus gave me at the hour of my night arrival the impression of being more modern than Morelia, and this impression was borne out upon later acquaintance.

Toluca is one of the more vigorous of the growing cities of the republic. It is a community of some twenty-five thousand people, the capital of the State of Mexico, and lies one thousand feet higher in the air than Mexico City. It is near the center of a fertile valley, forty or fifty miles in length, and ten to twenty broad, while ten miles to the southwest towers the snow-capped Volcano de Toluca, lifting its gleaming cone fifteen thousand feet into the heavens, its melting snows giving an abundant supply of pure water to the town.

The religious differentiation between Toluca and Morelia is marked. Morelia is one of the six cathedral cities of Mexico, and is the seat of one of the six Archbishops. Morelia is also the center of Jesuit activity in Mexico. In Morelia, the Spanish-Mexican takes off his sombrero when he passes the cathedral; the Indian kneels down in the street and crosses himself. The several hundred churches are kept in excellent repair. Ecclesiasticism dominates, the layman is subordinate. In Toluca, on the contrary, Church rule is pushed aside; while there are a number of churches, they are old and most of them dilapidated. The foundations of a great cathedral, laid many years ago, are now overgrown with grass and bushes. No money has been forthcoming from Tolucan pockets to build it up. The governor of Toluca is among the most progressive and liberal men of the republic. His administration maintains large schools and academies for the instruction of young men and women, where the sciences are taught, where enlightened thought rules, and where particular attention is paid to the English language and literature. Several of the instructors are from Chicago.

There are many fine residences in Toluca, with handsome private grounds. The public buildings are new and imposing; the Alameda Park, with its groves and gardens and multitudes of birds, is as beautiful as Chapultepec.

There is also great business activity in Toluca and a number of successful manufactures.

The morning of my visit, I noticed an unusual crowd upon the streets. It surged toward me. It was respectful and quiet. The swarthy company were pressing to look wonderingly upon two little Swedish girls, with the bluest eyes and pinkest cheeks, and braids of the most golden hair – perfect types of the Scandinavian North. They were the children of workmen imported from Sweden and now teaching Tolucans the skilled manufacture of iron.

The rich valley, with its climate of perpetual spring, is the home of a large Aztec and Otomy Indian population. These live in many towns built of stone and adoby, containing two and three thousand souls, even yet speaking their ancient Aztec tongue, knowing only Spanish enough to trade. They are mostly agriculturists, and raise large crops of wheat and corn, which are borne to market upon the backs of men and mules and burros. We met many such burden-bearing cavalcades entering the city, and generally driven by Indians of the wildest types we yet have seen. The sturdy and rugged men are of a stronger race than the inhabitants of the Tierra Caliente along the valley of the Balsas. These Indians run, not a man of them walks. They take a quick, short step, a sort of jog-trot, which carries them forward a great many miles a day.

The climate of Toluca is colder and drier than that of Mexico City, the town being so much higher above the sea. The temperature at night, all the year round, is said to be nearly at frost, falling as low as thirty-nine degrees (Fahrenheit). In the markets to-day I have seen oranges, limes, tamarinds, apples, guavas, hawberries, three sorts of bananas, strawberries, and several other fruits I did not know, as well as fresh peas, beans, lettuce, turnips, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and several other edible tubers. I have also just purchased some of the celebrated Toluca lace, made by the Indians, and some pretty head shawls, (tapalos), of native make. An Indian pottery, made here, is also attractive – a brown and yellow ware, made into jars and water jugs, some of which I am sending to Kanawha.

What a land this country of temperate highlands would have become if only our Puritan and Cavalier ancestors had discovered and taken it! But the descendants of Puritan and Cavalier have at last found out the charm and richness of this great country and, little by little, are beginning to come into it, sympathetically collaborating with its people. Mexico will yet become a most potent factor in the world’s affairs. Progressive Mexicans hope for the day when Mexico will become even more closely knit to the great Republic of the North. Reactionary Mexicans, the conservatives of the Roman Church, dread and deprecate the impending change. El Mundo, chief newspaper of the ecclesiastical party, continually declaims against what it denounces as the “Peaceful Conquest,” of Los Americanos.

In Toluca there was no extensive celebration of the twelfth of December, “The Coronation day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Indian Madonna,” to every Indian the greatest festival of the year. In Morelia, on the contrary, just as in Patzcuaro, the town was lit up from one end to the other with electricity, with gas jets, with lanterns, with multitudes of candles, with torches. The cathedral and the many churches were trimmed with bands of fire along each cornice, up and down each belfry and tower, and all the hundreds of bells were clanged discordantly. The bells of the churches of Mexico are not swung and rung, nor have they any clappers hanging in their throats. The bells are made fast in one position, are struck with a ponderous hammer, and distract the stranger with their incessant dissonance.

The illumination of Morelia is said to be paid for from the Archbishop’s chest, although each layman is expected to set out his own candles before his door. In front of the cathedral a company of priests touched off elaborate fireworks. During the day, hundreds of Indians came into the city, even as I saw them entering Patzcuaro. They camped along the streets, cooked at little fires along the curbs, and slept wherever they happened to be. These Indians were chiefly afoot, the women brought their babies upon their backs, even the old folks were sometimes being carried along upon the shoulders of the younger men. The thronged and excited city was early awake. In fact, it never slept. And there were not only the swarms of Indians, but also groups of dashing haciendados in their high sombreros, short velvet jackets, and tight-fitting, silver-laced and buttoned pantaloones, all mingling and promenading and celebrating the fiesta of Mexico’s patron saint.

In Morelia no one has yet dared to sell a foot of ground to the Protestant missionaries. To do so would mean the seller’s ruin.

In Toluca the Protestant Church (the Baptists) have purchased buildings and opened a fine school for boys and girls, which is become the pride and life work of El Padre.

So many smooth and cunning scoundrels have fled to Mexico, there to hide from American justice, that the Mexican has begun to doubt us all. Hence it is doubly gratifying when one finds here honored and esteemed the better type of our enlightened citizenship like El Padre, and some others whom I have met.

XVII

Cuernavaca – The County Seat of Montezuma, of Cortez and Spanish Viceroys, of Maximilian – A Pleasant Watering Place of Modern Mexico

Hotel Iturbide, Mexico City,December 17th.

This is my last night in Mexico City. I shall leave here to-morrow, Wednesday, at 9.30 P. M., by the Mexican Railway for Vera Cruz. I will reach there in time for breakfast, board the Ward Line’s steamer, Monterey, and sail about noon for Havana, via Progresso, Yucatan.

I delayed my departure until the evening, in order that I might visit Cuernavaca and have a glimpse of that famous watering place and the rich valley wherein it lies – where Montezuma and his nobles held luxurious court, where Cortez made his winter residence, and Maximilian erected a lovely villa for his Empress Carlotta; and which is, to-day, the favorite resort of fashionable Mexico. My passes would have taken me a hundred and fifty miles further along the river Balsas – two hundred miles above where I saw it at Churumuco – but limited time prevented my going so far, and I contented myself with the lesser journey.

I took the train this morning for Cuernavaca, at the large station of the Mexican Central Railway. I sat in a drawing-room car, as new and comfortable as though just leaving Chicago or New York. Quite a party of the ladies of the American Colony went down with me; along with them were several gentlemen, who seemed to belong to the diplomatic corps, and among these was the Swedish Consul, with whom I made conversation in German and French.

The railway leaves the city on the east side, curves to the north, and circles around the northern suburbs, until it begins to climb toward the southwest.

As we rise – a four per cent. grade – the fertile and beautiful valley of Anahuac, in which Mexico City is situated, spreads out before me. The big white city, its red and black-tiled roofs, its many domed and towered churches; the numerous lesser towns and villages scattering out into the bowl-like valley; the shimmering surfaces of lakes Tezcoco, Xochimilco, and Chalco, and bordering ponds; the plantations of dark maguey; the orchards of citrous fruits; the innumerable gardens, floating gardens some of them, from which are gathered the fresh vegetables daily displayed in the city’s several markets; the dark green groves of the splendid cypress of the Alameda and of Chapultepec, as well as the palace itself, perched high upon its rocky base; the circling ranges of lofty mountains, and, in the far southern distance, the mighty volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, snow-crowned and glittering with dazzling refulgence in the light of the morning sun, – all these made a picture as grand and imposing as any landscape I have seen or may ever see, and as astonishing in its contrasts of light and shadow, of green semitropical valley and icebound heights.

For several hours we crept slowly upward, – the views and vistas ever changing. Everywhere there were plantations of maguey, and everywhere at the stations Indian women were selling fresh pulque to the thirsty travelers of the train. Then, little by little, as we were lifted above the warmer airs, we came into the altitude of the oaks, extensive forests of well-grown oaks, and then yet higher we came into splendid forests of pine. The mountains now lost the smoothness of surface, which marked the lower slopes. We came into wide reaches of volcanic ash, tufa, beds of lava, all rough and sharp pointed, with deep cavernous clefts between, apparently lying just as they fell and flowed and hardened uncounted centuries ago.

Upon reaching the summit, attaining an altitude of over ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, we traversed for many miles a grassy tableland, where were herds of the long-horned cattle, and flocks of the thin-wooled sheep with their keepers. Running parallel to our track extended the ancient Royal Turnpike, built long ago by Montezuma and maintained by Cortez with the labor of his conquered Aztec slaves, and still called “El Camino Real del Rey.” On the very summit of the height of land stood the ruins of an old roadhouse and towered fortress. Here Cortez placed his soldiers, and here garrisons of troops have ever since remained to guard the public, to protect the royal mails, to preserve the dignity of the Republic, and even to-day to save the railroad trains from being held up by modern bandits as bold and merciless as their predecessors of bygone centuries. It is the tradition concerning these heights that they have always been the rendezvous of tribes and bands, whose immemorial privilege and occupation it has been to kill and rob. Gruesome are the tales to-day related of the murders and plunderings which once were of almost daily occurrence, and sometimes do yet occur along this famous road. Even now, I notice the camp of soldiers in permanent quarters beneath the shadow of the crumbling tower. Diaz, of the iron hand, takes no chances with the turbulent residents of these mountain solitudes! All along we are among the ancient lava beds, while always lifting into the deep azure sky far out to the left, glitter the snow-clad summits of Iztaccihuatl (Ista-se-wahtl) and Popocatepetl. They appeared to be close to us, and yet we never came any nearer to them, – although we steamed toward them almost half a day.

The descent was rapid – we came down nearly five thousand feet in an hour and a half – into a most lovely verdant valley, two thousand feet lower than Lake Tezcoco. Here grew great crops of sugar cane, bananas, coffee, and oranges, limes and pomegranates – a profuse verdure. The valley, from ten to twenty miles in width, stretched away in broad sweeping curves both east and west, while through it flowed the upper waters of the River Balsas. Here the river takes its rise from the fountains of the melting snowfields upon the volcano’s distant flanks. The valley is one of the most fertile and salubrious in all Mexico. Cortez seized upon it almost as soon as he had wrested Tenochtitlan from Montezuma’s grasp. What he did not take for himself, he divided out in liberal gifts among the great captains in his train, granting to them immense haciendas, farms fifty miles across, embracing lands of unbounded fertility, even then smiling beneath the care of skillful tillers of the soil. The best of these monstrous estates are still owned by families descended from the Conquestadores. The lands originally were all subject to the law of entail, and the laws are still upon the statute books. Here are famous prehistoric ruins, among them those of the ancient pyramid and temple of Xochicalco and many hieroglyphics dating back to an antiquity more remote than the memory of even the Aztec people. Here also are the caves of Cacahuamilpa, equally famous. The great ruins, lying a day’s journey from the city, I did not have a chance to see.

My glimpses of the town of Cuernavaca were but flashlight peeps. The station, where we finally arrived, after descending by a long series of zig-zags and sweeping curves, lies a good mile outside the city. Here a motley assemblage were gathered to greet our advent, an array of cochas, voitures, and cabriolets, drawn by dusty, uncurried mules and horses. Remembering my experience, when last arriving in Mexico City, I hurried to an antique vehicle, drawn by a pair of mules, and bargained with the young cochero that he should drive me to and about the city of Cuernavaca and bring me back to the station. This after some haggling, he agreed to do, all for one peso (Mexican silver dollar). I climbed into the dusty equipage. The cochero swore at his mules in sonorous Spanish, and cracking his long-lashed whip, started them on a full run down the wide camino, amidst a cloud of white dust. Thus we entered the city and thus we proceeded through streets narrow and broad, until we had traversed and circled and driven through the chiefer part of it. He never stopped his swearing, he continually cracked his whip, and the mules never slackened in their wild gallop throughout the happy hour he was in my employ. There are no sidewalks in these Spanish towns. Men and women bolted from our onward coming, children fled into open doorways, and dogs and chickens and lank hogs scattered before us as chaff before the wind. We rattled past the one-time palace of Cortez, afterward of Carlotta, Maximilian’s ill-fated mate, and now used as the State Capitol. We circled the pretty plaza with its flowers and palms and tropical gardens and splashing fountains. We viewed the monstrous cathedral, all dilapidated. We drew rein a moment before the shrine of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, kodaked it, and swung along in front of the old church of the Franciscans.